Chapter 25

Chapter 25 : The Traitor Under the Lamp (1)

Ding!

[!WARNING!]

Ding— ding—!

[!WARNING!!WARNING!]

[There is not much time left on the 【Time】 Quest!

▶Time Remaining: 0d : 0h : 58m : 01s]

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

[!WARNING!!WARNING!!WARNING!]

Even with my eyes closed, red afterimages kept surfacing.

The warning chime pounding directly inside my head was as persistent and relentless as an anti-theft alarm, forcing my mind awake again and again.

A muffled sound, like being underwater, throbbed through my skull and at last forced my eyes open.

The row of red numbers flashing at the top of my vision was the remaining time on the Time Quest.

I slowly blinked.

‘So that means… I have less than an hour left?’

Remembering that it had originally been a generous three-day quest, I clenched my teeth against the splitting headache.

That meant I had been unconscious for almost two full days.

‘And that penalty was death…….’

The soft bed felt as though it were soaked through, dragging my body down into it.

From that cozy, warm embrace came the temptation to simply pass out again and sink beneath consciousness.

My whole body throbbed as though I had been beaten senseless. When I rolled my tongue around, I found that the inside of my mouth was scraped raw and torn up as well.

My limbs were a wreck, needless to say.

When I searched my memory, I vaguely recalled something about penalties and branching points while I had been out of my mind.

‘Was there some penalty besides death?’

The moment the question occurred to me, sharp text came flooding into my blurry vision as though it had been waiting.

[The penalty from 〈Skill—Phantasm Domain Deployment (Temporary)〉 is currently in effect.

Recovery, mental strength, physical ability, and immunity are all greatly reduced while the penalty remains in effect.

You are vulnerable to various illnesses. Intermittent hallucinations will occur. Your senses are dulled. Chronic headaches, chronic fatigue, and chronic lethargy will persist.

If an enemy is nearby, survival cannot be guaranteed. Protection is recommended.

▶Duration: 9h/48h]

In short, it meant this:

You are going to hurt like hell while barely clinging to life, so just lie there and breathe.

I wanted to press a bag of ice over my burning eyelids.

Even breathing made it feel as though my throat had been hacked to pieces. I could only force out ragged breaths as I stared blankly at the red numbers counting down.

Did it wake me so I wouldn’t die?

‘It would’ve been nice if it had simply left out a death penalty from the start.’

Thinking that, I forced my unresponsive limbs to twitch.

If I failed to uncover the truth behind the Phantasmal Species within the hour, I would die. If I was going to die now or then anyway—

Ding!

[Protection is recommended.]

A question drifted through my clouded thoughts.

‘Why are you being kind all of a sudden?’

Whenever I had called for it before, the system had never once shown its face, and now it was openly trying to stop me.

‘Hm. Is this what intermittent hallucinations look like?’

I laughed under my breath at the absurd thought and almost died for real when my stomach pulled painfully.

Then again, perhaps it was a good thing. Pain had brought a little more calm back to my mind.

I slowly looked around and realized this was not the room I had been staying in.

Then again, it was not the office either.

‘When I woke up, it was to a strange ceiling.’

I almost wished it were one of those routes.

Instinctively, I started to think of my old home, then stopped.

Because the view outside the window looked exactly like the style of someone’s house suspended in midair.

Fighting against the weight of my body, I somehow forced myself upright.

Even though I had no reason to be in good shape after being torn apart by the Phantasmal Species and that madman, my body looked surprisingly clean.

The smaller wounds had all healed over smoothly, at least.

I pulled aside my clothes and checked the hole that had been gouged into my abdomen, my worst injury.

I pressed a finger lightly against the spot where the white bandage had been wrapped, and the sharp sting made me grimace.

‘This part hasn’t healed yet.’

Apart from the major wound, most of the rest seemed to have improved, probably because Pan had given me some kind of medicine then.

If not for the penalty, I would probably have been in much better shape.

Clutching my pounding head, I tried to steady my wavering vision.

Even while I did, the timer kept ticking down with perfect diligence.

‘I need to find Pan.’

If Pan had seen that sphere, then there was a strong chance he had already figured out the abnormality among the Phantasmal Species and dealt with it.

If I wanted to complete the quest in the few dozen minutes I had left, that was my only option.

