I half leaned back against the bed.
A familiar ceiling came into view.
Faint stains, dust in the corners, an old fluorescent light cover.
After going to the Human Ranch, the Glass Beach, and the Six-Book Corridor, just seeing an ordinary ceiling like this was enough to put me at ease.
My heart was slowly, ever so slightly, settling down.
The rough gasping from when I’d been gripping the sink just moments ago had more or less subsided now too.
I wasn’t sure if mental protection was really working, or if people simply started to adapt, in a way, after going through horrific things a few times. Well, maybe it was both.
I closed my eyes.
‘Just for a bit... I’ll rest for just a bit, then take a look.’
That was what I thought, but my mind refused to rest.
The glitter of the Glass Beach, the scratching sounds of the Six-Book Corridor, the massive shape that had looked down on humans like livestock.
Even with my eyes closed, they surfaced vividly.
If not for the fact that I was lying in my room, I would have felt like I was still inside some unknown dimension.
Dimensional Archive.
Without opening my eyes, I simply recalled the list.
Atlantis-1334.
Just from the name, it sounded plausible.
Civilization.
Ruins.
The legendary city sunken beneath the sea.
At the very least, it was a more familiar name than the Human Ranch or the Six-Book Corridor. And even if it was dangerous, it was the sort of danger I could imagine to some extent.
Underwater.
As soon as that thought occurred to me, calculations followed right after.
‘I just have to hold my breath.’
Even if it was deep underwater, I could enter, check the situation, and come right back out. If it was really dangerous, I could return within a few seconds. It was only a few seconds. If I just held my breath, wouldn’t I somehow manage?
I opened my eyes.
“...Fuck, am I a genius?”
The words slipped out, and then I let out a hollow laugh at how absurd it was.
Still, my thoughts kept rolling in that direction.
This time, it made sense to change my clothes too.
I got up from the bed.
I immediately took off my hoodie and long pants. If it was underwater, I figured lighter clothing would be better.
I pulled out a short-sleeved T-shirt and put it on, then changed into shorts that came above my knees.
I changed my shoes too.
Instead of the sneakers I’d been wearing until a little while ago, I put on sandals with rubber soles. Going barefoot would be insane, and sneakers seemed like they’d get in the way underwater.
In the end, this was what I chose. It looked ridiculous, but at least it felt like I wasn’t going in without thinking.
I tapped the front of the sandals against the floor with my toes.
“Done.”
Then I picked up my phone.
I still didn’t know how the time in other worlds and real time would differ. At the very least, I needed to check the time in reality right before entering.
Just looking at the lock screen time didn’t seem like enough.
I turned on an internet clock.
A screen where the seconds ticked upward clearly.
After staring for a while at the digital clock at the top of the search results, I propped my phone up on the bed.
Thursday, 2026.3.26. 19:37:17
‘Good. Let’s compare.’
I inhaled so deeply that my chest swelled.
Then I fixed my will on Atlantis.
The dimensional gate opened in a familiar way. A thin vertical rift split open in midair with quiet ease.
By now, even this sight was starting to feel just a little familiar. That didn’t mean it was any less frightening.
I walked up to the dimensional gate. Even right in front of it, it was silent, as if cut off from the world. Beyond it was only a blue haze, impossible to tell whether it was bright or dark.
The Dimensional Archive gave me no clues to the very end.
I held my breath.
‘Just confirm it.’
Saying that inwardly, I pushed my body into the dimensional gate.
The next moment.
My entire body was crushed.
“Ghk...!”
Even though I was holding my breath, a sound leaked out.
Before any sensation of cold or wetness came pressure.
My head.
My chest.
My eyes.
My ears.
My joints.
My organs.
It felt as if enormous hands from every direction had seized my body all at once.
The deep sea.
That word flashed through my mind like lightning.
Calculations like “I just have to hold my breath” were smashed to pieces in an instant. The problem wasn’t breath. It was simply a level where my entire body wasn’t supposed to exist here.
The inside of my ears throbbed, and behind my eyes, a pressure swelled as if it were trying to push my eyeballs outward. My chest was pressed down as if being squeezed, and my arms and legs grew so heavy they didn’t feel like my own.
Only then did the scenery around me cut in like flashes.
Deep blue darkness. A faint light falling from far above. The silhouettes of enormous pillars brushing past through the waves.
A collapsed tower.
A massive arch.
Things like the remains of a city sunken to the ocean floor.
Somewhere, blue light was glowing like civilization.
And one thing was moving.
It looked human, but it was not human.
Long, flowing blue hair.
