Chapter 29

Chapter 29 : The Traitor Under the Lamp (5)

The trap itself was simple.

All we had to do was dangle bait tempting enough to make them drool, since their objective was already clear.

“I’ll pretend to be Sek.”

“You?”

“You said it yourself that I resemble him. In atmosphere and other things.”

Pan had been the only one to suspect I was Sek. The other Surface Folk, even the rulers, had never connected me to Sek at all.

I had asked Pan exactly what about me resembled him, but all he gave back was that it was difficult to explain.

“Was Sek a recluse? Or are you the only one who sees me differently or something?”

“It’s not that sort of thing. Sek is—no one knows his true appearance.”

“Because he was the Master of Phantasms? Did he wear other shells over himself?”

“It’s the sort of concept Ochel would have recognized. Though, since she’s never met Sek, there’s nothing for her to compare it to.”

“Then what about you? What are you seeing that makes you suspicious?”

“Well.”

It was a good thing I’d already shoved that irritating face away.

And so, after becoming Sek, I wandered here and there, waiting for the rumor to spread.

The idea was to swell the matter from, There’s some Underfolk or whatever, so grab him first, into, The missing Sek is actually staying in the forest’s domain, so what are you going to do about that?

I had thought it was fifty-fifty, but once I dug into it, it was closer to ninety percent.

There was no way they wouldn’t take the bait.

I still didn’t know how far the fishing would go, but Timol was far too obvious a catch.

After one wave of backlash, the tangled red energies all stretched taut again, sketching out their paths.

Such a clear warning.

‘So this really is a navigator.’

It was a far, far more useful notification than the unfriendly system.

I narrowly avoided being dragged off by the vines winding around my legs and goaded Timol again.

“At this rate, you can’t even touch me.”

“Shut up. You’re nothing but a trifling Underfolk.”

“Trifling…… cgh, hm.”

“Lord Sek is someone a creature like you could never dare imitate!”

“Shouldn’t you pick one? Underfolk are trifling, but the Underworld Lord is worthy of worship? Wow. What a double standard.”

The only reason I could keep dodging the thorn-like spikes stabbing in from every direction—not leisurely, perhaps, but easily enough—was because of the skill.

It made me wonder whether that was why I’d managed to subdue him more easily than expected last time too.

I was turning over the fragmented memories in my head when I looked at the office interior, rapidly becoming a wreck, and dabbed imaginary tears beneath my eyes.

How was I supposed to clean all that up later?

“Lord Sek was someone who strove to preserve the present peace. Of course you wouldn’t know that.”

Several thorns grazed my cheek as they passed. In the movies, people sliced bullets apart with daggers, so if the system had really stuck to me, couldn’t it at least have granted me that much correction?

Was the dagger meant for stabbing, or for blocking?

Using the flat of it to guard my throat, I vaulted the ruined sofa and threw a nearby flowerpot at Timol as he came charging in.

‘Ah, that’s one Pan was strangely interested in.’

Soil scattered everywhere, along with the broken branches of the plant I could all but guarantee Pan had cultivated himself.

I’d sent the signal ages ago, so by now Pan ought to have arrived.

Frowning, I glanced out through the shattered window.

Something flashed—no, before that, a dark red line had already streaked across my vision.

Before I could even register the ominous nature of the thing hurtling at Timol’s head like a laser point, a small dagger struck the same spot a moment later.

Blood splashed.

Because I was so startled I failed to evade in time, the thorn-vines still wrapped around my wrist yanked me by force, and I went crashing into the corner along with them.

I had only just recovered, too.

The blow to my ribs cut off my breath completely, and after gasping pointlessly for air, I collapsed to the floor.

By reflex, I lifted my head and checked on Timol.

He was sprawled there exactly as he had been, neat and motionless.

I needed to check the window outside where the dagger had come from, but straightening my bent body hurt too much, so I dragged myself over beside the exploded sofa and finally managed to sit with my back braced against it.

Fortunately, everything outside was quiet.

And inside too.

“This is the kind of route where I get framed for murder.”