The problem was that my body refused to obey me.

Just sitting there for a moment made dizziness spin through my head and send everything whirling.

I could barely force out a voice.

“Water…….”

My throat felt split apart from just that single word, and the frustration made it worse.

I splashed water on my face, took a moment to catch my breath, and then the door burst open roughly.

Given the size and layout of the room, I had assumed I was in the ruler’s castle, but the first person to come in being Pan was an absurd stroke of luck.

My face lit up at once, the corners of my mouth curling upward and my eyes brightening.

‘Ah, my Time Quest.’

Unlike the forceful way he came in, Pan stopped short at the door for a moment, then strode over and pressed a hand to my forehead.

Without any resistance from me, he pushed me back down onto the bed, and I blinked up at his grim face.

“So you must feel well enough to grin like an idiot.”

“I think I’m… cough… dying.”

Swallowing against the burning in my throat, I draped an arm over my pounding forehead.

The sudden shift in my sense of balance flipped my vision so sharply it felt like motion sickness, and just when my stomach had almost settled, it turned over again.

I coughed several times into the back of my hand.

“It’s been two days.”

“Cough, yeah.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“What more is there?”

Only after Pan handed me water did I feel as though I might actually survive.

The cool sensation ripped down my throat and left the back of my neck taut.

“Ah. Thanks for the treatment.”

“You…… never mind that. Explain what happened back there.”

I pressed hard against my burning eyelids and rolled my eyes at Pan’s question.

As though I could explain it myself.

“That bastard still hasn’t woken up?”

Pan’s brow furrowed at my question.

Feeling oddly guilty, I rushed into a stream of excuses.

“The bastard thing…… I acted in self-defense. He unlocked his Frame and attacked me first.”

“He was at death’s door.”

“He was trying to kill me. If you’d seen the state I was in……”

My head throbbed with every word, and my lungs felt as though they were shriveling up, but I only stopped talking once Pan brought me a second glass of water.

“Timol is still unconscious. So you’d better explain yourself properly.”

“Do I really have to do that right now?”

I rubbed at my burning throat and scowled. There was still plenty of time left on the penalty, and the Time Quest had less than thirty minutes remaining.

‘Hmm…… if I handle this right, I can probably lead him to the answer with that question.’

Thinking I’d found a way, I shot upright from the bed—only to be smacked back down by Pan’s rough hand.

“If you want your wounds to open again, then get up.”

“……Yes, sir.”

The moment I felt I might survive, I’d stood without thinking, but doing so had reminded me that my unseen internal injuries were in even worse shape than I thought.

Whether from anemia or something worse, my brain kept threatening to shut down entirely, and it was hard to form any rational judgment.

What choice did I have? If I wanted to live, this was the only way.

Grinding my teeth against the pain, I organized the thought that had flashed through my mind.

Then, watching Pan as he dragged a chair over and sat at my bedside, I asked,

“Um…… what happened to that strange sphere?”

“It was an Underfolk device.”

So that was why it had felt so out of place in the genre.

I started thinking again about the sphere, with its intricate machine parts fitting together in precise motion, then raised my brows because Pan’s stare was beginning to weigh on me.

Pan pushed his hair back and, with a sigh, finally asked what he had actually come to ask.

“Are you connected to it?”

“Me?”

“It’s an Underfolk device.”

“……So you are suspicious of me?”

It was only natural.

An Underfolk object planted squarely in the middle of the forest’s domain. Of course he would suspect me.

Except—

the way Pan stood there with his arms folded, looking at me askew, didn’t really feel like suspicion. So I defended myself anyway.

“I was locked up and couldn’t go anywhere. Then I finally went out once, spent the whole time hanging there as bait, and barely made it back alive. Suspecting me on top of that feels a bit much……”

“The positioning was awfully perfect for that.”

“I only ended up there because I followed the source of the fog.”

“And a Surface Folk was dying there too.”

“I already told you, that bastard tried to kill me……! Cough, cough.”

I tried to swallow back the surge rising in my throat, but all that came out were harsher coughs. When even covering my mouth with my hand wasn’t enough, I dragged the blanket up and pressed it over my lips.

After wiping the dark blood off roughly, I pressed my fingers to the pounding side of my head.

“Anyway, when would I have had the chance to plant something there? I didn’t even know what it was.”

