“Does this building make you feel that something is amiss?” Elsa’s voice held a hint of pure curiosity and inquiry, “Does its strange shape hold some unique… meaning for you?”

  Pandora took a sharp, deep breath. The cold, damp air, rich with the fragrance of the earth, cleared her mind, which had grown dizzy from the overwhelming shock.

  She steeled herself, finally forcing herself to calm down.

  No, the problem wasn’t with this world, or with her experiences. The problem… was with the building in front of her. The one that shouldn’t exist. The one from another world.

  No, it’s nothing.

  Pandora replied softly in her mind, trying to make her tone sound as placid as usual.

  It’s just… I was thinking of some random things. It’s fine now.

  She raised a hand to wipe the cold sweat from her temple, her grip tightening on the greatsword in her hand, which glowed with a sinister red light.

  Her gaze sharpened once more, becoming cool, and filled with inquiry.

  She looked up again, at the building that stood in the center of the clearing, the one that shouldn’t exist.

  This time, she no longer agonized over the sense of discord and shock that came from the depths of her soul at the sight of the “modern” style. She forced herself, like a calm, rigorous analyst, to begin compiling the details before her eyes.

  It was a two-story building.

  The main structure was made of a material she had never seen before, a uniform grayish-white, its surface as smooth as a mirror, with almost no visible seams.

  The ground floor had no windows, only a massive curtain wall that occupied the entire facade. The glass was a deep, profound black, making it impossible to see anything from the outside—it was one-way glass.

  Its overall shape was boxy, orderly, filled with the cold pragmatism of modern utility, without any superfluous decoration.

  If she had to give it a definition… it looked a lot like… a research facility.

  A research facility. In the middle of this barbaric, primitive Forbidden Forest.

  The thought made Pandora feel a sense of absurdity.

  But something even more absurd was yet to come.

  She noticed that on either side of the main entrance, which was made of some kind of alloy, were several half-human-tall potted plants, trimmed neatly.

  It was a plant she had never seen before, its leaves a silvery-gray. The soil in the pots was damp; clearly, someone had been tending to them recently.

  Traces of human activity. Clear traces of human activity!

  This building was not abandoned!

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  It was certain. There had to be someone inside, or rather, a “person.”

  So… could it be a “fellow countryman”? Another transmigrator, one who had come to this world even earlier than her?

  The thought, like a vine, sprouted from the bottom of her heart, but was immediately and decisively severed by Pandora.

  No.

  I absolutely cannot jump to conclusions. Maintaining the highest level of vigilance is the best course of action.

  She suppressed all the distracting thoughts in her mind and issued a command to Elsa in her head: “Elsa, be ready to fight at any moment.”

  “As you command, My Lady.”

  Pandora, too, raised her vigilance to its maximum.

  She didn’t approach rashly. Instead, holding the sword of Elsa, she carefully circled the strange building, inspecting it.

  The result only made her more grave.

  The building had no other entrances.

  The walls on the ground floor were as smooth as a mirror, with no protrusions or cracks to use for leverage. The windows on the second floor were also covered by the same dark, one-way glass, and their position was so high that with her current agility, there was no way she could infiltrate silently.

  The only entrance was that main door, which gleamed with a cold, metallic luster.

  To avoid making too much noise, and to avoid appearing too passive, Pandora ultimately chose to use the main entrance.

  The main door was already open, so there was no need to consider how to open it.

  After reaching the entrance, Pandora hesitated for only a moment before stepping into the mysterious building.

  Inside the main entrance was a lobby that wasn’t overly spacious. The floor was paved with a grayish-white, seamlessly tiled material. Directly in front of the lobby was a curved reception desk, also made of an unknown material.

  Everything was neat and orderly, but… it was empty.

  Behind the reception desk was a deep, dark corridor. To the left and right of the corridor were various rooms, their doors closed.

  Pandora didn’t venture deep inside right away. Instead, she first pushed open the door to the nearest room.

  The scene inside further confirmed her guess about it being a “research facility.”

  It looked like a laboratory. In the center of the room were several massive experiment tables, made of metal and a strange, fleshy material. On the tables were scattered some glass vessels. Though they were covered in a thin layer of dust, their fine craftsmanship was still apparent.

  Along the walls stood several pieces of equipment that she couldn’t comprehend at all, with bizarre shapes. One was like a giant’s arm, connected by complex pipelines; another was a huge, yellowed piece of leather, on which remained some incomprehensible patterns made of lines and symbols.

  The entire space was permeated with a sense of abandonment, a silence frozen in time.

  Over the next few minutes, Pandora opened several more rooms in succession. There was what looked like an office, with strangely shaped desks and chairs. There was what looked like a records room, where the walls were embedded with rows of shriveled, flesh-like tumors that glowed with a faint light.

  All these remnants, this abandoned equipment, all painted a picture of a once-flourishing scene of scientific research.

  But when she carefully examined these instruments, especially those that seemed related to chemistry or physics, she overturned her own guess about a “fellow countryman / fellow transmigrator.”

  Because, these instruments were completely different from the scientific instruments of her previous world.

  Pandora wasn’t a scientist, but she had done the basic high school chemistry and physics experiments. She understood that there was an inherent, logically consistent connection between science and technology.

  Beakers, alcohol lamps, microscopes, centrifuges… they were the way they were because the scientific principles they served were fixed.

  And the equipment before her was the same. They might have had some similarities, but their underlying “technological philosophy” had taken a completely different path from the science of Earth, a path that was similar in form but different in essence.

  The building’s exterior… might just be a “similarity” that different civilizations coincidentally arrived at when they reached a certain stage of development.

  But its interior, its tech tree, had branched off in a direction Pandora couldn’t comprehend at all, a completely divergent one.

  So, the inhabitant of this building is definitely not my “fellow countryman.”

  But regardless, this was clearly something that shouldn’t exist in this medieval world.

  This was, on this medieval continent, an absolute anomaly, something from another world that should not be…

  an “Outsider.”