Chapter 373: The Rift (5)

"Caw!"

It wasn’t the only sound. Birdsongs, insect chirps, and the murmur of a stream all drifted in the wind.

For some reason, the crow’s cry gnawed at me alone.

"Caw! Caw!"

It sounded like a rebuke, scolding the flat, shadowless lethargy stretching over my days. Feeling strangely parched inside, I followed the sound. I found a crow perched alone on a branch, rasping its call.

Before it could flee, I quickly caught its leg. It flapped desperately, wings beating hard, pecking at my wrist with its sharp beak. It wasn’t enough to hurt me. I drew my skull back slightly and simply watched it. By all appearances, it was just an ordinary bird.

"Caaawk!"

Yet, as I stared at the struggling crow crying out in my grasp, I felt as though I had forgotten something important.

This is... strange. What am I missing?

The crow, unable to escape my grip, darted its beak from side to side in panic. I felt a pang of guilt for holding a creature that had done nothing wrong, but as I stared at it, I had the distinct sense that something would emerge if I kept looking.

The crow realized the difference in strength and ceased struggling, hanging in my hand, when...

Thump!

Without any warning, the crow burst apart in front of my eyes. Feathers scattered in all directions, and blood seeped down through my fingers. Bone fragments and the crow's broken beak fell to the ground.

Its cry was gone. Yet, as I stared at the space where the crow had died, at the empty air where it had been, my skull throbbed. Even through the thickening scent of incense, my mind grew clearer.

Shhh...

When had all these flowers bloomed?

A cold wind blew, and petals fell like rain, settling on my skull and my hands, washing away the crow’s blood and entrails.

By the time I looked down, the mud mixed with feathers and blood had vanished. However, the fact that the corpse disappeared bothered me even more.

As if it had never been there at all...

The moment I acknowledged that, the sky itself seemed to darken at the edges. A thought drifted into my mind.

How is Rubia doing?

It had been some time since I’d gone to see her at the castle.

Fwoosh!

I headed straight for her office.

The castle gate and the office door were wide open, as though they’d been expecting me. Rubia, immersed in her work, slowly lifted her head. Her gaze on me was entirely natural.

Rubia exclaimed, "You’re here! How is the reading going?"

She looked perfectly fine, but something was off.

"How did you know I was reading?"

Rubia blinked, eyes round. "Huh? What do you mean? You told me all about it."

I did?

I searched my memory, but nothing came to mind.

"Has... nothing happened?"

"Nothing at all. I’m living a very happy, peaceful life." Rubia smiled. "I’m at ease. So you should be, too. Do whatever makes you comfortable."

Is that... really all right?

Clack.

I turned my skull and swept my gaze slowly around the audience chamber. Nothing seemed out of place. Silence settled over the room.

"Please," she said softly, "just live as you like. You’ve earned that much."

It felt as though the crack in my heart was being forcibly stitched shut. Uneasy, I left without even saying a proper farewell.

Fwoosh! ℴ

Next, I wanted to see Rena. I headed for the house she had once invited me to.

The door was unlocked. I knocked lightly and opened it to find her setting tea on the table. Our eyes met.

"I’ve been waiting."

"You’ve... been waiting for me?"

Something was wrong. Rena wasn’t the type to say such empty things. Nor was she the type to sit quietly at home waiting for someone.

If she truly wanted to see me, wouldn’t she have come to find me herself somehow?

I let go of the doorknob and took a step back. "Is that... so..."

"Where are you going? I’ve been feeling lonely lately. Don’t leave me alone."

The sense of wrongness sharpened.

"Just... wait a moment."

My instincts told me not to go inside. Rubia and Rena. It would be somewhat inappropriate to feel unease toward those wearing their faces. I couldn’t just draw my sword and test what was inside either.

Ignoring Rena's call, I stepped back out and left. I decided to circle the city instead and headed for the central marketplace of Erast.

