First of all, Becky stood just on the edge of a little hill that Thomas didn't know when they climbed it or how. And he didn't want to even imagine the answer.
This hill was just less than a kilometre away from the big town Oliver called a settlement.
The first thing Thomas noticed was how neatly organised and planned this place was. It wasn't filled with random buildings, but all he could see was blocks, blocks of buildings as if they got clustered together.
Each block had six up to twelve buildings, built side by side. Each building was at least three storey high, with many reaching five and six even.
He saw wide streets running in between these buildings until the end of his sight. And the size of this place was at least tens of kilometres square.
He was far away to see many details, but he could see a tall wall surrounding the entire town, with few huge gates that opened up on wide streets.
And from his place, he could see lots of people walking, and a few weird looking carts moving in a pace that wasn't supposed for any cart drawn by animals to have.
"What do you think? Huh? Impressive, right? Hahaha!" Oliver seemed to enjoy the look over Thomas' face, before adding, "I built this from scratch, with the help from the SA of course… It seems this is your first time coming here, right?"
"Indeed," Thomas nodded, and before he'd say anything else, he felt Becky starting to move again.
And this time, it moved at a much slower pace, enough to take them down the hill and towards the nearby settlement.
Thomas noticed how Becky passed the hill. It seemed it had an axis that could extend when they moved down the hill. Thomas didn't feel like he was descending a hill of a few tens of metres in height. It looked like Becky was running on flat ground or something.
"Interesting…" Thomas muttered, and luckily Oliver next to him didn't hear what he said or else he'd boast once more.
They arrived at the frontal edge of that settlement, where many lines of big trees were. Thomas couldn't help but take note of the weird colours of the leaves of these trees, ranging between all grades of red and blue, without a single green leaf.
Oliver controlled Becky to finally move over a well paved road that ended up at one of the huge gates. If Becky was huge, then this gate was big enough to allow three Beckys to pass head on top of each other and side by side!
And being with the leader of this place made Thomas pass through the gate and the few guards here without getting asked anything or stopped.
The guards were the same type of clothes everyone in this world wore, like how Thomas wore. But they got blue coats covering their bodies, with hoods that covered their heads, hiding most of their features.
"Nothing tastes like home, right?" Once Becky walked on one of the wide streets in the settlement, Oliver took a deep breath, as if he was trying to get a big share of this place's air or something.
But Thomas on his side wasn't anyway attentive to what this dude was doing or saying.
Thomas was busy watching the weird world he got himself into!
In the wide street they entered, and as Becky was now travelling at a much slower speed, Thomas could clearly see everything around in great detail.
The buildings looked just like any buildings seen in the countryside on Earth. But that wasn't what attracted his attention, the people were.
The people walking here wore different clothes, not different from each other, but different from the fashion he used to see back on Earth.
He saw men wearing tight leather jackets or long hooded coats, with underneath vests that didn't look much different than his, filled with many small and different in size and shape pockets. Some wore scarfs, others wore old looking hats, and most walked while holding a wooden cane in their hands!
Seeing this made him just miss the pistols and guns, and this would be just a perfect cosplay of the nineteenth century era back on Earth.
As for ladies, just watching the gowns that got lots of Victorian era touch made this image quite perfect.
"I came back in time… Damn! Don't tell me this dream is happening back in the nineteenth century!" he was shocked and puzzled, not knowing if he was living in a dream anymore or a reality.
The face he saw didn't belong to him. He never looked like this when he was younger, never recalled seeing such a face before anywhere and anytime ever in his life.
Everything looked too real to be a dream, too perfect to be real. The more Becky carried him in the streets of this settlement, the more he became surer he travelled back in time.
"But… There was nothing like superpowers and superheroes in the entire history of Earth! What's going on here?!"
He was keeping his silence, only having such thoughts wildly wreaking havoc inside his mind. He saw different gothic and steampunk dresses and gowns, attires of men who looked like they were about to fire their weapons at any given time. Except none got pistols or guns to begin with!
