Chapter 133
“Ugh…”
It seemed I had lost consciousness. My head throbbed painfully as I slowly pushed myself up. Around me, I could see familiar faces in similar states of disarray.
“Where… are we?”
Seymour mumbled, flailing his arms in the air as if trying to grasp something. Solia, with a calm expression, responded to his question.
“I’m not sure. It looks like we were attacked.”
“Don’t say such scary things!” Seymour complained, his voice tinged with panic. Just then, another person stirred awake—it was Adela, looking a bit worse for wear.
“You… you were sleeping awfully soundly,” I remarked.
“What’s going on? Where are we?” Adela asked, her voice laced with confusion as she took in our surroundings.
We were in a dark, enclosed space, with nothing but a conveyor belt moving endlessly in the middle.
It looked like some kind of factory room, though its exact purpose was unclear. The unsettling part was that only the four of us had been brought here.
“Why are there only four of us?”
“Kuu! I’m here too!”
Ah, correction. Four people and one reptile.
Basilus peeked out from behind Seymour, his small face barely visible. Kloshti hadn’t made it to this place and had been bounced out somehow.
Seymour looked puzzled, so I explained.
“It’s a spatial distortion. We were unlucky enough to fall into a crack.”
If Yoon Haul had been with us, I would have let him handle the explanation. Unfortunately, the prophet wasn’t dragged into this mess.
The conveyor belt continued to whir and rattle as it rotated, and I quickly realized where we were.
The Room of Memories.
This is a hidden dungeon where all memories and moments in time are stored.
Although it wasn’t exactly created by Archant, it had appeared as a result of the spatial distortion caused by his teleportation.
It’s one of those dungeons that naturally forms due to distortions in space.
Normally, everyone would have fallen into it, but maybe the academic conference detected something strange and hastily made repairs, so only four of us ended up here.
Since it’s a temporary phenomenon, we’ll be able to leave eventually. But that didn’t mean we could just sit around and wait.
“Spatial distortion? What’s that?” Seymour asked.
“Do you know who Archant is?”
The name should be familiar to them by now.
“A-Archant?”
“Archant, you say?” Seymour and Adela both echoed, their eyes widening in surprise. Even Solia looked taken aback, her eyes widening as she stared at me.
“He’s famous, right? For all the wrong reasons…”
Archant was the dark mage who robbed the Imperial Bank and became a wanted criminal. Other dark mages were wanted for things like murder or forbidden rituals—activities you would expect from a dark mage.
But Archant?
He was a bank robber.
The reason he joined the dark magic group was simple: they promised him money if he could successfully steal the Cube.
“So, the dark mage chasing us… is Archant?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but given the situation, that seems like the most likely scenario. Archant’s unique ability is teleportation.”
His teleportation caused a spatial distortion, and we happened to fall into one of those cracks.
My explanation seemed plausible, and Adela nodded in agreement.
“That makes sense. I didn’t expect the dark mage after the Cube to be Archant.”
“So, doesn’t that mean we just have to catch him?” Seymour said, his voice suddenly filled with determination.
Maybe the thought of catching a bank robber seemed less daunting than facing some mysterious dark mage, because suddenly everyone seemed fired up.
However, there was one problem.
Archant wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Shk. Shk, shk.
Seymour, who had been shadowboxing the air, suddenly stopped and asked, “What should we do first?”
“I’m not sure.”
Vrrrrmm—
Answering Seymour, I approached the conveyor belt that continued to turn steadily.
When I said I didn’t know, I meant it. I’d heard that you could see other people’s memories in the Room of Memories, but I had no idea how to escape from it.
I checked the entrance of the conveyor belt.
“Is this a passage? It looks too narrow for a person to fit through.”
Vrrrrmm—
The conveyor belt just kept vibrating and moving without giving me any answers.
Then, all of a sudden…
“Hey! Something’s coming!”
Adela pointed to the other end of the conveyor belt.
“Huh?”
A small box was making its way toward us.
“A memory package…?”
Thud, thud, thud.
While I muttered softly to myself, the package arrived in front of me.
What’s this?
The sender is… Adela?
Adela, who was standing beside me and watching, tilted her head in confusion.
“I never sent anything like that.”
