episode_0169

As you walk a little through the dark cave, you see a light in the distance.

with a splash.

As I was walking forward, I suddenly heard the sound of water. It was dark in the cave so I couldn’t see very well, but there was water on the floor.

Luckily, it’s not that deep, so you can walk in. Just walk into the water, and the water will come up to your thighs.

The water is very cold.

A normal person would have turned blue in an instant, but I’m fine. I was trying so hard to cross the water when something tripped my foot.

Bam.

There’s some kind of lump hanging there.

I felt something soft and hard, and it felt like cloth. It’s not dangerous. There’s nothing alive around here in the first place.

If you were alive, there would be light.

But, there is nothing like that in this place.

Iron Buck.

Soon we reached the entrance. There were a lot of trees around the entrance, so it was darker than what we had seen in the dark, but once we got out of the cave, we could see the surroundings.

As the light shone, the identity of what was flowing into the cave became visible.

A corpse, swollen and half-melted, floats by. A boy and girl dressed in clothes you often see at the Royal Academy. But you don’t see any familiar faces.

Not only that, Kanna’s memories tell us that the clothes are a mess. They are from completely different eras and trends.

This means that this isn’t a real corpse, but someone did this for show. The only person who would do something like this is a witch.

If you’re going to do it, at least stick to historical facts. It’s like coming to an amusement park where not a single penny was spent on decoration.

Is the theme horror?

With that in mind, I follow the path that seems to be telling me to go there.

There are no tree trunks surrounding one side of the river, as if telling me to get out of the river. So I come out and there are dead birds with their heads cut off all over the place.

And each bird has a different body and head.

The cross-section and neck don’t match up, as if someone had messed up the pieces.

There, the meat is made realistic, and the smell of blood is also taken into consideration, but none of the ingredients used are alive. Hunters or butchers. The memories of such experts say that this is not meat.

I tried to ignore it and pass by, but there was nowhere else I could go.

A blocked road. A head with pieces all messed up. A puzzle.

I grabbed my head which was lying on the floor.

Quack! Peep! Tit!

Every time I hold my head, I hear a bird’s sound. The sound effects are fun. I keep remembering things like how you need lungs to make sounds, or how the sticky blood is so fresh and strange.

So as we hit all the bird’s heads, a child crawled out from among the surrounding thornbush, looking like an open jam jar.

The child walked forward, ripped off the clothes he was wearing, put jam on his head, and handed it to me. When I took it, the child pointed to the hole he had crawled through.

I’m reminded of a fairy tale I saw somewhere. I think it was medicine.

I put it in my mouth.

It’s marmalade jam. The clothes are chewy like bread.

Well, there is no actual food inside the body. The internal organs are completely empty of sensation. Instead, the body shrinks as if it has done the right thing. The hole the baby crawled out of is now much bigger than me. I walk to the cave.

As you come out of the rabbit hole, you see a huge palace in the distance. Is that your destination? You’ve made an interesting story.

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

There are a lot of corpses, but isn’t the overall plot the same? The birds that are supposed to be in the caucus race are all dead, and the mice are already withered and twisted where they first fell.

What’s coming out now are growth potions and shrinking houses?

“Who are you?”

As I was walking, reminiscing about a fairy tale, someone suddenly spoke to me.

I blinked. A small girl with long white hair. But she looked exactly like the person I remembered.

It’s a face I know. A long time ago. A witch who never existed in this world.

Hukkeshni.

This dismisses the theory that this is just a witch’s fantasy. At least it did something to my sanity.

All life in the third world, including Victoria, is at a standstill. Of course, time is just passing very slowly, as objects that are very fast or should be fast are seen moving very little.

I thought the world had stopped, but it was just something I did to my mind. It’s smaller than I thought.

First of all, there can’t be a chestnut in front of you. That fell to the ground and melted away.

“It’s hard to explain because it’s changed so many times.”

“Who wouldn’t change? So there’s something that defines it. A name. A name.”

He asked for my name. I’ve never had a memory, so I don’t know if this is me or just an illusion. Should I just ask first?

“Bell. First snow, Rebecca. Choose.”

