For it was Elina's last moment in her life, she needed to delay her death a little by using her remaining energy to say her last words to Sam, willing to reveal and tell her secrets that she had carried on hiding till now even from her own son. Considering how important this was, Sam was carefully listening to Elina despite the clash of emotions he was undergoing that was caused by the fact that his mother was dying in front of his very eyes.
"I'm fr..from... that... world you read... about in that book," Elina revealed, faintly smiling before coughing up blood once more.
"Huh?" Sam's eyes widened upon hearing that. These unbelievable words were like a slap on the face.
'Is this for real?' Sam thought, shocked, struggling to believe. 'This is impossible! The book's contents weren't bullshit after all! And on top of that, my mom's from that world the one the book has mentioned?!'
Sam felt like he would have a heart attack from experiencing shocking news one after another. Was this the reason why she was flustered when Sam had told her about the book [Wonders of Parallel Realms]? Sam wondered. Nevertheless, Sam didn't open his mouth to question as he just kept on listening concentrically with a tearful and serious expression on his face.
"I-I came... fr-from that dimensional... ga-gate because... conspirators... were pursuing me to... kill... me," Elina explained, struggling to speak out her words. "Right a-after I... went through... the... gate, the r-rune stone... stopped... working, a-and the gate... has... been... closed. Luckily, your... father... found me... laid th..there unconscious... and t-treated... my wounds."
"Why did they want to kill you?" Sam asked.
"Because... I-I'm a tamer... and y-you... have... inherited th-this power... from me," Elina answered.
"Tamer?" Sam wondered with a dumbfounded expression.
"Y-yes," Elina replied with a serious expression. "They... thought I-I was... the... one... the p-prophecy... has... mentioned."
'Prophecy? The book didn't mention this.'
"I'm so... sorry, but I n-need... you to... complete my... mission and save... the w-world... from... the destruction. I t-trust you. I trust... that you... can... do it," Elina said, sorrowful.
"What prophecy and what destruction? I don't care about any of that. I just... I just can't believe and afford to lose you; my mom," Sam cried, tears falling like a waterfall. Sam knew she was unable to delay her death anymore. And by thinking that there were people after her trying to kill her, Sam felt anger rise a bit inside him.
Elina hated the fact that by her death she would never be able to see her precious and beloved son anymore, and that he would have to live on his own from now on and struggle in overcoming his difficulties alone.
"I don't... have... much time," Elina said as buckets of tears fell from her eyes. "Go... there and investigate... about... the tamers. I-I hope... you are th-the one... the pr-prophecy... has... mentioned... no, I'm... sure of... it. I'm sorry... for dropping... all this... unbearable b-burden... onto you. You... must g-gather... friends and live... happily with... them though as this... is... my... last... w..wish."
Helpless and desperate, Sam shouted, "no, mom! I can't afford to lose you. There must be a way to save you. Alone, how am I supposed to live my life and survive on my own; without you?!"
"T-there's... no... way, son," Elina said, sorrowful for leaving Sam too early. Her sadness appeared clear on her face. But soon, an idea clicked inside her mind, thinking hopefully she should try out something as her idea got few chances that might work to save her soul intact. Well, she had nothing to lose right in the meanwhile. After all, she was going to die anyway if she appeared to be wrong.
Sam couldn't reply because he knew his mother's state was completely hopeless. So, instead of saying something, he just kept on crying and screaming, slowly filling his heart with negative emotions.
Having her time nearly run out, as she lifted her hand to touch her son's face and feel it for the last time, Elina's eyes started to gradually close right before she uttered her last words saying: "I... love... you, son. You must... live. I'm sure I will... be... always... alive inside... you..."
Strangely, her body started to gradually glow and fade, while she was saying those words. Of course, Sam didn't care for that abnormal phenomenon as he was deeply sunk in his grief by the thought that he too would never be able to see his mother anymore, starting to think to commit suicide.
"Mom, no, no, no. DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" Sam cried out aloud as the light of her glowing body ascended in front of Sam's eyes.