A wrecked office, a body marked everywhere with signs of a fight, and our already well-established history of trying to kill one another.

Even without a direct witness, the circumstances were enough.

“I’m screwed.”

Rustle.

I heard movement outside the window.

After a few weak coughs, I quietly searched for the dagger lying nearby and gripped it.

Thinking something idiotic like, If it comes to it, maybe I really will try murder for once—

“Hm? Why is this place such a mess?”

“……Why are you only getting here now?”

At the sight of Pan strolling in as leisurely as though he were out on an evening walk, all the tension leaked out of me at once.

The breath I had barely been holding slipped free, and the tremor in my hand eased.

“I told you to drag things out…… Did you kill him?”

“Not me.”

“Who would believe that?”

“…….”

Judging by the way he was grinning, it was only mockery.

And it was even more obvious he was mocking me when I saw the thing caught in his hand.

“There are two bodies……”

“This one isn’t dead yet.”

The one he carelessly flung onto the floor was one of the elders who had come to the office before, the obsessively persistent type.

One of the very people who’d been shouting that I ought to be killed at once, a perfectly healthy-looking man who nonetheless never hesitated to spout violent things.

He was also someone I had instinctively avoided every time he came by, because despite supposedly being old enough to count as an elder, he was just an enormous young man, and the mismatch between his rank and the way he looked and spoke was too jarring.

Pan, who had dragged even that man in with one hand and tossed him down, let his gaze sweep over the wreckage all around us—then his expression hardened the moment he saw the uprooted remains of that flowerpot.

Pan, who gave no attention whatsoever to the dead Timol still bleeding all over the floor, crouched among the shards and carefully picked up the scattered plant, wearing a face like someone whose whole world had just collapsed.

It was a miserable sight to witness.

I frowned and shook my head, then poked at the elder who was still barely breathing, and after that looked back at Timol, who really was dead now, and felt bitter.

No matter that he was, in the end, just one of the characters in some Original Work—I hadn’t seen many people die right in front of me, so I didn’t have the stomach to take it as calmly as Pan did.

It made me sick.

“I’m going to have to replace this flowerpot with a sturdier one.”

As if I cared.

“Why is the elder in this state?”

“He was skulking outside, watching.”

“You mean over there?”

I pointed to the window the dagger had come through.

While uprooting one still-living plant from another pot and stuffing his cherished one into it, Pan answered,

“That’s right.”

“Then the person caught in the act of killing Timol…… if he meant to silence him, it was a rather clumsy attempt.”

I prodded the elder’s cheek a few times as he groaned in pain and shook my head.

If Pan hadn’t come, this man would probably have killed with his own hands and then shamelessly presented himself as the witness.

Had he planned to whip the others into a frenzy by passionately declaring, In the end, that Underfolk killed Timol?

“They’re cowards soaked through with the heat of war.”

“……Not peace?”

Pan, who had somehow brought the plant fully back to life again in the new pot, set it carefully on the one shelf inside that hadn’t been broken and shrugged.

“The elders fear the war ending. They’re the sort who’d invent a pretext even if one didn’t exist.”

“Why?”

“Because their brains are pickled. They want to feel what it was like back then again.”

“Those—”

Bastards.

They would start a war because, with bright-eyed children like Chiru and Konu and all those kids from the playground still living here, they wanted to chase their own thrill?

Was this world rotten to the core?

A world that went mad if it didn’t see blood? Or one that had gone mad and therefore needed to see blood?

Either way, the reason for the betrayal had become clear enough.

“I should’ve stabbed him with the dagger instead of my finger.”

As I wiped the grease from my hands roughly onto my clothes, I clicked my tongue.

Whether he’d woken up and was pretending to be unconscious or not, the elder’s eyebrows twitched, and his breathing had turned noticeably shallow.

Pan must have noticed too, because he came over and calmly nudged the elder’s cheek with his shoe as he said,

“It’d be fine if Timol died, but if you kill an elder, it gets bothersome.”

“It’s not that I mustn’t kill him, but that it would be bothersome?”

“Pering nags.”

