Exiting the Forest of Chains was like waking from a long nightmare. For several days, we had walked through endless corridors of ancient trees and thick fog that swallowed sound and light. I was losing my sense of time, of direction, and of myself. Every shadow seemed like a lurking monster, but 404's silent presence beside me was like a charm that kept the real dangers at bay.

  Then suddenly, the trees began to recede. The fog thinned, and I felt a warm breeze touch my face for the first time. We took our last step, as if crossing an invisible barrier. Behind us, the fog hung at the edge of the forest like a silent white wall. And before us, a vast grassy plain stretched out under a clear blue sky.

  We were out.

  I stood for a moment, breathing in the fresh air and feeling the faint warmth of the sun on my skin. After what felt like months spent in a dark cavern, followed by days in a suffocating forest, this open landscape, this infinite sky, was a feeling of absolute freedom that nearly brought me to my knees.

  In the far distance, we saw the silhouette of a city. It wasn't carved into a mountain or built on water. It was a massive stone fortress standing alone in the middle of the plain, "The Fortress of the Plain," as I later learned. It was a commercial and military city, a stopping point for caravans traveling between Murim.

  We reached it after half a day's walk. Its walls were high, and its streets were wide and crowded with merchants, soldiers, and adventurers. It was a practical city, less concerned with beauty than with function and strength.

  The first place I went to was the "City Archives," a huge stone building that stored the records and maps of the caravans that had passed through the city over the ages. I spent the next few weeks there, poring over scrolls and books. 404 would wait silently in a corner, while I was not only learning about the world but learning how to draw its symbols, how to write its words.

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  One day, as I was sitting with him in our cheap room at the traveler's inn, I decided it was time to begin our second mission.

  I picked up an old book and began to read him a tragic story about a knight who sacrificed his life to save his love, only to die alone in the end. I read the words with passion, trying to convey all the sadness and pain in the story. When I finished, I looked at him with anticipation.

  "What do you think?" I asked. "Wasn't that a sad story?"

  4.04 looked at me with his empty eyes. "Analysis: The story lacks efficiency. The knight could have avoided death by choosing decision 'B' instead of 'A'. His sacrifice was tactically illogical."

  I felt frustration creep over me. "Damn it, that's not the point!"

  The next day, I tried something else. At sunset, I took him to the highest point on the city wall. From there, we watched the sun dip below the distant horizon of the vast plain, painting the sky and the grass in magnificent shades of orange and gold.

  "Look, 404," I said quietly. "Look at all this. This is the end of another day in this world. Don't you feel something? Anything at all?"

  He turned his head toward me. "I am recording data. The air temperature has decreased by 3.4 degrees Celsius. The wind speed is 7 kilometers per hour. There is no other relevant data."

  I sighed deeply. It was harder than I had imagined.

  That night, after we had returned to our room, I sat on the wooden floor. I took out the blank notebook I had carried with me since we left the cavern, and the piece of charcoal. My hand was no longer trembling.

  I opened the notebook to the first page. Under the faint light of the oil lamp, I wrote slowly, in a script that was still hesitant but clear:

  "Chapter One: The Civilization of Peace."

  The following morning, we joined a merchant caravan heading south. It wasn't our final destination, just a stop on our long journey. After weeks of travel across vast plains, we finally reached our next destination: the city of Hoi An, the true gateway separating the continent of Murim from all other continents and the technological continent I'd only read about in books. Our journey was still far from over.