Kanashi stood alone in a field, the dark green blades of grass below him the same color as moldy bread blowing in the wind. The Cold breeze sent shivers down his spine and his skin erupted with goosebumps.

The sky while dark gave him a liberal amount of light despite none of the three moons in the sky being visible.

“Where am I?” Kanashi asked aloud looking around, perhaps if he used magic he could have formed a pillar of stone and got a better vantage point. But the thought of using magic didn’t even cross his mind. It was as if he didn’t know such a thing existed.

Feeling the urge to walk and find something he strode through the grass. The smell of the forest filled his nostrils and the cold breeze blew his hair back chilling his ears.

He walked for a while, how long he couldn’t say exactly because he wasn't counting but long enough that he felt as though a considerable amount of time had passed. Yet he saw nothing in this field of endless dark green grass. However instead of being scared or unsettled by this he remained rather neutral. Only a mild confusion in his mind. Like he’d to this place before at some point in the past. Many times in fact.

“...”

Not speaking a word and walking forward some more, Kanashi eventually heard the rustling of the grass behind him.

“?”

Turning around he saw a small black jackal behind him, it looked rather healthy. No injuries or signs of malnutrition. Based on the way it stared at him you’d assume it was someone's pet but when he reached out to pet the dog it slunk back to avoid his touch.

“Is your owner around here?” Kanashi asked, looking in the direction which he assumed the dog had come from.

“...”

The dog responded by staring at him with its golden eyes reflecting his face.

With a shrug of his shoulders and a sigh Kanashi continued to walk for some time more. The dog following closely behind.

It seemed as though this world Kanashi had found himself in was completely void of life other than himself, the dog and the grass they trampled on.

There were no mountains in the distance, no cicada chirp or crickets singing. There was no endless tree or lights from a distant village. Nothing, just the endless field of dark green grass and a black sky.

“Hello!?” Kanashi called out into the night, his echo fading into the distance.

“...”

The only response to his query was a howl of wind which blew his hair back and burned his eyes. He turned around and looked at the Black Jackal which whimpered slightly, as if it too felt as he did.

How lonely… He thought.

۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞

Kanashi opened his eyes and with a yawn and sat up in the love hotel's bed. He peeled a rose petal off his cheek and stretched his back with a few pops.

Was I crying? He wondered, feeling his eyes and cheeks a bit wet.

Looking towards the room's lone window he saw no light coming through it, meaning the sun had yet to rise. Despite that Kanashi still felt well rested as if he’d slept a whole day away.

Maybe I was so tired I slept really deep? Thinking of it, I haven't had any kind of insomnia problems for a few weeks. Probably because of how much I’ve been exerting myself.

Kanashi had been diagnosed with both Stress and Depression induced insomnia, something he’d been victim of for only a few years since about the start of his 8th grade year.

Thankfully unlike a neurological disorder induced insomnia Kanashis kind wasn’t permanent and something he could change with improved mental health and physical exercise.

Putting that aside, Kanashi saw that the couch under the window was empty and so he turned to the right side of the love hotel's bed and saw it was empty as well.

I figured he wouldn’t sleep next to me but he’s not on the couch either… Crawling to the other side of the bed he peeked over the edge and saw Kenji wasn’t sleeping on the floor either.

“Hmmm.” Kanashi hummed, putting his feet onto the fluffy carpet and walking over to the bathroom.

After giving a light knock he opened the bathroom door and peeked inside seeing no signs of Kenji even when turning the lights on.

Did he leave? I fell asleep before him but he shouldn’t have just left without telling me right? Did I sleep through it? Hmm, I don’t like this. I do not like it one bit.

Kanashi shut the bathroom door and returned into the main room, from there he walked over to the closet which he pulled open. Inside he saw only a few hangres holding up strings which were too abstract to be called clothes.

