Chapter 68

Chapter 68 : The Edge of Truth (10)

The enormous body filling the inside of the clocktower slowly set down its front paw.

Every time it exhaled, sparks scattered. Its fur, made of flames hot even to the eye, swayed lightly with the movement.

I heard Murel’s short whistle beside me.

Twisting up the corner of my mouth at the sweltering heat, I focused on the Phantasm Domain.

The faintly connected strands—I drew in their weak power and wrapped it around the Black Mist that had been pushed out.

The Black Mist, which had been writhing as though it might spread into the surroundings at any moment, failed to escape that clumsy net and clumped together.

“Now.”

Woldeer, standing there and taking up the cramped space, opened his jaws wide and exhaled the breath he had drawn in deeply all at once.

Keeeeaaaaaa――!

A scream that should not have been audible seemed to brush past my ears like an auditory hallucination.

The unpleasant dregs that had been awkwardly stitched together with layers of emotions were chewed into Woldeer’s mouth.

Woldeer swallowed even the last small piece of mist, then spat out a small flame.

The blue flame reminded me of the rose-shaped production method, and I frowned around the eyes.

“Are you all right?”

[“It tastes bad. These take a long time to digest, so my stomach feels heavy.”]

Woldeer licked his front paw with his tongue, then shook his body and groomed his fur, pleased to be in his own form after so long.

Sparks flew, but they did not spread fire around us.

Crackle, crackle. Most of the flying sparks vanished in midair or quickly died out the moment they touched something else.

[“Worry about yourself rather than me, Master. This is a form you cannot handle. You dragged it out by force, so soon…….”]

The subtitle text translating Woldeer’s words distorted with afterimages and broke apart.

After that, sudden dizziness overtook me, and I grabbed the nape of Woldeer’s neck nearby. Before Woldeer could even react, red text flooded my vision.

Ding!

[!WARNING!]

[Abnormal Route detected.]

[System unstable. Unable to respond.]

[Some lost data will be corrupted.]

[!WARNING!]

My vision warped.

Beyond my sight, shattering into pieces like broken glass, I saw pitch-black darkness writhing. At the sudden fear that I might be swallowed whole at any moment, the back of my neck bristled.

That was when flames broke into my vision.

Woldeer’s body wrapped around me, and the sweltering heat died down.

By the time the afterimage of my shattered vision returned to normal and a heavy dizziness rang through my skull, Woldeer had already returned to Fluffnix’s form.

GRRRT—CLACK!

At the same time, the clocktower’s hands began moving again for the first time in a year.

The gears, slowly meshing together, pushed the hands organically. The faintly woven Power of Phantasm burst out explosively and formed a powerful boundary, driving the surrounding mist far away.

By the time the surging white wave returned, the hand had already moved toward the next mark.

[Clearing 【Time】 Quest 〈Where Do the Clock Hands Point?〉.]

[Selecting reward based on remaining time.]

[……Processing……]

Ding!

[Reward selected for 【Time】 Quest 〈Where Do the Clock Hands Point?〉.]

[〈Truth 1g+@〉 awarded.]

[〈Truth 1g+@〉 can be confirmed through ‘Mol Retu’.]

With nothing left to lean on, I dropped to my knees and braced a hand against the floor. Perhaps because of the dizziness, my vision blurred white, and hot liquid dripped from my nose, wetting the floor.

“What is this…… kuh-heuk.”

A fistful of clots scraped sharply up my throat and spilled out.

Supporting myself with one trembling arm, I hurriedly covered my nose and mouth with my other hand. Hot blood overflowed between my fingers.

The retching continued again and again, and the metallic taste filling my mouth made my tongue sting.

“My Lord―! Why――― right now―――!”

Murel’s urgent voice pierced through my muffled ears, but that was all.

Ding!

[The Original Work has been heavily affected, creating a Branching Point.]

[Beware penalty backlash.]

[……Processing……]

[Corrupted data is affecting the penalty.]

