Solina moved ahead of him with quiet certainty, her bare footsteps making almost no sound as she crossed the living space. She stopped before the eastern wall and placed her palm against it, fingers spreading slightly as if feeling for a pulse beneath the steel skin.
"Turn the lever there," she said without looking back, her voice calm, already assuming his compliance.
Wolf followed her gesture and found a narrow steel handle half-hidden between overlapping plates. He wrapped his fingers around it and turned.
The wall answered.
Metal did not simply slide—it bloomed. Panels folded inward and outward in precise, insect-like motions, layers stacking and curling until the structure elongated and descended like a cocoon suspended in mid-air.
The mechanism hummed softly, a low, steady resonance that vibrated through the soles of his boots and into his bones.
It was engineering with intention—quiet, controlled, and intimate.
Wolf raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
There was only one cocoon.
Solina stepped into it first, gripping the edge lightly as the flexible structure adjusted to her weight, cradling her form.
Wolf followed without hesitation, lowering himself beside her.
The cocoon sealed around them with a soft metallic whisper, the fine wire mesh beneath them shifting almost imperceptibly.
Warmth spread.
It's reading me, Wolf thought, his eyes widening in the dim light.
The mesh was shifting its thermal conductivity in real-time, pulling heat from his hotspots and insulating his extremities. He looked around, noticing the walls surrounding the suspended pod were lined with dark, perforated panels.
"Sound-absorbing," he muttered, his voice barely a vibration in the quiet air.
"You could set off a grenade in here and the rest of the house wouldn't hear a heartbeat."
He shifted his weight, testing the stability of the cocoo
He exhaled slowly.
"…This is a very good bed," he murmured, voice low, more impressed than he cared to admit.
Solina turned her head just slightly, silver lashes brushing her cheek.
"Sleep," she replied in a whisper, her tone clipped but not unkind.
Wolf understood her.
A silhouette of calculated routine.
He did not push.
They did not touch, not truly—but the warmth carried between them anyway, diffused through the mesh, shared without permission or intent.
And just like that, the first day of his new world ended.
The light of the new world could only hummed into existence.
Wolf woke first, his senses instantly sharp. He didn't move, but the moment his heart rate spiked in wakefulness, he felt Solina stir beside him.
She was like a mirror to his own instincts.
She sat up smoothly. "Bathroom," she said, pointing toward the living area. "The large mirror."
Wolf followed her and stopped before what looked like nothing more than a tall, seamless reflective surface. Solina pressed a specific spot near its edge.
The mirror folded inward, the reflection breaking apart like fractured glass, revealing a hidden chamber.
Wolf stepped inside.
The shower activated the moment he entered. A fine mist enveloped him—dense, vibrating, alive.
It wasn't water as he knew it; it was precision. The sensation crawled across his skin, penetrating instantly, stripping away sweat, grime, and residue down to the pore level.
"…Hm," Wolf muttered.
This would be too dangerous in my world, Wolf thought immediately, his brow furrowing as the mist hit his skin. He stood perfectly still, his mind racing through the physics of it.
It took him less than a second to understand the danger.
This isn't water pressure. This is frequency.
His eyes narrowed as he analyzed the invisible mechanics at work.
High-frequency vibration. Strong enough to shear tissue and cauterize simultaneously if misaligned. Heat generation from friction alone would cook skin in seconds if the calibration slipped.
He exhaled slowly.
Such an extremely precise thermal regulation. Perhaps near-perfect control...
Back in his world, this would have been impossible—lethal. too lethal.
This isn't a shower more like...an industrial-grade human cleaning machine huh?
The mist dissipated as suddenly as it had begun.
Wolf stepped out, dry, clean, and already recalibrating his assumptions about this place. He wondered briefly where the used water went—then dismissed the thought. He already had his answers.
Solina was waiting.
She gestured toward a neatly arranged set of clothing laid out on a metal surface that unfolded from the wall. "Your new outfit."
"My records... the documents you'll need... they are behind the wardrobe in the bedroom."
Wolf caught her arm as she turned to leave. "Secret archive? How do I get in?"
