Chapter 1 The Accident

Hearing a voice from not far away, Hao Ren turned his head and saw that it was indeed Becky, whom he had met once before.

The mercenary girl was coming out of another door of the garrison. She had a few sheets of paper in her hand, as if she had just completed some formalities. When she saw Hao Ren, she ran over excitedly, "Hey! I thought I was seeing things. Why are you still here? You just left the other day, and I've never seen someone with such a big temper. Was it really necessary to teleport away for a music box?"

Before Hao Ren could speak, the freckled soldier who was leading the way asked curiously, "Miss Becky, do you know them?"

"Uh, are they all with him? Why are there so many more people after just a few days..." Becky looked at the people around Hao Ren in surprise. "I only know this one. He's a magician. He flew to the Great Plains during a teleportation experiment. He broke his brain when he fell from the sky. Oh, and he owes me a music box..."

"Can you stop mentioning the broken brain thing!" Hao Ren was almost conquered by the girl's steel-like stubbornness. "I really didn't break it! And I brought you a music box this time..."

The freckled soldier felt relieved when he saw that the two really knew each other. He didn't want to lead strange foreign mages to register, because it would not only involve a lot of procedures but he would also have to write a report. So he explained the situation to Becky: "It seems your mage friend hasn't learned his lesson, and he's even gotten worse—they all came over in a teleportation accident, suddenly appearing at the busiest intersection, scaring Joseph and me. By the way, I'm about to take them to register. Miss Becky, can you help be a guarantor? Proving that you know one of them is enough, so you don't have to go through the registration procedures for wandering mages."

Hao Ren thought Becky, whom he had only met once, would refuse, but he didn't expect her to nod readily: "Sure, I'm free anyway."

"Uh, thanks," Hao Ren didn't know what this guarantor and wandering mage procedure were all about, but he still thanked her. After all, she didn't have to help.

Becky waved her hand dismissively: "It's nothing. Didn't you say you brought a music box? I'm waiting for my music box. This time you're not allowed to teleport away, especially not through the streets. You don't know how dangerous that is."

The group entered the garrison under the lead of the freckled soldier. Vivian saw that Becky was walking in front and not paying attention, so she leaned close to Hao Ren's ear and whispered, "A music box? Teleporting away? Broke your brain? The situation you encountered here last time was quite colorful."

Her tone was playful.

After Hao Ren returned last time, he had told Vivian about his experiences in the Dream Plane, and mentioned the mercenary girl named Becky, but he didn't go into too much detail, especially not the embarrassing "broken brain" scene. Vivian was naturally a little curious at this time.

"Don't mention it," Hao Ren sighed, "Especially don't mention the broken brain thing. This lady saw me fall from the sky once, and she's remembered it ever since. I bet she's even forgotten my name."

As they spoke, the group arrived at the garrison's records room. It was a small room filled with bookshelves, wooden boxes, and files. The wall skin was mottled and peeling, and the wooden floor creaked. Only the bright sunlight shining into the room from the high glass windows gave it life. The distinctive wooden furniture reminded one of the studies in those old European manor houses in movies. Behind the wide wooden table sat a middle-aged soldier who looked somewhat scholarly. When Hao Ren and the others entered, the soldier was intently looking at something that looked like a newspaper. The freckled soldier stepped forward and called the person in charge's name: "Mr. Wilton, I've brought people to register."

The middle-aged soldier called Wilton straightened up sternly and glanced at the freckled soldier: "Call me Officer Wilton, Lane. This is a military department, and you and I are soldiers."

So the freckled soldier's name was Lane, which was simple and easy to remember.

The young soldier named Lane roughly explained the situation of Hao Ren and the others, "foreign mages who conducted dangerous experiments in the downtown area and obstructed traffic due to an accident," and then pointed to Becky: "Miss Becky is the guarantor, so we don't need to go through the registration procedures for wandering mages, right?"

