Kazuma stood in front of the bookstore and just to make sure that he found the right one, he compared the sign on the door to the name that was written on the card that showed up in his room.

He knew that Mark and Sakura had never given him any directions or anything that would help him contact them and yet when he woke up he found several of the cards scattered all over his room.

It was as if the two were telling him, come here and we were the ones that did this.

He swallowed some spit and gathered his courage before he pushed the door open and walked inside the store, he immediately heard a bell ring the moment that he opened the door and then ring again when the door closed.

Kazuma looked around the room that he was in and found that books were carefully placed on shelves that seemed to go on forever.

"Welcome." he heard a woman say to him but when he looked down he only found a gray cat sitting at the front desk.

Normally Kazuma wouldn't have believed that the cat had spoken to him, however, considering that the store had bookshelves that could be compared to mountains because of how high they were.

He decided that it would be better for him to play along for now.

"Hie I'm here to see Mark," he says to the cat who lets out a loud purr before blinking twice and pointing her paw towards the wooden door that was at the end of the hallway.

Kazuma stared at the door, he was confused because he hadn't seen the hallway when he looked around the room and if there had been a door there he would have seen it the first time.

"How did I miss that?" he asks himself.

"If this is enough to get you confused then you probably shouldn't go in there." the cat says to him with the same voice that it used before.

Kazuma stares at the cat for a long moment and decides that he is done holding back.

'So are you a magic cat? Or are you some kind of magician that can turn into a cat?" he asks the cat who starts to laugh.

"Wouldn't you like to know, now go on he's waiting for you.' the cat says to him.

Kazuma walks past the cat and front desk and walks down the hallway, but no matter how long he walks he never seems to reach the door.

He stops walking to make sure that the floor isn't moving and when he sees that it doesn't move, he decides that he's giving up and going home.

Yet when he looks up he finds that the door is inches away from his face.

"Kazuma you're here," Mark says as he opens the door and pulls him inside.

"I was walking for, I think it was hours." he says to Mark.

'Right the defense system, sorry about that I forgot about it. Listen just step into the hallway and stop walking the door will go to you." Mark says to him as he leads Kazuma deeper into the room.

As Kazuma follows Mark deeper into the room that is filled with lights, paths, and dots that seem to be alive he realizes that the room itself is changing color.

One moment it's white, the other it's black, and yet his mind does not even notice it until it does, and then it ignores it again.

'What is this place?" Kazuma asks Mark.

"The Inbetween or at least that's what I call it. If there's a line or a dot that connects one thing to something else, it exists here."

"Every edge, corner- wrinkle- shadow and so on that has something like a line or dot, I can use this place to enter or exit wherever those lines and dots are," Mark says to him.

"Okay since you're here I'll explain what we will be doing." Mark says to him before he claps his hands and the world around them begins to spin.

"The planet is alive and by that I mean it thinks and it has tried to kill Humans since day one, sometimes we kill it, sometimes it kills us. The same goes for the moon and every other planet out there."

Kazuma watches as a pair of swirling lights spin above him before they are joined by several other lights that seem to make monsters that run towards him but vanish before they can reach him.

"To make a long story short I go into the dead worlds take their minds or those lights and use them as batteries to keep this place going."

'If there's anything that's still useful, I take it before the planet becomes dust." Mark says to him as a wall of weapons appears behind him.

"If you can do all of that on your own, why do you need me?" Kazuma asks Mark.

"Simple." Mark answers him with a heavy tone that makes Kazuma understand that something bad is going on.

"Somethings going on and I can't handle it alone, maybe we will run into it maybe we won't but I can't risk bringing it here, because this place leads to your world." Mark answers him.

"So what is it?" Kazuma asks Mark.

"I don't know. To be honest, there might not be anything out there and I'm just running out of dead worlds to raid, but I can't risk running into something unprepared if it does exist." Mark answers him.

"Okay so when do we go pick up the other guy or girl?" he asks Mark.

'When Sakura gets out of school, by the way, why aren't you at school?" Mark asks him.

'I dropped out after I woke up, it wasn't like I was going to ass anyway..' Kazuma answers Mark who grins at him.

"Greate I think that I can help you with that.' Mark says to him as a wall of digital code surrounds them.

"Congratulations you are now a part of Sakuras school, but you are one year behind her because you were held back." Mark says to him as he hands Kazuma a sheet of paper.

Kazuma can't believe his eyes as he sees his name- age and all of his other information.

Underneath all of it, he finds that his school asked Fuyuki High School to accept him because his grades were better than everyone else in his class.

It also explained that the reason that he dropped out was that he was bullied a lot. The principal of Sakuras school agreed and accepted him.

"Is this legal?" Kazuma asks Mark.

"Who knows but as long as no one asks questions you'll be fine." Mark says to him before pulling out a boy's uniform and telling him to try it on.