Solina stopped, her expression still the same.
"Listen carefully. On the inside wall of the wardrobe, there are 12 small pleats. Glide your fingertips along them—don't press, just glide. It unlocks the first gear under the wooden shelf. A hexagonal gear will reveal itself. Use the brooch you can find from all my clothes. Insert it, rotate it exactly thirty degrees clockwise. The gears must align, or the locking pins will shear."
She mimicked the turning motion with her hand, a delicate, twisting gesture.
"The walls will fold themselves. Just... follow the instructions, Wolf."
With a final, lingering look at the man she had essentially re-clothed for a new era, she headed toward
the bathroom.
Wolf picked it up, observing in silence.
The coat came first—deep onyx leather, heavy but balanced, fitted at the waist before flaring subtly at the hem. He ran his fingers along the back slit and the accordion-style pleats beneath it, imagining the way it would move.
Clack… shhh…A rhythmic sound, playful yet controlled.
Beneath it, the beetle-green vest caught the light. Low-relief lotus carvings spread across its surface, converging at a lotus-bud fold at the chest—the focal point of a cooling system. Extra thickness reinforced the area around the heart.
Vital protection, he noted.
The inner shirt was ivory, high-collared, with delicately ruffled cuffs that spoke of restrained elegance rather than excess. Slim black trousers followed, their side seams hiding folded pleats that would release under strain—designed for motion, not vanity.
Then Wolf paused.
She even made footwear I see
Mid-calf leather boots. Reinforced toe caps layered with folded steel—meant for breaking armor. The heel housed a compact shock-absorption system, subtle but unmistakably advanced.
He studied it one last time, then nodded to himself.
Yes.
It suited me perfectly.
Wolf returned to the bedroom in measured steps, the soft metallic hush of the folding walls whispering behind him as the house subtly reconfigured itself to accommodate his movement.
He paused before the wardrobe, eyes narrowing slightly—not in suspicion, but in focused recall—replaying Solina's instructions with mechanical precision.
Twelve small pleats.
They were easy to miss if one didn't know where to look: shallow, almost decorative ridges running in a neat horizontal line along the inner wall of the wardrobe, half-hidden beneath the shadow of hanging garments. Wolf raised his hand and hovered for a moment, fingers suspended in the air, as if listening to the room breathe. Then he began.
His fingertips glided along the pleats, slow and even, the pads of his fingers adjusting pressure instinctively. One… two… three—there. A faint resistance, followed by a muted tick beneath the wood. The first gear disengaged.
A subtle vibration passed through the wardrobe, traveling up the wall like the purr of a restrained machine.
Wolf's gaze sharpened. He crouched slightly and spotted it—the small hexagonal gear revealed within a newly opened fold, its surface dull and matte, edges worn smooth by countless rotations.
He retrieved the brooch Solina had mentioned from one of her clothes he found in wardrobe, its weight settling into his palm with surprising heft. He inserted it into the hexagonal slot and rotated it carefully, counting the angle not in degrees, but by feel—by tension, by the way the internal resistance eased and tightened like a living thing.
Click.
The wardrobe shuddered once.
Then the walls began to move.
Panels rolled inward, overlapping with elegant inevitability, folding and refolding like layers of origami guided by invisible hands. Wood vanished. Steel replaced it. The space compressed until only a thin vertical sheet remained—and then, without a sound, it slid open.
A narrow passageway revealed itself, dimly lit by the faint spill of light from the bedroom behind him.
Wolf stepped inside.
The air changed immediately.
It was cooler, drier, carrying the faint scent of metal and old ink—an aroma not of age, but of preservation. The archive unfolded before him, compact yet dense, every surface engineered for efficiency rather than comfort.
The books and notebooks were not arranged on shelves. Instead, folding metal drawers lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stacked in disciplined columns. Wolf approached one and pulled a nearby lever.
The drawers responded.
They unfolded outward like an accordion, each segment sliding smoothly into place, revealing rows of book spines wrapped in leather reinforced with thin metal bands. Titles were etched rather than printed, their lettering shallow but precise, designed to endure handling across generations.
