Kazuma frowned at his phone.
He had entered the group chat that invited him and just accepted it on a whim. Never have he expected that he would instead find himself staring at his phone screen after joining the weird group.
He have already joined the normal group chat in class, and yet he had somehow ended up in another irrelevant server called KABBALAH.
Realizing that he might have accepted a stray invitation, he decided to leave the group chat...only to be greeted by a message.
[You cannot leave the group chat]
Of course.
"Who designed this thing?"
Kazuma shook his head and tried to leave but every time he did, the same message popped out of the screen and he can't do anything about it. In the end, he decided to ignore this new group chat for now and send an introduction to the class group chat to also let the adviser and the Student Council President know he have joined the group chat.
He sent a brief introduction, received a handful of welcoming messages, and put his phone down.
That should have been the end of it.
Except for the other group. He couldn't sway his mind away from the other group chat he joined.
He reopened Kabbalah and searched for a way to leave. And yet, the same message as before reappeared again and again.
Kazuma stared at it with a frown on his face.
"Seriously?"
He searched the settings, but there was no alternative option. He could only mute the group, disable notifications, or hide it from his main list. Leaving, however, was apparently forbidden.
What kind of messaging app had a rule like that?
He considered uninstalling Harmony altogether, then dismissed the idea. He had only just reinstalled it for school. Besides, he could simply mute the group and forget about it.
Still, curiosity got the better of him.
Kabbalah had several channels, most of which were locked. Their names were even stranger than the server's title.
Malkuth. Asiyah. Eradication Requests.
Was this some kind of occult community?
He had heard about the bizarre groups people could find online. Some were harmless roleplaying communities, while others took their beliefs far too seriously. A few had even been associated with cults and criminal activity.
Perhaps Kabbalah was one of those groups.
He scrolled through the available channels.
There was a general chat, a channel named Malkuth, and several more listed under Asiyah. He couldn't access most of the others, but four caught his attention.
Eradication Requests.
Basics.
Low Tier Store.
Giveaways.
The store and giveaway sections were self-explanatory. Eradication Requests, however, sounded like something straight out of a crime thriller.
Assassination requests, perhaps?
Kazuma let out a dry laugh.
"That'd be a stupid thing to put in a public chat."
He tapped Basics.
His phone screen went black.
Kazuma blinked.
Then something appeared above the display.
A three-dimensional human figure hovered in the air, slowly rotating as if suspended inside an invisible glass case. Faint lines traced its skeletal structure, muscles, and organs.
Kazuma froze.
"What the hell?"
He tilted his phone.
The image remained in place.
He moved it farther away, then closer. The figure continued rotating, unaffected by the movement of his hand.
His phone wasn't capable of projecting anything like this. It wasn't even an expensive model.
He instinctively dropped it.
The phone struck the floor with a sharp clack.
For several seconds, Kazuma stared at it.
Then he hurriedly picked it up. Its protective case had absorbed the impact, and the screen remained intact.
The strange image was still there.
A woman's voice suddenly spoke.
"Welcome, prospective Magician."
Kazuma nearly dropped the phone a second time.
The voice was calm and clear, with an almost human quality that made it more unsettling than the robotic assistants he had encountered before.
"Your current rank is Malkuth, the lowest recognized tier within Kabbalah. As a new member, your access is limited. Before you can advance, you must first understand the world you inhabit."
The holographic figure changed. Its body faded, replaced by a view of the Earth.
"The world known to ordinary humanity is only one part of a greater existence. Beyond it lie other realms, concealed from the perception of those who lack the means to perceive them."
Kazuma stared at the image.
Was this some elaborate augmented-reality presentation?
He glanced at the corners of the screen, looking for a logo or indication that he had opened a video. There was nothing. No playback controls. No visible interface.
The voice continued.
"For generations, humanity has lived without understanding the forces that surround it. Most people remain unaware of the dangers hidden beyond their ordinary perception."
The image changed again.
Something appeared against the darkness.
At first, Kazuma thought it was a person.
Then he noticed its limbs.
