Chapter 137: Hanon and Isabel Go Missing

First floor of the Palace, Blue Island.
As expected from the Palace that changes every cycle, the first floor’s scenery had transformed once again.
Into that Blue Island stepped Hanon’s team.
“Huh?”
To be exact, it was Hanon’s team without Hanon.
“Where’s Prince Sweet Potato?”
Seron looked around, clearly confused.
And rightly so—Hanon, who had been with them just moments ago, was nowhere to be seen.
“That idiot, did he not come in with us?”
“No. He should’ve gone in ahead of us.”
At Seron’s words, Aisha tilted her head.
She was sure she had seen Hanon go in first.
“Oh, I’ll go back out and check!”
“No.”
Just as Poara shouted that she would check outside, Sharin blocked her.
Sharin, who had been silently observing ever since Hanon disappeared, now had a deadly gleam in her eyes.
“There’s spatial refraction.”
The Mirinae reflected in her eyes clearly perceived the surrounding area.
A strange current flowed through the entire Palace.
And within a gap in that current, she could sense traces of Hanon.
“Palace Shift.”
At that moment, Grantoni clicked his teeth.
Everyone’s expressions changed in an instant.
Palace Shift.
A rare phenomenon that sometimes occurs at the entrance of the Palace.
The last time it happened was 35 years ago.
Palace Shift is simple.
As someone enters, they are transported to a random floor.
No one knows which floor it’ll be.
Only one person is ever caught in the shift.
It’s unfortunate, but survival in such a case is considered nearly impossible.
This is the Palace—
A hellscape designed by the Evil One to root itself in the world’s destruction.
The Palace has only one intention toward humans: death.
“No, no…”
Seron’s face turned pale.
She too was well aware of the dangers of a Palace Shift.
“We have to go save him now!”
“We will.”
As Seron shouted, Sharin answered with a determined face she had never shown before.
Yet the way her hand gripped her staff tightly revealed just how emotionally shaken she was.
“Wait—Isabel? Isabel, where did you go!”
At that moment, another voice came from behind.
As everyone turned to look, they saw Isabel’s team.
But the one who should’ve been with them—Isabel—was missing.
Just like Hanon’s team, they had become Isabel’s team without Isabel.
“Sharin Sazaris.”
Along with that, another voice spoke up.
Following the commotion, one of the teams ahead had returned.
It was Iris’s team.
Iris, with her ink-black hair flowing, calmly asked,
“What’s going on?”

* * *

Palace Shift, cliff.

Isabel and I, ridiculously enough, had both gotten caught in a Palace Shift and ended up here.
I barely managed to grab Isabel midair and latch onto the cliff wall to stop us from falling.
As I did, Isabel looked around in confusion.
She had just regained consciousness from the aftereffects of the shift, so it was the first time she could actually take in her surroundings.
“Wh-what is going on?”
“Looks like you and I got caught in a Palace Shift.”
Isabel’s eyes widened at my words.
Understandable—she also knew how dangerous a Palace Shift was.
Clinging to the cliff wall, I slowly began to descend at a controlled pace.
“It’s actually a relief. At least you didn’t end up here alone.”
The biggest danger of a Palace Shift is that it usually targets only one person.
But by some stroke of luck, both Isabel and I were transported at the same time.
It was better that I was here than Isabel being alone.
Hearing my words, Isabel stared at me with a baffled expression.
“…Shouldn’t you be the one relieved you’re not alone in this?”
“I’m confident I could get out of here on my own.”
“I never know where that confidence of yours comes from.”
Isabel sighed as she said it.
“Anyway, going down together like this will tire us out. Thanks for saving me, but can you let go now?”
At her words, I let go without protest.
Immediately, Isabel kicked off the cliff lightly—

Whoosh!

Wings of white light spread from her back.
The Wings of the Goddess.
“Flying like this doesn’t really use much energy.”
As she spoke, Isabel reached out her hand toward me.
“Come on. Let’s go down together.”
There’s no need to cling to rivalry in a moment like this.
Helping each other is how we survive.
I took her hand, and she wrapped an arm around me to pull me in.
Since I was in Hanon’s body, which was small in build, it wasn’t hard for Isabel to carry me.
A faint citrus scent brushed past my nose.
I couldn’t exactly climb onto her back with those wings there, so I quietly let her hold me.
“Being like this… now I get why Lady Iris is always holding you. You’re ridiculously warm.”
At that, Isabel let out a small giggle.
We were in the middle of a Palace Shift crisis.
She probably just wanted to lighten the mood.
Then, as if something came to mind, her expression changed slightly.
“…So, what’s going on between you and Sharin?”
She must’ve remembered what happened at the Palace entrance.
“When I asked her yesterday, it sounded like she likes you.”
That made me a bit awkward.
Having someone like me is something I’m thankful for.
But maybe because Seron had already confessed…
And now Sharin too… my head was getting all tangled up.
From how Sharin had been acting, I had vaguely thought something like this might happen.
But once it became real, it was hard not to overthink everything.
“First Seron, then Sharin… you sure you didn’t come to Zeryon Academy just to flirt with girls?”
“If that were the case, I probably wouldn’t be stressing over all this.”
In Blazing Butterfly, the heroines play important roles.
So getting involved with them was necessary to move the scenario forward.
Still, I never imagined it would turn out like this.
Maybe if it were Lucas, sure—but this wasn’t something I thought would happen to me.
They say bonds form just by staying close to someone…

