The Outer God Needs Warmth – Chapter 169

After walking a little through the dark cave, I see light in the distance.

Splash.

As I walk forward, suddenly I hear a sound of water. It was dark in the cave so I couldn’t see well, but water is pooled on the floor.

Fortunately, it’s not too deep so I can walk through. As I walk into the water, it reaches the inside of my thighs.

The water is extremely cold.

If I were an ordinary person, my body would have quickly turned blue, but I’m fine. As I’m forcing my way through the water like that, something gets caught on my foot.

Thud.

Some kind of lump gets caught.

Wondering what it is, I touch it and feel something squishy and something hard. And something like cloth is felt. It’s not dangerous. There’s nothing alive around here to begin with.

If it were alive, there would have been light.

But there’s nothing like that in this place.

Splash.

Soon I came out to an entrance. There were lots of trees lying around the entrance so it was darker than when I was looking in the darkness, but when I went out of the cave, I could at least see the surroundings.

As light shone, I could see the identity of what was flowing into the cave.

A corpse, swollen and half-melted in the water, flows by my side. Boys and girls wearing clothes I often saw at the Royal Academy. But I don’t see any familiar faces.

Not only that, but Kanna’s memory says the way they’re dressed is a complete mess. The eras are all separate, clothes from completely different periods of fashion are overlapping.

It means this isn’t a real corpse, but someone did this to show it. The only person who would do such a thing is the witch.

If you’re going to do it, at least keep the historical accuracy, it feels like I’ve come to an amusement park that didn’t spend a penny on decoration.

Is the theme horror?

Thinking that, I follow the path that seems to be telling me to go there.

As if telling me to come out of the river, the tree trunks surrounding one side of the riverbank are gone. So when I came out, there are lots of decapitated bird carcasses strewn in front.

And each bird’s body and head are different.

As if someone haphazardly pieced them together, the cut surfaces and necks don’t match.

The meat is made to look realistic, and they even paid attention to the smell of blood, but none of it used living materials. The memory of a hunter or butcher says this isn’t meat.

I tried to ignore it and pass by, but there’s nowhere else to go.

A dead end. Heads randomly cut into pieces. It’s a puzzle.

I grabbed a head lying on the ground.

Quack! Cheep! Chirp!

Every time I grab a head, a bird sound comes out. The sound effects are interesting. Memories keep flashing that you need lungs to make sound, or that the blood flowing slickly is too fresh to be real.

So when I matched all the birds’ heads, a child who had become a jam jar with its lid open crawled out from between the surrounding thorny bushes.

The child walks forward, then tears off the clothes it’s wearing, dips it in the jam on its head, and hands it to me. When I receive it, the child points to the hole it crawled out of.

It reminds me of a fairy tale I’ve seen somewhere. I think it was medicine there.

I put it in my mouth.

It’s marmalade jam. The clothes chew like bread.

Well, no food actually entered my body. The sensation of internal organs is completely empty. Instead, my body shrinks as if I’ve taken the right action. The hole the baby crawled out of has become much larger than my height. I now walk into what has become a cave.

When I come out of a cave like a rabbit hole, I see a huge palace in the distance. Is that the destination? They’ve made an interesting story.

I don’t know what the purpose is, but it feels like I’m walking through a fairy tale.

There are subtly a lot of corpses, but isn’t the overall story structure the same? All the birds for the caucus race are dead, and the mouse has already dried up and twisted where it first fell.

Now what’s coming is growing potion and shrinking house?

“Who are you?”

As I was walking while reminiscing about fairy tales, someone suddenly spoke to me.

I blinked. A girl with a small build and long white hair. But she’s too exactly the same as someone in my memory.

It’s a familiar face. From a very long time ago. A witch who never existed in this world.

Hyunkeshuni.

This dismisses the theory that it’s the witch’s fantasy alone. At least, she’s done something to my mind.

All living beings in the third world, including Victoria, are stopped. Of course, seeing that very fast, or objects that should be fast are moving very slightly, time is just moving very slowly.

I thought the world had stopped, but she just did something to my mind. The scale is smaller than I thought.

Above all, it’s impossible for Hyunkeshuni to be in front of me. She fell to the bottom and melted away.

“It’s hard to explain because I’ve changed several times.”

“Who doesn’t change? That’s why there’s something that defines you. Your name. Name.”

She asks for a name. Since I’ve never obtained her memories, I don’t know if this is herself or just a simple illusion. Let’s try one first?

“Belle. Choseol, Rebecca. Choose.”

