If You Could Travel to Another World, Which World Would You Choose?

[The story will have a somewhat slow start. My writing ability is limited, but I'll do my best to portray the Hunter x Hunter world as I envision it and follow the original setting as closely as possible. Please forgive any inaccuracies. The protagonist is decisive and ruthless...]

"Do you think Chairman Netero could win against the Ant King if he returned to his prime?"

The glow of the phone screen reflected on Leo's face as his thumb rapidly scrolled through the endlessly refreshing messages in the group chat.

"Most likely not. With the Ant King's terrifying physical strength and learning ability, the Chairman could at most severely wound it. In the end, he'd still lose!"

"No matter how strong the Ant King's defense is, didn't it die from poison? Zero magic resistance!"

"I don't think so! Strictly speaking, the Ant King was still premature. If it had been fully born, maybe even poison wouldn't have worked on it."

"Stop arguing. Only Lord Sukuna is the strongest! One World-Cutting Slash and they'd all die!"

"Only Sukuna is the strongest? Then what are we JoJo fans supposed to be?"

"Good question. If you don't like it, come fight me!"

The corner of Leo's mouth lifted. He was far too familiar with scenes like this.

His fingers tapped against the screen.

"Sukuna? What nerve! You're really looking down on us Ultraman fans! Any Ultraman could stomp down once, and there wouldn't be even scraps of your Lord Sukuna left. Do you understand the sheer weight behind 35,000 tons?!"

The moment he sent the message, someone immediately chimed in.

"All of yours are too weak. Oma Zi-O can reset the universe with a wave of his hand!"

"Don't make Brother Li laugh. Oma Zi-O? A King of Time who can be stopped by time stop? Emperor Hero is the strongest!"

Wearing earphones, Leo walked down the street with his head lowered, staring at his phone. The group chat instantly exploded, messages scrolling so fast they made his eyes blur.

He read and laughed. These guys were always like this. Once power scaling came up, they could drag characters from any series to the same table and argue over them.

Putting one down while praising another, fighting until someone won or died—this was their favorite game.

They went from analyzing Hunter x Hunter's Nen system to Jujutsu Kaisen's Domain Expansions, then from Ultraman's beam attacks to Kamen Rider's form changes.

"If you could travel to another world, which one would you choose?"

Someone suddenly asked in the group, instantly steering the conversation elsewhere.

Some chose the world of One Piece, dreaming of eating a Devil Fruit and freely roaming the seas. Some longed for the world of Pokémon, dreaming of adventuring alongside companions like Pikachu. Others wanted to go to Frieren: Beyond Journey's End to learn magic and explore the mysteries of a thousand-year journey.

If he could travel to another world... Leo kept walking, but an answer surfaced in his mind.

He would choose the world of Hunter x Hunter.

The system Yoshihiro Togashi had created was simply too captivating—the ingenious division of Nen into six major categories, the high-stakes gamble of vows and restrictions, and the unfathomable Dark Continent.

It was the most rigorous yet imaginative power system he had ever seen. Every character had their own path and choices. There was no absolute good or evil, only clashes between different positions.

Just as he was about to elaborate, a piercing screech of brakes tore through the air.

Leo suddenly looked up. A yellow sedan was charging toward him from the entrance of a 4S dealership, its hood reflecting a blinding glare beneath the sunlight.

Time seemed to slow. He could see the driver's terrified expression and his own distorted reflection on the hood.

A dull impact.

The world spun. His phone flew from his hand, tracing an arc through the air.

His back slammed hard into the ground, and pain surged over him like a tide. The edges of his vision began to darken, while the crowd's cries grew distant.

"It's over... It's over! My brand-new car!" A man's voice quavered as though he were about to cry.

Leo's vision gradually blurred. The final thought that flashed through his mind was absurdly clear.

I should've known better than to walk around with my head down, playing on my phone...

Then darkness swallowed everything.

Cold.

That was Leo's first sensation when he regained consciousness.

Not the softness of a hospital bed, but a hard, rough surface that felt like stone.

He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt as heavy as lead.

After several attempts, his vision finally cleared—a towering dome, mottled stonework, and cracks spreading across it like a spiderweb.

Daylight streamed through several collapsed gaps, while dust drifted slowly through the shafts of light.

"Wasn't I... dead?"

He found himself lying on a cold stone platform, beneath him rough patterns that seemed to have been carved by hand.

His voice produced a faint echo in the empty space.

Leo realized he was lying on a circular stone platform roughly three meters across, its surface covered in unfamiliar writing.

The strokes curled like vines, with occasional sharp turns, faintly glowing in the gloom.

This was an altar.

He rolled over and sat up, looking around.

The stone hall was empty. Six massive stone pillars surrounded the altar, embedded with glowing crystal-like minerals that gave off a milky white radiance.

However, the pillars were severely damaged. Their surface reliefs had become indistinct, and only the bases still showed traces of animal-shaped patterns.

The air was filled with the stale scent of dust, mixed with a freshness like earth after rain.

Memories flooded back: the argument in the group chat, the out-of-control sedan, the instant of impact... as well as another set of unfamiliar memory fragments. A seventeen-year-old boy named Rexxar, living alone in a small town, who had fallen into a spatial rift while out hunting...

"Rexxar... Leo..."

The two sets of memories intertwined and collided in his mind, pain stabbing into his skull like needles.

Leo clutched his head, his fingernails nearly digging into his scalp.

After a long while, the pain gradually subsided and the memories began to merge.

He understood—his soul had transmigrated into the body of this boy named Rexxar.

And Rexxar's final memory was falling into a rift that had suddenly appeared.

"I've traveled to another world..."

Leo muttered, his voice echoing through the stone hall.