I think I’m finally starting to understand that old saying adults used to throw around—boys and girls shouldn’t sit together after age seven.
‘And yet.’
The ones I’ve ended up entangled with aren’t even meant to be love interests in the original storyline.
Sharin and Seron.
Neither of them were supposed to be involved romantically with Lucas.
Sharin is a whimsical character who occasionally shows up to help.
Seron is more of a fellow student at the academy—just a peer.
So then, what about Iris and Isabel, the main heroines actually tied to Lucas?
To Iris, I’m like a security blanket.
To Isabel, I’m someone she has a love-hate relationship with.
With those two, the distance between us and ‘love’ is pretty vast.
‘Is it because I’m Vikarmern?’
Vikarmern Niflheim, the character I’ve possessed—
He’s a mid-boss type who makes a mistake in Act 2, apologizes, and disappears.
Maybe I ended up tangled with Sharin and Seron because I’m Vikarmern, not Lucas.

“If that’s your big dilemma, wouldn’t it be solved by just dating one of them?”
“You remember what I said last time.”
I don’t have the luxury to date anyone while moving the scenario forward.
Training, academy classes, plus managing the scenario progression—
I try to act like I’m holding it together, but the truth is I’m barely keeping up.
Unfortunately, Vikarmern’s only real talents are stamina and fast recovery.
Nothing compared to Lucas’s overwhelming genius.
Right now, what I need to focus on is the scenario.

“…Then why not just reject both of them?”
Reject them.
That is an option.
If I turn them both down, none of this would be an issue.
But I know—both of them genuinely like me.
“I probably seem like a piece of trash, but… I can’t do that right now.”
I’ve lost the ability to love.
My emotions just don’t move in that direction anymore.
If I rejected them now, it wouldn’t be a sincere rejection.
Since both of them are being honest with me, I want to respond with sincerity too.
That, I believe, is the least bit of respect I can give to Sharin and Seron.

Isabel looked at me quietly.
I don’t know what I looked like to her,
but I had the feeling I probably seemed like even more of a trash person in her eyes.

“…Sorry. That was my bad just now.”
But then, an unexpected response came back.
I thought she was going to curse me out or something.
“I know you don’t have personal feelings for anyone. I’ve been watching you all this time.”
Isabel and I have been connected since the start of our second year.
So naturally, she’s been observing me closely.
She knows I don’t show romantic interest in anyone.

“If you did have those kinds of feelings, you wouldn’t be so calm right now, in a situation like this.”
She looked at me and gave a small smile.
Maybe it was funny, since I was being held in her arms like this.
“That’s actually what makes me curious. You’re still a guy, right? So how are you this unfazed?”

A hint of gloom flickered in Isabel’s eyes.
“…Or is it that I’m just not attractive enough as a woman?”

Every girl says that when they’re upset.
But Isabel is always near the top of every guy’s mental ranking.
The only reason that didn’t show on the surface before was because Lucas was always by her side.
After Lucas disappeared, Isabel fell apart.
That’s why none of the guys had the heart to confess to her.

There were still probably plenty of guys who secretly admired Isabel.
Isabel was always kind and cheerful to everyone.
That alone was more than enough to stir a guy’s heart.
Saying someone like her isn’t attractive would honestly be an insult to every other girl out there.

“Isabel, I don’t know why you’d even think that, but I’ll tell you this.”
I decided to give her a dose of reality.
“If you seriously tried to seduce someone, there wouldn’t be a single guy who wouldn’t fall for you.”
Guys are weaker to pretty girls than they’d like to admit.
Isabel needed to understand that.

At my sincere words, Isabel fell silent.
Then she quietly looked down at me.
“Then what about you?”
Our eyes met.
There was a seriousness in her gaze.

“If I tried to seduce you, would you fall for me too?”
I blinked in response.

“Oh—We’ve hit the ground.”
But before I could answer, Isabel landed.
I stepped away from her, putting a couple of steps between us as she folded her wings.

In the dim space, we could see a floor marked with ominous red lines.
The moment I saw it, my face stiffened.

“This… isn’t somewhere I’ve seen before.”
“…That’s what I figured.”
I replied, my fists clenched tightly.
Isabel seemed to pick up on my change in expression and looked puzzled.

But I was already lifting my head, following the path of red lines.
Isabel looked up after me.
And then, she froze too.

In our field of vision—
A massive door.
Painted all over with ominous red lines that formed disturbing symbols.

Now we finally knew where the dimensional transfer had taken us.
This was the 9th floor of the Palace.
Right in front of the entrance to the Abyssal Sovereign on the 10th floor.