Healing from Dystopia 83

#083

And at that moment, I opened my eyes.

“……”

I just stared at the sky with my mouth open. White snow was pouring down, covering me like a blanket as I lay fallen. The place I was in was still that same garden from before. I couldn’t even feel the cold and just lay there blankly for a while.

The last scene of the dream captivated me. The voice that blamed me for breaking a promise. Was that Carlisle’s voice? Or my voice? I don’t know. Everything was confusing.

It was a strange dream. I couldn’t understand what it meant at all. Well, they say dreams are reflections of the unconscious, so maybe there’s no point in trying to figure out the reason.

Did I have such a dream because I saw Carlisle being captured?

Recalling what happened before I lost consciousness, I grimaced. My whole body ached and the cold I only now realized was covering my entire body. I shivered and got up, looking around.

“What’s this about now…”

I remembered solving the quiz and falling down when the ice bridge collapsed. I definitely fell into ice-cold water when the ice broke. The sensation of my body freezing without even having the strength to struggle was still vivid. But now I wasn’t in water, nor was my body wet or frozen.

I was back in that garden from before, but the path that had crossed through the middle had disappeared. The fragments of the ice statues that had shattered to pieces, and the fence gates that had been placed at intervals along the path, all of it.

The time had changed too. Before it had been daytime unlike the outside, but night had returned.

“Carlisle.”

The image of him losing vitality like a corpse and going limp in his final moment suddenly came to mind. My heart sank. Come to think of it, where did Carlisle disappear to? I looked around but there was no trace of him anywhere.

I was engulfed in confusion. Had I been swept up in another sudden event like in the desert? But there hadn’t been any signs of an event starting. If my memory wasn’t wrong, the mansion owner definitely gave me a quest. Didn’t he ask me to return Celia? He even set conditions that I’d have to return Celia to get Carlisle back, never mind any reward.

But no quest window had appeared… Honestly, I had no idea how I was supposed to return Celia, who had already died long ago and become a ghost.

Given that he had the power to make Carlisle unable to resist, the mansion owner was definitely not just a simple ghost monster. What exactly was his relationship with the Sacred Tree?

It was frustrating and confusing. With no clues and no companions to share opinions with, I had no sense of where or what to start with.

It was true that I had relied on Carlisle to get through many parts of the quest so far. Not just his combat strength, but I might not have been able to solve the quizzes and puzzles with just my own power without him.

But now I really had to manage somehow on my own. If I couldn’t solve this, what would happen to Carlisle… I had no idea. He might be trapped in this mansion forever, or perhaps… disappear. My situation wouldn’t be much different either. Whether it turned out well or badly, I had no choice but to tackle it with the resolve to die.

I steeled my heart, but that didn’t mean my body would easily follow. My head began to throb. My breathing was about to become uncomfortable again. Before being caught by panic again and unable to do anything, I quickly took out my last remaining Tranquility Potion and gulped it down.

First, I tried to look carefully around the garden I was in to find anything that might be a hint, when I noticed a statue that hadn’t been there before. As if to show off, lighting was turned on all around its base, making it impossible to miss.

It was a statue of a woman wrapped in a simple design long cloak with long hair disheveled under her hood. The elegant face hidden under the hood looked tired and sad. A small desert fox in her arms had its head raised, looking up at her. That face also looked pitiful and sad.

I would have known even without seeing the portrait. It was Celia. However.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

Even looking at the statue, nothing came to mind. Should I put heating bands on it to melt it? Should I have brought something from the desert exploration? The desert rose model I saw in the study suddenly came to mind. But that wasn’t real. If I really needed to bring the real thing from the desert, clearing the quest would be impossible from the start.

I needed to find hints, more definite hints. But where, and what?

I wandered around the wide garden with a feeling of helplessness. Nothing that seemed like “this is it” caught my eye. Maybe I was missing something I saw because I was too anxious. Why weren’t the player privileges activating? If there were hints, they should sparkle as soon as I see them!

Time kept flowing by. The mansion owner hadn’t said anything specific about a time limit, but there was a high possibility I still had to solve it before sunrise according to the original event requirements.

‘Let’s go back inside the mansion for now.’