“Alright now this is getting spooky.” He growled, shutting the closet and walking over the window. He wasn’t sure why exactly he wanted to look out the window, there really was no logical reason he’d seen Kenji down there compared to anywhere else. He wasn’t a smoker so he wouldn’t be taking a smoke break nor would he just be standing out there waiting for Kanashi to see him like a brooding teenager.

Maybe he’s just training his sword strikes or something… Kanashi rationalized internally. Climbing onto the couch and lifting a single shutter from the blind he looked out into the night and saw…

“A Brick wall!?” He gasped, thinking he must be mistaken. He closed the blinds and shook his head, rubbing his eyes to make sure he could see he opened the blinds all at once with their handle. And when the blinds were cracked open with a creak he saw that there indeed was brick covering the window, completely, like someone had bricked them in overnight while they were sleeping.

“Okay… calm down, calm down. I technically never looked out the window so technically this could have been here the whole time right?” He laughed nervously. Though he knew it wasn’t true he wanted to pretend it was, because the only other logical option was the attack of a magic user.

“Is this a monster of the week manga or something?” He muttered, shaking his head. The window being bricked up was a weird thing but it could be a design flaw. And as for him missing Kenji he was probably somewhere outside causing trouble. That was what made the sense in this moment. Because the only other choice was one Kanashis didn’t want to even believe to be possible.

Walking to the room's front door he unlocked the bolt and swung it open.

‘...”

What he saw made his heart sink down into his stomach.

The hallway which had previously only been able to fit four doors now extended dozens of doors down to the left and the right.

“No, no this is a dream right?” He asked himself, considering ways to wake himself up. He could try to jump up and scream, maybe that would rouse his sleeping body? If that didn’t work then… well he could kill himself and see if that would wake himself up. He’d done it before in a dream and it worked out in the end but in that scenario he knew it was a dream for sure. Here though, the consequences of that method were very real and dangerous. Something he could not reverse by waking up.

Besides, the pain Kanashi felt from biting his lip was too real for this to be a dream. He'd just woken up from one afterall so the sensation was clearly different between the two states.

Maybe it was some kind of dreamception? A dream within a dream? Anyways, standing around with his dick in his hand wasn’t going to do anything so Kanashi took a deep breath and walked out into the hallway.

If this was an attack it would obviously have been the Toumeikans doing. Most likey the women he’d bumped into in the convenient store. She probably wasn’t the exact person attacking them at this moment but she was the cause of the mess when using context clues. She’s probably told some high ranking members and they’d sent the appropriate people to take care of the situation.

But what if this was a Joshins doing? What then? I won’t be able to defeat them myself. He thought. But I don't have to because I have Kenji with me! He’s equal to a Hachibuto so a Joshin should be no problem. I just need to find him and then things will fall into place.

Kanashi ran to the door next to his room and flung it open without so much as a knock. The door being unlocked slammed open with a crack, the inside of the room was exactly similar to his own down to his bag in the corner and the trash filled with two ramen bowls and a bento box.

“!?”

Slamming the door closed and opening the adjacent room's door Kanashi saw that it was again exactly the same as he and Kenji's room down to every fine detail.

Not yet jumping to any conclusion he checked a few other doors at random down the hallway and found them all to be the exact same as his original room.

I think I get it… He thought, rubbing his chin.

“Get off me you foul woman!”

The sound of Kenji's voice made Kanashi jump out of his skin, he immediately ran straight towards the voice's origin which thankfully didn’t cease as Kenji continued to hurl insults at his assumed female attacker.

A woman? If he defeats her then maybe this spell will deactivate!

Kicking down the door of the room Kenji's voice came from the inside of Kanashi conjured Itachi ready to fight.

Except what he saw made his face turn bright red and his will to fight decrease dramatically.

Kenji was surrounded by a horde of naked women, all of them looking identical down to the very marks on their body.

[Engiri!]

Kenji swung his Katana while spiking in a circle destroying all of the women in a single movement. Their bodies exploding into puffs of mana.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Damn things were trying to take my sword!” Kenji scoffed looking to Kanashi,

“And that’s how you woke up?” Asked Kanashi.