No one was there. I didn’t see any flower vendors, vegetable sellers, milkmen, fruit sellers, or cloth merchants. All of them were gone—the errand boys who once rushed about, the kitchenware peddler in the corner, and the young fortune-teller who yawned away her afternoons in the sun.

"Gone?"

Where liveliness once pulsed, only drifting black smears hung in the air like soot. I stared closely at one of the smears. Thin red lines crawled across it, writhing.

Slash!

The moment I cut through the floating soot, it burst like a balloon, and from the ground below, long tendrils surged upward. I hadn’t anticipated an attack at that moment. Covered in bumps and ridges, the tendrils wrapped around my skeleton, binding me tight.

I couldn’t move, nor could I deny it anymore. Something from beneath the surface had ensnared me and toyed with me while I was unaware. I didn’t yet know the details, but the world I had believed to be real was beginning to melt away.

I’ve been deceived.

Or maybe I’d wanted to be. Maybe, after all my regressions, I had been wandering in search of a place to finally settle. The sweeter the dream, the more it hurt to wake.

Somewhere, a crow cried. However, it wasn’t from a deep forest or a bell tower. Maybe this was what happened when I allowed myself to forget the one who had shown me how to survive situations like this.

The sound echoed from my memories. Once in that place outside time and space, once when I’d been devoured by a formless mass in the imperial archive, someone had pulled me back.

But...

This time, I had to escape on my own.

Crack!

The tendrils constricted until my bones creaked, but then I forced them apart. In the space I created, I drew my twin blades and set them against the flesh binding me. When the tendrils squeezed again, trying to reclaim that space, they cut themselves on their own tension.

While they recoiled in surprise, I spun once, hard, inside the tightening ring. With a wet, tearing sound, the tendrils were shredded into pieces and dropped across the market floor.

The twitching scraps dissolved, sinking back into the stone. The ground turned a deep, dark red, spreading outward in all directions. I didn’t want to plant my feet on it anywhere. So I leaped upward, bounding onto the rooftops.

Even the once-blue sky writhed, staining itself a dark, blood-red. As the world dimmed, something on my wrist caught the dying light and glimmered faintly.

[1915]

The number burned into my vision, and with it returned the memory of losing my kruna when I’d been imprisoned. A vast shadow of soot drifted past. I swung my blade in time with its movement.

The soot recoiled like a living thing, but it couldn’t predict the trajectory of a weapon summoned from my inventory. The cut split it cleanly in two.

[You have acquired 416 kruna!]

One fragment of the writhing soot slid across the broken market square, flowing toward the central fountain. I tracked it in silence, then stepped back, sheathed my sword again, and jumped down, driving the blade into the statue where the soot tried to hide.

The stone girl, or the Match-Selling Maiden, was shattered from her skull down. The basket she had once held tumbled from her hands.

Whoosh!

The carved matches spilled and burst into flame. However, there was no heat, only sheets of membrane made of fire clinging to every surface: tents, carts, walls... even to the empty air like webs of sticky light.

[416 kruna acquired!]

[816 kruna acquired!]

[1,289 kruna acquired!]

Tendrils stabbed like needles or swung like scythes. I cut through them endlessly. The faster they came, the more kruna I earned. By the time the number etched on my wrist passed seventy thousand, the marketplace had collapsed into ruin, its warped membranes undulating over the widening cracks.

I wanted to see what had become of the castle. I

ran. However, the horizon itself heaved. Colossal tentacles rose from below, coiling around the castle and lifting it into the air. When I tried to reach Rena’s district, the streets had risen into jagged ridges too steep to climb.

Bang!

I struck the path ahead, but instead of opening, a wall of white smoke burst forth, blocking my way.

Vwoom! Vwooong!

Abandoned carts nearby sprouted four pairs of wings each, fluttering violently before gaping open, rows of jagged teeth filling their maws as they lunged at me.

Clang!

Their snapping jaws missed me by inches. One bite could have crushed stone. Using the fractured air itself as footholds, I vaulted onto one cart’s back and drove my sword down.