“If it’s a memory package, is it real? What kind of magic is this?”
“I’ve heard of magic that stores memories, but I don’t know if that’s what this is.”
In the meantime, Seymour received his own memory package.
Judging by Solia’s curious gaze in my direction, it seemed she had received my memory package.
I was just as confused as they were.
I had only ever heard of memory packages; I had no idea they would manifest in the form of actual packages.
The idea of a dark mage sending us packages felt oddly sentimental and out of place.
Although, strictly speaking, these weren’t sent by Archant. Still, it was unsettling.
“Let’s open the package.”
However, if we wanted to break through the spatial distortion and find Archant, we needed to start by opening these.
“Alright.”
I tore open Adela’s memory package.
As soon as I did, a brilliant white light filled my vision.
* * *
Everything went blurry.
Losing consciousness twice in one day was not a pleasant experience.
Technically, my physical body was still in the Room of Memories, so I wasn’t actually passing out and waking up, but it certainly felt like it.
Anyway, I opened it.
Adela’s memory package.
“So, this is….”
Adela’s village?
“Kuuu…?”
Basilus poked his head out, looking around curiously.
Thankfully, since he was bonded to me, Basilus had been pulled into the memory with me.
“You came too, huh.”
“Kuuu…”
Basilus blinked as he reacted to the noise coming from nearby.
“Buy three boxes of apples! Special sale today!”
“Artifacts for sale! Artifacts! Especially imported from the Ardel Empire… Get your high-quality artifacts here!”
The place I’d found myself in was bustling, like a marketplace. I hadn’t realized it was an actual market until now.
No one seemed to notice that I had suddenly appeared in the middle of the street, which confirmed that this wasn’t reality.
“There must be a way out around here.”
Since this phenomenon was caused by spatial and temporal distortion, there had to be a crack somewhere.
I hadn’t been able to find it in the Room of Memories, so I needed to locate it here.
Given how familiar Archant is with these phenomena, he was likely moving through the cracks, searching for us.
While his primary ability was teleportation, Archant’s secondary ability, spatial distortion, allowed him to manipulate space, albeit indirectly.
Whenever he used his power, the space around him would naturally distort.
Adapting to this strange environment, I realized that encountering Archant alone could be dangerous.
Despite being a mere bank robber, Archant is not someone to be taken lightly. Only with the full team of the Execution Squad would we stand a chance against him.
Since we didn’t know where Archant might appear, it was imperative to find a way out of this bustling market. But where was the spatial rift?
“Rift… a rift… I’ve heard about them, but I have no idea what to look for,” I muttered under my breath, trying to calm the growing anxiety as I moved along the narrow streets. Basilus followed close behind, his little legs hurrying to keep up.
A student in a prestigious academy uniform walking around with a dragon—an odd pair that would attract suspicion anywhere, especially in a small rural village like this. But no one seemed to care. Or rather, no one seemed to notice me at all.
In a way, it was a relief. It meant I could move around freely without arousing suspicion.
I wandered through the market, passing by villagers tending to their crops, my eyes scanning for any hint of something out of place.
But everything looked the same.
“Rift… rift….” Like a madman, I muttered to myself as I sifted through the market, looking for anything unusual.
After what felt like an eternity of searching, I finally found something out of the ordinary.
“Huh?”
My steps halted instinctively.
Instead of finding a rift, I found a child.
She was standing quite a distance away, but I recognized her immediately—brown bobbed hair, sparkling emerald eyes, a little girl who would grow up to be a powerful earth mage.
It was young Adela.
“Adela,” I called her name without thinking.
Her sharp ears picked up the sound, and she turned her gaze toward me.
“….”
Adela slowly walked over, her steps cautious and measured.
This was Adela’s memory, a glimpse of her childhood. The small girl stood before me, her expression unreadable.
Luckily, it seemed she hadn’t heard me call her name.
“I’ve never seen you before,” she said, eyeing me carefully.
Her next words, however, were less kind.
“What are you doing here?”
* * *
In summary, Adela’s question was: Who the heck are you?
She looked like a strict child even at this age. It suddenly became clear how much Adela’s personality had softened over the years.
Back then, Adela was… small and sensitive…
She looked like she might bite if provoked!
