By the time Ren reached the waiting area, there were already quite a few people there.

Some looked around his age, maybe a little older. Others were clearly adults with experience written all over them. A good number wore armor of different styles — some light and flexible, some heavy with layered plates, some that looked simple at first glance but probably cost more than most people could imagine. A few wore plain clothes. In a world like this, the most dangerous people were not always the ones who looked like warriors.

He quietly found a place near one side and stood there. No one paid much attention to him. That suited him just fine.

Some people around him were talking in low voices. Others were checking maps on their light-brains, examining gear, or sitting with their eyes closed. One man was eating something from a sealed container as if he were about to get on a bus instead of entering a Secret Realm.

Ren listened here and there without making it obvious. Nothing too useful came up — warnings about not going too deep too early, complaints about transport fees, arguments over whether certain materials were still worth collecting after recent price changes. Nothing surprising.

The one-hour wait passed more quickly than Ren expected.

Eventually, a staff member arrived and called out that it was time for the next transfer group. Ren moved along with the others as they followed him deeper into the transport section.

The further in they went, the more obvious it became that this place was much larger than it should have been from the outside. Space technology again.

The corridor widened, opened, then opened even more, until they finally stepped into a vast section that made even the guild’s main hall look ordinary.

This was the teleportation center.

There were a massive number of teleportation circles. Some small, clearly meant for one person. Others huge, large enough for entire teams or military-level movement. Some open, some enclosed. Some surrounded by barriers and staff, clearly restricted. Others looked routine, almost casual.

The whole place looked like a strange mix of sci-fi technology and cultivation civilization. The circles themselves were not plain platforms — they were covered in symbols, patterns, and lines too complex to be called decoration. Ancient script curved around modern structural material. Energy nodes were set into the floor at specific points, and faint light flowed along the carved patterns in a way that made them look alive.

The circle their group was led to was medium-sized. As Ren stepped closer, the patterns and inscriptions became clearer — colors that shifted between green, purple, blue, and black, woven together in a way that looked both beautiful and dangerous.

It was the first time he had ever seen a working teleportation circle this close.

The staff member leading them onto the platform spoke in a practiced voice. "Once the barrier rises, do not move around unnecessarily. Do not interfere with the activation lines. Remain calm during transfer."

People nodded. Ren stepped onto the platform with the others. There were around twenty in this batch.

The moment everyone was in place, something like an invisible shield rose around the edge of the platform. Faint at first, then clearer as it sealed the group inside.

Ren narrowed his eyes slightly. So even the transfer itself had layered protection. Made sense.

A few seconds later, the system activated. The carvings beneath their feet began shining brighter and brighter. Energy ran through the inscriptions in pulses. The colors deepened. For a brief instant, Ren had the strange feeling that the ground beneath him had become less solid — not unstable, just... less normal.

Then came the burst of light. Bright enough that he instinctively closed his eyes. After that, everything went dark — not painful darkness, not frightening darkness, just a strange in-between blankness where his body felt like it was there and not there at the same time.

Then the darkness receded.

When Ren opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.

— • —

He was standing inside another building. Much smaller than the teleportation center inside the guild, though still clearly important. The platform beneath his feet was simpler, more utilitarian. The staff here were different too — uniforms not exactly the same, the general feel rougher, more frontier-like.

The shield around the platform faded. The staff member on this side spoke, informing them they had arrived and should move in order.

Ren stepped off with the others. After showing the transport token and clearing the short exit process, he walked out of the building.

The moment he stepped outside, his eyes shifted slightly.

This place was like an open market built on the edge of danger.

Far more people than he had expected. Temporary shops in rows — tent-like structures, portable metal booths, reinforced canopies. Stalls selling food, gear, tools, medicines, maps, emergency kits, even small batches of materials people must have brought out from nearby trips.

And all of this existed inside a larger enclosed zone.

Ren quickly noticed the energy shield around the entire area. It rose high into the air, faint but visible. Beyond it: towering trees, strange vegetation, and movement deeper in the wild. The protected market and staging area looked like a small human outpost pressed against the unknown.

Then his gaze found the thing that drew everyone’s attention sooner or later.

The portal.

It stood beyond the market like something from a dream or a myth. The border looked like a slice of the galaxy itself — dark and deep, yet filled with shifting points of light and color. The inside was even stranger, a mixture of purple, blue, black, silver, and flashes of other colors that changed every few moments like liquid light.

Ren stood there for a second. He wasn’t exactly mesmerized. But he was definitely awestruck.

This was a Secret Realm entrance.

He started walking toward it.

On the way, he passed through the outer market and looked around carefully. Swords, sabers, knives, gloves, crystals, strange orbs, bottles of liquid, monster bones, plant roots, map scrolls, charms, armor pieces, books whose covers alone made them look valuable.

And for the first time since arriving here, Ren began using one of his system’s functions properly.

SCAN.