But instead of going away, the light entered his body, and her body eventually disappeared into him, replacing all the negative emotions with warm feelings, that filled his heart with pure peace, and eliminating his thought of killing himself to follow after her. Of course, he still felt sad about his loss, but with far lighter intensity than before.
Apparently, Elina's idea got to have failed as she was nowhere to be alive, neither there was a corpse nor anything else.
"What the...?!"
Other than clearing out almost all the dark thoughts, some images popped up inside Sam's head from the thin air. Sam couldn't help becoming confused greatly as lots of questions were coming up in his head.
What were these images, and how had they entered his mind? Sam could see them the moment Elina's light had utterly vanished and got into him. Sam assumed that they probably were some of Elina's recent memories that accompanied her light. Sam's head was in a mess as the whole thing denied logic, however, the possibilities weren't zero at all.
These images showed figures of four individuals Sam didn't recognize. They were standing in front of the sphere-like dimensional gate with a fighting stance. One of them was clothed with a white hooded overcoat, dangling down across their face were a few strands of blonde hair; a sinister grin stretched across their face. Whereas the other three were wearing hooded black capes. Their facial features were shaded as they were hooded, making it hard for Sam to spot.
Moving their hand, the one in white made a gesture for the others in black, and they responded by injecting themselves with some kind of liquid on their thigh. Suddenly, a red bolt that came from nowhere struck them right before they knelt on the floor, rolling as if they were in agony as their bodies started to get bigger and larger, tearing their clothing apart. Their hands started to change into claws while their skin was getting blackened, transforming completely into those strange horrifying creatures from before. Their colorful hair changed to white, and their pupils became pitch-black with the white area around them turning fully blood-red.
As soon as the transformation was done, the one in white turned around and started to walk away into the gate.
'Something's telling me that the one with the white overcoat is one of those bastards my mom's mentioned,' Sam thought. 'That's only if my hypothesis turned to be true.'
With him getting calmed down after some time, Sam was able to figure out things to some extent. He remembered everything Elina had told him. But with recalling that sinister smile the one in white had given Elina, Sam's insides start to boil as his anger reached its peak.
"I promise you, mom. I'm going to make every one of those bastard conspirators, that sought your death, get what they deserve," Sam promised, his eyes flashing with fury.
*****
In the house of Sam's family, more accurately in the basement, blood was splattered around everywhere, and three corpses of scary unknown creatures were lying put on the floor. Sam, there, was sitting down, leaning against the wall, staring blankly at the space with swollen eyes. He was so shocked and confused by all the events that kept happening one after another non-stop, knowing no more what to do or how to behave.
'I could never see my mom again,' Sam thought, saddened by this fact. 'How am I supposed to live on and fulfill the mission she has entrusted me with?' Sam sighed.
But by recalling the images of Elina's memories one more time that he had received into him accompanying Elina's light, a wave of boiling anger filled Sam's head like a volcano and clenched his hands tightly causing blood to slightly leak without him feeling any pain.
"That damn dogshit with the white overcoat," Sam cursed, "just wait. I'm going to find you and make you pay for what you've done by suffering multiple times."
Now Sam started to sort his thoughts and priorities to make it easier for him to know what he should do and pick out the most appropriate step. The results of this were that Sam got two main goals; to find out who the conspirators were as well as why they wanted his mother Elina dead, and to fulfill her mission which was somewhat heroic as it was the prevention of destruction of her so-called world.
Besides the mission and the conspirators, Elina had mentioned some things Sam didn't know about before, including tamers, prophecy, destruction, and more things. So, he had to know in detail about this prophecy and the destruction of Monestopia, and investigate the tamers as well as the true identity of those conspirators. The whole thing was vague for Sam, still, he needed to learn about them in the first place to be able to get detailed information and connect the lines together to eventually obtain one big and clear image of the whole matter.
