Lost in the Seamless Loop
I got up from where the shattered pieces had been and looked around. Seamless white walls and floors stretched everywhere. It was similar to the underground passage I'd seen earlier, but it didn't belong to any place I knew. Hell, I was just grabbing my pad to surf the web, sitting on my bed, and suddenly I drop into a spot like this? The one saving grace was that I still had the pad in my hand.
I gripped the pad slowly and opened the screen. A stark red "No Signal" icon stabbed right into my eyes at the top. Of course. Just as I figured, but damn, total radio silence. Desperate for anything helpful, I checked the message from Lambda Lilion.
"This sucks."
There was a reply to the two photos I'd sent. The problem? The entire response was garbled gibberish. If this was a dream, my brain couldn't generate the text because I never actually saw it. Best-case scenario. If it was real? Then I was standing smack in the middle of danger.
What do you do in a situation like this? First things first, I checked the pad. Battery was nearly full. This thing ran on mana, not electricity, so in a pinch, I could charge it with my own. Basically like having a spare power bank. Or, more accurately, tapping into the dorm's mana circuits when I got physically tired. Same as pedaling a bike to generate electricity—your body's got the whole setup built-in, so as long as you're alive, you can recharge. Stamina or mana. Both matter, so use 'em wisely.
I switched on the video recorder, cranked the quality down, and set it to the longest recording mode possible. If it's a dream, it'd just be a fun story later. If not... well, what choice did I have?
Filming with the pad, I moved down the corridor. Thud, thud. My footsteps echoed around the space and bounced back to me. Nothing else made a sound. Come to think of it, it felt kinda chilly. The air had a different texture. This cool, dry atmosphere tugged at some memory. Why? What came to mind was the rustle of fallen leaves and the crisp scent of a clear sky. The underground passage earlier had been cool too, but it had a hint of warmth at the edges and wasn't this bone-dry.
Thud, thud. Comparing what I'd actually seen with this place, I advanced step by step. After walking a bit, I noticed the corridor didn't go up or down—it curved subtly. If this followed Pristine Comprehensive University's layout at all, I was inside the ring. Straight would be from the engineering building to the science building. Slopes for up or down. Curved for the ring. Wish I could see it clearly, but with no seams or shadows, it was hard to tell if it really curved or which way.
If it's a ring, a four-way intersection would be nice... but nothing but this, so I kept walking. Thud, thud. The white passage seemed endless. If it's just a loop, I'm circling the same spot. Better leave a mark to check if I come back.
What could I use? I was barefoot in a light shirt and pants—my everyday clothes doubling as pajamas, I guess. Sleepwalking in PJs. Hope it's a dream. Anyway, for a loop, I need to leave a trace and see if I return. Can't drop the pad. But I need some kind of stain. My skin reflected in my eyes, but I knew wounds cost stamina, so no self-harm. Blood's last resort.
Oh, right. Magic. Forgot about magic. I focused, channeled mana in a short burst, and fed it into the formula.
Fwoosh. A flame the size of a lighter flickered into existence midair. Not a perfect flame—more like a crude polygonal blob—but that's because I'm trash at magic. Normally it'd be a proper fire. Feeling mana move was a new sensation from my past life; I could sense it decently, but weaving it into spells? Tough.
Thank god this civilization runs on mana as long as you can produce it, so even hacks like me can live normally! Anyway. Fire might cause a disaster if it spreads, so I brushed the flame lightly against the floor, leaving scorch marks. Nice—black streaks appeared. I cut the mana flow to conserve... nah, this tiny flame wouldn't die even if I kept it up all day. But the backlash if it backfired felt like suddenly jamming a finger up your nose—gross—so I snuffed it.
Of course, recording the whole thing on the pad as I pressed on. Walk, walk, walk. And there it was—the small scorch mark I'd left in the corner.
Yup. Goddamn closed loop. Time for a new approach. If I had even my little sister's magic skills, I could've shot an arrow or laser into the wall. But nope. Can't chase what I can't do—find another way.
Think. I'd been breathing fine, no mana evaporation. For a long time, too. Most vertebrates here die without mana, like oxygen starvation. Time to fatal damage varies by reserves, but no mana metabolism means no life functions. So this isn't a total surreal void—there's mana here at least.
Mana class basics: Sensing others' mana. Emitting your own in concentric waves to scan surroundings. Basic stuff. But do it in public? You'd get arrested as a pervert. Scanning magic's illegal outside special cases—feels like groping someone's body invisibly. Misdemeanor for sure. But this is an emergency shelter. Not real scanning anyway.
No hesitation—I emitted mana at a sustainable level. One of the few clean curves I could draw came out. Technically, mana waves rippled outward in perfect circles. Real scanning would've analyzed and fed me data, but I just gauged the echoes. In a uniform passage like this, I felt the spherical blob expand until it left my control, ignoring sightlines. Look for asymmetry...
Behind me. I turned toward the weirdly rippling spot. Farther on, waves bounced erratically while others were regular. Distance to that distant scorch mark? This might be where I blinked—back to start after looping.
Feeling waves ping wildly off one wall, I approached. Distant waves amplified tiny phase shifts, letting my mana sense reveal the curve. This door led toward the ring's center. Reaching out, no hard wall—instead, empty air shimmered, and the wall vanished. Like an old game glitching into rendering a new path.
Lucky or not, the other side was still solid wall. Weird. Outermost ring should've sloped down at a three-way— but straight section. Still, a path appeared. I widened the wave intervals to conserve mana and headed in.
Didn't go far before stopping. Dead end ahead. A familiar door. Beyond the security gate like a subway turnstile from the science building basement. Hydraulic pistons and metal lattice frame—alien looking. Back then, no gate, just empty space. Now, a massive door sealed tight. Unlike reality's plain black, this had alternating black and yellow diagonal stripes. Shape identical.
Memories of info flashed: Same as science building underground passage, but no tracks, decorations, or facilities. No passage behind science building at all. If they just cleaned or repainted the real black door...
Institute built way before '80s, first Pristine uni 79 years ago. If that creepy black mannequin ties to now... And that weird old post mentioning 60 years back. Assume all pieces connect—
Is this the underground from around 60 years ago?
I turned, scanning every inch again. Stairs to science building ground level were there... but no passage at the top—just smooth white wall blocking it. Four-way? Nah, three-way puzzle number two.
Can't they give just one problem at a time...? Grumbling inwardly, I eyed the iron door with its black-and-yellow diagonals. Hypothesis set, but nothing proven. Odds of returning to my room? Still Schrödinger's cat behind the curtain—success or failure.
No choice. Do what I can.