[Inventory Proficiency increased.]

It didn’t seem to feel pain, but I only needed it as a handle.

Wuum!

Invisible subspace walls formed around me. This wasn’t Erast. This was a fabricated world, a construct manipulated by someone else.

I faced the air where thin red lines writhed like veins and muttered, "You might have dragged me here, but... inside this space, I decide the rules."

[Inventory (Lv. ???) Proficiency greatly increased.]

I compressed the unseen walls.

Crunch!

The winged cart let out a hideous laugh before it was shredded, crushed into itself within the tightening subspace prison. I landed lightly on empty ground.

[6,411 kruna acquired!]

Crack!

[5,291 kruna acquired!]

[Level Up!]

[8,101 kruna ...]

[3,410 kruna ...]

[Level Up!]

Where the walls overlapped, translucent system windows appeared.

[Inventory Level has increased!]

[Lv. ??? → Lv. ??? + 1]

The exact number was unreadable, but the air itself felt lighter. I altered the structure and folded the four intersecting planes into a sphere. The connected spaces gnawed at the air, and black fissures widened across the crimson sky.

A paradox took shape. An illusion gave birth to another illusion, and reality started seeping through. Three immense tentacles reared from the red horizon, their tips fixed upon me.

I want to destroy them.

Whoosh!

I hurled the spatial sphere upward and froze.

Krrk...

The three tentacles writhed, twisting together until they formed a figure. It was Rubia.

"Ahh... why are you doing this to me?" she said gently.

"That kind of thing... it’s frightening," I seethed.

Clatter...

Behind her, I spotted the broken remains of a cart coalesced into Rena’s corpse.

"What about it did you not like?" she asked softly.

"..."

"Still," she added with a faint laugh, "it’s your own dream you’re breaking. We only provided the catalyst."

Tentacle-Rubia lowered her eyes, shrinking her shoulders. Cart-Rena pouted, frustrated.

"But noticing this early? That’s rare. You’ve cleared this stage with the best score yet!"

"You’re not... Rena. You’re not Rubia..."

The words left my mouth dull and heavy, numbing everything else.

Rena tilted her head. "Does it matter? What difference does it make? All that matters is comfort."

Vwoom!

I swung my blade toward her, but my movements felt sluggish and restrained. Even if they were fakes, I couldn’t bring myself to crush Rubia and Rena’s faces beneath my own power.

"If you just open your heart," the false Rubia said, "you’ll be happy. What’s wrong with a prison like that?"

"A... prison?" I spat.

Their identities were clear now. I had been deceived from the start. Rena adjusted the hat perched on her head, a scorpion stitched into the brim, and nodded brightly. Her cheeks were painted in mismatched rouge like a jester’s.

"That’s right. Everyone trapped here is a threat to the Demon Realm. These criminals were chosen by the Demon Kings themselves! So we give each of you the perfect dream, as your most satisfying confinement."

"Insane... You mean there are others in here, too? Other prisoners trapped in the same illusion?"

Rubia smiled. "Of course! Why punish evil with suffering? Why cling to notions like retribution? If something dangerous must be isolated, isn’t the kindest type of isolation letting them live forever inside the world they desire most?"

I glared at them both and saw no openings or flaws.

Even if I find one, could I really strike at it?

This illusion had swallowed me whole, but the domain itself belonged to them.

"Punishment doesn’t reform evil," Rubia continued.

"Containment doesn’t lessen the need for it. So why not let each sinner commit their evils endlessly, within their own dreams? Ufu... ufufufu!" Rena added.

To forge a world like this... how immense must their power be?

The Lord of Dissociation.

From the beginning, had that been merely one fragment of the scorpion-crowned figure who had watched and toyed with me?

"Well then," the jester-Rena sang sweetly, "since you’ve rejected your illusion... the next stage is simple. Those who wake must fight one another to the death."

Rena’s smile widened, impossibly bright against the blood-red sky.