So I said that. But Hyunkeshuni shook her head. She doesn’t react particularly to Rebecca’s name, just shakes her head.

“No, those aren’t your name, are they? What I’m asking is your real name.”

I don’t know if this is talking about the only person in the faded memories, or if the witch is trying to find out my name.

“I don’t have a name. If you need a designation for my vessel, name it yourself.”

Then Hyunkeshuni giggles.

“Okay. Then how about this name?”

Hop

She came down from the rock she was sitting on and pointed at me while saying.

“Outer God.”

I’ve used the title “Outer God” in this world. But she’s the first person to call me the Outer God.

Which one could it be?

“Call me that. I want to get out of here, what should I do?”

First, I ask the figure in front of me. Then Hyunkeshuni, or the woman modeled after her strokes her chin. At least, it’s an action Hyunkeshuni has never done.

As far as I know.

And she pointed with her finger to the castle visible in the distance.

“Go that way.”

Hmm. Right. An easy-to-understand NPC. This one has no light in its chest. It means it’s not a person. I nodded and was about to go there when I stopped for a moment.

“Excuse me.”

“What is it?”

She looks at me with an expression that says to ask quickly if I have a question. So I asked her.

“What do you think about people who laugh when they’re scared?”

At my question, her expression disappeared. And she stays still without saying anything as if broken. She even stopped pretending to breathe.

I guess there was a logic error because I said something unexpected.

I turned off my interest and headed towards the destination.

I can see a castle in the distance, and there are several places I have to pass through in between. If I meet figures from the past, who will I meet?

“Hmm? You’re a child I’ve never seen before. What brings you to this old man’s house?”

A one-way street. While walking, a door appeared and when I opened it, a place from my memory appeared. Very luxurious, but relatively modest in its own way.

And in front of me is an old man and dozens of busts with their heads missing around him.

I can tell who it is just by looking.

Tis. But we’re not particularly close. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually met him. Even if it’s real, I have nothing to say. So I just… State my purpose.

“I’m heading towards the castle visible out there.”

I pointed to the castle with my finger. Then old man Tis looks at me quietly. And he gets up from his seat, goes to one side of the room, picks up something and comes in front of me.

“Hold out your hand.”

When I held out my hand, he dropped something. It’s a key. The word “despair” is embossed on the key.

“It’s the key to the back door. I hope it helps you on your way.”

“Thank you.”

And Tis went to the window and opened one. Strangely, outside the window is not the space that should be outside the window, but a corridor.

And it’s a very old and ancient passage.

I climbed up through the window and stood in the corridor. Inside the window, Tis is wiping the busts with a cloth.

Leaving him behind, I pass through the corridor again.

Suspiciously, without any flow of conversation or context, he tells me the way to go. What was the witch thinking when she made this?

A corridor with earthen walls without any decoration.

It’s where I lived in the first world. But it’s not a place in my memory. It’s only similar up to a point, the traces and the map in my head don’t match originally here.

So when I passed all the earthen walls, a small room came out.

There are two people there. One is a man with a body as big as a bear, but with a pale and gaunt face. The other person is.

“To think a child like you would be in a place like this, are you lost by any chance?”

Joanna.

“I’m going to the castle.”

“Castle? Do you know where you’re talking about?”

The man answers Joanna’s question.

“She knows. You’re heading to a dangerous place.”

Yasle. The Yasle and Joanna in my memory are not talkative individuals. Looking at that, they’re probably fakes that just look similar.

“But to enter the castle, you need to be invited from there. If not, you have to get a key from a dangerous person.”

I silently took out the key I received from Tis earlier. Yasle looked at it with a surprised expression and opened a door that was in a place where there were only earthen walls in the first world.

“Then you can go this way.”

There were no questions.

I nodded and waved goodbye to Joanna who was waving her hand and Yasle who was looking at the key with a sharp expression, and moved my steps again.

I should be in the middle of the underground, but when I opened that door and came out, a city buried in trees appeared. Trees have grown in a place where there was once a city, and no traces of the city are visible.

A thin stream flows along where there was once a wide road.

I walk along there. The surrounding nature gradually starts to dry up, and soon a place like a newly built city appeared.

A place where buildings rise in a circle around a round square. And under the female statue in the center, the white-haired girl I parted with not long ago is standing with her back turned.

Behind her stands another person I know. A girl who looks exactly like the statue, with a large chest impressive compared to her small stature.

Rebecca Rolfe.

She waved her hand towards me.