A pale upper body.
A massive tail continuing below the waist.
‘A mermaid...?’
But up close, it was absolutely not a fairy-tale mermaid.
The scales on its tail were long and sharp. Thin membranes were attached between its arms and sides, and beside its face, instead of ears, several rows of slits like gills were split open.
It slowly looked this way.
A chill ran down my spine.
‘Did it... see me just now?’
At that moment, a red window erupted in the center of my vision like it was about to explode.
[Emergency Warning!!]
Current water pressure significantly exceeds human survival limits.
[Risk of bodily damage rapidly increasing]
Risk of lung damage
Risk of eardrum damage
Risk of ocular damage
Risk of vascular system compression
[Recommendation!!]
Return immediately!!
I didn’t even have the leisure to read the whole thing.
I was already at my limit.
My chest was too tight. It wasn’t a matter of holding my breath. Existing here at all was wrong.
Even the sensation of water touching my skin was strangely heavy. Rather than feeling submerged in seawater, it was closer to the entire world pressing down on my body and crushing it.
“Kh, mmph...!”
The breath I had been holding wavered.
Dangerous. Truly.
Reflexively, I thought only of returning.
At that moment, the mermaid-like thing in the distance moved.
With one large sweep of its tail, I could feel the current push toward me even from far away. I couldn’t tell if it was coming this way or merely turning direction. I had not the slightest desire to find out.
That being was not beautiful. It was a creature perfectly adapted to the environment called the sea.
That perfection was terrifying.
It was a resident of this place, and here, I was nothing more than a lump of meat weak against pressure.
‘Return... now, right now!’
As I dragged up my will, the deep sea distorted first.
The blue darkness folded, the outlines of the ruined city tore apart like hairline cracks, and the distant mermaid’s figure scattered like a shadow stretched across the waves.
The next moment.
I returned, half collapsing onto the bed.
“Cough, khuhk...!”
The breath I had been holding burst out.
I sprawled over the bed and coughed like mad.
My lungs hurt as if they were burning. My ears were muffled, and my eyes burned hot. Like someone barely pulled out from deep water, I couldn’t get my breath back.
“Hah, hhk... hah...”
I gripped the bedsheets and gasped for air.
‘I survived...’
That thought came to me again. And right after, so did the thought that I had genuinely almost died just now.
For a while, I couldn’t get up.
My heart was pounding wildly, and inside my ears, there was still a low ringing, as if the pressure remained. Even moving my head slightly made me dizzy.
At the edge of my vision, the Archive quietly appeared.
[Record Updated]
Reality Time: 2026-03-26 19:37:17
Dimension Entry
Atlantis-1334
[Record Updated]
Local Status: Unknown
Location: Deep-sea underwater zone
Current water pressure significantly exceeds human survival limits.
[Record Updated]
Local Status: Unknown
Risk of lung damage
Risk of eardrum damage
Risk of ocular damage
Risk of vascular system compression
[Record Updated]
Local Status: Unknown
Humanoid aquatic lifeform observed
Unidentified entity: 1
[Record Updated]
Reality Time: 2026-03-26 19:37:17
Returned to reality
Earth-0300
[Record Updated]
Coordinates saved
Atlantis-1334
Dimension where immediate return is recommended
I stared blankly at those sentences.
‘Humanoid aquatic lifeform.’
It sure phrased things dryly.
What I’d just seen wasn’t something I could simply gloss over as “something like a mermaid.” That being had clearly seen me. And I, with the insanely stupid blockhead calculation that I would be fine as long as I held my breath, had stepped into the middle of the deep sea and nearly had my body burst open first.
“Fuck... am I an idiot?”
Then my gaze drifted back up the record window.
Reality Time: 2026-03-26 19:37:17
Dimension Entry
Reality Time: 2026-03-26 19:37:17
Returned to reality
“...Huh?”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at those two lines again.
They were the same.
The entry and return times were identical.
At first, I thought I’d seen it wrong. Since it was only in seconds, maybe they had just overlapped by luck. But it was strange no matter how I thought about it, that after nearly dying in the deep sea, coming back, coughing, catching my breath, and even reading the logs, the time in reality was still the same.
“No, wait...”
I read those two lines once more.
Then, very briefly, I bit my lip.
I should have noticed from the first record update.
“I really am a fucking idiot...”
Muttering a curse, I immediately reached for my phone. The internet clock I’d propped up on the bed was still on.
Thursday, 2026.3.26. 19:37:18
I froze like that.
I looked again.
Thursday, 2026.3.26. 19:37:19
My hand stopped.
