The next morning, after having slept in the carriage along the side of the road, a certain noise wakes both Zak and Gabrielle.

"SCREEEEE!"

Standing near the back entrance of the carriage, a beat-up looking crow with one wing continues "Screeeing"

Gabrielle wakes up yelling "Pup! No!", receiving an odd look from Zak. Growing annoyed by the bird, Zak decides to do something about it. As he walks up with a claw at the ready, Gabrielle grabs his arm to stop him.

"Zak! It's just a poor bird! Look how hurt it is!" Her puppydog-like eyes stop him.

"Whatever. It'll die soon anyways. I was just going to put it out of its misery."

 Zak feeds the horses while Gabrielle tends to the hurt bird. As Zak begins to tie the horses to the carriage, he gets an odd feeling with the bird.

I wonder... He uses [ Mana Control ] to attempt to embue his eyes with his Mana. As he does so, he notices a faint string of Mana flowing from the bird to somewhere in the forest. Saying nothing to Gabrielle, he notes the direction of the string as they begin to make their way along the road.

[ Learned Skill: Mana Detection ]

"Zak, isn't the scenery so beautiful? So tranquil?"

Zak looks around, but it seems like the average forest to him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that nature is beautiful. Haven't you ever taken the time to sit down and just enjoy it? C-Can beasts do that...?" Her voice trails off at the end.

Can beasts do that? Zak sighs internally as he remembers his past. His wife always wanted to go out hiking and go on a picnic, but he's never seen the draw to nature. He has always seen it as a nuisance. Bugs, pests, ravenous animals, no thank you. As Zak looks down at Gabrielle, he sees the polar opposite of his beliefs. Her eyes are glistening as she looks to the bright, green leaves of the forest trees as they sway gently in the breeze. Small animals make various sounds as they gather food and play. The smell of grass mixed in with the freshness of a nearby pond. Just from looking at her, Zak, too, notices all of these. A warm feeling begins growing in his heart as sees Gabrielle's love for nature.

He looks forward, a monstrous smile crossing his face. "It's hard not to enjoy nature when the ones around you love it so dearly." Though he cannot see her, he gets the feeling she's smiling at him.

Gabrielle continues to tend to the bird, applying small bandages to small wounds he had not previously noticed. As Zak feels the calmness of this tranquil scene, a large CRASH can be heard, pulling Zak out of a state of mind that's quite unusual for him. As they round a corner, a huge tree blocks their path. Zak gets off of the carriage and attempts to pick it up, but a powerful force keeps it down. Using [ Mana Detection ], he notices another string coming from the tree in the same direction as the bird.

What is going on?

Zak notices a trail to the left. Though it feels odd, it's the only other option, and is more than big enough to fit the carriage.

"What's going on?"

"We have to take a slight detour." Zak sighs as he feels that someone is playing with them, like puppets or toys.

As they make their way across the trail, Zak begins to notice a lack of any type of sound. He stops the carriage, hopping out of it and onto the soft earth.

"What are you doing, Zak?"

"Gabrielle, please stay in there. I have an uneasy feeling about this place..." As Zak says this, a rumbling beneath the earth begins. The confusion on Zak's face grows into worry as the carriage falls into a massive crack, and the raven somehow flies away despite only having one wing.

"GABRIELLE!" His monstrous voice calls out as he attempts to reach into the closing crack, but he was too late. The earth looks just as it had previously, no sign of a crack at all.

Laughter emanates from the forest around Zak as his mind slowly becomes drowsy. Zak can't quite make out the voice, it's a mix of several. A man, a woman, a young boy, a young girl. "You are quite interesting, young beast..."

"What... do you mean?" Zak attempts to fight off the sleepiness. His head begins to ache as he fights it with all of his will. "Where... is Gabrielle?"

[ Skill Learned: Sleep Resistance ]

Before he can activate the new skill, Zak's world turns black.

Zak awakes to find himself laying down in an odd room. The roof and walls appears to be crude stone bricks, almost like a dungeon you would see in an MMORPG. One wall has a metal door, and using [ Mana Detection ], he can tell it's heavily protected by magic. If it's like the magic on the tree previously, there's no way he'll be able to break it. The only other object in the room is a small book atop a stone podium that faces away from the door.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Zak approaches the podium, and glancing at the book, notices it has English characters written on it. Interesting...