He didn’t use it openly enough to make himself stand there staring at random stalls like a lunatic, but as he walked, he scanned various items. A blade. A stone. A strange orb. A thick old-looking tome. A pair of gauntlets.

Some items looked impressive but turned out to be ordinary or just decorative. Some looked plain but were actually decent. One weapon looked almost like a legendary main-character treasure from a fantasy novel — glowing and dramatic — but when he scanned it, it turned out to be a good-quality weapon and nothing more.

Ren almost laughed. "So no lucky cheat moments today, huh?"

No hidden divine weapon. No absurdly underpriced miracle treasure. No inheritance casually lying around because the universe had decided the main character deserved it.

Which honestly made more sense. This wasn’t a novel.

’Yeah,’ Ren thought, ’looks like my luck is not at main-character level.’

He didn’t mind. He would rather rely on the things he actually had — his optimized cultivation, his pathway, and the system — than on random miracle luck.

By the time he finished passing through most of the market stretch, he had reached the portal side.

There were lines there. And security too, clearly connected to the Explorer Guild and whatever joint local authority managed the outpost. Some people were in teams. Some stood alone. Others looked like veterans who had done this many times already.

Ren joined the line and waited. The process was simple enough — show access proof, get scanned, move forward, enter the portal.

When his turn came, he handed over his ticket. The staff member scanned it, checked something on a side panel, then nodded. "Proceed."

Ren stepped forward.

As he passed through the portal, the sensation was different from the teleportation circle. The circle had felt structured, mechanical, controlled. The portal felt alive.

The moment he crossed the threshold, it felt like pushing through some kind of membrane — thin, cool, and strange. For an instant, there was darkness again, but not the clean darkness of teleportation. This one had depth, like he was crossing through a layer between two worlds.

Then suddenly — he was inside.

— • —

Ren found himself standing in a forest.

The first thing he noticed was the air. Denser. Richer. It carried a wild freshness mixed with something harder to describe — old energy, wet wood, living growth.

The second thing he noticed was that he was alone.

Then he remembered what he had read. Everyone who passed through the portal was randomly transported to different positions inside the realm. The only exception was if they used a special team binding scroll — created by high-level cultivators, according to the public info — which allowed linked teammates to pass through together and arrive close to one another.

Those scrolls were mostly used by established teams. Ren, obviously, had no such thing. So random entry it was.

He looked around carefully.

The forest around him was alive in a way that normal forests were not. There were many kinds of plants and some small animals, but even from a glance it was obvious this place wasn’t normal. Some plants had faint fire burning on parts of them without actually being consumed. Some leaves glimmered with odd colors. Some vines moved just a little too deliberately when the wind touched them.

The animals nearby did not seem aggressive — but they looked strange. Twisted combinations of things he knew: too many limbs, odd scales, unnatural eyes, fur patterns like markings, bodies that seemed like someone had mixed different creatures together and somehow made it work.

Ren watched a small creature with a lizard-like body and feathered ears disappear behind a glowing fern.

"...Yeah. Definitely not Earth."

After a moment, he opened his terminal and confirmed what he already knew. No connection to the outside world. As expected.

He opened the map and looked at where he was.

He let out a breath after seeing that he had not been teleported into the core area. That would have been a disaster. But he also wasn’t in the outermost zone either, which was slightly annoying. He was somewhere in the middle region between the outer and inner area.

Not terrible. But not great.

He would have preferred the outer area for a first entry, but at least according to the map, his current position was not in one of the marked high-danger zones. There were no especially powerful monsters or top-grade dangerous plants nearby in the currently known area.

That was something.

He didn’t move immediately.

First, Ren reached into his storage ring and took out a small black crystal. He looked at it for a brief second, then pressed it against his chest.

The response was immediate. The crystal softened like liquid and spread over his body in a dark flowing layer, enclosing him almost instantly before stabilizing into a fitted combat suit.

Ren looked down briefly. Smooth. Protective. Light enough not to interfere with movement. Good quality. Definitely better than anything he could have bought for himself right now.

Next, he took out a pair of strange gloves. The moment he put them on, their shape changed, tightening and shifting into a metallic structure that still moved naturally with his fingers. A faint energy ran through them.

These were the suit and weapon-support gear his parents had left for him. And, just like the storage ring, they had come through Alex, their team leader. At first, Ren had thought it was too much — these weren’t low-end things someone casually handed over to a random junior. But Alex had been very direct: it was an investment.

Simple. Straightforward. Honestly, Ren preferred that over fake modesty or mysterious benefactors acting like everything had happened by fate.

He flexed his fingers once inside the gloves. The fit was excellent.

He scanned both the suit and the gloves to confirm. As expected, both were high quality for his current level — far better than ordinary outside-market gear and more than enough for a first realm expedition.

A small smile appeared on his face. "Good."

Then the smile faded, replaced by focus.

This was the real thing.

Ren took one more look around, checked the nearest safe-ish route on the map, then started moving.