The scene shifts to Firefly, who's still idly scrolling through her phone, chatting in the group chat.
Free Eagle: "Hey, has anyone else noticed that you guys haven't been talking as much in the group lately?"
Shu Cat: "Huh? Uh... really? I don't think so..."
Free Eagle: "I'm talking about you, Shu Cat! You used to practically live in this group. What's with the sudden silence? What's going on?"
In reality, Shu Cat's activity hadn't decreased; he'd simply moved his conversations to a private chat group for people with Super Abilities. Since that group only had five members, and Free Eagle wasn't one of them, he naturally wouldn't know about it.
Shu Cat: "Uh, this..."
Peace Dove: "It's true! I'm totally siding with Eagle on this one. Where have you been disappearing to lately, you little sneak? Did you find someone new behind our backs?"
Shu Cat: "No way, Peace Dove! You can't just slander me like that!"
Free Eagle: "??? Peace Dove? Didn't you used to call her 'Peace Dad'? Oh, right... you guys had that meetup. So Peace Dove's a girl?"
Shu Cat: "What are you talking about? I always called her Brother Peace before! But Peace Dove is definitely a girl, and the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life!"
Free Eagle: "Seriously? But I thought you said you'd actually met Robin in person. So, Peace Dove is even prettier than Robin?"
Shu Cat: "???"
Peace Dove: "Oh, that's right! Who do you think is prettier, me or Robin?"
Seizing the opportunity, Firefly casually tossed out this "death question." She didn't actually care who was prettier, since they were both her anyway, making the question pointless. But teasing her group members was simply too amusing to resist.
If someone answered that Robin was prettier, Firefly would immediately scold them for daring to find her lacking. If they said Peace Dove was prettier, she'd still scold them, accusing them of betraying Robin, her beloved idol.
But before anyone could answer, Firefly felt a faint tremor beneath her feet. She sat up abruptly, slipped on her shoes, and rushed to the balcony. There, she saw the colossal black sphere looming in the distance.
"A Dimensional Rift?! Wait, does that mean my divination wasn't about a conflict between the Dragon Nation and White Eagle at a conference in this city, but about a Dimensional Rift opening here that I can exploit for points?" Firefly paused, momentarily stunned. Just as she was about to investigate the rift, a faint dizziness washed over her—the unmistakable prelude to being pulled into an Otherworld.
"An Otherworld-type Dimensional Rift? And... why is its range so massive?"
In reality, the dizziness wasn't confined to the conference attendees at the airport or Firefly in her hotel room; it afflicted every single person in the city.
The Otherworld Dimensional Rift's effective range was so vast that it enveloped the entire metropolis!
In the next instant, the city of Nawajima transformed into a desolate ghost town, utterly devoid of life.
Cars careened out of control, crashing into buildings lining the streets. A plane preparing for takeoff slammed directly into the terminal, igniting a raging fire. Perhaps the only silver lining was that these disasters claimed no lives.
When Firefly regained her senses, she realized she was no longer in the hotel. She stood on a rutted dirt road in a completely unfamiliar place, surrounded by a crowd of people who had formed a tight circle around her.
"Where am I?!"
"We're doomed! I just wanted a vacation, and now I'm caught in a Dimensional Rift? What are we going to do?"
"I knew we shouldn't have come! It's all your fault! You insisted we avoid the tourist season crowds by traveling during the off-season!"
The crowd around Firefly erupted into a cacophony of voices, the scene descending into chaos.
These weren't locals. Like Firefly, they were ordinary people pulled into this strange place by the Dimensional Rift—likely tourists from various countries who had been staying at the same hotel as her.
Their panicked arguments echoed in Chinese, English, and a few obscure languages Firefly barely recognized. Japanese was conspicuously absent, which made sense; locals wouldn't stay in tourist hotels in their own towns.
Firefly strained to stand on tiptoe, but the crowd around her was too tall. Many were over 170 or even 180 centimeters, and they were packed so tightly together that she could barely see anything.
"Tch... Move aside! Let me through!" Frustrated, she shoved her way through the crowd in a random direction. Finally free, she took in her surroundings.
On either side of the uneven dirt road stretched rows of market stalls. The vendors and local pedestrians stared in stunned silence at the sudden influx of newcomers.
Firefly's gaze swept across the stalls. They displayed cold weapons like knives, swords, and guns (but no halberds), as well as tattered books and strange objects resembling severed body parts from unknown creatures.
The clothing worn by the vendors and passersby struck Firefly as vaguely familiar, though she couldn't quite place it.
Then, when a nearby pedestrian spoke in flawless Japanese, it clicked: this was the classic attire of a Japanese fantasy RPG world!
Or, to put it another way, the kind of outfits you see in the endless stream of trashy isekai anime that flood the market every season.
In other words, this Dimensional Rift, this Instance, was set in a JRPG-style world?
A moment later, Firefly realized something: why had that passerby been speaking Japanese?
She remembered when she and the European Union team had been dragged into a Dimensional Rift before. In that Instance, the NPCs had seamlessly switched between English and Chinese mid-sentence. But in this new Instance, the language wasn't automatically translating. Why?
Firefly's Japanese skills were passable at best, entirely self-taught from watching anime in her previous life.
"Seriously? Not again..." Firefly's lips twitched. Thanks to Robin's tutoring, her English was now conversational. But now this? Time to learn Japanese all over again?