Thomas watched as different-sized behemoths navigated the diamond-paved streets, each one a patchwork of riveted metal and venting a rhythmic, chugging roar.
They all released the same thick, oily black smoke from their chimneys, creating a low-hanging haze that caught the orange sunlight in a strange, sepia filter.
Many of these vehicles looked like the wooden caravans of a bygone era, but they were scaled up to impossible proportions and forged entirely of iron.
Every single machine Thomas laid eyes on was brutally ugly, prioritize function over form with a violence that made his head ache.
They were multi-tiered platforms of seats, carrying dozens of people who looked down at the streets with a calm indifference that suggested this mechanical nightmare was their everyday norm.
The streets themselves were a marvel of labour. They were paved with small, diamond-shaped stones, cut with such precision that they fit together like the scales of a serpent.
The ride was smooth—certainly smoother than the rutted dirt of the wilderness—but it lacked the seamless, silent glide of the asphalt he had travelled on just hours ago in Manhattan.
"What date is it?"
The question burst out of Thomas suddenly. His voice was slightly shaky, cracking against the backdrop of his numb internal void.
His mind was his greatest weapon—equipped with a sharp ability to notice minute discrepancies and an inhuman capacity to link disparate evidence together.
Coupled with his legend-tier ability to sense a lie, he could no longer ignore the data.
A dream? A hallucination? His mind finally rejected the theory. No subconscious could generate this level of granular detail—the specific weave of the pedestrians' clothes, the unique architectural flourishes of the buildings, the gritty texture of the soot in the air.
His mind discarded the "fever dream" explanation and began to wrap itself around a much crazier, more terrifying conclusion.
Oliver glanced at him, looking puzzled by the urgency of the question. "It's day one hundred and twelve, after the ten thousand mark, by two hundred and fifty-two clicks."
Thomas stared at him, unblinking. As he remained silent, Oliver added slowly, as if explaining a nursery rhyme to a child, "We have already crossed the ten-thousand-year mark since the ascension of the Big Monarch, plus another two hundred and fifty-two years."
"B… Big Monarch… T… Ten thousand years?!" Thomas stammered. The words felt like lead in his mouth. His mind was lost once again in a fierce, howling storm of emotions. The scale of the timeline was so vast it threatened to crush his sense of self.
"Yes, the Great Monarch," Oliver said, his voice taking on a tone of deep, historical reverence.
"The one who unified the central sectors and put an end to the everlasting chaos of the dark villains. He was the one who discovered a use for the F-grade superheroes, you know. Before him, they were just called the 'Fuckers'—useless drains on resources. He turned them into the cornerstone of our entire civilisation."
Thomas didn't respond. The evidence was now undeniable. This wasn't a dream, and it wasn't Earth's past.
He had reached a conclusion that would have made his old therapist call for a straightjacket: he had travelled to a completely different world. A world with a ten-millennium history that had nothing to do with Rome, the Renaissance, or the Cold War.
To test the physical reality of his situation one last time, Thomas raised his hand and delivered a sharp, stinging slap to his own cheek. The pain was immediate and hot. Oliver gave him a weird, slightly concerned look, but Thomas ignored it.
"I'm not dreaming," he thought, letting out an internal sigh that felt like a collapse.
He hadn't travelled back in time; he had been transplanted into a reality where the very laws of physics and society were built on the backs of people with "superpowers."
"Tsk! I don't know how your parents raised you, lad, but you seem to know precious little about the world you live in," Oliver remarked, shaking his head.
"My parents are dead," Thomas replied. "They've been gone since I was young." He spoke in the same flat, monotonous tone he had used his entire life.
It wasn't because he had regressed to his old state of numbness, but because the emotional storm inside him was so violent that his facial muscles simply couldn't figure out which expression to wear.
He looked like a blank slate because his internal canvas was currently being shredded.
"Oh… sorry about that," Oliver said, his bravado softening into genuine sympathy. He seemed to want to make amends for his unintended insult, so he began to speak rapidly, providing a crash course in the geography of this strange existence.
"We live in a world comprised of different sectors, Thomas. Each one is a world unto itself. In between these sectors, there are the Isolation Zones—extremely dangerous, naturally formed voids filled with a thick, eternal black fog. They are places of immense riches and even greater death."
Oliver's voice lowered as he spoke of the black fog, and Thomas felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
"These zones are filled with Qi mines," Oliver continued. "More than enough to fuel the eternal wars between the superheroes and the villains. Wherever you go next, you'll find people far more educated than I who can explain the intricacies. But for your own knowledge, you should know that you are the first person to be discovered with superpowers in this settlement since the very appearance of this sector."
"And that is… since when, exactly?" Thomas asked. He was finally beginning to exert some control over the internal wrecking ball of his thoughts.
"Twenty years," Oliver said, his gaze drifting toward the horizon. "This sector appeared exactly twenty years ago. The first three years were pure, hectic slaughter. Brutal fights erupted between the superheroes of the SA and the villains who tried to claim the land. Since then, the sector has been carved up into different regions. The big cities and fortified towns act as the lords of this place. Small, insignificant settlements like ours usually fall under their jurisdiction. But that changes today! We've found our own hero. That makes us a 'Big Shot' settlement now, hahahaha!"
Oliver had a talent for turning even the grimmest history into a reason to laugh. Thomas remained silent, his mind spinning as he processed this new piece of the puzzle.
"Are you telling me this entire land—this sector—is newly discovered?"
"Newly born is a better word for it," Oliver corrected him. "Sectors appear out of the fog in the Isolation Zones without warning. One day, the black mist just recedes, revealing a grand expanse of land that wasn't there before. And that's what we call a sector. Just like the one we're standing in now."