It had already been strange in the record update, but seeing the internet clock directly made it even clearer.
While I nearly died inside the dimension, came back, gasped for breath, and even read the logs, time on the reality side had only moved by about one or two seconds.
“...Insane.”
My voice leaked out very low.
Reality time had stopped while I was inside the dimension.
I slowly sat up.
It felt as if one piece of a puzzle was clicking into place inside my head.
I opened the basic screen at the edge of my vision.
───────────────
Dimensional Archive
User: Baek Siyun
Reality: Earth-0300
Until Next Update: 22:39:34
[Dimensions] [Abilities] [Records] [Settings]
───────────────
I stared at the third line for a long time.
22 hours, 39 minutes, and 34 seconds.
This was not the cumulative time I had spent inside the dimensions.
It was the time left until the dimension list changed again.
Only after seeing that number did it become even clearer.
Reality time, the time I experienced inside dimensions, and the time running internally for the Archive were all moving separately.
I slowly exhaled.
“...Good.”
The word I let out was short, but my mind was busy.
I’d confirmed what I needed to confirm. Reality stopped. At least while I was inside a dimension.
This seemed like good news, and also like very bad news.
□ □ □
For a while, I leaned against the bed and did nothing.
To be precise, I couldn’t do anything.
My legs had given out at the Human Ranch, my cheek had been cut at the Glass Beach, I had thrown up at the Six-Book Corridor, and at Atlantis, my body had almost actually burst apart.
After being hit with four in a row, the act of looking at anything more felt like madness itself.
I lay still, staring only at the ceiling, then dragged a hand down my face.
Cold sweat, the fishy stink of seawater, and the clammy discomfort after vomiting were all tangled together.
“Fuck, it reeks of salt...”
The mutter slipped out.
I looked like hell.
In the end, I got up and went into the bathroom.
When I turned on the shower, warm streams of water ran down my shoulders and neck. For a while, I stood there blankly.
The glitter of the Glass Beach, the smell of the Six-Book Corridor, and the pressure of Atlantis’s deep sea all remained as if stuck to my skin. Even washing with water didn’t make the unpleasant feeling come off easily.
Still, I felt a little like I was returning to reality.
I roughly washed my hair, face, and neck, then came out and dried myself with a towel.
For a moment, I looked down at the short-sleeved shirt and shorts shoved into the laundry basket, and the sandals thrown carelessly beside it.
That had been the combination I picked before entering Atlantis while pretending to be smart.
The result was a total fucking disaster.
I exhaled through my nose like a snort, then picked up the long clothes I’d taken off earlier.
A long-sleeved hoodie.
Long pants.
Sneakers.
I put them on one by one.
I put on the hoodie, tightened the drawstring on the long pants, and tied the laces of my sneakers firmly. After tying them once, I pulled on them again to check.
Now I knew.
Dimensions did not kindly behave according to the way I imagined them. If they were pretty, they were dangerous in their own pretty way; if they were underwater, they crushed people in their own underwater way.
So at least when it came to clothing, I had to go as conservatively as possible.
I tapped the toe of my sneaker against the floor once.
“Ready.”
Half leaning against the bed, I recalled the Dimensional Archive.
Reality stopped.
Strangely enough, that fact reduced my fear a little, while instead feeding my stubbornness.
The world was perfectly fine, and I alone was peering into this insane list.
That was how it felt.
Black Universe Breeding Grounds-9648.
‘This one’s obviously wrong from the name alone.’
The Human Ranch, at least, had humans at the center. But the Black Universe Breeding Grounds started from the scale of the universe.
And on top of that, breeding grounds.
It was obvious from the start that it wouldn’t be on a human scale.
‘Not going is the right choice.’
Even as I thought that, my gaze was already fixed on the name.
Stubbornness.
At this point, it was less curiosity and more stubbornness.
“Let’s make it short and decisive.”
I muttered a resolve no one had ordered me to make.
I checked the time on my phone once more.
Thursday, 2026.3.26. 20:05:53
‘Good.’
I clenched my teeth once, then fixed my will on the Black Universe Breeding Grounds.
A vertical gate opened. This time, even the color was different.
Inside was black.
It wasn’t simply dark. It was a blackness where light itself had been swallowed. Beyond the gap in the gate, nothing could be seen.
I paused for a moment in front of the dimensional gate.
It was black, and oppressively quiet.
“Let’s go...”
After saying it, I found it slightly absurd.
That the resolve I could muster in this situation amounted to only that much.
Then I slowly stepped into the dimensional gate.