Chapter 32

Chapter 32 : Treasure Hunting Is Made of Dreams and Hope (2)

The Record Archive, which I had come to again after so long, was exactly the same as ever.

It still overflowed with a bleak atmosphere, and the great heavy doors still looked like the sort one ought never to open.

I had to come here eventually for the treasure hunt anyway, and if I could use that as a natural excuse, then all the better, but……

“To go through that horrible copying again…… for how long…… and will there even be an end to it…….”

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, pressed my forehead against the door, and muttered to myself.

It felt as though, from beyond the closed door, some thick, sticky jelly monster might ooze out, seize my ankle, and drag me inside.

I took a slow breath, forcing myself to rein in the part of me that wanted to flee.

Since slipping into the Record Archive without Ru noticing was Mission Impossible, I kept persuading myself that this was the only possible way.

When I lifted my head, I saw the red lines swaying here and there, scattering mist.

That was the only thing that had changed.

The constantly active Phantasm Domain made the Record Archive look even more grotesque.

Red strands stretched out in every direction, tangling into cocoons, and all of them twitched like beating hearts, drawing the eye.

At a glance, it looked like the movement of muscle. Look again, and it resembled red Christmas decorations.

‘This would look better if someone hung up some oversized stockings.’

I knew I was stalling.

I also knew that this was the last moment when I could still turn back.

I dabbed at tears that refused to come, then opened the door anyway.

For all the effort I had spent hesitating and prowling in circles, there was not a single sign of anyone inside.

Ru had drunkenly rambled and told me to come at this hour, so I had come, but perhaps she had truly just been talking nonsense in her cups.

“Well, if no one’s here, that’s better.”

It was a little dark, but there was sunlight filtering in where the tree grew in the distance, so it was no real problem.

With my changed vision, I swept my gaze across the entire archive.

If it was a Fragment of the Original Work, then just as with the earring, it would surely have some sort of distinct feature.

But the hope died almost immediately.

“This is…… awkward.”

My prediction that the red lines would be heavily tangled had been correct.

The problem was that the degree of it far exceeded what I had imagined.

There were the wave-like red strands covering the entire ceiling, for one, and the red mist and threads weaving themselves between the shelves like a maze made it look like a labyrinth all its own.

“So it really is going to be brute force.”

And the range I could pinpoint was still narrow, so it seemed the only way would be to divide the archive into sections and search them one by one.

Perhaps I would at least find some peace of mind if I gave up on finding it quickly.

“Riwin? You don’t look well.”

“……Why are you dropping from the ceiling?”

“Ahahahaha, did I scare youuu?”

Ru, whether spider or bat, dropped upside down right in front of my face and burst into laughter.

For a moment my nerves sharpened, wondering whether she had heard me muttering to myself.

Ru righted herself with a light movement, beckoned with her fingers, and started walking ahead.

I followed after her and carefully changed the subject.

“Are you all right after the hangover?”

“I’m perfectly fineee!”

That much was obvious.

“I’m glad you got home safely.”

“Ahaha, Pering was shy.”

“Ah…… excuse me?”

“There’s lots of work. Why are you lateee? I waited such a loooong time.”

The more Ru stretched out her words, the worse her mood became. Taut with caution, I took my seat in the place where I had nearly died copying last time.

“This, and this, and this one too—just this much for now.”

Each time she added another word, a new tower of paper appeared.

There was no way this was a single day’s worth.

But since I had no intention of souring the mood of Ru, who seemed to be enjoying herself, I obediently took up the papers and began copying.

“Ru, there’s something I’m curious about. May I ask?”

“What are you curious abouuut?”

Ru sat opposite me, resting both elbows on the desk and cupping her chin in both hands, her eyes sparkling as she leaned forward.

“……Yesterday, I happened to hear something about surveillance—or should I call it that?”

“If you call it surveillance, that does sting a littleee. But yes, that’s basically right.”

“I heard that you read it directly. Does information continue coming in all the time?”

“I can’t quite explain it…… hmm…….”

