Chapter 110: The Shadow World

In the snowfield west of the Drey Steel Smelting Factory, near the depths of the vegetation.

George and Gune stood inside a snow cave they had just excavated.

"Ready. We're going in." George's voice was very steady.

"Mm!"

The next moment.

Whoosh...

Gune only felt a twist of time and space.

The surrounding scenes rapidly twisted and shattered. As the shattered scenes gradually reassembled, Gune found himself in a completely new, bizarre, and grotesque world.

Gune immediately felt he could not breathe, and the air in his lungs quickly escaped.

There was no air here at all, as if it were a vacuum.

Fortunately, Gune's source power breathing had always served as the energy supply for his entire body's cells.

Whether there was air or not made no difference.

His powerful physical body easily adjusted the balance of internal and external pressure.

"Is this... the Hunting Layer?"

Gune looked around with considerable curiosity and asked with interest.

Gune was now using source power to produce sound, which did not affect their communication.

"This is the Shadow World. I'll take you here first to get you familiar with it. When we enter the Hunting Layer, it will be time to fight."

"The Hunting Layer is the deeper world of the Shadow World. Once you're proficient here with source power, spell incantations, and such changes, they will also apply when you enter the Hunting Layer."

"Mm!" Gune nodded.

Then, while sensing the differences in the flow of source power within his body compared to the real world,

Gune also began to survey the surrounding environment.

This Shadow World could be described in one word: "desolate," and it was a despair-inducing desolation.

First, there was no vegetation in this world, like a desert or Gobi. The ground was withered yellow tinged with deep black, with a few places bearing the burnt red of bricks after firing.

The entire world seemed like a dead desert after a fire, without a trace of life.

A suffocating and despairing atmosphere permeated the whole world.

Only occasionally there were fist-sized, not quite round stones on the ground that caught Gune's attention a bit more.

At the same time, thanks to the power of reality's projection, many terrains and even scenes of this Shadow World were projected from human transformations of reality.

At the spot where Gune had just come over, there was a road paved with bricks.

However, the road was somewhat broken, with many places slightly collapsed, and many areas had burst upward, but the burst soil floated and remained fixed in the air.

It was as if the pause button had been pressed at the moment of the explosion, appearing somewhat strange and bizarre.

Not only there, but there were also paused explosion scenes on the road.

Further away, many buildings in the Sugg Ruins City had similar conditions, making the whole world seem filled with scattered floating soil.

"What's going on here?"

Gune pointed at the burst soil and stones floating fixed in the air.

"In the Shadow World, it's hard to say whether it's real or illusory."

George spoke softly, explaining.

"You can understand it as having both forms."

"These buildings and products of human activity that transform nature in the real world are also projected into the real world."

"But whether it's human structures or original natural projections, some collapse or uplift occurs. You can understand that the power of projection is uneven."

"Or perhaps illusory forces disturb the strangeness of the Shadow World."

"But we are real. When we, the real, approach, the illusory projections are corrected by us."

Saying this, George walked toward the burst hole. Sure enough, as he approached, the burst soil quickly closed back, and the ground restored to its original state.

When George stepped back and left that area, the burst soil burst outward again.

"Truly amazing." Gune sighed softly.

Then Gune pointed around again.

"What are these?"

At this time, throughout the Shadow World, beams of light could be seen everywhere shining in from the space, some disappearing in midair.

Some shone on the ground.

And some beams were even more magical, directly piercing through the ground. Gune could see the deep soil beneath through the pierced ground.

These were like the Tyndall effect rays in a forest, scattered down from the sky.

They kept the Shadow World from being too dim; at least Gune could see the surrounding scenes clearly.

"I don't know about this either. It's said to be a special power of light projection. My understanding of the world framework only stays on the surface." George also shrugged.

Gazing at these lights, Gune pondered for a moment and then asked.

"Are these lights always like this?"

"Mm, they often pierce through the ground." George nodded.

"No, no... I mean, are these lights always at this angle?"

"How could that be? They change angles over time. The specific angle matches the sun."

"What about night?" Gune asked.

"Night?" George shook his head. "The Shadow World has no night."

"No night?" Gune's brow twitched.

"Yes. When the sun sets in the west, it simultaneously rises in the west, then sets in the east. When it sets in the east, it rises again from the east."

Hearing George's explanation, Gune frowned deeply.

"So that's it. I kind of understand now. I see why those guys had such a recording method, why there is a world framework of overlapping hemispheres."

"Deducing reality from shadows, the deep world of this world, it's right there."

"I think I can somewhat understand the framework model of this world." A hint of a smile gradually appeared at the corner of Gune's mouth.

"The overlap of hemispherical projections, this is the essence of this world. One entity, two sides—no, even one entity, multiple sides. It should be about right. After all, the layers of this world are complex and three-dimensional. The direction deduced by those scholars of world framework runology is not wrong. This world is most likely a planar form. This Shadow World is projected in the region, just the boundary of light and darkness in this world. In the deeper world of the Shadow World, the dark side, what lies there?" Gune muttered to himself.

"What?" George, hearing Gune's muttering, was completely confused.

Glancing at George, Gune smiled.

"I've been studying rune analysis all along. Entering the Shadow World today and seeing its many peculiarities, combined with what I've learned from books and deduced, I roughly understand some things."

"You... studied rune analysis?"

Hearing this, George couldn't help but look over, his face showing astonishment.

"Yes, what's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. My mentor told me that rune analysis requires geniuses with top-tier learning abilities and extremely high compatibility with source power and runes to study."

"In our cohort, only two people barely qualified to study rune analysis."

"I didn't expect you to be one of those top-tier existences."

"I just spent a bit more time studying." Gune waved his hand.

Then, Gune looked at the eternally overcast sky of the Shadow World, as if completely locked in.

But within a few hundred meters above the ground, scattered Tyndall effect rays pierced through, illuminating the entire world.

"This supernatural world, after all, is not governed by Newton!" While rapidly constructing the world framework in his mind, Gune sighed.

As a transmigrator with past-life learning, Gune was fairly familiar with the knowledge of the universe and planetary systems under a scientific worldview.

And now, with the increase in soul strength and magnitude, many vague memories from his past life were emerging clearly.

When combining the knowledge learned in his past life with the content obtained from this world's rune analysis system,

Gune naturally found it easier than scholars who only studied the rune system in this world to deduce the world framework.

"Who is Newton? Is he very powerful? I've never heard of him. Some deity?" George asked from the side.

"A deity, I suppose."

"But Newton isn't powerful; Newton's younger brother is." Gune said with a smile.

"Oh? Who is Newton's younger brother?"

"Niu Bi."

George Derrick: "..."