So I said that. But Hukkeshni shook her head. She didn’t particularly react to Rebecca’s name, she just shook her head.

“No, that’s not your name. I’m asking for your real name.”

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

“There is no name. If you need a name for my bowl, please make it up yourself.”

Then, Hyungkesuni giggles and laughs.

“Okay. Then how about this name?”

Flicker

He came down from the rock he was sitting on, pointed at me, and said:

“Foreign news.”

I’ve used the word ‘foreigner’ before in this world, but you’re the first person to call me a foreigner.

Which one?

“That’s what I call it. I want to get out of here, what should I do?”

First, ask the person in front of you. Then, Hukkeshuni, or the woman imitating her, strokes her chin. At least, it’s something Hukkeshuni has never done.

As far as I know, yes.

And he pointed with his finger to the castle in the distance.

“Go over there.”

Hmm. Right. An easy NPC to recognize. This one has no light in its chest. That means it’s not human. I nodded and started to walk over there, but stopped for a moment.

“Excuse me.”

“Why is that?”

She looked at me like she had a question for me, so I asked her.

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

When I asked him, his expression disappeared. And he remained silent as if he was broken. He even stopped pretending to breathe.

I think I made a logical error because I said something unexpected.

I turned my attention away and headed towards my destination.

I can see the castle in the distance, and there are many places I have to pass through in between. If I were to meet someone from the past, who would I meet?

“Hmm? This is the first time I’ve seen you. What brings you to this old man’s house?”

A one-way street. As I walked, a door appeared, and I opened it to find a place I remembered. It was a very luxurious, yet modest place.

And the old man in front and dozens of headless busts around him.

I know who it is just by looking at it.

Tisha. But we’re not that close. We’ve only met a handful of times in real life. Even if we did, there’s nothing to talk about. So just… tell me your purpose.

“I’m heading towards the castle you see outside.”

I pointed to the castle with my finger. Then the old man, Tisha, looked at me quietly. Then he got up from his seat, went to one side of the room, and came to me with something.

“Reach out your hand.”

When I reached out, I dropped something. It was a key. The key had the word despair engraved on it.

“The back door key. I hope it helps you on your way.”

“Thank you.”

And then I went to the window and opened one of the windows. Strangely, outside the window, instead of the space that should be outside the window, there was a hallway.

That’s a very old and worn-out passageway.

I climbed up to the window and stood in the hallway. Inside the window, I was holding a towel and wiping the bust.

Leave him behind and go back down the passage.

It tells you which way to go without any context or flow to the conversation. What was the witch thinking when she made this?

A passage with a mud wall without any decoration.

It’s where I lived in the first world. But it’s not the place I remember. It’s just a little similar, but the original traces and the map in my head don’t match.

So after passing through the mud wall, a small room appeared.

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

“I never thought there’d be a kid like you in a place like this, are you lost?”

Joanna.

“I’m going to the castle.”

“Sex? Do you know where I’m talking about?”

The man answers Joanna’s question.

“I know. You’re heading to a dangerous place.”

Yasle. Yasle and Joanna in my memories are both quiet. Looking at them, they are probably fakes with similar faces.

“But to enter the castle, you must be invited there. Otherwise, you will have to get the key from a dangerous person.”

I silently took out the key I had received from Tisha a moment ago. Yasle looked surprised when she saw it, then opened the door in a place where there had only been a mud wall in the first world.

“Then you should go this way.”

There were no questions.

I nodded and waved to Joanna, who was looking at the keys with a sharp expression, and then continued walking.

It would be in the middle of the underground, and when I opened the door and came out, I found a city buried in trees. Trees had grown where the city once was, and there was no trace of the city.

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

Keep walking along there. The surrounding nature gradually begins to dry out, and soon you come across a place that looks like a newly built city.

A place where buildings rise up in a circle around a circular plaza. And in the middle of it, under the stone statue of a woman, stands the white-haired girl who we broke up with a while ago, with her back turned.

Behind her, there is another person I know. A girl who looks exactly like the statue, with impressively large breasts compared to her short stature.

Rebecca Rolfe.

She waved at me.