To achieve all the goals, he absolutely had to travel to Monestopia through the dimensional gate, entirely abandoning earth perhaps. But Sam had to admit it, this fact made him feel sorrow. After all, everything was finally starting to get better, and hope... well, hope started to immerse him with the thought of having quite a better life filled with close friends around him.
Yet, everything got crushed down and became worse than how it used to be. Why did he have to have such a stroke of terrible luck? Perhaps it was a rather unreachable dream that he could never touch to get quite a good life enough for him to not feel lonely anymore, Sam thought.
To snap out of his deep thoughts, Sam shook his head to regain his focus and decide what he was supposed to do now in order to prepare for his new hard journey first off. So, he walked up out of the basement towards his bedroom, thinking before anything else he should change his blood-stained school uniform and wash it before taking a bath to clean himself from blood to make nothing look suspicious.
To think of it, Sam also thought he would have to make the basement clean from anything suspicious in case one noticed something was strange and their curiosity led them to come in and take a look into it. But what about the corpses, how was he going to get rid of them? Sam was starting to feel a headache from this thought. He decided to think about a solution for that matter while cleaning the basement, but if he didn't find one, he would have no choice but to throw the corpses through the dimensional gate.
"'Drag' would be the right word for that," Sam sighed after making a quick glance at the heavy-seeming corpses, feeling it would be quite exhausting.
With this, Sam decided to go back down to the basement to clean it before changing clothes and taking a bath. But mysteriously, when he got into the basement, his eyes couldn't spot any corpses anywhere. They had vanished altogether although the gate hadn't been opened as the stone was in the same place and position as Sam had left it. This sent panic into Sam.
"Where would some peaceful dead corpses go suddenly?!"
Where could they possibly go as they were just corpses?
It was right then when Sam felt like he stepped on something. By lifting his foot, he could see something quite strange; a black object that seemed as though evaporating could be seen. Sam picked it up and started to inspect it. As a result, he noticed it was a certain part of one of the creatures.
"Holy crap!" Sam shouted, reflexively tossing what was in his hand. "This is a toe; a dead monster's disgusting toe!"
Figuring that led Sam to a conclusion; these whatever creatures would evaporate when they died, or to be more accurate, after a while of their death... perhaps, Sam thought. To some extent, that made Sam wonder. He had read enormous numbers of fantasy novels so far, yet he hadn't read about such creatures as almost all the creatures' bodies would rot when died rather than evaporate, forgetting how Elina had died as her situation was stranger and more unique than those of the creatures as she was turned into light instead of evaporating or rotting.
Sam then ignored the matter as soon as he felt reassured, that it wasn't any other bizarre creature that came and took the corpses, and even felt better with the corpses' disappearance as he was troubled about how to get rid of them. Next, Sam proceeded with the cleaning.
After an hour, Sam had finished cleaning and had taken a bath already. Now he was thinking about what things he should take. Then although Sam wasn't hungry, he forced himself to eat food to delay his feeling of hunger as long as possible. It was so that the supplies Sam would take wouldn't reach an end before finding another source of food and drink.
After going here and there around the house and taking this and that, Sam gathered some quite necessary supplies filling up a rather big backpack to the brim with some foods and drinks, some spare clothes, and even some quite useful items like a rope.
"Who knows what kind of troubles and difficulties I'd maybe face."
The backpack was about to burst with stuff as they were relatively too much, but that didn't back Sam even a bit as he jumped up into the air and landed on the bag in a wrestling stance making the stuff inside it get deeper in and the backpack gets quite a bit easier to zip close.
After finishing all the preparations, Sam immediately headed to the basement and grabbed the rune stone before walking over to its slot. By placing the rune stone into the slot on the wall, the part of the space near it started to flicker, and distortion took place, eventually forming the sphere-like dimensional gate.
Standing in front of the gate, Sam's whole life from his childhood till now, especially today's events, flashed through his head. Having lost his mother meant Sam losing the meaning of his whole life. However, he had quite a few hope, no, wish that his life in Monestopia would be much better. Still, the fact that he was going to leave Earth probably forever without coming back was making him feel an incredible weight on his heart hurt.
