It was not a particularly spacious laboratory. The alchemy platform and various magical items that should have been there had all vanished, yet the room gave no sense of emptiness whatsoever. On the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, magical patterns in silver-white and black protruded in relief, rippling with flowing, water-like luminescence, all interconnected into a three-dimensional model.
Moreover, they extended outward, weaving layer upon layer of illusory nets that merged seamlessly with the complex Magic Circle arranged at the center of the laboratory, forming a scene of profound mystery.
"A Magic Circle?" Heidi stared at the small laboratory in considerable surprise. Her teacher had been busy for months, shrouded in secrecy, all to set up this Magic Circle? And it didn't look particularly complex—clearly not the sort that would require a Grand Archanist to spend months on.
She had originally assumed her teacher was setting up a new experimental apparatus—perhaps a better, more powerful particle collider—but the reality left her struggling to understand.
After a moment of stunned silence, Anik was the first to recognize the Circle's general purpose: "A space-time Magic Circle? An extraplanar gate?"
This left him and Heidi even more astonished and bewildered than before. Once they realized it wasn't an experimental device, they had guessed that the Magic Circle might serve some special function—perhaps enabling unique microscopic-domain experiments to help Archanists uncover the mysteries of electrons and other subatomic particles. But who would have thought it was a teleportation array of the extraplanar gate variety? What use was that to the Atomic Research Institute? Could it possibly teleport them inside an atom?
Lucian, who had his back to them, paid no heed to their astonishment and curiosity. He walked into the laboratory at an unhurried pace, positioned himself at the center of the Magic Circle, and then turned to face Katrina, Sprint, Anik, and Heidi with a smile. "As for what it actually does—we'll find out once we try it."
"Teacher, you're terrible! My curiosity is about to explode!" Heidi declared with an exaggerated expression, then trotted into the lab in quick, small steps and planted herself at her teacher's side. Sprint and the others, though brimming with doubts, were not about to fall behind, afraid someone else might steal the opportunity, and followed close on her heels into the laboratory.
"Heidi, when you get back, you absolutely have to tell me everything you see and feel!" Reilily called out in an envious, raised voice—she had been half a beat too slow raising her hand.
Lazar, Rourke, and Jerome stood nearby, watching with smiles as the others carried on. Though they were intensely curious themselves, they felt that as Lucian's friends—effectively Heidi's and the others' "uncle generation"—it wouldn't be proper to compete with them. Even though their Archanist ranks and magical levels had already been caught up by Anik and the rest, the psychological sense of seniority was hard to shake. Unless, of course, they could follow in Lucian's footsteps and become Legendary Mages or Grand Archanists within a mere dozen years or so.
*Snap.* Lucian snapped the fingers of his right hand. Every magical pattern in the room blazed bright simultaneously, their previous water-like glow flaring to the brilliance of the midday sun.
The light converged. At the center of the Magic Circle, a small sun seemed to rise—dazzling, yet not scorching.
Gradually, this pure sphere of light stretched and elongated into a "Gate of Light" roughly two persons tall, with magical symbols floating and sinking amid the flowing radiance, appearing and vanishing in alternation.
Lucian extended his right hand, which now appeared encased in a silver-white gauntlet, and pressed it firmly against the Gate of Light. The gate swung open immediately, and an endless torrent of light poured forth, engulfing Lucian, Heidi, Anik, and all the others in an instant.
By the time the light dissipated, Lucian, Katrina, and the rest had vanished without a trace, and the "Gate of Light" seemed to have lost all its vitality—dead, dim, and lifeless, as though composed entirely of pale stone.
"I wonder what Heidi and the others will see…" Cherry clasped her hands together involuntarily.
The dizziness of spatial displacement arrived without any surprise. Fortunately, Sprint, Heidi, and the other fifth-circle Mages had ample experience with this sensation and had already cast protective spells against it, so the discomfort faded quickly.
Before she had even fully recovered from the dizziness, Heidi eagerly looked ahead—her curiosity was simply too overwhelming!
Ahead was transparent "glass," and beyond it lay absolute blackness—the deepest, heaviest darkness Heidi had ever witnessed. Boundless darkness, with no end in sight.
And deep within that darkness, points of white light shone with piercing clarity, utterly steady, without the slightest flicker—pure and lucid. This gave Heidi a sensation of profundity and vastness she had never experienced before, as though her very soul had grown tranquil, as though she herself were infinitesimally small and the world immeasurably immense.
"This is…" Heidi had completely forgotten her dizziness, her voice drifting and ethereal, like someone talking in a dream.
Sprint, Anik, and Katrina stared equally entranced at the endless darkness and scattered lights surrounding them. They had a vague inkling of what they were seeing, yet they could not quite grasp it with any clarity.