Ru stroked her chin with a very serious expression for a long while, then suddenly slapped the desk and opened her mouth.

“My lord is the one who sees things directly, and I merely steal a glimpse of those fragments and record them. Like the words written on this kind of paper. That’s why I call it reading. Does that answer your questionnn?”

Reading it? Words?

That sounded exactly like the way I summoned the Original Work.

I was so taken aback that my answer got stuck in my throat, and Ru, nodding to herself, went on to explain further.

“There is an Archivist in every domain who serves its ruler. All of them carry out duties like mine. Their forms differ, of course! From the moment we are born, we are burdened with the duty to glimpse the lives unfolding in the domain and record them, and we devote our entire lives to it.”

It was not a matter of pride or purpose.

It was not the same as the way she whined about being worn down by overtime.

Ru simply accepted herself exactly as she was—someone born that way and destined to live that way—and there was something both calm and sad about it.

“Isn’t it difficult?”

“Is breathing difficult for you, Riwinnn? It’s the same thing.”

Bursting into laughter again, Ru collected the pages I had finished copying and smiled brightly as she looked them over. Perhaps it was simply in her nature.

“Then yesterday I heard that there are people you can’t glimpse. How many are there?”

“Why do you askkk?”

“Because, with the spy issue this time, there are a few things I’m curious—”

“—Lord Pan already took a list of them, you knowww. Hmmmm. He said it didn’t help much with this matter…… wait hereee!”

Ru sprang to her feet and vanished beyond the shelves in an instant.

The very moment I stopped moving my pen and blinked after her, she reappeared and thrust a sheet of paper at me.

“This is all of themmm!”

I had no idea why she was quite so excited, but I took it anyway.

The page was densely packed with names.

As expected, the elders were on the list, along with Pan’s close aides.

Roughly twenty people in all.

Timol was not on it.

Which meant that there had been no need to persuade him or probe him—he had already been a confirmed traitor.

Then why had Pan hidden that fact and tested me instead?

Pan knew that the real traitor, the one still not exposed, was hidden somewhere among the names on this list.

‘What is that bastard planning?’

I frowned as I pictured Pan’s face, the sort that looked as though it hid a hundred snakes in its gut.

In the end, I had failed to find the traitor, and the Original Work had advanced.

That meant the chance to stop it was gone, but at the very least I ought to prepare against being stabbed in the back later.

I committed the names to memory, then handed the paper back.

“Even though it’s supposed to be over now, I suppose being so close to the matter still left me uneasy.”

A plausible excuse.

Ru narrowed and reopened those round eyes, then smiled.

“If it left you with trauma or something, then Ruuu’s Recovery Class continues. What do you think? Want to join? I’ll restore you thoroughly enough that you can function in everyday life again!”

“No! No. Absolutely not.”

The Fear-of-Heights Support Group was more than enough suffering for one lifetime.

I shook my head vehemently and focused on my copying again.

At this rate, it felt more likely that Ru would drive my mind to flee the scene before the quest or the treasure hunt did.

---

Scratch, scratch.

The ink spread, soaked into the paper, and dried there.

Even the mountain of chaotic pages had been sorted into some kind of order by now.

I glanced to the side and rolled my aching shoulders.

Ru had fallen asleep.

The night before, Ru had been so drunk that Pering had practically carried her away on his back, yet apparently she had still worked perfectly well all day today.

If she had truly gone one hundred and twenty hours without sleep, she might as well have simply pretended to lose and gone to bed.

According to her, once one fully unlocked one’s Frame, a mere hangover could be blown away in an instant. Even most poisons stopped being effective, so a little alcohol hardly mattered.

Judging from that, it seemed fair to say that I had not fully unlocked my Frame.

Its traits had shown only in one eye, and if Frames came in stages, I had probably only opened a single door so far.

I pressed insistently at my red left eye and tilted my head back.

In the end, there was no way to know whether that drunken act had really been an act, whether she had simply wanted to complain for one brief moment, or whether she had put on that pitiful display to bait me.

