The Unknown World.

The people in the surrounding area began to panic, and while rushing to safety, they bumped into Ivan, who hadn't moved an inch from where he stood. He simply ignored them as if they didn't exist and continued to look at his phone, slightly panicking about his family's safety, inwardly. People fell face first, were stomped on, pushed aside, and did the most heinous things to save their lives; then the sky rumbled louder, and millions of lightning bolts struck down all over the world.

"!!!"

"Aaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!" Ivan screamed in agony as the lightning bolt struck down on him; he could "feel" the lightning bolt cruising through each and every vein of his body.

SNAP!

Then suddenly, his consciousness snapped, his vision blurred, and in that moment, he felt as if he knew what was happening; the sensation he was experiencing at the time was all too familiar to him, and "Teleport," he muttered subconsciously in his mind.

SHWOOP

And with a strange sound, the man that was just struck by a strong lightning bolt, disappeared in a poof, without any trace, and the people who saw this, rushed out of the place to find shelter, hoping that they would survive if they had a shelter above their heads, so that they simply won't disappear without a trace.

*

In an unknown place.

Ivan slightly regained his consciousness, but his vision was so blurry that he couldn't even recognise his own hand that he brought close to rub his forehead because of the splitting headache he was having.

[DING]

[DING]

....

...

..

Some kind of strange ringing sound sounded in his head, and combined with the headache he was having, it was a bit too irritating. "Shut up!" He cursed loudly and knuckled his head.

The ringing in his head stopped, but the hit hurt. "Haaa..," he sighed in annoyance, and massaged the spot where he had just knuckled while massaging his forehead with his other arm.

His vision slowly returned and got adjusted to the dark.

'It's too dark to see anything.' He thought inwardly, and strangely, he wasn't afraid of anything even while being in such a strange place.

He placed his right hand on the cold ground, slightly turned to his right, sat up, and tapped on the ground because he felt scratches on the rock-hard ground, squinted his eyes, and noticed that there was some kind of carving on the ground. He glanced around completely focused on understanding his surroundings.

The ceiling, the side walls, the ground, and a pathway at his right, he jumped back on his feet, walked towards the walls, searched, and found a spot where he could easily reach the ceiling. He placed his hand there and felt it. The structure was 8 feet tall, 16-17 feet wide, the place felt slightly damp, and he found something important, it was a needle-sized hole at the corner of the two walls from where water was dripping down. If he ignored hygiene, the water seemed drinkable, and everything seemed to have naturally developed, so,

"It's a cave." Ivan mumbled and scratched his chin, pondering. Though he didn't know where it was or what was really going on, something in him screamed to get ready for combat. He had always trusted his instincts, and he glanced at the pathway, which seemed to be the only path. Since he didn't know where it would take him, he felt the need to prepare, and among all the unfortunate things, there was one thing that was fortunate, and that was the fact that his backpack was still with him.

"I don't know what I'll use this for though...." He mumbled while staring at the translucent bag filled with prophylactics.

"Let's keep it, for now...." He mumbled and turned his bag upside down, pouring out all of its contents. There were a few books that didn't seem to have any use, as they were a few dusty textbooks, a few pens, and two notebooks that were filled with different drawings; among them were a few drawings of naked female bodies, complex calculations, and circles with strange and indescribable words written in, and then, the thing he was "searching" for dropped out of the bag; it was a pocketknife. Why was something like that in the bag of a university student? Of course, because...

"Why did I toss this in my bag again?" He mumbled under his breath, but he was thankful he did.

'Ah, Inna had asked for it.' He remembered the reason, but...

"It's pink." He mumbled as his right brow slightly twitched.

'I don't know why, but I feel like I'm going to be here for a while....' He muttered in his mind.

"Water and food; if I ignore the amount of time I will have to wait to get a glass of water, water is here, so I need to secure food...." He mumbled under his breath and walked in the pathway while sticking his back at the right side of the wall.

'1....2....3....'

*

'289, and 290.' He counted the seconds until he reached the end of the path, then peered out of the cave entrance, shocked to see the ominous land he had walked into.

The land was completely red, as if dyed with blood; there were hills and mountains everywhere his eyes could see; and the sky was completely dark, with a black coloured moon, that was hiding something that couldn't be a sun as some kind of lava or something pouring down from the total eclipsed sun.

"How is it "falling" down?" Though fascinating and ominous, Ivan did his best to ignore the mesmerising sight and glance around in search of the main sources he needed to survive. And he was relieved when he saw a lake that was quite far away from the cave entrance, but it was there nonetheless, and now he won't die of dehydration.

"?" He squinted his eyes when he noticed a dog-like figure in the distance. He saw a wolf standing slightly in front of the lake, huffing and glaring at him with a pair of bloodshot eyes. "!" His eyes widened in surprise, and he instinctively took a step back when he understood that the wolf was glaring at him. Even though the wolf was standing quite far away, it looked like a dog from the spot where he stood, meaning that it was quite larger than what he could see right now.

ZING!

"Uckh!!?" He shook his head and groaned as something flashed in his mind, as if someone was forcibly imprinting information about something in his mind.

THUD

And he passed out, thinking that maybe dying in sleep wasn't so bad because he wouldn't feel any pain, even if the wolf bit him to death while he was unconscious.

*

After a few hours.

Ivan wiggled around while sleeping at the cave entrance, but his mind soon cleared up and the splitting headache from the earlier shit ton of information being forced into his head returned.

SHING

He instantly tightened the loosened grip on his pocketknife, ignoring the headache, and swung it around as he jolted and stood back on his feet, glaring at the wolf that he imagined to be in front of him, ready to bite his head off.

"?" He looked around in confusion when he couldn't find the wolf in front of him, and he glanced back at the spot where the wolf stood earlier and noticed that the wolf was in the same place with the same expression on its face.

'Survive to return.' He muttered in his mind because that was what the information that got imprinted in his mind said.

The world he was in right now was the "Unknown World," and that was everything about the world; it seemed like whatever was happening wasn't even known to the being that was doing things like this, or so Ivan thought. He concluded that all these strange things happening left and right had something to do with a higher being, something like a god or whatever, but it didn't matter to him as he doesn't believe in god or other things like that, so whoever the being was, he/she was just a higher being that had transcended human, and the other information he got was about the energy known as "magic power" or "mana," and the final information was about what he could do.

"Summon." He mumbled, and without waiting for anything to happen, he focused on what was going on inside his body, because if he wanted to, he could "feel," "see," and even "hear" everything that was happening in or with him.

'Ooooooommmmmmmmmmmm.....' He "heard" the magic power moving in his body; it moved from the spot below his belly button, cruised through his right arm, reached until his fingertips, then dispersed as there wasn't anything to "summon."

The colour of this "magic power" in him was black, and since it was a colour he liked, he ignored it. It felt similar but a lot stronger than the energy he gained when he was around the blood crystals at his home. He slightly calmed down and noticed that his body was feeling better and lighter than it was when he was around the crystals at home, but suddenly a thought flashed through his mind, and he began to wonder what if his magic power was in that colour because it knew that Ivan liked that color. Though it felt ominous, he decided to do something about it after he returned to the cave, because he needed to analyse the data in his mind and come up with a plan to survive, and since he saw a wolf glaring at him, he understood that he had to fight it in order to survive, as the information in his mind said.

***