His attention shifted as he noticed another system embedded into the far wall.
Information that could not be bound—blueprints, city layouts, structural schematics—had been etched onto ultra-thin metal sheets, folded repeatedly until each was no larger than a fingertip. He picked one up between thumb and forefinger, its weight negligible, its edges impossibly fine.
A projector mounted above the workspace hummed to life as he set the folded sheet into its cradle. With a soft whirr, light spilled across the wall, magnifying the folded etchings into vast, intricate diagrams—streets, districts, supply arteries—each line razor-sharp.
Efficient. Brutally efficient, Wolf thought.
Then he saw it.
At the center of the room, suspended in mid-air as if gravity had simply forgotten it existed, floated a cube-shaped metal box.
No visible supports. No ether currents that his senses could immediately detect. Its surface was seamless, reflecting neither light nor shadow properly, as if refusing to fully exist in the same space as everything else.
Wolf stopped walking.
For a long moment, he simply stared at it, eyes narrowing, instincts prickling at the back of his neck. His hand twitched faintly—an unconscious urge to reach, to probe, to test.
Not now, he decided.
He turned away, imprinting the cube's position and presence into memory with deliberate care.
Another lever caught his attention near the floor. He pulled it.
A metal table unfolded upward, segments locking together with a soft clack, followed by a chair rising beside it, its backrest aligning perfectly with the table's edge. Wolf seated himself briefly, testing the balance, then stood again, already moving.
He began gathering materials.
First came the foundations.
World History. Geopolitics. Anthropology. Economics.Trade Routes. Religion and Beliefs. Biography. The World's Power Players.
He stacked them neatly on the table, aligning their spines without conscious thought. Then he returned for more.
Economic and Tax Structure of the Axion Kingdom. Social Hierarchy and Nobility of the Axion Kingdom. Social and Cultural Conditions of the Axion Kingdom.
These went beside the first pile, forming a second column—denser, heavier.
Still not enough.
Theories on the Use of Ether. Alchemy.Botany. Martial Arts.
He placed the last pile near his left foot, almost absentmindedly, as if already categorizing them by priority rather than subject.
Only then did he sit.
Wolf picked up the first book from the initial pile and opened it. The pages were thin but resilient, text compressed yet perfectly legible. His eyes moved—not line by line, but in sweeping captures—paragraphs absorbed whole, cross-referenced instantly with half-remembered fragments from Lamentia's archives.
Not reliable, he thought coldly. Two thousand years old, filtered through decay and myth.
His jaw tightened briefly.
And Hyung-woo's memories…
Wolf exhaled slowly through his nose, irritation flickering across his expression.
Except from monsters, dungeons and quests.
Almost nothing else.
He clicked his tongue softly.
"Dumbass…" he muttered under his breath, the word lacking heat but heavy with disappointment.
Wolf read.
One book emptied, then another. The first pile vanished piece by piece. He shifted seamlessly into the second, posture unchanged, eyes sharpening as numbers, hierarchies, and institutional behaviors layered themselves into his mind.
Then the third.
Ether dynamics. Material interactions. Combat philosophies.
When the final book closed, Wolf remained seated.
His hands rested loosely on the table. His gaze unfocused—not vacant, but inward.
Information rearranged itself in his mind like interlocking gears, systems meshing, contradictions resolving, patterns emerging where chaos had been moments before. Power structures. Economic pressure points. Cultural fault lines. Belief systems that could be bent—or broken.
Wolf did not move.
He simply sat there, silent, breathing slow and steady, his mind sinking deeper into analysis as the archive's dim light hummed softly around him.
Wolf steadied the sheet of thin alloy beneath his palm, the metal faintly warm from the projector's residual glow. The stylus scratched softly as he drew—clean, deliberate lines forming coastlines, borders, pressure points. Each stroke was measured, never rushed. His breathing had settled into a slow, even rhythm, the kind that only came when his mind entered its preferred state: sharp, silent, utterly awake.
"So… Axion," he murmured to himself, voice barely more than a thought given sound.
The word lingered as he marked the northwest. Axion Kingdom—mechanical cities, folded steel, disciplined trade. Close. Too close, perhaps. His stylus slid upward, sketching the looming mass to the north.