‘The last one seems most likely.’

Nodding to myself, I quietly set down my pen.

The thought flickered, only slightly, that I wanted to drop everything and run away.

No matter how much copying I completed, the amount still left only kept increasing.

‘Well. Let’s just remember why I took this job in the first place.’

I rolled my eyes toward the nearest place where the red lines were bunching together.

The mass that had woven itself among the books like tangled strands of yarn looked very much like the cocoons I had seen outside.

Only, though its form was elaborate, the color was dull and murky rather than clean.

A little to one side of that, however, was a smaller point where thicker, clearer lines crossed.

They were so deep a blood-red that anyone would think, There must be something there.

As far as I could tell from casually searching while I copied, the signs had narrowed themselves down to those two types.

There was no way I could search this vast archive one shelf at a time.

The only option seemed to be dividing the place into sections, focusing on those two clues, and checking the books—or whatever else seemed plausible.

I tilted my head and checked the Field Quest in the corner of my vision.

If memory served, it had not specifically said “book.”

[Before you could recover your senses from the tidal wave of books, you sensed something suspicious. Within the Record Archive, which houses approximately fifty million volumes, you must find the Trace Left by the Master of Phantasms.]

That number—fifty million volumes—had overwhelmed me so completely that I had failed to properly read the rest.

It had not specifically said “books.”

More than that, the implication was the entire Record Archive.

My head began to ache.

That meant the range of what I had to search had just grown wider.

I tipped my head back and sighed, then frowned at one of the bundles of threads pulsing in short beats and returned to my copying.

Day one was for safe reconnaissance only.

---

When I pressed both fists hard against my hollow eyes, the heat and steady pressure made the corners of my mouth loosen into a silly grin.

“I thought my eyes were going to fall out.”

By the time I was finally released on that first day in the Record Archive, no less than fifteen hours had passed, and somehow I had now been keeping that up for a full week.

I was sleepy.

No—once I pushed past the limit, it was stranger than that. I couldn’t sleep at all.

My arms hurt.

I was developing muscles.

My eyesight had worsened.

Blurry focus lost all shape and dissolved, then the red lines clung over everything again like hallucinations.

The Record Archive held far too many traces of phantasm. All it did was make my head swim.

That’s right.

For an entire week now, I had been providing free labor with almost nothing to show for it.

“Hey, you stole my liquor—!”

Pan burst the office door open hard enough to nearly break it, then immediately shut his mouth in a rush when he saw the darkened state of the room.

I had been sprawled behind the table in the corner, rose unsteadily like some zombie, and lifted a hand toward him.

“……Good evening.”

“Why do you look like that?”

“Ask Ru why I look like this.”

“Ahem…… in any case. I heard you siphoned off my liquor.”

“……Did I?”

I looked at him through half-lidded eyes and played dumb.

After all, the evidence had already been thoroughly destroyed in our stomachs that night, so if he wanted to argue, all he had left was force.

“There is tea, though. Want some?”

As I set water on to boil, Pan quietly took a seat beyond the bar table.

I turned on the nearby lamp and waited for the kettle to heat.

“I thought Ru had looked brighter lately. So she had reinforcements.”

“Ah…… well. That’s what happened.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be drinking that. You should be sleeping.”

“I’m just a little foggy. I’m fine.”

“……Should I tell Ru to stop working you so hard?”

“Why would you? No. There haven’t been any fixer requests lately, so I’m bored. If I don’t at least do this, I feel like I’m going to stick to the floor.”

I had only just searched half the archive. I couldn’t let all that effort go to waste now.

As far as I knew, Ru completely rearranged the books in the archive on a monthly cycle.

Which meant soon.

That abrupt thought cleared my head at once.

I shook myself, blinked twice, then poured the boiling water over the tea leaves.

“Ah, can I ask you something?”

“If it’s something I can answer.”

I handed Pan his tea and asked,

“Ru mentioned that Sek once came to the Record Archive in the past…… was that true?”