Black Universe Ranch-9648

The ground under my feet was solid.

Dirt.

I blinked.

A breeze stirred. Somewhere in the distance, something like birdsong carried on the air. I could smell grass. There was a sky.

"Oh..."

The word slipped out before I could stop it.

The place I was standing looked like an ordinary field—not quite city, not quite countryside, just that vague kind of outskirts landscape. A vacant lot with weeds poking up here and there, low hills off in the distance, silhouettes that might have been utility poles, and a faint mechanical hum from somewhere I couldn't place.

Earth... right?

I drew a breath.

It didn't hurt.

I wasn't underwater. My ears weren't about to burst. My stomach wasn't turning inside out. Nothing was slicing my skin open, and no one was staring down at me from the other side of glass.

For the first time—really, truly the first time—I didn't feel like I was going to die the second I stepped through.

I took another step.

Crunch.

Dirt compressed under my shoe.

It was real.

"It's normal?"

I muttered it half in disbelief.

The Dimensional Archive stayed quiet. No warnings. That, if anything, felt even stranger.

I turned slowly, taking in my surroundings. It looked like Earth. Too much like Earth—so much so that it felt fake. Like a background that had been cleaned up a little too carefully, like the starter zone of a game map.

I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was off.

Then, suddenly, I felt it.

The light.

The scenery itself was fine, but the direction of the light was wrong. It looked like afternoon sun, yet the shadows sat at odd, uncertain angles.

I narrowed my eyes and slowly lifted my head.

I looked at the sky.

And froze.

There were clouds. There was a sky. But above that, there was something else.

At first it looked like a vast black band—like the night sky ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had been layered over the day.

It wasn't. Holy shit, it wasn't that.

It was the curved surface of something that existed beyond the sky. Something so enormous I had mistaken it for the sky itself.

An impossibly massive black curve.

Points of light were studded across its inner face—stars, I thought. They weren't stars. They were planets.

Things that looked like Earth. Red ones, blue ones, ones cracked halfway open, dark ones.

They were so distant and so huge that for a moment my brain simply refused to process them. It took several seconds to understand that the sky I was standing under was not a real sky at all—that it was the inner wall of something far greater.

Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.

"......Insane."

And just like that, everything twisted.

The wind. The smell of grass. The dirt. The birdsong. None of it felt real anymore. It felt like the environmental recreation of a single enclosure inside a ranch.

I held my breath and looked higher.

And I saw something move.

Far across that black sky—beyond that enormous curve—something passed slowly by.

A single shadow.

At first I thought it was a cloud. But the moment that shadow drifted past, one of the Earth-like planets fixed in the sky rocked, just a little.

Too easily.

Really—like a toy brushed by a fingertip.

In the next instant, the planet's surface split.

A distant point cracked open like a hairline fracture, and a red line bloomed across it. Its oceans seemed to boil. Something like continents tore apart. Lights that might have been civilizations, or cities, winked out all at once.

I couldn't speak.

That was a world.

A planet that had been someone's history, someone's life, someone's sky and sea.

A red window tore up into the center ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of my vision as if the air itself were ripping open.

The sentences were short. Short—and somehow that made them hit even faster.

That was when my mind snapped fully back into place.

Fight. Hide. Hold out.

None of those thoughts even formed.

Here, the ideas themselves didn't hold. Even this moment—me looking up at that sky—probably amounted to nothing more than someone watching a speck of dust inside a ranch.

"...I've lost it."

My lips barely moved as the words came out.

I thought of returning at once. I shoved myself toward the rift open in the air.

In that same moment, the sky folded first. The blue day, the black curve, the planets fixed upon it, the vast shadow drifting past in the distance—each layer rolled in like sheets of paper. The dirt floor I'd been standing on flattened with them.

The next instant.

I was back, one hand braced against the floor of my studio apartment.

"Hah...... hah......"

My breathing was fine. I hadn't thrown up water. My ears were intact. My cheek wasn't cut.

And yet, strangely, words took a long time to come.

I just sat there.

Blank.

The room was the same. The bed was the same. The clothes I'd thrown off were the same.

But the sky I'd been looking at moments earlier was not a sight I could simply set aside.

It had looked like Earth. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That was what made it so much more horrifying.

A world that let you breathe like Earth, walk around fine like Earth—and only when you finally looked up told you that you were inside a ranch.

I dragged a hand down my face.

"...This is seriously fucked."

A log rose into one corner of my vision.

I read those lines and said nothing for a long time.

Then, slowly, I opened the main screen again.

I stared blankly at those numbers, then muttered under my breath.

"So it's not real-world time after all... just the Archive's clock running on its own."

The thought had barely finished when all five of the ones I'd seen so far came crashing in at once.

Human Ranch. Glass Beach. Fleshscript Corridor. Atlantis. Black Universe Ranch.

It wasn't just the scenery that remained. The sensations were still there too.

The sting of a cheek sliced by glass. The nausea that had rolled over me in the Fleshscript Corridor. The crushing pressure of Atlantis. The cold sweat of the moment I'd looked up at the sky of the Black Universe Ranch.

It all came up together.

I finally clamped both hands around my head.

My fingers dug into my hair. I squeezed so hard my scalp pulled. It hurt, and I still didn't want to let go. I felt like I needed to be holding on to something.

"Hah..."

My breath shook.

"Hah, fuck..."

I couldn't take it anymore.

