"Except this big guy right here."
Aziel muttered, his gaze fixed on the rising distortion ahead.
The sea convulsed violently, bending and twisting around something massive forcing its way up with unstoppable energy.
At first glance, it looked like a sea dragon, its long, layered body made of liquid glass, its scales reflecting countless numbers of shifting colors that shimmered and danced like flowing light.
The creature that had emerged from the sea rose up, its serpentine neck stretching high, aiming toward the clouds that loomed faintly in the distance.
And that was when he saw it.
A thin, blue, gleaming sheet hovered across the sky, rippling faintly like a mirror of silver mist, catching the faint rays of the red light.
Faint red outlines beneath its glow hinted at distant landmasses and jagged ridges.
It stretched endlessly, so wide it curved gently with the horizon, giving the sense that the sky itself was folding around it.
He twisted his head over ninety degrees and realized that he had been floating below this faint, luminous sheet for a surprisingly long distance, almost losing track of time.
"What in the world is this… I thought I had experienced my fair share of surprises when I managed to escape before."
He murmured under his breath, his gaze scrutinizing the monster with growing curiosity and careful attention.
The monster stood completely still, and from the looks of it, it didn't feel hostile or like it was going to attack anytime soon, almost as if it were simply observing him.
Its head rose until it reached the same height as the shining plane above.
The jaw of its mouth opened widely, revealing nothing yet hinting at an enormous, unseen interior.
A strange, invisible pull tugged at him.
Not from gravity.
Not from the ocean.
But from that gleaming, endless layer above.
It was faint, familiar, almost instinctive in the way it beckoned him forward.
Aziel twisted, and his body shimmered, stretched, and finally transformed into gas.
It was the first time he had ever managed it. Since inheriting his body, he had only ever succeeded in becoming liquid after countless painstaking attempts.
Every effort to take the gaseous form had failed miserably, collapsing into nothing, slipping out of control, leaving him frustrated and exhausted.
But now, after long struggle and many tries, he had finally learned to manifest it properly.
The wind currents carried his ethereal form forward, hurling him toward the monster's belly at high speed with surprising ease.
He braced for resistance, expecting gut-wrenching pain and the impossibility of entering alive.
Instead, the creature welcomed him.
His plasma essence seeped effortlessly into the gaps, the pores, whatever they were, flowing naturally into the living interior without restriction.
Inside, the world outside dissolved entirely.
Twisting walls of light and energy spiraled around him, pulsing with molten veins that bent and folded space in impossibly intricate ways.
Channels coiled, narrowed, and expanded, yet every path seemed to lead forward, like a maze designed with intent.
He was left with no choice to make, no direction to consider, only the forward motion of the living structure around him.
'Of course… why not? Just casually float into a giant dragon's belly. Totally normal day. No big deal.'
He thought wryly, only to realize that after shifting into gas, he had lost the ability to produce sound entirely.
He slowly skimmed along the only path that existed, a narrow tube with no distractions or alternatives.
To him, it felt like playing a car racing game after loading tens of gigabytes of mods — trying to erase all the NPCs that had bothered him relentlessly for so long.
The tube soon branched into several others, and after careful consideration, he chose one at random, curious about what lay ahead.
He passed through many such branches, and to his surprise, he began to notice a repeating, deliberate pattern.
All the branches seemed to emerge from the same central location, like veins flowing from a single source.
To confirm the suspicion, he even attempted to return, choosing a different path cautiously.
But he couldn't.
The previous path had vanished, now twisting into a spiraled, chaotic mess that offered no explanation whatsoever.
He returned to his prior location, and a straight path followed predictably.
He drifted along it for what felt like an eternity, the veins of molten light along the walls pulsing rhythmically with an almost living, breathing heartbeat.
A bright, radiant light fell on him as he skidded across a slimy, writhing surface, sensing texture he couldn't name.
Jagged shapes—sharply pointed, white, glowing hills—loomed on either side, twisting toward him with a strange, unnatural grace.
Only then did it finally snap into his focus.
It was the dragon's mouth.
And then, suddenly, he was shot out from the dragon's mouth, expelled into the open, weightless and free, the mouth behind him folding back as if it had never been opened at all.
Then a strange, wet sensation hit him.
It was wet, almost liquid in texture and movement.
He twisted instinctively and began to rise.
His vision pooled with cyan-shaded liquid.
'Water! Is this really water?' he thought in disbelief.
Come to think of it, this was the first time he had actually seen water in this strange dimension.
Not to mention, it felt strange that he hadn't felt thirsty at all during the entire ordeal inside the dimension.
Though, it had been so much time, longer than he could calculate.
He wanted to suck all the water out of scarcity, but his gaseous form couldn't perform such a tedious, physical task.
'Fuck.' Aziel cursed inwardly, the thought of turning solid just to consume water — and risk exposure to unknown dangers that had yet to come — weighing heavily on him.
He made a mental note to come back later, after he had figured out exactly wherever the hell he was.
Though, deep down, he had an inkling of the truth, but he didn't want to accept it yet.
The trial of thoughts ended abruptly as the feeling of wetness vanished completely.
No — he did not emerge from the body naturally, as one might expect of a gas.
Something else was clearly in control.
He was forcibly dragged out by something else.
"Found hi—" a voice screamed sharply.
A man with exaggerated features, however, inched above the water. His hand, which suspiciously wasn't solid, held Aziel's in his gaseous form.
As if in response to his call, shapes began to flicker at the edge of Aziel's vision, circling around that man instantly.
A faint hush of voices followed, before another voice urgently urged the man to leave quickly.