Building The First Adventurer Guild In Another World

Chapter 303: Shocked And Fear

Time passed quietly after the battle, but the silence that followed was far from peaceful. It was a heavy stillness, the kind that lingers after something violent and overwhelming, leaving a weight in the air and an unsettling emptiness in the chest.

Despite this atmosphere, the Adventurers wasted no time. They moved quickly across the battlefield, their initial shock replaced by practiced efficiency as they began to collect whatever remnants they could find from the fallen beasts.

However, they soon realized there wasn’t much to salvage; these peculiar wolf-ant creatures were unlike typical magical beasts. Their bodies were unstable, many parts already dissolving into faint green mist that vanished into thin air.

What remained were only their cores, small glowing crystals pulsing softly with green light, and from the five Elite beasts, denser bones and outer scales that shimmered with a faint metallic sheen, clearly more valuable than anything else.

Even so, their yield was disappointing, prompting several Adventurers to exchange glances of frustration as they carefully packed what they could into their storage pouches.

Gregor navigated among them with steady steps, offering calm but firm instructions to ensure everything was collected properly. Vanthrice and Caelis assisted diligently, making sure nothing useful was overlooked.

Meanwhile, Brutus grunted under the weight of several larger bone fragments slung over his shoulder, muttering about how much effort it took for such little reward.

In contrast, Mina sat lazily on a nearby rock, swinging her legs and watching everyone work with an expression of boredom as if this entire cleanup process barely interested her.

Occasionally she poked at one of the cores with a stick she had picked up, her curiosity mild at best, while Sage stood not far off, his gaze sweeping over the area one last time as he mentally shifted focus toward what lay ahead rather than dwelling on what had just transpired.

After some time had passed and they had taken a moment to recover their mana and catch their breath, the group gathered together again.

Their expressions were calmer now; though tension still lingered beneath the surface because deep down everyone understood this was only just beginning.

Sage nodded lightly at them with a small smile creeping onto his face as he spoke in a relaxed tone: "Alright, that’s enough resting; we’ve already spent too much time here. Let’s keep moving, whatever this Vault has won’t wait for us."

His voice carried a quiet confidence that made everyone stand a little taller; focus returning as they adjusted their gear and prepared to move forward once again.

They had barely taken a few steps when something changed.

At first it was subtle, a faint shift in the air like ripples passing through space itself, but within seconds that subtlety morphed into something far more pronounced as reality around them began to distort.

The air thickened heavily, as if an unseen force pressed down upon them from above, and then someone stopped abruptly; another followed suit until all of them froze in place as an unmistakable sense of wrongness washed over them.

Sage’s expression shifted instantly; his eyes narrowed as he looked up, and what he saw made his heart race. The sky... was moving. Not in a typical way, but lowering, slowly yet unmistakably, as if the entire expanse was collapsing downward, pressing closer and closer to them.

Before anyone could react or even speak, a deep, low sound echoed through the air, like something tearing apart, and then,....

CRACK!.

A massive tear split across the sky, stretching wide like a giant mouth opening, dark and endless, swallowing the light around it. In that instant, a powerful force pulled at everything below.

Sage felt it immediately; his body tensed as he tried to move, but it was too fast, too sudden. His vision shook violently as the world twisted and distorted around him. Before he could gather his thoughts, everything went dark.

There was no time to react. No time to fight. No time to understand. One moment they were standing on the prairie; the next,....

They were gone.

Just as suddenly as it had happened, the sky above sealed itself shut, the massive tear disappearing seamlessly, as if nothing had ever occurred.

The heavy pressure lifted completely within seconds, and everything returned to normal: the sky calm, the air still, and the land below... untouched.

The deep fissures, massive craters, scattered corpses, blood staining the earth, all vanished. The prairie stood pristine once more: clean, quiet, empty, as if nothing had ever happened; as if their entire battle had been nothing more than an illusion.

Silence fell again. Complete and absolute.

—

Sage’s vision spun violently when his feet finally touched solid ground again. The sudden shift made his head feel heavy; his balance wavered for a brief moment before he steadied himself with uneven breaths washing over him like faint waves of dizziness.

When his sight cleared at last, he realized that everything around him had changed completely.

He wasn’t on the prairie anymore.

His eyes widened slightly as he scanned his surroundings quickly, and he wasn’t alone in this realization. Around him, others were regaining their balance too; confusion and shock painted their faces along with hints of fear as they darted their eyes around trying to comprehend what just happened.

Valeria stood a short distance away, her posture straight as always but her brows were slightly furrowed; her sharp gaze observed their new environment carefully while maintaining her calm demeanor tinged with seriousness.

Gregor broke through first with a strained voice after swallowing hard: "What... what just happened?"

His question hung in the air because no one had an answer not one of them understood what they’d just experienced. One moment they stood on solid ground; in another breath they’d been swallowed by the sky itself and thrown somewhere entirely different, a suddenness that left unease lingering in their hearts.

Sage remained silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to piece things together, his thoughts moving quickly as he compared what had just happened to something familiar, and after a few seconds, he muttered inwardly.

His voice low enough that only he could hear it. "This... this is like a game... like clearing one stage and getting moved to the next."

The thought felt strange, almost ridiculous, but at the same time, it was the only thing that made sense to him, though even then, the reality of it was far more bizarre than anything he had ever imagined.

Before anyone could say anything else, Valeria stepped forward slightly and cleared her throat, her voice cutting through the silence as she spoke calmly. "This is the Vault, it doesn’t follow normal rules, things like this can happen at any time, so stop standing around and stay alert."

Her words were simple, direct, but they carried a weight that made everyone straighten slightly, their confusion still there, but their focus returning as they nodded one after another, understanding that whatever this place was, it was not something they could predict or control.

For a brief moment, everything was quiet again.

But just then a small voice broke the silence.

"Umm... everyone..."

Mina’s voice was trembling slightly, something that almost never happened, and that alone was enough to make everyone turn their heads toward her immediately, their expressions tightening as they saw her pointing ahead with her tiny hand, her big golden eyes wide, filled with something they had never seen in them before.

Fear.

"...is that normal?"

Her question was soft, almost hesitant, but it sent a chill down everyone’s spine as they slowly followed her gaze, turning their heads one by one toward the direction she was pointing at, and the moment their eyes landed on what was ahead....

Everything stopped. No one spoke and no one dared to moved. It was as if time itself had frozen.

Several Adventurers felt their bodies go stiff, their breaths catching in their throats as their eyes widened to their limits, their minds struggling to process what they were seeing, and one of them even took a small step back unconsciously, his hands trembling slightly, while another swallowed hard, the sound unusually loud in the sudden silence.

Even Valeria who is usually cold and calm even if the world is coming to an end, eyes where wide opened with shock and a hint fear in her eyes.

Enough to show that even she was shaken.

Sage stood at the front, his body completely still, his gaze locked onto the scene ahead, his mind blank for a moment as he tried to understand, tried to make sense of it, but nothing came, nothing at all, because what he was looking at...

It didn’t make sense. Not even a little.

His breath came out slowly, unevenly, his fingers twitching slightly at his sides as his eyes remained fixed forward, and after what felt like a long, long time.

He finally managed to take a deep breath, his chest rising before falling as he spoke, his voice low, shaking just a little as the words left his mouth.

"...What the fuck is that!?"