The middle-aged officer hummed and got up to rummage through the file rack next to him. Hao Ren noticed that one of his legs seemed to have a problem, and he didn't walk very steadily. The middle-aged officer finally found a register, opened it, and placed it on the table. Becky went up first and wrote her name with a flourish, then turned her head and called to Hao Ren: "The one who fell from the sky, come sign!"

...This girl had indeed forgotten what Hao Ren's name was.

Vivian stepped forward and glanced at the registration form, immediately noticing something.

The form used a different script—not the Leta runes that they had previously thought were the everyday script in this world.

Hao Ren quickly noticed this as well. He and Vivian exchanged glances, and they both saw the doubt in each other's eyes: the buildings here used Leta runes to write blessing phrases, but this script was not the one used on a daily basis? What was the purpose of Leta runes here?

With the help of the translation system, mastering a foreign script was not a problem. Perhaps other Imperial staff members had registered the character library here while performing tasks in the Dream Plane. Hao Ren and the others could easily understand the contents of the registration form, but writing it was not so easy. They awkwardly spelled their names phonetically using those crooked symbols, then skipped most of the items under Becky's guidance, and finally ran into trouble in the "Foreign Mage Faction Registration and Origin" column.

What was faction registration?

"Are you from the Spire Faction or the Academy Faction?" Becky was surprised that there were mages who didn't know which faction they belonged to. "Don't you have mentors? Did you all teach yourselves?"

"Uh... we're from a rather remote place. There are some reclusive sects in the Northern Empire that don't care about worldly affairs," Hao Ren remembered that Becky didn't know much about the other side of the Great Plains, and coupled with his own guesses about this world, he slowly thought of a reason. "What's the difference between the Spire Faction and the Academy Faction?"

"Reclusive sect? Then that's the Spire Faction," Becky nodded. "I've heard of reclusive mages, but I didn't expect you to be so closed off. I guess you haven't even joined the Mage Association, right? Speaking of which, I thought you were from the Academy Faction with the way you dress."

"What do these two factions mean?" Hao Ren saw that she wasn't too suspicious, so he simply asked like a newbie mage.

"The Spire Faction is the old sects. They develop strictly according to the mage inheritance rules that have been passed down since ancient times. Because the bases of the old mages are those mage towers with hundreds or thousands of years of history, and most of their activities take place in the mage towers, they are called the Spire Faction. The Academy Faction is a new sect that has emerged in the last few decades, starting in the Horna Empire in the north. Because they educate new students in academies, they are called the Academy Faction. Now there are more and more Academy Faction mages."

Hao Ren and the others nodded repeatedly, and then decisively filled in Spire Faction—this faction sounded more conservative and had reclusive types, which was very suitable for explaining their unfamiliar situation. As for why such a conservative faction like the Spire Faction would have a happy-go-lucky oddball like Lily...

Hao Ren thought about it and decided that if anyone asked, he would say that Lily ate the wrong medicine when she was experimenting. Anyway, no one would delve into it, and Lily's own opinion could be ignored.

While they were filling out the forms, Wilton and Lane chatted. Lane pointed to the newspaper that Wilton had been reading: "Another search team has gone missing at Lake Beinets Blood Lake?"

"Yeah, this is the fourth team that's gone missing in the last two months. Even the church is getting a little restless," Wilton shook his head, laboriously moving his bad leg onto the other leg. "Some people say that the bottom of Lake Beinets Blood Lake leads to another world, and the search teams have all been sucked away. The church is currently refuting the rumors. Tsk, tsk, people nowadays dare to say anything. Lake Beinets is a holy site, personally smashed out by the goddess. Those novelists don't even pick a place to spout nonsense."

Hao Ren was filling out the form, but he couldn't help but stop when he heard this.

It seemed that it was a smart decision to honestly come to the garrison to register. He had coincidentally heard such an intriguing message—Lake Beinets Blood Lake leads to another world?