He carefully slid off the altar, his bare feet landing on the icy stone floor.

There was only one set of double stone doors in the hall, their carved reliefs too worn to distinguish.

Leo pushed with all his strength. Accompanied by a dull grinding sound, the doors slowly opened inward.

A broader space unfolded before him.

This was the main hall of a palace. Several enormous pillars, each so thick that three people would need to link arms to encircle one, had collapsed or tilted over. Rubble and broken columns littered the floor.

The ground was paved with massive stone slabs, with weeds and ferns growing from the gaps. The place had clearly been abandoned for a very long time.

Leo cautiously crossed the main hall. Large sections of murals remained on the walls, most of their colors faded, leaving only vague outlines. One seemed to depict a ritual, with crowds kneeling around an altar. Another showed beasts fighting humans, its style bold and full of motion.

"This place... has been abandoned for at least several hundred years."

Beyond the main hall lay the palace's front entrance. Leo forcefully pushed open one of the doors.

Blinding light rushed in.

He narrowed his eyes for several seconds until they adjusted, then clearly saw the sight before him—

Outside was a broad stone platform with waist-high railings along the edges, many of them broken.

Several dozen steps extended from the platform, leading down to a clearing surrounded by forest.

Farther away stretched an endless, dense forest. The trees were unimaginably tall, some trunks more than three meters in diameter, their canopies forming green clouds that blocked out huge swaths of the sky.

Birdsong, insect calls, and the rustling of leaves in the wind... countless sounds intertwined into a natural symphony brimming with life. The air carried the fresh scent of plants and soil.

Leo stood there in a daze for several seconds before slowly walking onto the platform and approaching the railing.

Looking down, he saw that the palace stood atop a hill, at a high elevation overlooking the surrounding forest.

"Ah Zhen, you really did it, huh?!" He gave a helpless, bitter smile.

"If I really traveled to another world, then what world is this?"

He recalled what the group had been discussing before he passed out: One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Pokémon, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Hunter x Hunter... At the time, he had said he would choose the world of Hunter x Hunter.

"No way..." Leo's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

He carefully observed the surroundings again: the ancient palace, the mysterious altar, the strange forest.

If this truly was the world of Hunter x Hunter, then this place might be the ruins of some ancient civilization.

But for now, that was only speculation.

Leo decided to explore the palace interior first in search of more clues. He entered the main hall again, this time inspecting every detail more carefully.

In a corner on the western side of the main hall, he found a relatively intact room.

It seemed to be a storage room. Several damaged wooden shelves stood inside, and fragments of pottery jars were scattered across the floor. On the innermost shelf, Leo discovered two relatively intact items.

One was a fist-sized stone, its surface covered in intricate natural patterns. In the dim light, those patterns seemed to flow faintly, as if some liquid had been sealed within the stone.

The other was a rolled-up animal hide tied with some kind of plant fiber.

The hide was remarkably well preserved, flexible to the touch, with regular serrated cutting marks along its edges.

Leo carefully untied it and unfolded the hide.

It was a map.

It had been drawn on tanned dark-brown animal hide. The ink had faded somewhat, but it was still clearly visible.

The map marked forests, mountains, rivers, huge monsters, and symbols for several other buildings. Waves were drawn around the map's edges, possibly representing the ocean.

Several lines of text appeared beneath the map, written in the same strange script as the altar.

"I can't understand any of this. It must be some ancient language."

Leo frowned. He carefully rolled the hide back up, retied it, and then looked at the stone.

The patterns on the stone seemed to be drawing him in. Leo reached out and touched its surface—

The moment his fingertips touched the stone, something strange happened.

Golden patterns inside the stone suddenly lit up, pulsing as though they were alive.

Then the entire stone transformed into a pool of dark-gold liquid and flowed down from the shelf at an unimaginable speed.

Leo tried to retreat in shock, but his body could not move—not because some force had restrained him, but because of an instinctive rigidity, like an animal freezing when it encountered a natural predator.

The liquid crept upward from his fingers, swiftly covering his arm and shoulder before spreading across his entire body.

"This—" Leo's question caught in his throat.

The liquid had already covered his face, yet it did not hinder his breathing.

On the contrary, he felt an unusual sense of clarity, as if every pore in his body had opened. His vision was enveloped in dark gold, then gradually dimmed.

Then darkness swallowed everything.

In the silent storage room, Leo's body collapsed onto the floor. The dark-gold liquid had completely entered his body, leaving no trace on the surface of his skin. The tattoo on his arm flickered slowly.

Only the animal-hide map lay quietly beside him, its edge trembling slightly in the light leaking in through the doorway.

At that moment—

The altar at the center of the palace suddenly emitted a faint glow.

The light seeped from the grooves of its inscriptions. At first, it was nothing more than firefly-like points of starlight, but they quickly gathered and intensified, transforming into a slender yet solid pillar of light that shot into the sky!

The pillar pierced through a hole in the dome and streaked toward an unknown distance. The entire process lasted only three short seconds before it swiftly faded and vanished.

The altar returned to normal, as though nothing had happened.

At the same time, somewhere on the distant Ulubian Continent.

It was a bustling border town. Pedestrians filled the streets, while vendors' cries, children's laughter, and the rumbling of carriage wheels intertwined into the busy symphony of everyday life.

Suddenly, a faint ripple appeared in the sky.

Then a dark-gray stone slab materialized out of thin air and fell from above, striking the stone-paved road in the center of the town square with a bang.

Passersby stopped and gathered around it curiously.

The slab was roughly palm-sized and a finger thick, its surface covered in strange writing and patterns.

Someone cautiously stepped forward to pick it up, only to discover a simple map and an arrow symbol carved onto the back.