#122
“While fighting, I got injured and blood flowed, and it seemed to have an effect on the monsters, so I kept using it. But as you said, that was just a hallucination and it actually had no effect on the dragon or mermaids. As for breathing… I don’t know either. I lost consciousness and when I opened my eyes, I could breathe underwater on my own.”
I shook off his hand and walked down the corridor again.
“Raon, wait a moment.”
Carlisle quickly approached and blocked my path. I glared at him. I thought he would continue asking about my abilities, but he suddenly asked an unexpected question.
“Have you… recovered all your memories?”
“…What?”
I couldn’t help but open my mouth since I never expected to receive such a question from Carlisle.
Asking if my memories have returned. That’s not something Carlisle, someone from this world, should be saying to me, is it?
Of course, after entering the sea, I had received hints that there were erased memories and had seen things called memory fragments. But I still couldn’t tell whether I really had lost memories or if it was simply a dungeon trick. It could just be referring to memories as a player character.
It was certainly abnormal that I couldn’t properly recall real-world memories yet didn’t find it strange… but anyway, that was still a story within me. It wasn’t something to discuss with people from this world… that is, with NPCs in the game.
To be honest, I could no longer think of Carlisle and the others as simple NPCs. They had already become more than mere data fragments within me. But that didn’t mean I could accept everything the ‘memory fragments’ showed me as truth.
My limit was acknowledging that this world might not simply be the game world I had played, but might actually be a real existing world. The idea that I had actually come to this world from childhood and formed relationships with people—accepting such things as fact when I had no memory of them was difficult.
Some of the visions were even…
I looked at Carlisle standing before me again. When I met his cold gray eyes, my hand unconsciously moved toward my left chest. I still felt like I could sense being stabbed by the sword he wielded. If even that was something that really happened, something I experienced… No. I absolutely didn’t want to accept it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no way I have lost memories or anything like that…”
I avoided his gaze. But Carlisle blocked my path again as I tried to turn and walk away. His gaze persistently examined my eyes. Had my pupils wavered? A strange smile appeared on Carlisle’s lips.
“Not all of them have returned yet?”
Not ‘all’ of them have returned?
Carlisle’s tone was gentle and both his eyes and mouth were smiling. But somehow I didn’t feel good about it.
“What nonsense are you spouting about memories and such?”
An irritated tone burst out without me realizing it. I was struggling to handle the increasingly tangled confusion.
“Raon.”
As I pushed past him and walked away, Carlisle spoke gently to the back of my head.
“I can send you back to your home.”
At those words, I stopped walking. It felt like I’d been hit in the back of the head with a hammer.
Send me back to my… home?
Carlisle walked up to my frozen figure and faced me again. I narrowed my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
I tried to act calm, but I couldn’t help my voice trembling without realizing it. To Carlisle… to someone from this world, was it okay for him to know that I was a being from another world?
“Anyway, once we collect all the Fragments of the Sacred Tree and solve the corruption… I can return to my home on my own.”
I spoke as usual, in words that could also be interpreted as my farm in this world.
“Ah, if you mean this as a way to erase the debt I owe you…”
Carlisle interrupted my attempt to steer this toward ordinary conversation.
“How much do you trust me?”
It was an unexpected question.
“…What?”
The gray eyes looking at me were calm and sharp without the slightest waver. Before I could answer, Carlisle threw another out-of-the-blue question.
“What do you think about the Priest?”
“What do I think?”
“Do you think he’s trustworthy?”
“…?”
I did think he was someone hiding something. But the meaning of this question seemed to be asking whether I thought he was a villain.
Just today, I was able to save my life thanks to the pill he gave me. Moreover, his appearance in the memory fragments—did I call him teacher? If those were real memory fragments, he was someone who taught young me something. He looked kind and gentle. No, did he also look cold? And rather, if anyone was a villain in the visions I saw today, it would be more than the Priest…
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
I answered weakly.
The people I actually encountered, the appearances I saw in memory fragments, and the information given by various visions were all mixed together, leaving me simply confused. I have no idea about the Priest. He’s both suspicious and not suspicious.
To be honest, the person I found hardest to trust was Carlisle. I was having a harder time because my heart wanted to trust the most suspicious person too much. Ever since seeing the black pearl vision, my head had been so complicated it felt like it would explode, and I wanted to refuse thinking altogether.
Carlisle dropped another bomb in my head.
“The one who brought you to this world was actually the Priest.”
What?
This was the sound of my worldview crumbling into chaos. My vision spun. For a moment, my head went completely empty. After a while, I realized I wasn’t even breathing and barely managed to inhale.
“Wh-what the hell…”
“You were dragged here while playing a game, right? That game was actually designed by the Priest.”
“……”
I just stared at Carlisle with my mouth agape in a daze. I had no choice. But Carlisle looking at me maintained a dry expression and tone throughout.
“The final reward of the main quest probably appeared as a wish ticket. You were thinking of receiving that and returning to your original world.”
This doesn’t make sense. This was the real hallucination. No matter how confused I’d become with things like my voice and memory fragments… I honestly couldn’t fully believe them. I might have unconsciously still been thinking of them as part of the game.
But from the mouth of Carlisle, who should be an NPC in this game world, came the words “original world.” He directly mentioned the word “game.” The Priest, a character in the game, had dragged me from reality to here. This was a real shock incomparable to anything else.
“You really shouldn’t believe that, Raon. That’s all a scheme the Priest devised to make you do quests, to make you find the Fragments of the Sacred Tree.”
“W-wait a minute. Wait.”
The world spun. I was panting and felt dizzy, so I leaned my back against the wall. Carlisle quietly watched me as if observing.
To some extent, I had unknowingly been accepting like getting soaked in drizzle that this world and the people here were real, not data fragments. But the fact that I had been moving according to someone’s script was another matter entirely.
This shocking fact—all the events that had happened since coming into the game, all my actions as a player were actually moving according to a script the Priest had written. How was that possible? Moreover…
“How do you know this fact?”
I looked straight at Carlisle.
Actually, the reason he came to participate in my quest was because of my request. Carlisle hadn’t approached me first. But does that mean I can completely trust him?
It was the Priest who dragged me into this world where it’s hard to survive alone and made me do quests impossible to complete by myself, and it was also the Priest who cornered me into a place with nowhere to run, forcing me to ask Carlisle Lightinger for help. So, in other words, he… the two of them…
Carlisle lowered his eyes.
“Because I cooperated in… bringing you to this world.”
When the answer I had suspected actually came out, my head rang for a moment.
“But Raon, I had my circumstances too.”
Carlisle hurriedly continued.
“The Priest has the ability to manipulate people’s memories. He manipulated my memories, so I was used by him. Raon. I would never do anything to harm you. Because I… like you.”
I heard an unexpected confession in an unexpected situation. My mouth opened by itself. Even though it wasn’t the right situation, my heart stupidly pounded.
“Sud-suddenly what are you saying…”
“I don’t know how much of your memory has returned, but Raon. I like you. I’ve liked you continuously since childhood, never changing for a single moment. So I won’t do anything that would harm you. No, I can’t do it.”
Carlisle approached me closely. His expression became heavy and his voice became even lower. My heart jumped wildly.
“Raon. You have to return to your world.”
At the following words, it felt like cold water had been poured over me. After saying he likes me… I have to go back?
“…What?”
“If you stay here, you’ll only become nourishment for this world’s corruption recovery. The Sacred Tree, which was corrupted and rotting, must have discovered you and dragged you here with that intention. This world, so to speak, needs a sacrifice to solve the corruption.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
