From Somkid's account, Nawa realized the vastness of The Oneness; it far exceeded his previous imagination. Over the years, more than ten million players from across the globe have entered The Oneness, yet humanity has only explored the tip of the iceberg.
Many areas remain unexplored, not only because of The Oneness's immense size, but also because it's a land fraught with danger—from its challenging terrain and weather to its powerful creatures. In some areas, even high-ranking players can face immediate demise if they're unprepared or careless.
The more he talked with Somkid, the more Nawa realized his own powerlessness. At his current strength, he was like an ant in a dinosaur world. Exploring The Oneness was out of the question; even traveling to a nearby village was an impossible feat.
After a heavy drink, Somkid finally passed out at the table, intoxicated. Nawa got up and went to the counter where a female employee was sitting, saying,
"Could you let him rest there for a while?"
"I'll pay for all the food and drinks myself."
"Okay. We usually have customers who get drunk and pass out like this," the waitress replied, handing Nawa the bill.
Nawa looked at the price of the food, then opened his dimensional storage. He took out two silver energy crystals and dozens of copper energy crystals, handing them to the waitress to pay for the food. He then took out another silver energy crystal to pay for a week's stay at the hotel.
Although the hotel room price was comparable to that in the human world, the food and drinks were extremely expensive. A few dishes made with common-level monster meat cost almost two silver coins each, at least five to six times more expensive than what was sold in the human world.
The reason for this was that preparing monster meat was not easy. Or, to be more precise, cooking monster meat deliciously was difficult. If done incorrectly or with even a slight mistake, such as overcooking or undercooking, the taste would be terrible, even if the quality of the meat wasn't compromised. So bad that even a dog wouldn't eat it.
Cooking monster meat requires machinery, but in The Oneness, even advanced machinery is unusable. Therefore, preparing monster meat relies solely on the chef's strength and skill. Chefs' wages in The Oneness are extremely high; some earn more than high-ranking players.
Because of this, food in The Oneness is many times more expensive than on Earth. It's no wonder that most players prefer to eat monster meat back on Earth. Ordering food at the hotel bars in The Oneness is a luxury for low-ranking players.
But this time, Nawa wanted to treat Somkid to a meal as a way of repaying his kindness. Even if it cost twice as much, Nawa wouldn't regret it.
Honestly, the advice and information Somkid gave Nawa were worth hundreds or thousands of times more than this meal. Especially the clues about a possible cure for his father's illness; their value was immeasurable. Nawa resolved that one day, he would repay the other's kindness.
Once Nawa received the room key, he climbed the stairs to the third floor and continued down the narrow corridor until he reached the room at the end. Nawa inserted the key into the lock on the door. Suddenly, faint blue rune patterns appeared on the door and then vanished. It was a sign that the seal on the door had been broken.
Upon opening the door, the interior was decorated similarly to a typical hotel on Earth. While there were no electrical appliances, there was a small, round lamp in the center of the room for lighting. In the corner was a self-heating fireplace, requiring no fire. Nearby was a refrigerated storage unit overflowing with various drinks. All of these were magical devices powered by energy crystals.
Even without electrical appliances or electronics in The Oneness, the advanced technology of magical runes made life in The Oneness quite comfortable, perhaps even more so than on Earth.
Nawa quickly prepared to take his belongings back to Earth. All his items were stored in his dimensional storage. Like most players with limited dimensional storage space, they would either pack items that couldn't fit in their storage and carry them in bags tied to their bodies or hold them while logging out back to Earth.
After making sure he hadn't forgotten anything in The Oneness, Nawa collapsed onto the bed. He mentally summoned the system window.
"Ding!" The system's sound rang in his head, and a window appeared before him.
(Will you be logging out to return to the world?)
(No) (Okay)
Nawa simply thought (Okay). Shortly after, the system window changed.
(The login process will take 2 hours and 39 minutes. During this time, if you leave the ring area, the login will be immediately canceled.)
(Time remaining before login: 9,540 seconds)
Nawa watched the time decrease before drifting off to sleep. He woke up to a strange sound, like flies buzzing in his head. Opening his eyes, he saw a white light emanating from his body. It started as a faint light and gradually brightened, obscuring his view completely.
When the white light faded, Nawa found himself no longer in his hotel room. The soft bed had become a cold, hard surface. Looking around, he saw a large, familiar-looking teleportation portal.
