Chapter 35
Pession reached out his hand.
Arellin, who was right beside him, pushed him away and disappeared.
Space rumbled and twisted.
A sense of disquiet that vanished in an instant.
“-Master!”
Pession, staring at his hands, which gripped nothing, turned his head at the familiar voice calling to him.
“Graham.”
“Master, are you alright!”
He changed his name, conscious of the stares he was receiving, but his act of supreme respect remained the same.
Pession stared down at his hands, still dazed.
“Master, what happened to you?!”
Around them, the other children and chaperones had gathered, asking each other if they were okay.
“Graham, what happened, please explain.”
“Oh. Well, all of a sudden, all of the video recorders in the guardian’s room broke and stopped working, and the magic on the mansion went haywire. The wizard in charge was rambling, so I don’t know the details…”
“An error?”
“Yeah, so we had to come out and look for the kids ourselves, thank goodness. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Graham breathed a sigh of relief. Pession couldn’t disagree more.
“Arellin’s still in there?”
“What do you mean?”
Mehen, who had now approached, asked, his face pale and determined.
***
“Mmm….”
She opened her eyes to a cold chill touching her cheek.
“Ugh…”
When she regained consciousness, she was lying face down in the corridor alone.
She mean, she saw the space warp, and she pushed on the Pession.
“Am I in the middle of something?”
The view of the mansion was unchanged.
Still the same ominous, dreary space.
“I’m … screwed.”
A strange, grotesquely twisted mansion.
It was clearly the same place as before, but it felt different.
When she was with Pession, she still felt somewhat safe, but now…
‘Looks like one wrong turn and I’ll be decapitated.’
She looked around.
Had the location changed?
“Where am I?”
It was dark outside, like it was night, and she couldn’t see a thing.
The mansion, without a single light, was haunted and eerie.
So much had changed. There were no gadgets, the decor had changed, and…
Hwik-
She didn’t feel any human warmth, but she could sense the hustle and bustle.
The kind you’re never supposed to encounter.
“Hah.”
She was taught that when you’re a human, you stay where you’re sitting.
As much as she’d like to stay put, she have an ominous feeling that she going to get caught by something roaming around and meet a bad end.
‘At least the structure is still there.’
Fortune or misfortune?
That’s when she was cautiously moving around the mansion.
Thrrrrrr.
Thrrrrr.
The direction Pession and she had been playing games.
The alien sound of the place. A strong premonition from the weakest part of her worldview that she shouldn’t go there for some reason made me mute the sound and slowly turn around.
“!”
She stumbled backwards, still breathing, startled by something she had only glimpsed for a moment, between the corridor and the hallway.
‘What … is that!’
She didn’t want to know more, frightened by what her brain seemed to refuse to understand.
This made it clear.
She doesn’t know how, but this mansion is full of landmines everywhere.
“No…”
Why this ordeal for her?
Isn’t this supposed to be Pession’s ordeal, and she taking it for him?
With reasonable suspicion, she move to the safest place she can find.
She doesn’t know the way, but it’s a good thing her worldview’s weakest sensors have made it clear where she shouldn’t go.
Otherwise, she’d be dead.
‘Can we get out of here?’
She’d been wandering around for hours now, and aside from her exhaustion, the mansion was as dreary as it had first seemed.
Have you ever had such a strong sense of foreboding in your life?
Something must be going wrong.
That’s when she thought.
A jerk.
Footsteps that shouldn’t be heard.
Her body stiffened.
‘What, what.’
A frozen, breathless moment.
“You.”
Her eyes locked with his, pupils narrowed vertically, golden eyes glowing in the darkness.
“Can you see me?”
…She met a ghost.
***
“We must find Arellin!”
After a moment of relief that even the crown prince had returned safely, Graham was troubled by Pession’s stubbornness.
The crown prince was not the only one suffering. True adversity was another matter.
“Where’s the manor bookkeeper? Where’s the safety officer?”
All visitors except Pession and Graham were turned away, and the streets of Sharit were sealed off by Halbern.
It had only been three hours, and it had happened as soon as Mehen had arrived.
“Hey, you better calm down…”
The Matap and Faraltri families were stunned by the suddenness of the incident and immediately rushed out, but they were unable to stop Mehen, who had calmly returned.
“Are you sure you’ve had your covenant stability checks done properly? I’m looking at the records from last year, Leiana 1654, and there are a few missing. If you can’t account for them, I’ll have to refer you to the Bregemin of Matap.”
“No, that’s a matter of unavoidable…!”
“Sir Mehen, please calm down and drink this tea first.”
“I was going through the financial statements of House Paraltril and came across a very interesting point. There are some discrepancies with the estimated revenues earned on the streets of Sharit, and I’m sure His Majesty will find this very amusing.”
“…No, what are you doing to me!”
Mehen laughed, having in that short time managed to get his hands on and review all the data on Sharit Street that had accumulated over the decades.
The wizards of the Matap branch, and the House of Paraltri, were going crazy.
“Halbern will not go quietly about this, and the Matap and the Paraltri will have to answer for what happened.”
“No, this is not our fault!”
“We’re doing the best we can!”
“I’m not finished.”
Mehen’s eyes grew cold.
“This is about when she will return safely. If anything happens to her, I’ll be sure to send a message to …”
Gulp.
The sound of someone swallowing loudly echoes through the room.
“You’ll have to be prepared.”
The wizard and the lord of the house, whose feet were suddenly on fire at the sentence that foretold a gale of blood, began to beat their men with glee.
“Hurry up and do something!”
“Well, we’re doing our best.”
“Do something! Do you all want to be taken away by the Master and killed?”
The scene of a heartwarming downward spiral continued.
“Uh?”
Fazizik-!
The wizard, who had been tinkering with the crystals hanging in the mansion for some time, seemed to realise something and rushed over.
“What’s going on, Jenga!”
“Sir Ansen, it’s…”
“What’s going on?!”
“When I was examining the crystal system installed in the mansion, there was a magic repulsion phenomenon! I thought it was strange…”
“Magic repulsion?”
Wizard Ansen had tested the manor’s crystals by spreading his own magic. The magic that resonated with the manor’s crystals suddenly bounced back.
A grip.
“-!”
Ansen’s eyes widened as if he realized something.
“It seems that the mansion has a superimposed karmic system that we don’t know about.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mehen narrowed her eyes at the new information.
“I mean, you can’t stack a bond, even if it’s of the same family, and even if you could, it wouldn’t multiply its power or effectiveness.”
“Ah, enough of the minutiae, just get to the point.”
“Yes, well, it seems that the manor has split into two phases.”
“I thought I told you to keep it simple.”
Wizard Ansen gave me an exasperated look, as if to say, “How can I make it any easier? He grunted and said.
“In short, it’s as if two completely different worlds have been superimposed on the same plane, here in the Mansion.”
Mehen’s expression hardened.
“So.”
“Perhaps Lady Arellin is trapped in the other world of this mansion.”
Arellin, trapped?
