Four figures appeared amid warped space in the abandoned rear courtyard of the residence.
Perhaps because they had all been going about their own business just a second earlier, the four of them stood stunned for a long time after suddenly appearing in completely unfamiliar surroundings.
Although every new Player heard the Administrator's voice before entering the Beginner Game, ordinary people who had never encountered supernatural events often assumed that voice was part of a dream or a hallucination. Some could not even remember what the Administrator had said in their ears.
"Lin, look at the moon!" The yellow-haired boy among the four seemed to prefer taking action to thinking things through. While the others were still puzzling over Where is this? and What happened?, he had already looked around and even noticed something different about the sky.
At his words, the others followed his outstretched finger and looked up.
At first, all they had noticed was that the night around them was far too quiet and that the light looked strange, as though covered by a faint red filter. Only when they looked up did they discover that the moon in the night sky was blood-red!
Like the moon they knew, the blood-red moon waxed and waned, but the curved-blade crescent hanging in the night sky lent it an even more mysterious, eerie air.
"A red moon? Is it some once-in-a-century astronomical phenomenon?" Standing beside the yellow-haired boy was a girl who looked only twelve or thirteen. Her slightly curly short hair and fluffy bear hoodie made her look like a teddy bear, but her expression as she gazed at the Red Moon seemed even more mature than his.
"And it's so cold here." The teddy-bear girl hugged herself, shivering a little. "I'm already wearing so many layers. Why