“Even so, he’s still a member of the forest. Can you really say that?”

“So what? Who would know who killed him?”

He was saying it for the old man’s benefit.

An Underfolk who was on speaking terms with Pan, the Ruler of the Forest himself. If this man was a traitor, then it was obvious what sort of report he’d make.

‘I had my doubts, but that Underfolk really was Sek!’

That was precisely what this had all been aimed at.

The Epic Quest telling me to find the traitor was still active. Which meant that this elder wasn’t the true head of the traitors.

He was only one of many voices.

I looked up at Pan and furrowed my brow.

He’d said he knew everything that happened in the forest. So if he knew, why were there already this many traitors running around?

And besides, the real one still hadn’t even shown a shadow.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because the state of your domain seems to be doing just fine.”

Was he deliberately pretending not to know? About the traitor?

I cast Pan a narrowed look, then dusted my hands off and rose.

“Just in case, I’m asking—you’re not thinking this is the end of it, are you?”

“I left him alive so we could dig further. He won’t open his mouth, and even if he did, he’d have made himself some way out.”

I agreed. If he were only clever enough to re-tie a cut string, then something would already have come to light by now. The fact that nothing had meant—

“This one will be silenced too. Just like Timol.”

Once again, that was meant for the elder to hear.

Either he could keep his mouth shut and die without a sound, or he could at least open it once, spit out whatever resentment he held, and then die.

“By the way, am I getting charged for the repair costs here?”

“I’ll speak to Pol.”

Pan, who had sunk into a chair in the corner that was only half-broken and was now absorbed in something, shrugged and said he’d already contacted him. Some kind of telepathy, perhaps.

Not long after that, Pering burst noisily into the office.

When he saw the wrecked interior, he looked horrified, and then his face darkened even further at the sight of the two bodies lying on the floor.

“Are they both dead?”

“Timol is dead. The one next to him still has a pulse.”

Pering let out a sigh, swept a hand through his hair, and lifted his head with a murderous stare.

“Did I not, very clearly, beg you, please, not to cause trouble.”

Pering, who looked as though he might seize someone by the collar at any second, dealt with the scene more calmly than I expected.

He carefully wrapped up Timol’s corpse, then tamed the nearby vines and encased it like a cocoon. And simply by placing one palm on a tree and making a brief request, he sent the body all the way back to the ruler’s castle.

In the meantime, Pan rose from his seat and once again grabbed the elder one-handed.

“We can’t sleep here, so are we heading back to the ruler’s castle?”

“Probably. We should fold up this trap here.”

Pan lifted his brows, muttered, What does it matter anyway, and headed out of the office first.

I was about to follow him directly, but instead I picked up the flowerpot Pan had replanted.

It wouldn’t be looked after while the office was being repaired, and there was no way a plant Pan, the Ruler of the Forest, had taken special interest in could be ordinary.

“So in the end, we still haven’t found the traitor.”

Trailing after Pan as he walked lightly ahead, I was beginning to feel bleak, wondering whether all that remained now was to wait once more without any limit, when—

the system, which had been quiet ever since I’d gone ahead with the trap plan it had objected to, suddenly made its presence known in a noisy burst.

Ding!

[The 【Epic】 Quest 〈Find the Surface Folk in League with the Underfolk〉 has failed.

You did not uncover the traitor before the Original Work advanced.

Shouldn’t you have looked into the Original Work instead of wasting time on pointless antics?]

[An Original Work episode will now proceed according to the Executor’s contribution.]

[……Processing……]

[The special episode 〈The Traitor Under the Lamp〉 has been reflected in the Original Work.]

[You will now be forced to read the special episode 〈The Traitor Under the Lamp〉.]

[10……9……8……]

The quest failed?

And it said it had added an episode to the Original Work?

Beyond the red countdown flashing insistently, I could see Pan’s back.

My sense of balance twisted sharply, and in the sudden surge of dizziness I reached out and grabbed the nearest tree.

Just as Pan turned slowly and started to say something—

Ding!

[Loading part of 〈Your Regret After Killing Me – The Traitor Under the Lamp〉.]