Aside from this, Becky wasn't the only behemoth in the streets he walked through. He saw different sized behemoths, all walking and releasing the same thick black smoke from their chimneys.
Many looked like carts of old times, wooden caravans that were instead made out of pure metal. Every single vehicle he saw looked quite ugly, and had lots of seats on its top, carrying many people onboard.
The streets were paved with little stone, cut in small sized, diamond shaped pieces that perfectly fit each other. This made the streets quite smooth, but not as smooth as asphalt he used to travel on, but much better than being made out of dirt and stones.
"What date is it?" Out of the blue, Thomas suddenly turned to Oliver and asked in a slightly shaky tone.
His mind was equipped with all of his best traits, the sharp ability to notice little details, the inhuman ability to analyse things and link evidence together, coupled with his ability to sense the truth and lies out of anyone and anything.
And right now, as he saw all this, he couldn't help but see the previous explanation he thought about to be a bit funny.
A dream? A dream that was filled with such a high level of details? Even to the extent of people's clothes, buildings, and streets? No way! His mind rejected such a theory, and instead started to accept a much crazier one.
"It's day one hundred and twelve, after the ten thousand mark by two hundred and fifty-two clicks," Oliver looked in a weird way towards Thomas. And as the latter didn't say anything, he slowly added, "we already crossed the ten-thousand-year mark after the ascension of the Big Monarch by two hundred and fifty-two years."
"B… Big Monarch… T… Ten thousand years?!!!" Thomas muttered these words while his mind was lost again in a fierce storm of emotions and crazy thoughts.
"Yes, the Great Monarch, the one who unified the central sectors, put an end to the everlasting chaos of the dark villains… The Great Monarch who discovered a use for the F grade superheroes, turning them from being called the Fuckers to be considered the cornerstone of our current civilisation."
"..." Thomas was now sure of his crazy conclusion. This place wasn't a dream world, but a real one. And as all evidence pointed towards this, he couldn't help but reach another crazy conclusion.
But first he slapped himself on the face, and that gave him a weird look from Oliver, one that he didn't care about.
"I'm not dreaming!" Thomas thought to himself, while inwardly sighing. And then he started to think about the next crazy theory he had.
He didn't travel back in time but travelled to a whole new world! A world where superpowers and superheroes existed!
"Tsk! I don't know how your parents got to raise you, but you seem to not know a lot about our world."
"My parents are dead… Since I was young…" Thomas said it, and he didn't even seem sad at all. He just said it, in the same monotonous way he used to speak in.
That wasn't because he recessed and lost his emotions, but because his emotions were too damn wild to show a single effect on his face and voice.
"Oh… Sorry about that," Oliver felt bad, didn't know what to say to console him, "we live in a world filled with different sectors, each is considered like a small world in its own regard. In between sectors, there are extremely dangerous and naturally formed places, ones that are filled with thick black fog, lots of riches, opportunities, and deaths… The Isolation Zones…"
Oliver didn't know how to make up for his unintended insult towards Thomas, so he started to speak uncontrollably about this world.
And the more he talked, the more scared Thomas inwardly became.
"... These zones are filled with lots of Qi mines, a thing that is enough to cause eternal wars between superheroes and villains. Anyway, wherever you are going next, you'll find more informative people who will tell you about everything. But to your knowledge, in case you didn't know this, you are the first person discovered with superpowers in our settlement since the appearance of this sector."
"And that is… Since when exactly?" Thomas was now asking just the first questions that appeared in his mind, while trying to better control the wrecking storms in there.
"Twenty years," Oliver seemed to get lost in thoughts, "this sector appeared twenty years ago. The first three years were quite hectic as brutal fights erupted between the superheroes on our side and the villains. Since then, the sector got distributed into different regions, with cities and towns as the big shots and names, and lots of weak and insignificant settlements like ours under the jurisdiction of any of these big shots. But that's no more, we already got our first superhero discovered, and that makes us one of the big shots, hahahahaha!"
