Oliver tried using the ’Zenith’ ranked inheritance he had just obtained, but unfortunately nothing happened. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to activate it.

It was as if there were requirements he simply didn’t meet yet and so after a few failed attempts, he had to give up.

Looking towards Goldie, he asked if there was anything else worth seeing here. The squirrel immediately shook its head in a no, and so Oliver began making his way back towards where he had come from.

However, as he passed by the mural depicting the red-skinned horned people, something suddenly changed as his hands began trembling and shaking violently.

At the same time, the familiar cool voice of the System echoed inside his mind.

[Conditions Met: Shall the Key of Forgotten Doors be used?]

Oliver frowned, confused as to what conditions had been met but he still said,

"Huh...Sure?"

The moment the words left his mouth, the world around him began twisting.

The walls around him stretched and then distorted, as though reality itself had become liquid. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a gigantic hourglass began floating in front of him.

At first it remained still, but then just as suddenly it had appeared, it began spinning. It span faster and faster until Oliver could no longer make sense of what he was seeing. The cave, the paintings, even Goldie disappeared into a blur of colors and shapes.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped and Oliver found himself standing somewhere else.

The first thing he noticed was the sky.

It was orange, painted in the colors of sunset, and in front of him what looked like a city.

The buildings surrounding him were unlike anything he had ever seen before. They possessed curved roofs made from a strange silver-colored material. Though relatively small, they somehow looked more advanced than many modern structures back on Earth.

"Where the fuck am I?"

Oliver slowly turned around, only to realize that Goldie was gone too.

Before he could think about that further, he heard some footsteps and as he turned, movement caught his attention.

A red-skinned man and woman with black horns suddenly ran towards him.

Oliver instinctively stepped aside, expecting them to collide with him, but neither reacted to his presence, it was as though he didn’t exist. The pair continued shouting to one another in a language he couldn’t understand before disappearing around a nearby corner.

A few moments later, a scream echoed through the streets.

"Aaaaaahhhhhhh!"

The sound was filled with terror and without thinking, Oliver immediately ran toward it.

The scream led him through a few streets until he finally reached an intersection. There, hiding behind the corner of a building, he cautiously peeked out. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The sight before him made his blood run cold, as it was the exact same scene that he had seen in the painting.

Several red-skinned black-horned people were scattered across the street, many of them were already dead, while others desperately fought for their lives.

These creature’s strange black blood covered the ground, and in the middle of the carnage stood the man from the mural.

The man in the yellow suit, with golden horns and black blood that stained his face.

Oliver was completely horrified. What horrified Oliver wasn’t the battle, but, the fact that the suited man didn’t seem to care about it.

Several warriors were attacking him simultaneously. Many of their weapons struck his body and their blades cut into his flesh, and yet, he ignored all of it.

Instead of focusing on the battle, he continued eating one of the fallen horned beings as if nothing else in the world mattered.

Oliver felt his stomach twist.

These creatures weren’t human, but they looked human enough. Their screams, their fear, their desperation—all of it was all too much for Oliver, and so, he suddenly bent over and vomited.

The sound of his vomiting echoed louder than he had expected, but he wasn’t worried. From everything he had seen so far, nobody here could perceive him.

But, then the impossible happened, the golden-horned man suddenly stopped eating and slowly raised his head and looked directly at Oliver.

As their eyes met, the world seemed to freeze.

The suited man stared at him with visible surprise before saying something to one of the warriors attacking him and pointing in Oliver’s direction.

The warrior immediately seemed to doubt him but still turned and looked over, but confusion appeared on his face. He clearly couldn’t see anything.

The suited man spoke again and the warrior searched the area and yet he could still see nothing.

Throughout all of this, the golden-horned man’s gaze never left Oliver.

Not even once.

A chill crawled down Oliver’s spine as he understood what was happening, the others couldn’t see him but that thing could.

’H-he can see me...?’

It was as if the man in the yellow suit had finally found something intriguing, something that interested him more than the battle around him, more than the red-skinned warriors trying to kill him and more than the corpses he had been happily feasting upon moments ago.

His eyes remained locked onto Oliver and then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.

The look in his eyes was enough to make Oliver’s blood run cold. It wasn’t the look of a predator staring at prey, it was something far worse.

It was curiosity, the kind of curiosity a child might have upon discovering a strange insect.

’N-No goddess...Please.’

The yellow-suited man then casually did something that Oliver couldn’t even tell what it was.

And then—

Bwooom!

All the warriors attacking the suited man were suddenly erased. There were no screams, no blood, no bodies flying apart; they just simply ceased to exist.

The building behind which Oliver had been hiding turned to dust first, then the buildings beside it followed too. Streets collapsed, houses vanished and entire sections of the town disappeared in an instant.

Oliver stood frozen. Nothing had happened to him, there was not even a scratch on him and yet everything around him was gone.

Only Oliver and the man in the yellow suit remained standing amidst the ruins.

The suited man’s grin widened slightly as he continued staring directly at him with intrigue and slowly step by step started walking towards him.

But then the hourglass, that had appeared before he had teleported here, returned.

Without any warning, it appeared between Oliver and the yellow-suited man, floating silently in the air. This time, however, it began spinning in the opposite direction.

The moment the yellow-suited man saw it, his expression changed. The amusement on his face disappeared, replaced by something Oliver couldn’t quite identify.

It seemed he had sensed that the hourglass was trying to take away his new toy.

He increased his speed, but it was as if no matter how fast he ran, he could never reach Oliver.

The surroundings had already begun changing as the barren wasteland, the orange sky, and everything else around Oliver started twisting, and slowly they burst into countless fragment.

The yellow-suited man didn’t care and continued charging toward him.

But then, in an instant, the world shattered completely, and Oliver found himself back inside the cave.

Goldie, the paintings on the walls, and the familiar darkness greeted him once more. For several seconds he simply stood there frozen before finally muttering,

"What the fuck was that?"

And as he once again looked at the painting, Oliver was surprised to see that it had changed.

The red-skinned horned people were still there, and the yellow-suited man still stood at the center of the scene surrounded by corpses and black blood, but now there was something else too.

At the very edge of the mural, a small building had appeared that definitely hadn’t been there before.

The details were crude, yet Oliver immediately recognized it as the same corner he had hidden behind while watching the massacre and peeking from behind that building was a tiny human figure looking towards the battle.

The drawing lacked any real features, but deep-down Oliver knew.

It was impossible and yet somehow the human figure...was him.