"Valgard Empire," he continued quietly. His eyes narrowed a fraction.
Lamentia.
The name didn't escape his lips, but it pressed against the back of his skull all the same. His fingers paused mid-air, stylus hovering.
He leaned back slightly in the chair, metal creaking under his weight, and exhaled through his nose.
"If she's remembered at all," Wolf thought, "it'll be as a victory… not a warning."
Respect, yes. Honor, certainly. But obedience?
A faint, humorless curve touched his lips.
"No emperor tolerates a wild war hawk."
He resumed drawing, lines flowing southward now. Quinthall Kingdom.
His pace quickened slightly here, interest sharpening. Trade arteries. Liquid metal exports. Lubricants essential to jointed architecture, to folding cities like Axion's itself.
"A practical neighbor," he muttered. "Too practical to start wars lightly."
If Valgard moved, he had options. Switching banners meant nothing to him. Borders were conveniences, not loyalties. Escape routes traced themselves in his mind as easily as ink on metal.
Yet his hand slowed when he reached the central regions of the map.
"…But this still isn't where I want to be."
He set the stylus down and rubbed the back of his neck, fingers sliding into his hair, scratching absently as his gaze unfocused. Two names rose unbidden, heavy with implication.
Arteria Kingdom.
Ventilogia Empire.
"Ventilogia... The Divine Eyes Behind the Veil…" he whispered, almost reverently, his hands coming together as if holding a delicate secret. "A nation built on the harvest of whispers. Information is the only true currency there, and the freedom... the freedom to move and to learn."
His hands drifted down to the map again, hovering over the imagined space of the Arteria Kingdom.
"The Confluence of Heaven and Earth."
His eyes sharpened again as he leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. He visualized it vividly now, layering memory over imagination.
"A geographical miracle. All rivers converge, all life flows through their sluice gates."
He shook his head, a look of profound respect crossing his features. "Rich alluvial soil, plants growing three times faster, ores meant for forging equipment beyond conventional limits. Materials no other land could replicate.."
His fingers drummed once against the table.
"Not only do they feed the world," Wolf thought. "They also hold it hostage."
Close the gates, and empires starve. Rivers dry. Fields crack.
The kind of power that didn't need an army to be absolute.
That, more than anything, made Arteria dangerous.
Wolf leaned back fully now, spine stretching, joints popping softly beneath the coat Solina had made for him. He raised both arms overhead for a moment, then let them fall as he reached for the stacks of books.
The metal drawers hissed faintly as he began returning the volumes, one armful at a time.
History. Economics. Ether theory. Alchemy. Martial treatises. Each returned with care, as though mishandling them would be a personal offense.
"No matter which world," he thought calmly, almost fondly, "All knowledge shall be mine.."
That had always been his pursuit.
He paused, books held against his chest, and allowed himself a rare moment of stillness. There was no hunger twisting in his gut, no urgency clawing at his thoughts. Only a quiet, steady resolve.
"My pace. My journey. I'm savoring every second."
As he moved, his expression settled into one of profound, serene detachment. This was the Harmonious passion—the fire that warmed him without burning him alive.
And in Buddhist, it would have been simpler.
The Middle Path.
He felt the Middle Path beneath his feet. He wanted it all—the secrets of Ventilogia, the power of Arteria, the history of Valgard—but as he slid the books back into their slots with a soft thump, he smiled.
If he never reached those golden valleys, if he stayed in Axion until his hair turned white, he would still be whole. He was chasing the sun, but he was perfectly happy walking in the moonlight. He savored the texture of the book's cover, the scent of the old ink, and the thrill of the plan itself.
The outcome was a destination; the pursuit was the life.
Detached from outcome. Committed to action.
Wolf returned the final book to its place, the drawer folding shut with a soft, satisfied click. He stood there for a moment longer, hands resting at his sides, breathing evenly.
Only the quiet certainty that, wherever this path led—through kingdoms, empires, worlds, and universes—he would live it fully.
His heart knows no regret or emptiness, past or future.