[Some memories of 〈Lost Data―Sek〉 will be shared.]

---

Strictly speaking, the distortion of the Boundary of Death and the stopping of the clocktower had been Sek’s influence. Around the time his journey began, the things he did on a whim touched the axis of time and affected the boundary.

Even a change as small as a single tree branch was enough if it was shoved into the gears and made them stop.

Retu suspected Sek, who claimed to be the cause, but she did not stop him from entering Mist’s Domain. As he claimed, if the clocktower truly had stopped, it was a problem that had to be checked.

“The hands really have stopped.”

“See? I told you I was right.”

“This is the first time the boundary has distorted while I have been ruler.”

“If even I do not remember it, then it must indeed be the first.”

“If this had happened during the war, we might have missed it and caused a disaster. I owe you a debt.”

Though Sek was the lord of the Underworld, Retu acknowledged his ability more than anyone else.

He was a Creator beyond what all the repairers of the Mist combined could match, and a man who could even repair things that would happen in the future before they occurred.

Retu watched Sek silently repair the clock and felt a question arise.

Was Sek’s journey, which had begun in the forest, bound the curse of the sky, and now involved the accident in the mist, intentional?

“I wonder what you saw.”

“Well. That part is not something I particularly want to mention, at that time.”

Only after the stopped clock hands began moving normally did Sek turn around, wearing an awkward smile. Retu, overcome by her own languor, did not bother digging those words out of him.

If there was one thing she regretted, it was merely the small curiosity of whether the world he had seen was still peaceful.

“If you are finished, go back. I do not believe this is a place where you should remain.”

“Because those things are screaming?”

“They are my cherished members.”

“If you go around saying things like that, rumors will spread that Mist’s Domain is a den of ghosts.”

“I would like to see whether such rumors still arise after you die.”

With a shrug, Sek moved together with Retu to a secret place within the ruler’s castle.

It was an internal space difficult even for Katesa, the Archivist, to approach, and also Retu’s office, a place said to be passed through once by every dead person.

The lights faintly soaking into the mist made the atmosphere even more dreamlike.

Mixed with that energy, the Black Mist grew even more restless. Sek calmed it and pulled up the corner of his mouth.

“I wondered when I would get to come in here.”

“I only let you in because you seemed to have business. Was the reason you kept watching my expression instead of speaking properly because you had to avoid Katesa’s surveillance?”

“Right.”

Sek sat on an empty chair and looked up at Retu.

Sek’s eyes swept across the distant past and future, then stayed in the present. Experiencing countless times and immeasurable years vividly, he always lived in the present.

“There will be a problem with the clocktower.”

“Again?”

“In the future, though not a close one. It will cause quite a headache.”

“Can you not come and repair it then too? If it is peaceful, that is.”

“Mm…… that is uncertain. The me who comes then will be so hopeless and stupid that you will wonder how anyone can be that foolish. Even recognizing me will be difficult.”

“Is that a joke?”

“As if? Anyway, if you recognize me, call me. Even if you do not, if you call an Underfolk, it will be resolved, so do not worry too much.”

Sek waved a hand and cut off the thought, then drew in a deep breath.

The chatter of dead spirits whispering in tiny voices swallowed the quiet space.

What a ridiculous sight, even the Black Mist, so fiercely insistent on its own presence, dissolving into that bright chatter.

“If I die, will I come here too?”

At Sek’s question, Retu tilted her head.

“Does one who cannot die think of death?”

“Do I look like a living person to you?”

“Wordplay is not my hobby.”

“Ahaha, then if I ask after I die, will you answer?”

“If you die…… I suppose it would be possible.”

Sek supported his temple with his fingertips and smiled in satisfaction.

Because he thought one gift for the me of that time, who had possessed no will at all, would be acceptable.

---

When I opened my eyes, it was an unfamiliar ceiling.

—to think I would say that again.

The warning alarms in the corner of my vision were distracting, so I roughly pushed them away and blinked.