They bent at impossible angles, folding into one another like the pieces of a broken puppet. Its head was tilted backward, and its face seemed to contain several overlapping features that refused to settle into a recognizable shape.
Kazuma's stomach tightened.
"What is that thing?"
The figure moved.
Not across the screen.
Toward him.
Pain erupted behind Kazuma's eyes.
He staggered, clutching his forehead as the phone slipped in his hand.
For an instant, the room around him disappeared.
He saw a narrow corridor.
A wall stained dark red.
A door standing slightly ajar.
And beyond it, a pair of eyes staring directly at him.
He had never seen that place before.
He was certain of it.
Yet something inside him insisted otherwise.
The images vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving him gasping in his own living room.
The woman's voice continued as though nothing had happened.
"These entities are known as the Qlipoth. Their presence has been linked to the anomalies threatening our world. Their nature and motives remain subjects of investigation, but their danger to ordinary humanity is undeniable."
Kazuma barely heard her.
His head throbbed. His vision swam, and the strange images kept flashing behind his eyes.
He tried to turn off the tutorial.
His fingers missed the screen twice before he finally managed to close it.
The hologram vanished.
The room returned to normal.
For a moment, Kazuma stood perfectly still.
Then he rushed to the bathroom.
He barely reached the toilet before vomiting.
When it was over, he gripped the edge of the sink and splashed cold water across his face. His breathing came in uneven bursts.
"Get a grip," he muttered.
It had to be some kind of trick.
A hallucination, perhaps. Or an adverse reaction to something in the app.
He raised his head and stared at his reflection.
Pale skin. Sweat along his forehead. Nothing visibly wrong with him.
But those images—
He could still remember the corridor. The door. The eyes.
More disturbingly, he remembered the feeling that he had seen them before.
Kazuma closed his eyes.
For one brief moment, something stirred at the edge of his consciousness, like a memory buried beneath layers of dust.
Then it slipped away.
He opened his eyes again.
"No. I'm just exhausted."
He had spent the previous day moving into an unfamiliar house, checking its fixtures, and trying to settle in. Perhaps he had pushed himself too hard.
That explanation was reasonable.
It was also the only one he had.
Kazuma returned to his room and sat on the edge of his bed. His phone lay beside him, its screen dark and innocent.
He wanted answers.
But he wasn't going to get them while he was in this condition.
He would rest first. Once he felt better, he would reopen the tutorial and figure out what had happened.
After all, if it was some kind of elaborate prank, he wanted to know who was responsible.
And if it wasn't—
He didn't want to finish that thought.
....
....
.....
"Chief, we have a problem."
The man behind the desk didn't look up from his monitor.
"What is it?"
"A new Malkuth just activated the introductory tutorial."
That got his attention.
He slowly raised his eyes.
"Repeat that."
"A new member. The account was created recently, and there's no prior activity worth mentioning. But the tutorial activated when he opened Basics."
Silence settled over the room.
The chief leaned back in his chair.
"Did you authorize this?"
"No."
"Did anyone?"
"Not that I can find."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then the chief tapped a finger against his desk.
"That's impossible."
"That's what I thought."
The chief turned back to his monitor. Several lines of information were displayed there, most of them meaningless to anyone outside their organization.
One entry, however, stood out.
Malkuth — Tutorial Access: Activated.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Find out who he is."
"Understood. Do you want me to contact him?"
"No. Observe him first. I want to know how he entered the server and why the tutorial responded to him."
"And if he's dangerous?"
The chief's expression hardened.
"Then we'll decide whether he's worth keeping."
The subordinate hesitated.
"And if he isn't?"
"Then we'll deal with him accordingly."
"Understood."
The subordinate turned to leave, but the chief spoke again.
"One more thing. Don't underestimate him just because he's Malkuth."
The subordinate stopped.
"Do you think he's special?"
"I think we have too little information to make that judgment."
The chief returned his attention to the screen.
"But something has gone wrong. And until I know what it is, I want that boy watched."
The subordinate bowed his head and left the room.
The chief remained alone, staring at the unfamiliar entry.
A new Malkuth.
A new account.
And a tutorial that should never have activated on its own.