Anju Hotel.

"May I ask if this token came from here?" Henry King asked.

"No, it didn't!" William Clark denied decisively.

"Oh."

"You said you were just here to take a look?"

"Yes."

"Then please leave." William Clark's mind was a mess.

"I think you need my help." Henry King didn't mind his attitude and smiled.

"You're wrong, I don't need it."

"You have many questions that I can answer for you."

"No, thank you."

"..." Henry King was taken aback for a moment, then helplessly shook his head before turning to point at the glowing object. "Don't you want to know what that is? Don't you want to know what this place is?"

"Thank you, but you should go back."

"It already exists. I was just the first to arrive, but I won't be the last. You should consider yourself lucky—at least relatively lucky—that the first person you encountered was me, not someone else," Henry King said. "This is just a transit station. Soon, there will be a constant stream of people coming here. Some may be much weaker than you, while others may have the power to destroy your world. But what you can't be sure of is whether each of them has a good temper."

"Uh..." William Clark was a bit stunned, then said, "But I'm not a superhero. I can't take responsibility for something this big. At worst, I'll just close the door and give up this warehouse, okay?"

Henry King shook his head again, calmly gazing at him. "Some people will have to stay here for a while. Maybe some can go without food or water, but others can't endure hunger or thirst. If you close the door, someone might starve to death here."

"I don't know them, and I'm not a saint."

"Yes, I understand what you mean. I'm not a saint either, but I've decided to help you here," Henry King said calmly, giving him a slight smile. "If you could easily decide the life or death of someone unrelated to you, I think most people would choose to let that person live."

"But it's not easy at all. The risk is too great for me," William Clark instinctively retorted.

"It's not as great as you imagine. It's just that you know nothing right now, so you don't know how to control those people," Henry King said. "But that's okay, I can teach you."

Before William Clark could speak, he continued, "Maybe this matter isn't as easy as I just said, but you won't come away empty-handed. It can bring you a wealth of things, beyond your imagination, even beyond mine."

"Hmm?"

"You're tempted," Henry King said with certainty.

"I'm not," William Clark denied flatly, then sat down cross-legged. "Come on, old man, let's talk slowly."

Henry King smiled, sat down without fuss, and began to explain in detail: "This is a spacetime node, or you could call it a spacetime relay point—essentially a transit station connecting different universes. It exists in every world, but doesn't always awaken. Here, 'awaken' means becoming a 'transit station.' The vast majority of spacetime nodes are dormant. Our world has one too; I once found it and stayed by its side for ten years, so I know a bit about it."

"But unfortunately, in our world, it always remained 'dormant.' When it changed location again, I lost it."

William Clark listened in utter confusion. He wasn't the kind of protagonist whose intelligence had been forcibly reduced by some system; even with all his knowledge, he couldn't make sense of such a strange thing.

Fortunately, acceptance and understanding are two different things.

Henry King continued, "Almost no one knows the principle of its existence, or how it came into being. Given the vastness of the universe, its lifespan, and its uncertainty, almost no one can find it in the endless river of time, and almost no one can be there when it awakens. More often, the world is exhausted and it still sleeps. The chance of someone being present when it awakens is even lower. I spent ten years researching it, trying to activate it, but as you can see, I didn't succeed."

"Becoming one with it is an extremely rare occurrence, and you are so lucky to have encountered it in such a coincidence constructed by the endless universe and the long river of time."

William Clark couldn't help but twitch his lips. "So I've become one with it?"

"Yes, that probably required an incredibly harsh coincidence."

"But what's the use of that?"

"Now that I've come to this place, from now on, if I want to leave here, return to my original world, or continue to some other destination, I'll need your help," Henry King said politely, smiling at him. "At the same time, when others are traveling through spacetime in nearby worlds, if the distance is too great or their own abilities are insufficient, they'll need to use this world's spacetime node as a relay. At that time, they'll need your help too."

"I... what if I don't help?" William Clark asked again.

"They won't be able to leave," Henry King said. "Maybe someone will be trapped in the node space until they die, or maybe someone will, over a long lifetime, find a way from the node space into your world. By then, you might have trouble."