"I don't want to leave Earth. I don't want to abandon where my memories were made," Sam said, placing his hand on his chest and tensing it. "I don't want to go away from my home."
Although Sam was hurt uncountable times on Earth, he didn't want to leave the place where he lived with his mother Elina and was filled with their memories together that some of them were with his long passed father. Of course, Sam was determined to achieve his main goals for his mother's sake, still, it was incredibly hard to leave everything behind and go away to another world.
"Farewell."
Not to delay his departure anymore and make it harder for him, Sam's teary eyes were being closed, and his falling tears descended across the air before reaching the floor as he walked into the dimensional gate which started to flicker. A tingling was felt through his body as a gentle breeze brushed against him. A sharp light entered through his closed eyes as well.
The whole process lasted for a few moments. As soon as it ended, suddenly, the sharp light was replaced with darkness, and the air was packed with the smell of dankness.
Sam opened his eyes to find himself in a big dark spooky dead-ended cavern, barely able to see the details of the place around him. That was due to only a pretty weak beam of light coming in through a side passage, only showing the way out. Seeing clearly where this slight light was coming from, Sam decided it was better not to use the flashlight in order to save the batteries for times when he absolutely would have to need them.
"Oh, I really did it. I'm nervous... and slightly thrilled," Sam said.
The fact that Sam had just put his feet on another world other than Earth made him feel incredibly nervous and uneasy as he was worried about what kind of world Monestopia would be. If it was a medieval-like world as the book [Wonders of Parallel Realms] mentioned as in a huge number of fantasy novels, then the hardships would be great and the chances of Sam dying would be so high. But if it was a modern world, like Earth, and what was in the book was just bullshit, then the hardships would be less than in the medieval world, or that was what Sam thought.
As a fact of the matter, Sam was wrong to think of that like this. He would make a big mistake if he was considering Monestopia like those fictional worlds of fantasy novels and linked them with each other. In the end, the fictional worlds were literally fictional while he still was in a reality where the slightest mistake might take his life in a moment.
Looking back to see the dimensional gate, Sam unexpectedly spotted a glowing stone on the wall... yes, it was another rune stone that resembled the one on the other side of the gate in Sam's house considerably, but with no cracks. Curiously, Sam took it off of the wall to inspect it and observe what would happen.
As expected, the spherical dimensional gate was closed.
"If my guess is right, then it means the dimensional gate is a gate which opens by two keys from both sides," Sam thought loudly. "Which means if I wanted to prevent anyone from going to the world beyond this gate completely, I will have to break one of the keys."
Sam's guess was completely right. The dimensional gate worked with a pairing link. When one put a rune stone as it was the key, a linking signal would be produced and sent through the dimensions to reach the other side. So, if the key was put in its slot, it would produce and send its own signal to meet with the other key's signal, and a pairing link would be successfully done, forming a dimensional gate whereas if not, the pairing link would fail, and nothing would occur.
Thus to prevent the signals from being linked, after he got himself standing near the exit passage, Sam gripped the stone in his hand pulling his arm back to swing it fast and let go, throwing the stone as strong as he could so it would break. But unlike what Sam thought, the glowing stone, rather than breaking, landed on the ground to bounce back right at Sam, hitting his nether area; his balls.
Causing such a great surge of pain, Sam felt like his eyes would pop out of their sockets due to the unmeasurable pain as he said, "oh, my precious balls..."
How come an inelastic hard stone was able to bounce? This question was poking in Sam's mind as he was going through a severe pain that was preventing him from standing, but that didn't make Sam back away.
Noticing there was a large rock two times higher than Sam near the passage, Sam approached the rock and prepared himself to hide behind it as there was more than enough space after throwing the stone again so that he could avoid it hitting him. Without any hesitance, Sam swung his hand quickly and threw the stone with more strength as his limits allowed him to extract, then leaped behind the rock and made his back face it.
