Inside the Proust’s House bar, Heinrich, Alea, Eli, as well as Silas and Alaric, were gathered together.

  They were discussing where Alea had gone—and specifically, what those entities from the other universe had done after causing her to vanish.

  Alea had been unaware that, following her departure from Earth, so many years had actually elapsed.

  After all, immediately upon vanishing, she had found herself in a garden.

  It was a garden created for her by those entities—a place perfectly suited for human habitation. From her perspective, only about twelve days—measured in Earth time—had passed.

  Then, she had met Eli and Alaric, who had come to retrieve her.

  Alaric sighed with a sense of profound reflection.

  Two hundred years had passed on Earth, yet for Alea, it had felt like a mere twelve days.

  ...

  Silas and the others stepped out of Proust’s House and emerged into the open air.

  The scene before them bore a striking resemblance to the Holy City. Yet, this was not the Holy City; it was the *Norvis* Space City. The *Norvis* spanned an area of ??1,600 square kilometers and housed a population of approximately 600,000. The entire city was encased within a massive, transparent sphere—300 kilometers in diameter—which served a multitude of functions. The space city was filled with a breathable atmosphere, its composition identical to that of Earth’s air. Humanity had since constructed even larger space cities, and vast numbers of people now resided on various habitable planets.

  Eli observed people walking into a small wooden cabin; they would enter, vanish from sight, and then other people would emerge from the same cabin. This was the standard mode of transportation for the inhabitants. The space city was dotted with many such cabins. Inside each cabin lay a short-range transit portal, capable of instantly transporting a person to any other cabin within the city. Eli had long since adapted to the rhythm of human life in this era—two centuries into the future.

  Three days later, Alaric, Silas, and Heinrich prepared to embark on a voyage of exploration aboard a spaceship. Silas intended to bring Eli along, but he hadn't seen him for two days. "Eli and Alea have already taken a ship and set off on a journey through the cosmos," Heinrich remarked. The three men walked over to their vessel. Gazing up at the hovering, ellipsoidal metal spacecraft, Alaric fell into a brief, contemplative silence. Not long ago, they had inadvertently stumbled into another universe—a universe so incredibly distant. If one were to liken the two universes to grains of sand, the distance between them would be akin to the distance between a grain of sand at the Cape of Good Hope and a grain of sand on the beaches of the Holy City—that vast, that immense. Even if Alaric were to pilot humanity’s most advanced spacecraft—capable of traversing space or even navigating through spatial wormholes—he might still never reach that other universe. Moreover, even within this universe, spatial travel does not allow for a direct jump from one side to the other; it would require at least a hundred consecutive spatial jumps to achieve such a feat. Yet *they*—whatever they are—transported our spacecraft into another universe in a mere two seconds.

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

  Boarding their spacecraft, they departed from the *Norvis* space city to journey—or perhaps, to *explore*—the vast and mysterious cosmos.

  Humanity’s mastery over the primordial dimensions remains at a very rudimentary stage. It has been but a few short years since they established new settlements beyond the confines of the Milky Way galaxy.

  The universe still holds a multitude—an immense number—of mysteries awaiting human discovery.

  Alaric, Silas, and the others traveled through the cosmos aboard their spacecraft, venturing forth to explore.

  They executed a spatial jump and arrived at a specific location. "Alea's spacecraft coordinates are right here," Heinrich announced.

  Suddenly, a colossal star—or rather, an entity *resembling* a star—materialized outside their viewport.

  It was a "sun" radiating a faint violet glow, its entire structure composed of translucent crystalline material. Its light did not erupt violently from the surface, but instead appeared to flow slowly from within the crystal's depths, refracting through layer after layer to form a soft yet profound halo. At least, that is how it appeared to their eyes.

  The spacecraft's sensor systems flickered erratically for a brief moment.

  "Unable to resolve structure." "No gravitational data detected."

  The readings returned by Alaric's spacecraft were both simple and anomalous.

  "It... possesses no gravity?" Alaric asked, utterly bewildered.

  They felt as though they were suspended within a violet-hued "black hole"; within the spherical void surrounding the object, the violet starlight it emitted gradually faded, until it vanished completely.

  Gazing at the violet star, Alea suddenly felt that it was not merely a celestial body, but rather some form of unique spatiotemporal construct. For the first time, she realized that the "nature" humanity thought it understood might, in reality, be merely the *portion* of nature they were *permitted* to comprehend.

  Alaric sighed softly: "We are, after all, merely insignificant carbon-based life forms."

  In the boundless expanse of the cosmos, space possesses curvature, and the flow of time can accelerate.

  And there are even black holes—entities capable of collapsing eleven-dimensional spacetime into a single, infinitely small point. Centuries ago, humanity was still unable to detect the nature of dark matter, nor could they venture far beyond the confines of Earth.

  Within the eleven-dimensional spacetime, the past, present, and future are all visible. In this boundless cosmos—this enigmatic void—what, if anything, remains constant?

  "The Primal Dimension—what exactly is it? Where, precisely, does it lie?"

  "Perhaps," Alaric mused, gazing up at the mysterious Amethyst Sun, "we have existed within the Primal Dimension all along." He continued with a startling observation: "It is simply that we—or rather, *all* cosmic civilizations—are incapable of observing this boundless, enigmatic universe *from* within the Primal Dimension itself." It transcends every dimension. It transcends all dimensions.

  As Alaric and his companions traveled a certain distance aboard their spacecraft, the Amethyst Sun vanished from sight.

  They had returned to the space city, *Norvis*.