Floor 30. Human's Royal castle.

In a huge chamber deep under the castle, over a hundred figure in white hooded robe are standing around in a circle. They harmonically chant something over and over. Every once in awhile, one of them suddenly collapse and gets carried out by a group of stationing soldiers. In the middle of the room, a black sphere is slowly forming. The sphere looks like a black hole in space but doesn't have any suction. As it reaches 3 meters in diameter, distorted colors start appearing on the sphere. The color reconstruct themselves into three human figures holding to each other. As the human figures become complete, the sphere collapses onto itself and disappears like it has never been there. The close-to hundred figures in white robe stop chanting, some of the fall onto the ground, motionless.

"The summoning.. is a success!" One of them exclaims.

"What is the meaning of this?" Zwei screams.

"Are we…" Ein mutters.

"We are in another world!" Drei happily exclaims.

Floor 1 - Grass Field (Slime).

Dad tells me to act normal in the town. Our names aren't much special. If anyone ask, he would claim to be a merchant from the city on Floor 30 bringing his son (me) to do business in town. I don't understand much about it but dad says he would explain everything to me later.

He is currently waiting next to one of the Gate's pillar. There is actually two arrow-buttons on the pillar, the upper one is pointing up while the lower one is pointing down. It looks exactly like the buttons in front of an elevator.

"Are we waiting for the lift?" I jokingly say as I could image the Gate (portal) open and a platform appear on the other side with some people already on it.

"Not really. Each floor only has two Gates, so we have to wait for our turn, when this Gate links with the one at our destination." Dad sprouts some non-sense, but after thinking about it, I understand the reason. It would be disastrous if two people from different places come out of the same Gate at the same time.

As I was toying around with my phone, dad suddenly gets on the carriage. Looking forward, I could see the horizon beyond the Gate becomes distorted. A veil of colorful mist fades into existence inside the gate, falling from the arch and disappearing into the ground.

I put the phone into my pocket, bracing myself for what to come. Although I know dad wouldn't throw me into a dangerous situation, the trip between dimensions was scary enough for me.

Spoiler :

The horses disappear behind the veil of mist. If the cliff was still there, aren't we going to our doom? Thinking so make me shudder and cling to the carriage tightly. Soon, the veil is right in front of me but I couldn't see the other side at all.

A slight tingling sensation passes through my body as I go through the mist. There wasn't any special visual or sound effect, and I've already reached the other side.

I lean over to look behind the carriage. We just came out of an exact replica of the earlier Gate, a veil of mist is still there and falling down. There are a group of people waiting in a line in front of the pillar with the button. There is only a single Up button on that column though.

Suddenly I feel the world shift, almost making me fall off the carriage. It seems the Gate is stationed on a paved ground higher than the surrounding.

"Welcome to Floor 0, First Pivot Town." Dad says as he continues driving forward.

I look around like a kid from the countryside coming to the city. It's pretty much reversed as the town looks like a medieval era town that I usually see on the internet. The noise of people talking, the clinking of metals, the sounds of horses' hoofs on the paved road, etc… Everything makes a perfect presentation of a non-modern town.

Dad drives the carriage down the street then turns into an alley. Another turns and we get into a small yard behind a building. It looks like a private yard but I am sure this is our new home as the design looks exactly like our former store, except everything seems to be made of wood and stones. I get off the carriage, walking a few steps toward the back door then turn to look at dad.

"Go ahead. It's not locked." Dad motions me with his head and starts unloading the cardboard boxes from inside the carriage's cargo.

I open the door and enter the building. My first impression is: It's so empty! The entire floor is an empty hall with a stair next to the back door. Dad soon enters while carrying a box.

"This is the shop. Our rooms are upstair." He says then carry the box up the stair.

"Seriously? You want to open a grocery store here, in this Fantasy world?" I say jokingly. Running a shop is dad's hobby so I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. He only chuckles.

Floor 0. First Pivot Town.