“Yeah, my instincts led to me cutting her down as soon as I awoke but once I did more appeared from inside the bathroom.” Kenji said, jumping to his feet and walking to the bathroom door with his Katana in hand.

CRACK!

Kenji kicked the door of its very hingest with a splash of wood particles. The door flew into the bathroom wall with a crash. Kenji with his Katana raised in one hand flicked the lights on with the other. But he saw nothing inside the bathroom.

“Good thing I wasn’t attacked in the same way. I’m not sure I would have been able to survive so easily.” Kanashi joked, leaving the bathroom and walking back into the hallways with Kenji following him.

“?”

Kenji, seeing the hallway's new appearance raised his brow but seemed to figure out something was wrong on his own without the need for explanation.

“Up or down?” He asked.

“Down, that should lead us outside the fastest.” Kanashi answered.

[Inogiri!]

With a swing of his Katana Kenji obliterated the floor carving into it a man sized hole which he jumped down into.

“Be careful about jumping down so fast please. We don’t know if they have any kind of trap set up.” Kanashi muttered as he too jumped down so the story below.

The new hallway they entered was exactly the same as the one they’d just left, a seemingly endless stretch of identical doors.

Kenji turned to one of the room doors and kicked it open, walking inside with Kanashi both of them saw the room was exactly the same as their original one.

“Weird.” muttered Kenji.

“That basically confirms it, a Liminal Realm which creates a large complex out of already existing assets.” Kanashi muttered.

“?”

“It probably takes way too much mana to create a large construct like this with multiple unique rooms and details, so they instead just copy and paste our room and the hallway a bunch of times in all directions. The women golem we saw was probably just made in the shape of a guest here. Though I don’t know what conditions were required to copy her…” Kanashi explained. Would explain why she was naked too. Though with that last line of dialogue also came a hint of anxiety as the worst possible outcome came to mind. “At first I thought it was a territory but this second theory confirms my theory. A territory wouldn’t be this complex.”

“So there’s somebody doing this to use and that somebody is inside here?” Asked Kenji.

“Probably, being able to hide outside of this Realm would be way too overpowered for even a blessing. And this probably isn’t a blessing because of how everything is just copy pasted. This is a man made spell so the user is hiding somewhere inside of it.”

“So if we kill them then we’ll be able to escape?”

“Depends, I’d say most likely but maybe the only way to escape is through meeting some conditions. But I’m not sure if that’s the case since we don’t know if such conditions even exist. But let’s just say we do kill them without meeting some set of imposed conditions then we might just be stuck in here forever.” That is if it doesn't still dispel upon their death or eventually run out of mana. But I don’t know how they’re running this exactly

“That’s all I needed to hear then.” Kenji grunted, raising his Katana overhead.

[Rashomon!]

With bolts of mana flying from his katana Kenji sliced the hotel clean in half, or at least he should have, but the walls quickly repaired themselves as soon as the attack had been completed.

“?”

Kanashi looked up to the hole in the roof they’d entered this next through and saw that it too had been closed.

“Wait Kenji.” Kanashi called out as Kenji prepared another attack.

“Hm?” Kenji hummed.

“Hold off on destroying it in big attacks like that for now, let’s try little things.” Kanashi said.

“Like?”

“Just causing little bits of damage over and over again, I wanna see if it will eventually stop healing or not.”

“What should we destroy then?” Kenji asked.

“I have an idea.” Kanashi said entering one of their room copies and grabbing the cane off the wall which he handed to Kenji.

Kenji without question snapped the cane over his knee and let the two broken pieces fall to the floor, the cane not repairing itself.

It didn’t repair itself? Maybe because it’s not considered significant enough? Maybe only structural damage is important.

“Alright try the bathroom door next please.” Kanashi instrutec.

Kenji kicked the door of its hinges and it too didn’t repair itself.

