The boundary between life and death blurred

"Yo, yo~ You two old fossils, we're here."

While Beckman was engrossed in that little phone, scrolling through its bewildering variety of courses and novel information, the hovercar had already slipped away from the dazzling heart of Reverse City without him noticing.

When he realized the car had stopped and looked up, the sight before him caught him off guard, drawing a frown.

The bustling steel jungle was gone.

In its place stood an empty plaza on the outskirts, shrouded in thin mist.

The silence here was terrifying.

There were no vehicles, no pedestrians. Even the faintest sound of wind had been eerily shut out.

The paving beneath their feet was black basalt with a dark sheen, stretching hundreds of meters ahead to a gate at its far end.

An antique torii-style gateway that radiated an utterly incongruous presence.

The gate was carved from pitch-black ancient wood, covered in intricate symbols Beckman had never seen before.

It stood alone at the end of the plaza, connected to no walls and leading to no building.

Yet this gate, which looked as though it could be moved anywhere, exerted such terrifying pressure on Beckman that he felt his soul would dissolve instantly if he approached it.

Even more unsettling was the scent in the air.

There was no briny smell of the sea, no exhaust, not even the earthy scent of soil.

Only a peculiar presence Beckman could not describe.

"Hiss!"

Beckman instinctively drew a breath, the muscles in his right hand tensing at once.

"There's something there!"

His gaze shot toward the space before the gate like a blade drawn from its sheath.

To the naked eye, there was nothing there.

But his Observation Haki detected two figures standing quietly before the seemingly empty gateway.

Two young men in close-fitting white