"AAAAAAARGH!!! FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!"

I screamed until my throat felt like it would tear.

The studio walls shook. My own voice came back and hit my ears again. Once wasn't enough—more screams tore out of me like I was wringing myself dry, until my breath cracked.

"AAAGH!!! Ah, fuck!!! AAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"

Anyone hearing this would think I was a lunatic. But I really did feel like I was losing my mind.

Why am I looking at this stuff? Why the hell did this happen to me? I think I actually have a mental illness. I don't even know if this is a power or a curse, an opportunity or a fucking nightmare, so why do you keep making me open the damn doors—why?!

My hands clenched tighter in my hair.

Ah, I think I'm gonna cry.

My eyes were already burning.

Then.

A blue window popped up dead center in my vision with a soft thunk.

I stared at it with my breath halfway stuck in my throat.

"...Huh?"

For someone who'd just been clawing at his own head and screaming, the sound that came out was absurdly dazed.

"What did I even do."

That was genuinely the first thought I had.

What had I done to make these go up?

I hadn't fought anything. I hadn't cleared a quest. I hadn't killed a monster. I'd just walked into some obscenely dangerous worlds, failed to even scavenge free loot, and then run like hell.

I stared blankly at the window, then narrowed my eyes again.

Mental Protection had the highest number. Next was Bio-Adaptation. Lowest by far was Aging Suppression.

"This... is it reflecting what I've actually been through?"

Thinking about it, it wasn't that strange.

The thing that had taken the hardest hits so far was my mind.

I'd thrown up in the Fleshscript Corridor, and after coming back from the Black Universe Ranch I'd clawed at my head and screamed.

Next was the body.

I'd thrown myself into every kind of alien environment imaginable, so Bio-Adaptation climbing along with that wasn't weird either.

Even Aging Suppression being the lowest made a kind of sense. I hadn't endured anything for long yet—I'd just come close to dying, short and sharp, over and over.

It checked out, didn't it...?

The feeling was strange.

Not bad. Honestly? Kind of nice? Heh~.

Lv.2.

Just a single number going up, and somehow it was a comfort. The cheap kind of comfort that said none of what I'd seen so far had been completely pointless.

Having even this much made the screaming from a moment ago feel a little less pathetic.

I slowly pressed Confirm.

The window vanished.

It went quiet.

And in that quiet, my mood sank straight back to the floor.

"Hah......"

A long, long sigh.

So my levels went up. What could I actually do with that?

Could I walk back into the Human Ranch right now and survive? Could I go skipping around Glass Beach humming a tune? Could I look at the Fleshscript Corridor with a clear head? Could I endure the deeps of Atlantis? Could I look at the sky of the Black Universe Ranch and not freeze solid?

No, right...? You're an idiot.

Even at Level 2, I was still me.

The scary things were still fucking terrifying. The things that felt like dying still genuinely felt like dying. And my head had already been rattled once—no, several times—pretty hard.

I don't have the courage to look at the rest of the dimensions anymore, sensei...

What was left now was Astrania, Earth-0382, Nameless-8224, Paradise Exile Zone-6915...?

My hand wouldn't move.

I sank onto the edge of the bed and picked up my phone. I wanted to shut my thoughts off. I wanted to look at anything—literally anything.

So I opened Shorts.

What the algorithm fed me was a cleaning-meme Short with an unnervingly addictive quality.

A cheap-looking character with a cheap-looking expression kept yelling about how great mopping was.

I watched it with a blank face.

Next video. Another similar meme. Next video. A remix of the same music from earlier. Again.

Short after short went by, treating a single mopping routine like some kind of festival.

I almost snorted.

Without a word, I hit Like and Save.

A guy who'd just come back from a ranch on a cosmic scale was now sitting on his bed, looping cleaning-meme Shorts.

The situation was so stupid that it actually made me feel a little more alive.

I stared at it, dazed, several more times.

Watching, then watching again. Scrolling past, then stopping. Repeating it for no reason at all.

My head emptied out. Not completely—more like the terror was still there, with a cheap song laid over the top of it, and everything had just paused for a second.

The feelings that had been standing up razor-sharp a moment ago pressed down a little.

I didn't know if that was a relief or just pathetic, but either way I could breathe again.

I slowly looked down at my phone.

Along one edge of my vision, the dimension list still hung in a vertical column.

The name of the next dimension to enter.

Astrania-1337.

I looked at it for a long time.

"......You think it'll be normal?"

The words came out alone.

I didn't think so.

Everything so far had been insane. There was no way this one would be normal. If anything, it might be the most cunning of them all—the one that pretended hardest to be ordinary.

A world that let you breathe, let you walk around fine, and then suddenly made you look up at the sky.

Suspicion coming first was only natural at this point.

Still... I can't just not look, can I?

I slowly got to my feet. My legs felt heavy. Even the short walk to the dimensional gate felt long.

Then I set my will on the name Astrania.

A vertical door opened.

I frowned.

"Try any bullshit this time and see what happens."

This time I didn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠go in for a while. I just stared the gate down.

Glass Beach had been beautiful at first, too. Black Universe Ranch had looked like Earth at first, too.

I couldn't trust first impressions anymore.

I reached out and swept a hand through the air just inside the threshold.

Nothing happened.

I put just the tip of my foot through first.

Still nothing.

One step... another step.

But still, sensei... please, just this once...!