It took us an entire afternoon to settle in. There are plenty of room on the second floor and the third floor is an antic. I picked the room on the front where I could look down onto the main street. Every now and then I could see people in strange costume… err, equipment set walk by. Though I've only seen human and horses but not any fantasy creature.

After getting electricity, I start playing game on my console. Other than the wooden floor, walls and roof, my room become no different than a modern room. I could not pay attention to play at all. I am in a different world, but the closest I've been to Fantasy is the game I am playing. I haven't seen anything magical other than the slime and the gate. Where is all the magic? I start suspecting that this is a medieval amusement park or something similar, but the floating outlet tells me otherwise. Dad warned me to not try to learn magic on my own as it might be dangerous. My life in another world starts way more boring than I expected.

Dinner time.

Dad has been busy setting up the shop so I couldn't ask him any question about this new world. However, even during dinner, I could not bring myself to ask. The reason is simple: I start feeling like this is just my delusion.

"Is this phoenix soup?" I ask with jest in my voice, pointing at the chicken-like's leg in the wooden bowl of soup. Although it's delicious, it tastes no different than chicken.

"No, it's just regular chicken." Dad's words make me sigh on the inside. Is everything just my imagination? "Phoenix is luxury and expensive ingredient. No one sells something like that on this floor."

"Oh…" After that, I let the awkward silent take over the dinner. I silently eat my soup while dad silently eats his with a constant smile not leaving his face.

"Do you have something to ask?" He suddenly asks. I look up and see that he is staring at me with a serious-smile on his face.

"Dad, is this really a different world? Why do I feel like we just moved to the countryside?"

"So this is what has been bugging you." He says then looks down on the bowl of soup and mumbles something under his breath. Before I could ask, his bowl suddenly shakes violently but the soup doesn't spill out. Rather, it turns into a mini whirlpool. "Reanimate!" With his shout as a command, the meat in the soup reconstruct itself and form an abominable chicken. It splashes around in the soup then jumps out and runs away. Before it could run far, it collapses onto the ground, becoming a pile of meat.

"It's… disgusting!" I say and push my bowl of soup away. "If you want to show off magic, could you not make me lost my appetite?"

"Ah, sorry, sorry." He says with an apologetic-smile on face.

"Anyway, I still don't feel like this is a sword and magic world. I saw a lot of people carrying swords and other weapons on the street, but I haven't seen any magical thing nor different race."

"Well, this is the lowest floor of Orbis, you could only see human here."

"Then why don't we move to the higher floors?"

"I have an… illness so I can't go too high. The higher the floor, the denser the energy and the denser the energy, the worse my illness get." Dad sighs. This is one of the rare time the smile disappears on his face.

"Then… can I go on an adventure to the higher floor?" I say with a hint of excitement.

"You eventually will. However, I wouldn't let you go until I find a suitable team of bodyguards."

"Bodyguard? Why can't I be an adventurer?"

"Rex, This world has monsters, and I wouldn't let my son into dangerous situation.".

"I… I came from another world, so I would get 'cheat' or something like that, right?"

"Huh?" He frowns. "Where do you learn something like that?" Soon, he seems like remembering something and wryly smiles. "In order to summon people from another dimension, a whole lot of energy would be required…"

"I know about that!" I start flushing out the knowledge I read in novels. "The exceed energy would turn into 'cheat'... I mean 'super power', right?" Dad looks at me with a surprise face. Don't underestimate my vault of cliché situations!

"However, we traveled without using any local energy so you didn't get any super power."

"So… I'm just a normal kid in this world?"

"Don't worry. You have the best dad in the world to protect you!"

"I don't want to be protected." I slam the table and stand up. At this moment, my phone suddenly rings. I annoyedly pull it out from my pocket. Who would even bother calling me? "Who is that?" I answer the phone after glancing at the Unknown number.

["Ah? Is that you, Rex? You grew up so quick."] A woman voice is on the other side. Normally, with years of my novel knowledge, I could immediately guess who this is. However, my mood isn't really good at the moment.

"Who are you?"

["Zet hasn't told you about me? Rex, I'm your mother."]

"Noooooooooooooooooooooo!"