Peeking to watch the rock from the corner of his eyes, Sam saw the glowing stone reach the floor and bounce up to the high ceiling to bounce back to the part of the wall behind the large rock. Next, it again bounced at Sam and hit him, having targeted the same place as before. The sudden feeling of the huge pain made Sam bend his body and hold his balls as tears started to make their appearance in his eyes, saying: "oh, I'm very sorry my precious children who haven't come to life yet."
Making it worse, Sam's current posture caused him to lose his balance and fall to the ground, hitting his head on a small projected rock on the floor and making a small fountain of blood pour from his head. Cursing his misfortune internally, Sam's tears filled his eyes as he thought, 'dying is better than this hell.'
Feeling desperate about the rune stone breaking, Sam decided to take it with him, putting it inside the backpack for another time. He felt the rune stone must have some kind of magic to protect it. That was why he tossed it into his backpack. Sam then took some tissues out and wiped his head clean from his blood.
Right after, Sam started to think seriously again as he thought, 'before facing the conspirators, I have to adapt to this world called Monestopia, learn how to overcome difficulties, obstacles, and dangers, and get stronger in order to be able to beat them all. Initially, I'll have to investigate them stealthily until I get the adequate strength to face them head-on. But the question is, how am I going to accomplish all that shit?'
Sam was wondering about how he would be able to get stronger and from where he should start, not knowing how to proceed with everything at all. Sam was getting even more confused from all the thinking. Only one thought kept bugging him.
"I need some trustworthy companions," said Sam.
Companions.
Sam was absolutely unable to achieve nearly anything alone on his own. That was when Sam realized he needed to get to know reliable people so they would help him.
First of all, Sam had to go out of this cave and find a populated village or city no matter what so that he would be able to find people and extract information. But what he was worried about was if the people would be friendly or hostile when first-time meeting him... friendly he wished. Also, the language worried him a little, but Sam was somewhat sure it was the same language as his as Elina appeared to speak her mother tongue.
"I'll worry about that when I get to find people," Sam mumbled. "Now, I have to get out of this spooky place."
With this, Sam proceeded to walk out of the cavern through the wide passage. While walking, the light was getting sharper the more he got nearer to the exit, so everything was getting clear for Sam to look around him. As a result, Sam was able to notice some muddy footprints of a group of people who had been here perhaps before his arrival.
"According to these traces, I guess there were five people here. They indicate that two of them left the cave, yet three of them didn't. I guess those never-left three could probably be the ones in black that had turned into monsters while one of the two was the one in white... maybe," Sam deduced. "That means there probably was another one beside that dogshit with the white overcoat. Now the question is who are you, bastards?"
Of course, Sam was quite unsure of what he found out. Well, that was quite useless for him to proceed.
After reaching the outlet of the cave, the moment Sam stepped outside, he witnessed an unusually beautiful and magnificent scenery of a vastly wide forest filling the sight field wholly as he walked along a cliff extended outwards from the outlet. Sam was hypnotized by how charming the sight was. It had quite tall trees
'I've never seen such beautiful scenery like this before, even on Earth,' Sam thought, astonished by the beauty of the scenery.
While enjoying the sight, Sam shook his head to snap out and regain his focus, noticing the cave was unfortunately located at a high altitude. On top of that, there was no path to follow and get down, causing his expression to harden. Sam held his head as he started to scream. His heart was starting to reach its limit to explode from this all like a time bomb.
"Ah, shit," Sam cursed. "How am I going to go down this cliff?! I'm so damn trapped!"
Feeling pretty helpless, Sam felt his head would burst from all the thinking that he was trying hard to process smoothly. Thinking about the rope, Sam realized its length was inadequate, so he had to find another way. That was before something clicked in his mind.
'Wait, wait. As I remember, my mom mentioned that she was a tamer, and luckily, I have inherited that thing from her. Based on that, I may have the ability to tame. But what kind of creatures can I tame?' Sam thought.
After thinking for a while, Sam clicked his fingers as he shouted, "if I could tame a flying monster, that might be my way down."
*******