Exhausted, I changed my thinking. If I examined the letters and props again, something might come to mind.

I tensed briefly wondering if I’d have to pass through some trap alone again to enter the mansion, but fortunately this time I could enter normally through the back door. The secret passage had disappeared and the collapsed floors and broken props were all restored to their original state.

I went back into the study. The puzzles and such had all disappeared, but the pile of letters was still on the desk just as I’d taken them out. I thoroughly searched through the desk, bookshelf, and display cabinet once more, including the letters, and carefully examined the portrait as well.

In the portrait, Celia was sitting on a sofa holding a small desert fox in her arms. A few thin books were scattered beside her, and in the corner behind her was a pot with bright red flowers.

“Books…”

Seeing the books, one thing came to mind. Earlier, Carlisle and I had solved the puzzle in the study and then immediately went to the boss mob’s garden through the secret passage, but in the original game event, you had to move to the bedroom and solve one more cipher using books.

The bedroom was at the opposite end of the corridor. I hurriedly left the study and crossed the dark corridor. If the corridor collapsed again this time, it would be difficult to get through with just my own strength, but fortunately it seemed traps wouldn’t activate while I was carrying out the (forced) request from the boss mob.

I remembered that the books used for cipher solving were on the bedside table, so as soon as I entered the bedroom, I headed straight for the bed while barely glancing at the surroundings.

As expected, several books were neatly placed on the bedside table. But more than that, I was startled to discover someone lying on the bed that should have been empty and stepped back with a start.

At first I was wary thinking it might be a ghost NPC, and after realizing the identity of the figure, my mouth fell open.

“Carlisle?”

The one lying quietly on the bed was Carlisle. I couldn’t understand why Carlisle, who had been tightly bound by ice vines and freezing before I lost consciousness in the garden, was here. He was no longer wrapped in ice vines or frozen like an ice statue, but simply looked like he was sleeping peacefully.

I approached almost running, half surprised and half glad, instinctively reaching out my arm before hesitating.

‘Wait. Is this really Carlisle?’

A new wariness suddenly struck me. The mansion owner’s (unilateral) condition had definitely been that he’d return Carlisle if I returned Celia, but there was no way he’d return him so easily before I’d even cleared the quest. There must be some scheme.

‘What kind of scheme?’

I suppressed the urge to shake him awake immediately and carefully examined his face. At first glance he looked like he was sleeping comfortably, but when I looked closely at his face, that wasn’t the case. His complexion was pale overall with deep shadows under his eyes, and his lips had no color either.

It was clear this wasn’t Carlisle in a normal state. But his chest was rising and falling with regular breathing, and when I carefully brought my finger near his nose, I could feel soft breath.

He was breathing. He was breathing, but…

‘Cold.’

The air touching my finger was excessively cold. No normal person could have breath this cold. Moreover, Carlisle’s breath was usually on the hot side, matching his abnormally high body temperature.

I looked at him for a moment, then gently placed my hand around his chest area. Sure enough, his body that was always hot was utterly cold. Even a frozen corpse would probably be warmer than this.

My mood also began to sink coldly. I unbuttoned Carlisle’s shirt to check his bare skin. The tattoo I remembered, that is, the contamination mark, was there intact.

It did seem to be Carlisle after all.

I crossed my arms and fell into thought.

‘What am I supposed to do by showing me Carlisle in this state? Am I supposed to try waking him up myself?’

I looked around. Come to think of it, the bed Carlisle was lying on had a frame made of ice, but the bedding wasn’t frozen and was soft. At the head of the bed was an out-of-place basket of apples. It was a prop that wasn’t in the original game. In a landscape where everything was frozen and looked bluish, the bright red ripe apples particularly caught the eye.

‘What is this, Snow White?’

Such an absurd thought occurred to me. Of course, Carlisle didn’t have black hair, so strictly speaking, Sleeping Beauty would be more fitting.

I chuckled at such a ridiculous imagination in this serious situation and shook my head, then hardened my expression again.

“No. This might really be a hint.”

I looked at Carlisle seriously again. The combination of him fallen into sleep like a corpse on the bed and the out-of-place apples at the head of the bed.

Whether Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, there was one way to wake them up.