Exploring the Unknown

As John locked the door behind him once he entered his room, he felt uneasy about this whole talk with his mother he just had. On the one hand it was nice to know what was going on with his mom, but on the other hand, it opened the door to something he rather didn't want to think about: His mother having sex. Sure, he was completely aware that she had had, and probably still had sex, as he wouldn't be here if she didn't, but it was not something a kid wanted to think about. That's like thinking about most of your teachers having sex (June was the exception here, but only in his fantasy of him fucking her...).

He had to get his mind off it as quick as possible. And how could The Gamer do that the easiest? Well by playing The Game of course and trying out the stuff he had. This namely meant using the Nexus to find out what was behind its secret (also because he had no intention to deal with the dick). So John pulled the item out of his inventory, and the thing that fell into his hand was indeed a black key card. But not just black, it was so black that it felt like it was absorbing all of the light that fell on it, except for the light on the gold pieces which were the magnetic strip and a stylized picture of a lotus.

Looking around his room for a proper 'slot' he could slide it through; John decided to use the small gap between his closet and the wall next to it. Pushing the card into the gap, it seemed to unfold, but not in a way that should have been possible! The gap grew, but it was not as if the closet was pushed away, but it was like the space between it and the wall simply... expanded... the card kept unfolding itself until an equally dark door as the key card was in front of John. Space around the door seemed to be distorted and weird, but nothing stood out as actually wrong, as it was mostly the knowledge of how it had been just a second ago...

John put his hands on the door that had no handle and started to push slightly. The door gave way, and beyond it, John could see some dark room, too dark to make out any details, but certainly 'brighter' than the door and the card. He put a single foot inside of the room and immediately felt that there were a lot of different things in that room. The temperature was different, the pressure was off, and the humidity of the air was different than in his own room. His curiosity pushed him further, and he went through the door with his entire body.

The change in the air immediately hit him, as well as the difference in the brightness of the room; his eyes immediately tried to adjust to the new darkness around him. Looking back to the door he just came through he could see the light of his room, but he could also see that none of it actually entered the room, leaving the room in darkness despite the incoming light. His eyes adjusted to the new light levels after a minute or so and John could see more details of the room. The room was roughly as big as his own room, but there was nothing in here except for a giant terminal on the other side of the room. There was also a hatch on the floor and one in the roof, while to one side of the room was another door, not as black as the one the key card had created but still quite dark. The room didn't have any natural light, but there were some weak blue lights coming from all four corners of the room. The air was completely silent in here, nothing except his own heartbeat and breathing.

The terminal was pretty big once John stood in front of it. There were multiple giant monitors fixed to the wall and beneath it was a desk with your typical keyboard and mouse. Nothing of these things gave off any glow of activity and John could actually see that there was a thick layer of dust on the desk and the monitors, showing that apparently, no one had been here for a long time.

While he was still looking at the monitors and the giant computer next to them nestled to the wall, he got a pop-up that did surprise him:

Magic attuned with Abyssal Nexus. Nexus magic limitation not enabled. Mana Link established.

New Status: Mana Link, your mana will regenerate double the usual amount as long as this effect is active. Only works if you open the connection to the Abyssal Nexus from the real world

Magic limitation? Also, this Mana Link status sounded really good if he could properly utilize it. And did the pop-up just tell him that he could use the card while he was in a Barrier as well? That sounded like some Inception kind of weird...

Trying to push some buttons on the keyboard of the terminal and some buttons that looked vaguely like power buttons, John found out that the computer either didn't have any power or was busted, or maybe both. Since there was nothing else to look for in this room, John exited it through the closed door, leading deeper into whatever complex this was.

Outside of the room was a small spiraling staircase going both up and down. The walls were again illuminated by the same weak blue lights (some kind of emergency lighting?), but there was also some light coming from the top of the stairs. Was there someone up there or was it natural light? John still wasn't quite sure what this place was, just that his magic somehow responded to it and that he felt at peace here. Moreso than he should have, now that he thought about it. Was that a hidden effect of this Mana Link? Whatever it was, it was something that John gladly took right now, even if it was a potential trap, trying to lure him in.

Going up the stairs, John found himself standing on the ground floor of a big and bright mansion. The floor was covered in a black, fuzzy carpet (John couldn't quite see what the floor in the basement was like), while the walls and the high roof were colored bright white with golden details. He was now standing in some kind of entrance hall, with no apparent door to the outside, only a long and wide corridor lined with white doors going away from where John was standing. Close to him was a giant window in a golden window frame and what John saw outside took the breath out of his lungs:

Outside of the window was a couple feet of grass before it just suddenly stopped. Beyond that was nothing but cloudy and brightly lit sky. It was very similar to the view he got from the monastery, but there was one major difference: Where at the monastery he could see some of the trees and smaller mountains sticking out of the clouds, there was nothing but a white sea of fluffy white cotton all around, hinting at the height this mansion was at.

Taking a step back from the window, John decided to keep exploring this building and seeing if there was anything of note in here. Walking into the hallway to the side of the entrance revealed a giant living room to the right and a lot of doors on the left. The living room was empty; there was no furniture around. However, unlike the basement, there was not as much dust lying around here, but it was still pretty dusty. The central room was lowered into the ground and was surrounded by a railing and some stairs to enter it. This mansion was spacious as hell! But why was there nothing around? Why build such a pompous building and not fill it with equally pompous furnishing? John kept asking himself the same questions as he entered the rooms one by one... there was nothing around, all the rooms were dusty and empty. The windows showed pretty much the same scenery like the first one, just lit slightly different due to the angle of the sun. Was there even a sun? Was it a skybox? John would have to find that out at a later date...

The south side of the living room was a fully windowed wall that gave view to another part of whatever this was. Outside of that window was an extremely overgrown garden with a murky but obviously artificial lake in the middle. Just like with the other windows, the view just suddenly stopped at some point in the distance, giving John the assumption that this was some kind of plateau.

Now that John knew that the building was empty, he had two other options on what he could do: He could either go down into the basement and look into the lower floor(s), or he could explore the garden and the vicinity of the mansion. Something in his gut told him that he should look outside and that he would find something interesting out there.

And if he didn't find anything interesting, he at least had some beautiful scenery!