Beneath the Dim Starry Sky

The Eerie Green Flame fell like a meteor from the frozen canopy of stars, streaking through the air in a bright trail before crashing down upon a barren plain strewn with strange rocks.

Then the flames burst apart and bloomed in midair. Amid the scattering firelight, Duncan and Alice emerged and finally set foot in this unknown world.

Before the firelight faded, Duncan noticed the bizarre, twisted, terrifying figures in the distance—more than a dozen Abyssal Demons gathered at the edge of the landing site, looking strangely dazed.

He and the demons stared at one another, and the atmosphere inexplicably froze.

It was not until Alice finally cried out in belated alarm that the stalemate broke. "Captain! We're surrounded!"

"...I see that," Duncan said casually, already prepared to "make contact" with the demons. The dozen or so monsters in the distance were clearly different from the Abyssal Demons he had seen in the real-world dimension, the ones summoned by Annihilation Cultists. Their limbs were far more distorted, with strange dislocations and cracks visible on some of their bodies. The floating skull demon even had a horrifying hole in the top of its head. It did not look easy to deal with.

By Duncan's understanding, the more twisted something like an Abyssal Demon was, the more wrong it was—and therefore the stronger it was. The demons before him were twisted to the point of nearly snapping apart. They had to be experts of the Abyssal Deep Sea, surely nothing like those weaklings in the Real World who ran the moment they saw him...

Yet to his surprise, just as he had prepared to "fight" the local natives in greeting, the monsters in the distance seemed to suddenly snap out of it. They instantly let out a string of chaotic roars and