Beside the bed was Murel, on his lap was Fluffnix, across from me was Katesa, and near my feet was Herton. They were all amicably surrounding me, nodding off.

“Ahem.”

The first to react to my cough was Murel.

“Lord Iwon! Are you awake? You were out for three full days…… I thought something terrible had happened.”

At Murel’s fuss, Katesa woke and hurried out, saying he would call Retu, and Herton woke at the commotion too, wiping drool with the back of his hand.

“I was worried you might leave for Lady Retu’s side.”

Ah, haha. I had left, in a way. This looked like the ruler’s castle.

Even then, I glanced at the silent Fluffnix and suppressed my unease.

I would feel sorry if feeding him junk food had made him sick.

Fortunately, given that his energy had stabilized, it seemed I did not need to worry too much.

“You have awakened?”

When even Retu, who had gone to recover and had not been seen while I repaired the clocktower, came to see me, I felt like I had become something important.

That said, my state was one where I collapsed at the drop of a hat, so I quickly recovered my sense of reality before I could feel too proud.

“I have something to discuss with Riwin, so would the rest of you leave us?”

Murel tried to object, but when I nodded, he drooped his shoulders and went outside. As for Herton, these were the words of Retu, whom he respected, so he had nodded and left long before.

I pushed myself upright, feeling quite light.

“The clocktower is repaired, and it seems it is time for me to receive what will tempt me.”

“Is shamelessness your nature?”

“Fair compensation is the source of labor.”

“I will assume you say that because you do not know I was the one who treated you all this time.”

“Ah, I truly did not know that. Thank you.”

“I did not say it because I wanted empty courtesy, so stop.”

Seeing Retu shudder made me laugh for no reason.

Perhaps thinking something of my frivolous appearance, Retu’s face hardened, and she threw a black bead with an attitude that said I should take the object and get lost.

“This is……?”

“A Soul Fragment.”

“……?”

“It is Sek’s, and yours.”

“Mm……?”

“Remove that absurd look from your face. I am about to grow sick of your shamelessness. Did I not say it would tempt you?”

I cleared away the somewhat playful attitude and slowly took a breath, composing my expression.

“Shameless? How hurtful.”

Sek’s “partial” memories contained more information than I had expected. They lodged in my mind so naturally that even I found it difficult to distinguish the boundary, as though insisting that of course they had always been there.

“Let us see whether you can say that after seeing your own face.”

“Ahaha, I would prefer to decline that…….”

I held the small bead-shaped, round clump of mist close before my eyes and examined it.

A Soul Fragment, was it? I raised my brows and slowly exhaled. The information inside my head had not fully settled, so my sense of time was wavering.

“I would like an explanation.”

“You remain nothing but foolish.”

“I cannot pretend to know what I do not.”

Retu gathered her long, trailing hair together, swept it behind her shoulder, and sat with her legs crossed as though giving up on everything before beginning a long story.

“You have already died once. That is why you could arrive before me and leave that behind.”

Retu sat in the seat of Ruler of the Mist, who could involve herself with the dead.

If one died, whether for a long or short time, they were placed under Retu’s influence.

Some among them mixed into the mist and created ghost stories, but most were crushed beneath the fragments they had left behind and unable to do anything.

Guiding those wandering dead was Retu’s calling. A fate she had to follow as the ruler who governed Mist’s Domain, which guarded the Boundary of Death.

“The reason only a fragment remains is because you came back to life. I could not fail to recognize you.”

Retu continued speaking while looking at the black bead in my hand, then only then lifted her head and met my eyes.

“You are Sek.”

In the past, in death, and now.

For a moment, the solid mist bead soaked into my hand as though rejoicing to find a part of its own soul.

Ding!

[Fragment 〈Soul Fragment of the Revived One―Sek〉 bound to Executor.]

[Acquired 〈Skill—Phantasm Vision〉.]

[Phantasm Vision—Passive

Recognizes phantasmal existences within the Phantasm Domain.]