He begins reading the passage on it,

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

As he reads, a tapping noise begins at the door he's facing. This is The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, but what is a work from my world doing here...? On the second page begins another passage,

To open the passage of this door,

One must confess the saying of the raven, not the man raving,

For if you wish to escape, and live to tell the tale,

You must utter the word, from a quote of yore:

"Quoth the raven: "

Zak sits there for a moment. "Nevermore?" his monstrous says, confused as to what's going on. When he utters the word, a small grinding sound can be heard as the door begins to descend into the ground. As he makes into the hallway, utterly confused, he notices the walls have changed slightly. Now, the walls look like something you'd see in a catacombs. To his left, lying in a small, almost cabinet-like indent in the wall, is a bottle of wine with the tip broken, and beside it a trowel.

From behind Zak, a drunken voice coughs then pipes up: "Let us continue. But first, another draught of the Medoc." Zak quickly turns and swipes reflexively, but his claws go right through the man. The man seems to be French, and carries a dull torch.

So he's an illusion...

Zak, confused, gives him the bottle of wine. The man empties it at a breath. His eyes flash with a fierce light. He laughs and throws the bottle upwards with an odd motion. Zak's obvious confusion covers his face as the whole situation is just... weird. The man repeated the motion, and honestly, it looks a bit grotesque.

"You do not comprehend?" he says, his actions and very existence confusing Zak.

"Uh, no. I do not." Zak says in his monstrous voice, as he cannot use telepathy with an illusion.

"Then you are not of the brotherhood."

"What?"

"You are not of the masons."

It's as if a lightbulb appears above Zak's head as he remembers his sophomore year in high school, so long ago. "Yes, yes," Zak says, "yes, yes."

"You? Impossible! A mason?"

"A mason" Zak replies, adding a bit of an overdramatic bow.

"A sign," the man says, "a sign."

"It is this" Zak says as he picks up the trowel, showing it to the man.

"You jest," he exclaims, recoiling a few steps. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."

"Be it so" Zak says as he offers his arm to the man. The man appears to lean heavily on his arm, but oddly, Zak can feel it, despite thinking the man was only an illusion. Why did my attack earlier not affect him, then...?

They enter a small room with a pile of human remains near an archway. Three of the walls seemed to be lines with remains, all the way to the roof.

The man goes towards the archway, but his dull torch does not allow him to see much of anything.

Zak steps up and motions into the crevice, "Proceed," he says; "herein is the Amontillado."

Quickly, the man finds himself at the end, stopped by the wall. He looks confused, and Zak quickly ties him with rope in the archway to the hooks on the walls. The man looks astonished.

"The Amontillado!" the man yells, still not quite recovered from his astonishment.

Zak gets right to business, moving the pile of bones to the side to uncover an amount of building stone and morter. Using his inhuman speed, he quickly walls up the man and avoids the later interactions while he walls him up. As Zak places the last stone, another grinding noise, much louder this time, can be heard as at the far wall rises a staircase from the floor, and the roof in that area opens up. As Zak begins to move towards the staircase, he notices, for a split moment, another grinding sound from behind the wall he made. Using his [ Mana Detection ], he notices a small amount of Mana trickling from the slight holes in his subpar wall building.

This [ Mana Detection ] skill has come quite in handy...

Zak breaks down the wall with a punch, revealing a very surprised man in the act of rubbing his freed wrists as the wall behind him opens up. The man quickly turns and begins running, Zak right on his tail. The corridor after the wall was tight, but made of refined, smooth stone. Zak could barely fit in it because of his size, much less run, which caused Zak to be at nearly the same speed as the man. Usually, Zak would easily be able to outrun this man. A bright light begins to slowly fade in at the end of the corridor as they near the exit. The man runs up a small staircase, Zak quickly jumps out as the exit begins closing.

Zak looks around, yet the man is nowhere in sight. The room is interestingly decorated. The ceiling is incredibly high, and the floor is made of a polished surface, easily reflecting everything above it. At the far end is a throne atop a multi-ringed step. Behind it, attached to the wall, are pipes in the shape of an organ. However, in front...

Flames shoot out of two chalice-shaped object on either side of the throne, as well as two bigger ones at the bottom of the steps, also on either side. As this happens, a green head appears from above the throne.

"I AM THE MYSTICAL WIZARD ZO!" the voice says. Both the face and voice are of four, a man, woman, boy, and girl. However, he hears a second girlish voice, just a bit ahead of the others, behind a circular curtain.

Zak sighs, annoyed by all of this. It's just like the goddamn movie... Zak throws the curtains, and his face is shocked as he sees who sits in that chair.

"I knew it! We're from the same world!" the girlish voice says to the astonished Zak.