Nawa recognized it as the same one he used to enter The Oneness, but this time there were no people inside. Instead, a beam of white light, the size of a bamboo tube, shot out from the center of the portal. At the end of the beam, a large ball of light appeared. As the light faded at that spot, the figures of the players appeared.
Most players who had just returned from The Oneness had a lot of luggage on their backs, including various items and monster parts. This was because the players' dimensional storage had limited space, forcing players who wanted to bring things back to their world to carry them or tie them to themselves.
The area behind the teleportation gate was crowded with people. Not far away, countless shops lined the streets, buying monster meat, energy crystals, herbs, and various materials. It felt like a huge market.
"Where should I start?" Nawa muttered to himself, blaming himself for asking Somkid so many questions about The Oneness earlier, but not about trading the things he obtained from it.
Nawa's energy crystals were almost completely depleted. The only thing that could make him money was the monster meat in his dimensional storage, and he wanted to sell it for the highest price. Nava looked around and saw many shops. He decided to inquire about prices at a few shops, and would sell to whichever offered the highest price.
But the result was something Nawa hadn't expected. Every shop offered him monster meat at almost half the price the system had estimated. When he inquired about the reason, the answer he received only made him more resentful. The reason the shops couldn't buy Nawa's monster meat at the normal price was because he wasn't affiliated with a guild.
Almost all the shops here bought their meat from players who were members of various guilds. Therefore, the butchers paid exceptionally high prices to guild members. Members of larger guilds fetched even higher prices, while unaffiliated players were sold at significantly lower prices.
It was similar to the mafia's protection racket. The government knew about it, but they couldn't do anything because it wasn't blatantly illegal. And if a real conflict arose, the shops would be the ones suffering, facing boycotts from guilds.
"Grrr..."Despite his injustice, Nawa gritted his teeth. He was powerless to do anything. Once again, Nawa was heartbroken by his own weakness.
After composing himself for a while, Nawa gave up on the idea of selling his monster meat here. He decided to go somewhere else to sell his monster meat. He offered it to the restaurant where he used to work because he thought he'd get a better price there. As he was about to step out of the spacious restaurant, a voice called out from behind him.
"Nawa, is that you?"
It was a familiar voice, causing Nawa to turn around. The owner of the voice was a young man of Chinese descent, plump but strong-looking, in his early twenties, dressed casually but respectably.
"N…Nui?"Nawa didn't answer the question, but instead asked one back.
The name he uttered was that of his close friend, someone he'd shared meals and hangouts with since their teenage years. Importantly, this man was the one who funded Nawa's experiments on space-time fields five years ago. Without this man, his understanding of space-time fields wouldn't have reached this point.
"You're not really dead, are you?" Nui said, shaking Nawa violently, as if afraid Nawa's body was an illusion.
"Nui…I'm sorry," Nawa said, lowering his head, not daring to meet the other's gaze.
In the past, this friend was the only one who believed in him and funded his research on space-time field theory with a huge sum of money. The reason he hadn't contacted Nui was because he didn't have enough money to repay him yet. He intended to repay him when he had enough, but today they met by chance. He felt a little guilty.
"Sorry… sorry about what? I'm the one who should apologize to you." Nui's words made Nawa look up at his friend again in surprise.
Five years ago, Nui was the only one who believed in Nawa's space-time field theory and also funded all the experiments. Their goal was to win Thailand's first Nobel Prize and revolutionize scientific knowledge worldwide, a revolution after the era of Newton and Einstein.
Unfortunately, before their dream could come true, Nawa disappeared along with the experimental equipment, which had cost over ten million baht to build.
Immediately after the experiment began, a massive electromagnetic wave was emitted. While not particularly harmful to living things, its intensity caused a city-wide power outage and damaged electronic equipment within a 1-kilometer radius. The cameras recording the experiment, as well as the stored data files, were corrupted.
And that wasn't all. Suddenly, Nawa's body, near the equipment, began to emit a white light. Soon, it transformed into a white light ball with a radius of more than 2 meters, with Nawa at the center.
When the white light disappeared, everything within it was nothing but emptiness. What had happened was beyond imagination. Nui didn't know where Nawa had gone, or if he had simply disintegrated into dust.
Even though Nui was the only witness to what happened, he couldn't tell anyone. No one would believe him because he had no evidence. Besides, what happened was even more unbelievable than seeing ghosts or spirits.