“Hm. That was my conclusion too.”

After all that rambling, and after coughing up blood through half my defense, Pan accepted what I said rather readily.

Which meant there was only one possible conclusion.

“So someone else didn’t accept it that easily.”

Closing my eyes for a moment against the pain splitting my skull, I thought.

They must have been back at it again, talking about killing me or not.

And all the goodwill I had painstakingly built up had probably plummeted into the abyss.

“We couldn’t disclose the Underfolk device.”

“……?”

“I kept silent about it with the others.”

“Why?”

“Did you want to die? You just said I suspected you.”

At Pan’s hardening expression, I shut my mouth.

An Underfolk who had nearly killed a Surface Folk.

An Underfolk device found at the scene.

And the grotesque black fog produced by that device.

At that point, it was the sort of crime no one would object to punishing twice over.

Which meant that if they decided the Underfolk were the cause of everything, then naturally they would want to take it out on the only Underfolk in the area—me.

And by then, not even Pan, as ruler, would have been able to stop them. So rather than let that happen, he’d decided to make the whole cause vanish from the record.

“What about the sphere? Did you destroy it? It kept pouring out black fog.”

“Ha…… the reason the Phantasmal Species went mad was because of that fog. I didn’t expect the bait to be at risk. I’ll apologize for that.”

“……Shouldn’t you start by apologizing for using me as bait in the first place?”

“Why would I?”

So Slave No. 1 was simply meant to be thrown around, then.

“In that case…… did you figure out why the number of Phantasmal Species increased? That was the whole point of this operation, wasn’t it?”

I stole a glance at the timer above, then blinked at him as though asking innocently out of curiosity.

Pan, still with his arms folded, narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, then nodded.

“We found similar spheres elsewhere. Those turned out to be the reason the number of Phantasmal Species increased.”

Slave No. 1 will diligently fulfill his duties.

I silently thanked Pan for describing the quest completion conditions with such accuracy, and relaxed at the sight of the timer finally stopping.

Ding!

[You clear the 【Time】 Quest 〈They Say You Can’t See an Inch Ahead〉.

If you want to die, there are plenty of ways to go about it.

May your future be blessed, you who threw away your life to take one step closer to the truth.

▶Fixed Reward: Greatly Increased Contribution, Skill Unlock

▶Time Remaining: 0d : 0h : 04m : 44s]

[Selecting a reward based on the remaining time.]

[……Processing……]

“I retrieved both spheres myself, so keep your mouth shut too.”

“Well…… I suppose I can do that.”

Considering I’d only just survived.

The clamorous warnings had vanished, the timer had stopped, the quest reward looked promising, and perhaps all I needed to do now was clear up Pan’s misunderstanding of me.

As the tension drained out of me, the back of my neck grew even heavier.

Keeping time with the thudding beat of my heart, I thought again of the Epic Quest.

The traitor.

There had been something undeniably suspicious about Timol.

There was no way Pan hadn’t noticed it too, and the fact that he had come here to question me like this meant he was clearly fishing.

‘Should I tell him there’s a traitor, or not?’

I ran my tongue over the metallic taste in my mouth and rolled my eyes.

“At least you can tell me whether or not I’m about to die.”

“There was talk of not letting you live after what you did to Timol.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

“Not yet.”

Why that sounded so much like he personally held the power of life and death over me, I had no idea.

In the end, my mind tilted toward telling Pan about the last thing I’d seen in Timol.

“There was something strange about him back then.”

“What?”

“He walked out of the fog. Wasn’t that fog supposed to be dangerous?”

“It was. He was prepared for it.”

“Then you ought to be suspicious of him, not me.”

“And?”

Watching the corners of Pan’s mouth begin to lift, I had the sinking feeling that I was digging my own grave, yet once I started speaking, I had no gift for stopping.

“He didn’t recognize me.”

How busy would someone have to be not to know who I was by now?

I let out a sigh at the sight of Pan’s satisfied expression.

You sly bastard.

Since he’d already withdrawn his suspicion of me, I left the business of coaxing the rest out of Timol to him.

“You look exhausted. We’ll discuss the details again after Timol wakes.”

“Yes, yes. Do as you like.”

I waved a limp hand and flopped back onto the bed.

Ah, I really do feel like I might live.