Oliver seemed to get such an ability to turn any discussion around, ending it up with his laugh. Thomas kept his silence, while trying to process what he just learnt.
"Are you telling me this sector is newly discovered?"
"Yes, it just appeared twenty years ago," Oliver paused, "sectors appear out of nowhere, just happening all of sudden, naturally born if you asked me. In one day, any fog inside the Isolation Zones can recede, showing a grand place of land. And we call these huge places sectors, just like ours."
And before Thomas would ask anything else, Oliver pointed towards a big plaza at the distance, "we arrived! I believe you got a place to go. I'm really honoured to have met you, champ. Good luck, and may Qi be on your side."
And with Oliver's words, Becky finally stopped at last! Thomas didn't know why, but this last phrase looked weirdly familiar.
"Thanks for the ride," Thomas wanted to add his thanks about the information he lacked but didn't. He got his tree pot, and descended the stairs carefully this time, until safely landing on the ground.
"Make sure to come here later, our settlement will warmly welcome you," Oliver shouted from the top of Becky, before that behemoth started to roll over the road again.
And this time, Thomas confirmed his earlier guess. "Who was the madman to create oval shaped tires like these?" he shook his head, before turning to inspect the place he landed at.
He was at a corner of a very wide plaza, one that was built with lots of rectangular shaped stones, a little bigger than the diamond shaped ones he saw in the streets before.
This plaza looked so huge, enough to accommodate thousands of people easily without getting overcrowded. In the middle of it, he saw a fountain, one with a statue of a man, raising one hand high, holding a sword with the other, while water came out from his extended hand, as if he was releasing this from his body or something.
He got a weird eye mask on his face, one that suited a masquerade not a superhero. Thomas didn't stick his eyes for long over this statue and started to inspect the buildings around.
The biggest and most eye-catching one was the one lying just next to him. It was a building with a wide entrance, a huge sign, with neatly arranged words on it.
For a reason, Thomas could read these words, while feeling they weren't English. They were written in the same weird language he got to learn before, the one he found on the scroll he got in his vest pockets.
"Dante Train Station… At least something familiar…" Thomas went through the entrance, to find himself standing in front of a platform that extended for hundreds of metres right and left.
The station looked like a train station in any countryside town, with only two platforms and two rails, enough to accommodate two trains at any time.
He moved his eyes around, finding a few people sitting on stone seats, waiting for the trains to arrive. They were wearing the same Victorian clothes, weirdly giving this place a serene touch.
As he was watching the place, he couldn't help but notice a small building, the only one here, just on the other side of his spot.
"It's a nice bridge," he found a pedestrian bridge, built entirely out of metal and stone. It looked like the bridges he once walked over at Venice, the ones covering the many rivers there.
When he reached the other side, he found two citizens of this settlement finishing their business with someone sitting inside the building. And without asking, Thomas knew tickets were bought from this place.
"Excuse me," Thomas opened the scroll he got from before, and read the name of the place he was going to, before adding, "I want a ticket to Retto town please."
"Retto town? That will cost you ten Dems," the worker didn't even lift his eyes off the big record with yellow pages there. Thomas could see a small black ink bottle with a long wooden pen getting soaked into it, before this dude would return to the record and write words in small and neat handwriting.
"Dems?!" Thomas got startled when he heard that.
"If you got Niks then I don't have any change for that," the worker totally missed the weirdness in Thomas' tone.
Thomas found out in a hard way that he didn't have anything of this world's currency. He retreated in silence, and the worker didn't even bother with what he did.
Thomas went and sat on an empty seat on this platform, trying to think about the situation he found himself facing.
He put his tree pot just next to him and started to think about this dilemma. He now was sure he wasn't dreaming, and this was a new world, different from Earth.
"They even got their own currencies…" he muttered to himself, without knowing what he should do now.
He was confused, agitated, and lost. He knew nothing about this new world, only the bits and pieces he got from Oliver on the road to here. And that wasn't even enough.