All Nui could do was upload their experiments and the theories he'd heard from Nawa to various social media platforms, hoping to get knowledgeable people to analyze them so he could understand what had happened.
But in the end, it seemed no one understood—or rather, no one was open to understanding. Because understanding Nawa's theory began with the view that everything in the universe has no physical form; there is only the relationship between space and time, or simply put, space-time fields.
Objects are merely smaller space-time fields within the larger space-time field (the cosmic space-time field). This contradicts current scientific beliefs far beyond them.
Whether by coincidence or some other reason, two months after Nui disseminated this knowledge, the American government announced they had discovered the technology to create a portal to The Oneness. It was the beginning of the Player era.
Even without confirmation, Nui believed that... The technology for creating the portal to The Oneness was based on a theory Nawa discovered, and it had troubled him for years.
"It's been a long time, don't think about it too much. If I were you, I would have done the same thing," Nawa smiled and patted the other's shoulder lightly. Nui smiled back, his expression relaxing.
"Nawa, when you disappeared, you went into The Oneness, didn't you?" Nui asked, staring seriously into Nawa's eyes. Although he could guess, he wanted confirmation from Nawa himself.
"Let's talk over there," Nawa said, walking away to a less crowded area. He didn't think anyone would overhear their conversation, but he didn't want the secret to spread unnecessarily.
Nawa told Nui the truth—that he had wandered into what appeared to be The Oneness and returned through an ancient dimensional portal. But he didn't mention the god-like entity and the White Snake residing within his body.
Nawa didn't tell Nui the truth, not because he didn't trust his friend, but because he didn't want his friend to get into trouble. Because Nawa himself wasn't sure what this would lead him to.
"Hahaha! Just as I thought! We were the first to discover The Oneness! We are the ones who changed the world!"
Nui burst into laughter like a madman. He had secretly suspected all along that the dimensional portal technology was their experiment, but because he lacked evidence, he never spoke of it.
Nui asked Nawa if he would announce this, but Nawa immediately refused, citing that he had no evidence to confirm that he discovered The Oneness before The One Society.
Furthermore, Nawa wasn't sure if The One Society had used his theory to create the teleportation portal, as he didn't even understand its detailed workings.
Most importantly, Nawa didn't want to become an enemy of a global organization that was now as large as the United Nations.
Nui seemed to understand his reasoning, so he changed the subject to another equally important question.
"Nawa, if you've been in The Oneness for 5 years according to Earth time, you must have accumulated a tremendous amount of stat points, right? What rank are you now?"
Nui's face was filled with anticipation. He thought Nawa must have accumulated a very high stat point, because 5 years on Earth is more than 15 years in The Oneness. Most high-ranked players haven't even spent half that time in The Oneness. Nui thought that Nava must be at a high rank by now, maybe even Rank A.
"Rank D," Nawa replied with a straight face.
The answer surprised Nui so much that he shouted,
"How is that possible? Even I, who rarely go to The Oneness, am Rank C! Are you trying to hide something from your best friend like me?" Nui raised his voice, frowning in suspicion.
"Hey, don't lie to me. I really am Rank D. If you don't believe me, look!" Nawa said, showing Nui his stats. Nava's average stats were indeed at the early Rank D level. Nawa explained that when he returned to Earth, he used a device that drained all his energy.
"Don't worry too much, friend. It's great that you survived. If you have any problems, just tell me. Our world has changed a lot…"
Nui tried to comfort him and offered to help, but before he could finish, Nava quickly refused. Because Nawa didn't know where he would find the money to repay the experiment he'd used five years ago.
"It's alright, friend. You've helped me a lot already. Besides, don't forget, I've been there longer than anyone. Even if my rank is lower than yours now, my monster hunting skills are far superior to yours."
Nawa tried to speak casually to reassure his friend.
"Why did you become a player?"
Nawa asked curiously. From what he knew of Nui, his friend disliked fighting or using force. Becoming a player was unusual, and from what he knew, his friend was wealthy, so there shouldn't have been any need for him to work in a life-threatening job in The Oneness.
"Nothing much. My family has started a business related to The Oneness, so I had to become a player to help my family manage the business. Do you know the company, Overall?"
Nui spoke casually, but Nawa's eyes widened in disbelief.
Even though Nawa knew his friend was wealthy, he never imagined he was the CEO of the country's number one monster meat company.