“Now the wall.”

Kenji punched his fist through the wall and pulled it back out. The wall repairing itself immediately.”

“Try to keep your fist it in this time.”

Kenji once again punched the wall, though this time he kept his fist in it.

“!”

However as the wall began to heal his hand was flung backwards with a great force.

“So it can forcefully reject obstructions that inhibit its ability to repair structural damage…” Kanashi frowned. If that’s the case then I doubt we’ll be able to find the master of this place by just breaking our way through it. So he has to be somewhere inside of it, some kind of room. But where? Does one of the hallway room doors lead to his command center or is there a trick to it? Like he’s hiding behind something? “Alright let’s just keep breaking stuff for now, let’s see what we end up coming across.” Instructed Kanashi.

And so that’s what they did for the next two hours, they broke different things trying to see what exactly was repaired at what wasn’t. All the furniture was considered non structural of course and thus didn’t repair itself. The same could be said with the accessories and their own belongings like their clothes and bags.

Kenji even cut himself to see if it would repair to Kanashi's chagrin.

If they left the room and shut the door behind them then upon entering they found it to be repaired completely. Though Kanashi suspected this was probably just due to the room being repasted instead of repaired. Everything they closed a door would be deconjured and every time they opened it the room would reconjure though of course only sticking to the base model.

I wonder why they haven’t sent out more golems? Kanashi wondered, staring at the rooms bricked in window. Did they see how ineffective they were and decided not to waste the aura on them? If that’s the case their mana pool isn’t crazy big since they’re going out of their way to conserve it… but what I’m most worried about is the time dilation. The faucet still runs water and the electricity works so we can survive for at least a week without dying of hunger. But the liberation is in four days, so that’s overkill. Maybe their goal is just to keep us here for that long and if we die it’s a bonus? Maybe that’s one of the restrictions imposed onto the spell, it only lasts a certain amount of time before dispelling. It could also be that’s why they’re not attacking us. But then what were the golems for? They tried to grab Kenji's sword, maybe to kill him with it? But why didn’t they attack me first? I should have been a way easier target. Except maybe they thought if I did manage to defend myself the commotion would wake Kenji and they’d have no shot in hell of killing him? With his brain rattling in his skull Kanashi mulled over the possibilities while Kenji continued to wreak havoc on everything in sight.

“Kanashi!” He called out suddenly.

“What’s up?” Kanashi asked excitedly, walking into the bathroom where Kenji was.

“The mirror, it repaired itself!” Kenji said pointing to the mirror on the opposite side of the shower wall.

“Did it really?” Kanashi asked, tilting his head as he stared at his reflection. But why? Why would the mirror be considered as a structural part of the Realm!? What kind of purpose would it serve?

Kanashi tried to recall all he’d experienced up to that point with Liminal Realms. The explanations Jin gave him on the train and the White Water Space Cutter, the Witches Mushroom and Satoshis Shadows…

“!”

“That’s it!” Kanashi laughed as a light bulb went off above his head.

“?” Kenji tiled his own head to the side, curious as to what Kanashi's realization was.

“The mirror is probably a medium which leads to the control room! Like Satoshis shadow and the Witches mushroom! Except rather than a whole other Liminal Realm this is just a separate part of the same realm. Like a double appendix! I mean I can’t say for certain but wouldn't that explain why it’s considered a structural piece?”

“I’m not sure I understand but I’ll take your word for it. But just because we know where he is, how do we get him?” Asked Kenji.

“I’m not sure exactly…” Kanashi answered with a sigh. They’d found the most important piece to the puzzle, now they just needed to know where they had to put it. Jin used [White Water: Space Cutter] on the Witches Mushroom and if I still had the magic infused ring we wouldn’t be in this situation…

“!”

“Wait, I have an idea?” Kanashi yelled, snapping his finger.

“?”

“Okay so we can’t break the mirror but we can still move it right? Let’s try to reflect two of them off one another. I mean it’s worth a shot right?”

۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞

“Maaaan this is booooring.” Tenbeki sighed, leaning back in his chair. The room he sat in was about the size of a small bedroom with the only source of light being the glow from the cheap TV set in front of him which played the same game opening animation over and over again. “I should have brought another one..” he frowned, looking at his watch. “Well it’s been twelve hours already, so about four and a half days left to go.”

His spell [Liminal Hell] had the restriction against him of seeing what exactly those trapped inside his Liminal Realm were doing. He’d only be notified if they’d died through his observation. The only way he could actually know what the two men were doing was of je ;eft the control room through the mirror himself. Of course such a thing would be highly dangerous which is exactly why he avoided it.

He’d just sit in this room and wait until the five days had passed and his spell deactivated. The idea of someone finding out the mechanics of his spell were alien as such a thing has never happened before.

But Gadokoro Tenbeki had never in his life fought anyone of note. He was a notable grunt, but still a grunt. As such his confidence overweighed his reason so much that he didn’t even notice someone had entered his control room.

Not even when they’d sliced his head from his shoulders had he realized what happened. He was alive and bored one second and dead the next.

۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞

The hotel room crumbled around Kanashi and Kenji with a flash of light thrusting them back into their own hotel room in the real world. The corpse of their captor falling to the ground with a wet thud and his head rolling to Kanashis feet.

“Got him.” Kenji said, flicking the blood from his Katana nonchalantly.

“...” Kanashi with wide eyes stared at the head of the man who Kenji had just killed, His eyes wide and neutral as if he’d not even realized that he’d been killed.

Thump

Thump

Thump

Kanashi's heartbeat pounded in his ears as the world slowed down around him. His mouth grew dry and his eyes blurred at the grizzly flight before him. This was only the third person who’d been killed before his eyes. The first being the Witch and the second Sakashima. Adding this third nameless man to the mix made his stomach turn sour.

We don’t know his name, who he was or what he was like as a person. If he had any family or friends who will miss him… he’s just head and we killed him.

“Kanashi!” Kenji yelled, snapping Kanashi back to reality.

“Y-yeah?” Kanashi stuttered out turning to Kenji with trembling blue lips.

“I kept calling your name but wouldn't answer me!” Kenji huffed.

“S-sorry.” Kanashi muttered, lowering his head.

“Save your apologies for later, we should escape from here now since they know where we are and there’s no telling if there are others.”

“Yeah.” Kanashi nodded in agreement. Both men grabbed their few belongings and ran down the hallway to their elevator. Though he wanted to, Kanashi didn’t have the heart to check if the other guests were alive and well. He wasn’t sure if he could handle another grizzly sight like the one he’d just seen so he closed his eyes with a prayer for forgiveness.

When the elevator door opened to the first floor they were immediately greeted by a grotesque scene. That being the front desk clerk lying dead in a puddle of his own blood, a knife buried into his forehead.

Kanashi in a moment of pure shock didn’t have time to register the women who came at him from behind with a knife. Only Kenji did and he spun around smashing his leg into her stomach with a kick.

“Blegh!” She gagged blood flying from her mouth as she flew backwards and crashed into the wall.

“Pay attention!” Kenji barked at Kanashi who nodded. “You can’t die until I’ve had this promised fight with Julius!”

“G-got it!” Kanashi grinned nervously. Shaking the beads of sweat from his face.

I need to put my personal feelings behind myself right now, I need to succeed in meeting up with Akatora and the only way to do that is to survive. So I can’t let my fears get the best of me. I have to push them aside to succeed!

“Kenji, new plan, we’re going straight to Shibuchu war to meet up with Akatora!”

“Got it, how do you wanna get there?”

“We can hitch a ride on a train, it should be late enough that securit isn’t as big of an issue.”

“Let’s go then!” Kenji laughed while running out the door.

“Yeah!” Kanashi agreed, chasing after him with a plastic smile and trembling eyes.