"I'm… I'm broke…" he never found himself struggling financially before. After all, he lived a successful life, and he was living single his whole life. He didn't have a girl to waste his money on, or kids to suck his wealth away. So, he never even bothered himself about money before now.
He didn't know what Dems and Niks even meant. And out of desperation, he searched through his pockets, hoping to find anything there.
Yet he found nothing! His vest pockets were all empty, as if the owner of this body didn't have a life before.
"What shall I do?" Thomas knew he had to pay for the ticket to go towards the destination he wanted. A wild thought flashed in his mind, about boarding the train without even paying for the ride.
But as there were tickets here, that meant there were conductors on the trains. And if he got caught, he might end up in big trouble.
He tried to think about what was the fine of boarding a train or a subway without a ticket, yet he couldn't remember anything. He never did such a thing, never cared to ask even about such a fine.
As he was totally lost about what to do, he tried to stand and walk, a habit he got before when he ever faced a situation he couldn't solve.
Just as he stood up, turned his back to the trails, he found a big pale green wooden board that he missed before.
It was just on the side of this platform, looking as if it was part of the wall of something. When he looked closer, he found yellow posters hanging there, with many faces drawn on them, and lots of small words.
It seemed he was lost in his own mess and didn't notice this weird wall. And when he did, he couldn't help but stand and approach it, while holding his tree pot with one arm.
For a reason, he didn't feel any heaviness at all when he held this pot. But Thomas wasn't in the mood to think about this for now.
As he approached this wall, he saw these posters quite clearly. Each one showed a face of a man or a woman, ugly looking faces to be honest.
He saw wounds, scars, people with pieces of their flesh appearing as the skin and even part of their muscles were missing.
But to his surprise, none of them showed any pained expression. They looked ferocious and vicious, evil from the first look, the kind of people he used to chase and hunt down for the most hideous of crimes on Earth.
Thomas looked closer and saw lots of weird names, lots of descriptions about brutal crimes committed against superheroes, and the prices for these folks' heads.
He heard about Niks and Dems, but now the currency used was Laks. he didn't get what the first two even meant, and now he had one extra that he didn't know.
"Interesting, right?" out of the blue, and as he was absorbed in watching the tens of posters, reading their content, a sudden voice came from his side, startling him.
"Excuse me?" Thomas turned and saw an adult standing next to him. This dude was wearing an eye-catching set of clothes, looking like a formal suit but one that was made out of leather.
The suit was black in colour, with lines and spots of red colour that extended over his shoulders, parts of his back, and his waist. His vest was one that looked like a more expensive version of what Thomas wore, looking like something Thomas would crave for to wear.
He looked decent and elegant, especially with the black coat he was holding by one arm. He looked like someone who mattered in this world, even with that weird boot with a pointed tip and a metallic small wheel that got fixed on each side.
As he looked decent, he looked a bit dangerous with that weird metallic piece that covered the right side of his face, starting from his temple, passing down below his right eye.
This piece covered his right eye entirely with something that looked like an oculus, with a frame that was made of metal and pieces of black and red leather.
Thomas didn't know why, but when he saw such a weird metallic piece, he recalled the ugly looking posters he just saw. He imagined this dude with a wound that didn't look any better than the one he saw over these posters.
"I noticed you standing here, looking at these ugly bastards, while holding that in your hand," the man motioned his eyes towards the scroll Thomas kept in his hands all this time without even realising it.
And to make Thomas not miss what he meant, as if it was this hard to guess, he even pointed at the scroll with his wooden cane.
Thomas got the scroll out to ask the worker back there about the price of the ticket, and he forgot to store it away. And it seemed this dude noticed this piece of paper in his hand and recognised it.
"Who are you?" Thomas grew instantly vigilant and suspicious about this stranger. He didn't know why, but he got a dangerous vibe out of him.
"I'm someone like the person you are going to meet," the dude didn't say anything about his name. And then he placed a black hat over his head, wore his coat, leant using his black long cane on the ground, and added, "you are going to meet your mentor, right? I was on my way to pick up someone as well. How about this, I can give you a ride."