The sounds of heavy creak of a door echoing in his mind made Noah freeze.
He knew that sound.
It was the exact noise that played whenever Yog-Sothoth activated.
But why? He didn't cast any magic. He didn't chanted the spell. He knew he didn't mishear it.
If he traced his actions back, what did he just do?
He just killed a man.
'Wait.'
The core condition to release his consciousness from the projection in the alternate universe was offering a life as a sacrifice.
Did the spell require a blood sacrifice in the real world to open the gate again?
"P-please, spare me!"
The surviving coward's pathetic begging snapped Noah back to reality.
Noah looked down at the man, his mind still miles away, analyzing the magic.
He didn't even blink. He raised a finger, summoning a jagged earthen spike that punched right through the man's skull.
He didn't bother hiding the bodies.
Lost in thought, he hoisted Maris onto his back and carried her the rest of the way to the surface.
...
When Noah walked into the Guild lobby and Eina saw Maris's missing leg, the half-elf broke down.
She dropped to her knees, sobbing over her friend.
Noah didn't stick around to offer empty comfort. He set Maris down, handed over the Guild paperwork, and left the building.
His mind was racing.
He skipped dinner, walked straight into his bedroom, and locked the door.
He lay on his bed and closed his eyes. The physical world melted away, dropping him back into that endless, pure white void.
He stared at the chaotic gate floating in the empty space and reached his hand out.
The heavy lock holding it shut was gone.
He could feel it.
If he took a single step, he could cross right back into the Blazer world.
But stepping through that door right now was a death sentence. Even if he joined the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival with his current stats, he wouldn't make it to the finals.
Forget the elite knights from the other academies, he couldn't even beat Ouma Kurogane in a fair fight!
Ouma wasn't stupid.
Now that the swordsman knew Noah could manipulate souls, he would never let him get within arm's reach again.
The One-Armed Sword Saint was an A-Rank Knight for a reason. He survived as one of the Twelve Apostles of Rebellion by being an absolute monster on the battlefield.
His strength eclipsed ordinary Knights, backed by decades of brutal combat experience.
In a pure clash of swords, Noah couldn't hold a candle to him.
Noah only won that fight because Wallenstein had never fought someone who could alter their own molecular density to phase through attacks.
Touch-based instant-kill magic existed, but combining it with intangibility broke every rule in the book.
Noah didn't win through skill, he won by catching a veteran assassin off guard with an impossible trick.
If Ouma knew his kit going into the fight, the veteran wouldn't have been so careless.
If Noah wanted to survive a return trip to the Blazer dimension, he needed to wait until he hit Level 3.
Going back as a Level 2 meant acting as cannon fodder against those freaks of nature.
'Hm?' Noah blinked, rubbing his eyes.
His vision doubled.
The white void didn't just hold one chaotic gate anymore.
Two doors hovered in the endless space.
He walked closer, running his hand over the strange frame of the second door.
It felt cold and real.
This wasn't a hallucination..... it was a brand-new gateway!
"This is..."
A new universe? A path leading somewhere other than the Blazer world?
Noah stood before the unknown gate, hesitating for a fraction of a second.
He used to worry about the random nature of the spell.
What if it dropped him into a dead universe? A void with zero life or breathable air?
He figured out the grim reality pretty fast.
If he got trapped in a dead world, he would have to live out his entire natural lifespan there.
Dying of old age would snap his consciousness back to Orario.
But dying of old age in a projection... what kind of toll would that take on his real brain?
He didn't have a solid answer, but he guessed it wouldn't kill his physical body.
The rules were strict: damage taken by the projection mirrored onto the main body.
Back in the Blazer dimension, his body tore itself apart, but his Denier skill bailed him out, purging the fatal damage and restoring him.
When he woke up in his bed in Orario, he didn't have a single scratch.
Even the brutal cuts from Ouma's sword vanished.
Plus, dying from starvation in a projection probably wouldn't translate to actual starvation in the real world.
The real threat was the mental toll.
Being trapped alone in a desolate wasteland for a hundred years would break a human mind.
Even if he survived and the magic pulled him back, he would wake up as a raving lunatic.
That was the hidden poison baked into Yog-Sothoth.
He knew the risks, he knew the theory behind surviving it.
But he didn't know if his own willpower was strong enough to hold his sanity together in the dark.
There was no way to test it without taking the plunge.
It was a blind gamble.
Still, he felt good about his odds.
Staring at the shimmering frame of the new universe, he made his choice.
He wondered what kind of fake background the cosmos would forge for him this time.
Taking a deep breath, Noah stepped through the gate.
....
Half an hour later, Noah shoved his way through a patch of thick untamed woods and stumbled onto a wide dirt road.
He glanced down at his new outfit.
He wore a set of cheap, roughspun clothes. The tailoring wasn't bad, but the fabric was itchy.
A faded blue pack hung over his shoulder.
Well, calling it a pack was generous. It was just a big square of cloth wrapped around a few items and tied in a crude knot.
He didn't carry much. His inventory consisted of a few weird-looking fruits and a sealed letter.
A quick pulse of Truth Seeker confirmed the fruit wasn't poisonous.
He broke the wax seal on the letter and read through the neat handwriting.
It was an introduction letter written by a guy named Roton.
Apparently, Noah's new identity cast him as the only son of Roton's dead best friend.
Honoring his fake father's dying wish, Noah was supposed to travel to the Imperial Capital using Roton's recommendation.
Once he hit the city limits, he was supposed to track down an old colleague who used to work with his dad.
This contact would supposedly set him up with a cushy job. Noah aimed Truth Seeker at the parchment to get the bottom line.
[Roton's Letter of Introduction] Present this document to the military office in the Imperial Capital to secure a posting as a city guard.
It read just like a quest item description in a video game.
The rest of the heartfelt fluff in the letter was pretty much useless.
The real issue was his spawn point.
He had no clue which way the Imperial Capital was, and he spent the first twenty minutes walking in circles through the woods.
He only found the dirt road by using his gravity magic to float above the tree canopy and scout the terrain.