“I’m an outsider who walked over from the next village.”
I tried my best to explain in a way that a child could understand. She looked about seven years old—an age where that kind of explanation should be believable.
“It takes three days to walk here from the next village.”
…She wasn’t buying it.
I was at a loss for words, caught off guard by Adela’s blunt response.
“I… ran…?”
“Please make sense.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
That didn’t work.
Now what should I say?
“Kuuu!”
Basilus interrupted the awkward silence.
Sensing Adela’s scent, Basilus dashed toward her, practically leaping at her in excitement.
“Kuuu! Kuuu!”
I knew what he was trying to do.
Basilus’ charm offensive.
He batted his eyes and put on his most endearing expression.
This was ridiculous.
There’s no way that would work.
“…He’s cute.”
It worked.
It turned out that young Adela liked cute things even more than she does now.
She went from being cold and aloof to smiling brightly, something I hadn’t expected at all.
“Hehe, what’s his name?”
“Kuuu! Basilus!”
“Basilus?”
“Kuuu!”
Adela quickly hugged Basilus, laughing happily.
She was acting exactly like a kid her age should.
“This is surprising.”
Despite my earlier doubts, Basilus had succeeded in getting Adela to open up.
Although she still seemed to find me suspicious, the fact that I had a cute dragon with me apparently convinced her that I wasn’t a bad person.
So I made a request.
“Can you show me around the village?”
* * *
This was Adela’s memory.
In hindsight, it seemed likely that the key to the rift lay with Adela. After all, this unconscious world was built around her.
Sure enough, as soon as I started sticking close to Adela, the villagers, who had previously ignored me, began to take notice.
They started showing interest.
“Where are you from? An outsider, huh? You’re a handsome one!”
“I’m from the capital of Ardel!”
“Oh my, you’ve come from far away.”
The villagers didn’t seem at all like the kind of people who would harbor a dark mage.
They seemed more like the warm, welcoming women of a rural village.
Even before Adela could introduce me, the women of the village had already pulled me into their shop.
“What’s your name, dear?”
“Han Siha.”
“Han Siha. That’s a unique name! How old are you?”
“I’m sixteen now.”
“You’re a young one to have come all this way by yourself!”
As they chatted cheerfully, I quickly scanned the surroundings.
This wasn’t the time to sit around gossiping with the villagers.
I had to make a decision.
Should I focus on finding the rift and escaping, or on uncovering the identity of the person Adela needed to kill?
Adela’s memory package likely contained clues about her revenge.
The reason her village had to be wiped out must be hidden somewhere here.
Could it be that a dark mage was hiding in this village?
I carefully surveyed the entire village.
Nothing stood out.
At this rate, I wouldn’t find anything.
“Phew….”
Maybe I should just ask directly.
The clues must be here.
I looked back at Adela, who was preoccupied with playing with Basilus.
“Ad—”
I caught myself just in time.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hmm?”
Adela frowned, looking up at me with suspicion.
“What is it?”
“Is there anyone strange in the village?”
I decided to focus on finding clues about Adela.
The rift would disappear after a certain amount of time anyway.
Adela stared at me, her eyes rolling as if trying to make sense of my question.
I tried to clarify further.
“Like someone who looks suspicious… or maybe someone who practices dark magic?”
“You’re the most suspicious person here.”
“Your attitude hasn’t changed since you were little.”
“…?”
“Never mind.”
I suddenly missed the older Adela. This younger version had a serious attitude problem!
“This is frustrating.”
This wasn’t working.
I sighed and stood up.
If even Adela herself didn’t know what the clue was, finding it here would be difficult.
Was I really going to be stuck in this tiny village, just waiting?
I was grumbling inwardly as I turned around when—
“…Huh?”
I stopped in my tracks, recognizing a familiar face.
“Argh! You’re dead if I catch you!”
Like in any busy marketplace, children were playing and running around, laughing and shouting. But among them was one child who stood out, walking with an air of dignity.
He looked familiar.
“Who…?”
As I furrowed my brows, trying to place the face, my blood ran cold.
He looked about ten years younger, but there was no mistaking it.
There was no way he should be here.
No way.
“Han Si-hyuk?”
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