Led by Steve, Fors and the others stepped into the oil painting spread across the wall.
The instant they passed through the door within the painting, the light around them abruptly dimmed, and the faint scent of the sea, salty and damp, reached their noses.
Fors curiously looked around. This seemed to be the base of a round tower built from massive stones. The door they had entered through had vanished behind them, leaving only a spiraling staircase leading upward.
The circular walls of neatly stacked boulders were dotted with holes of varying sizes, allowing air to circulate and sunlight from outside to filter through like dense, bright stars in the night sky.
Once everyone had satisfied their curiosity, Steve finally gestured ahead. "Please follow me."
Audrey and the others followed behind him, climbing the spiraling staircase.
As they ascended, they found the surroundings growing increasingly spacious, as though the space itself was being stretched open by some unknown force.
After climbing for two or three minutes, Glaint, the physically frail Apothecary, had begun to pant lightly.
He glanced at the three ladies, whose expressions remained unchanged, as well as the dog happily racing up the stairs, and for a moment, he began to doubt himself.
His inferior stamina compared to the three ladies could still be explained by the differences between Beyonder Pathways, but he was already a Beyonder, yet he could not even outdo a dog!
Noticing Glaint's self-doubting expression, Audrey lowered her head and curled her lips into a smile.
...This wasn't funny, but Glaint surely couldn't imagine that even Susie was a Sequence 8 Beyonder—no, a Beyonder dog.
Steve, who was leading the way at the front, stopped at the end of the stairs and pushed open the half-closed door before him.
With a creak, brilliant,