Chapter 299

In the end, I accepted Milited's proposal — at least for now — and decided to stay in its territory for a while.

The reasons were simple enough: Han Su-yeong still hadn't come around, probably from taking the brunt of that unidentified light, and moving blind through a world I knew nothing about would only invite trouble.

Milited told me it had business of its own and would be away for about a week. It added that it had already instructed its subordinates to treat me and Han Su-yeong as equals to itself, so I shouldn't hesitate to ask for anything I needed. Then it was gone.

Living under the lavish hospitality of Milited's subordinates, I used Henir's Shadow and the World Tree's Branch to gather information on the surroundings.

The conclusion I eventually reached was that this really was the world of three hundred years ago.

What surprised me was that, unlike the world I came from, the overall level of civilization here three centuries back didn't look much different from the present day. The only real difference was that monsters — Milited included — wielded overwhelming power, and it was, in every sense, a bleak age for humans. Here and there I caught fragments of talk about other Seven Calamities like Margo and Minerva, too.

"What should I do."

Muttering it to myself, I poked a finger at the small body riding on my shoulder.

"And how did you even end up tagging along all the way out here?"

"…!"

"Ow."

In response to my question, Rauné lightly smacked me on the cheek, as if to say what was there to complain about. It looked sulky enough to give the impression of nursing a small wound to its dignity.

I'd left it back in my dorm room before the fight with Milited broke out — but somewhere along the way, without me noticing, the little thing had latched onto me.

'Wait, hold on…'

Hadn't Belluna said she'd borrowed the ring?

So how had Rauné slipped into the dorm in the first place?

"Rauné, when exactly did you stick yourself to me?"

The little thing took the question for an interrogation and tilted its head in a deliberate not-listening sort of way.

I told it I wasn't scolding, just genuinely curious, and slipped the question in casually.

"Now that I think of it, I don't see the ring or the necklace. You didn't lose them, did you?"

"…?!"

Rauné froze in alarm, as if to say of course it hadn't, then opened its mouth wide and shoved both hands inside. As the ring slid out from between its lips, I raised a hand to stop it.

"No, it's fine. You don't have to pull it out."

It tucked the ring and the scale back into its mouth with a small huff.

So it had gotten the ring straight back from Belluna.

I was about to follow up with another question —

"Mmgh…"

A rustle of bedding, and at last Han Su-yeong stirred awake.

I told Rauné we'd talk again later and went straight to her side.

I'd checked her over more times than I could count and found nothing wrong, but a nagging worry refused to leave the back of my head.

"Su-yeong."

"Mm…?"

When I leaned close and called her name softly, Han Su-yeong looked up at me with that hazy voice peculiar to someone surfacing from a long sleep. Her eyes blinked slowly, still drugged with drowsiness.

She studied me for a long moment with her brow drawn together, as if trying to decide whether the thing in front of her was friend or foe. She always wore a smile, so I'd never really noticed, but it struck me again that her natural features leaned sharp rather than soft.

Then, at some point, the wariness fell out of her face and she broke into a loose, dopey little grin.

"Whaaat…"

She mumbled and stretched a hand out toward me, fingers wriggling.

It was a sloppy reach aimed nowhere near me — no way it would actually connect — yet she muttered "knew it" under her breath. From her expression, she clearly thought this was a dream.

"Sleepy…"

"Wake up a little, Su-yeong. Sleep later, okay? We have a lot to talk about."

I caught her by the shoulders and gave her a careful little shake.

She had been happily nuzzling her cheek into the blanket, and now her body gave a small jolt. The trembling pupils sharpened back to clarity in an instant and started darting around the room.

"…Huh?"

She murmured blankly and slowly turned her head to look at me.

"Huh?"

"Sleep well?"

I shot her a grin, and she let out a sharp little scream and scrambled away from me.

She floundered around on the absurdly enormous, plush bed, completely unable to get her bearings.

"Wh-what? Ji-hyeok?! Why are you next to — wait, where am I? Huh? A bed? No, what?!"

"All right, just settle down for a sec. I'll explain everything."

Han Su-yeong took a moment to calm her startled heart, then quickly scanned the room.

She nodded, composing herself even as her face still showed shock.

"Right, the strange light just swallowed us up at the end there…"

"You remember?"

"Yeah. I remember pulling the pendant off your body too — all of it."

Her face settled into a calm expression as she said it.

"So that's what happened… I lost consciousness. But are the others okay? Wait, are you already healed? You came all the way to check on me like this."

"Mm, about that. Su-yeong. The thing is…"

That was when —

A soft knock came at the door.

"Oh, yes. Come in, please!"

Han Su-yeong called back, then froze the moment the people stepped inside, her eyes huge and her mouth hanging half-open without a word coming out.

"Your companion has finally awakened. Many congratulations, honored one."

The huge man who'd opened the door bowed deeply in my direction.

The woman beside him kept her eyes lowered and asked Han Su-yeong politely, "Is there anything you require? If you wish it, we can prepare a bath at once. Or, if not — fresh clothes? Something light to eat?"

"Uh. Uh…?"

They were Landschi and Natalia Milited, respectively.

I answered in Han Su-yeong's place — she was clearly no less rattled than I'd been a few days earlier.

"I'll call you back later. Step out for now. We have things to talk about, just the two of us."

The two of them showed no reaction at all to my casual familiarity in addressing them and bowed deeply once more. As they backed out and closed the door behind them, Han Su-yeong turned to me with a silent demand for an explanation written all over her face.

"I don't even know where to start, but I'll tell you everything I know for now."

With that, I snapped my fingers.

The threads of Henir's Shadow and the World Tree's Branch I'd spread out everywhere to gather information rushed back, contracting fast and pulling into my body.

"Try not to be too shocked, though."

…Even as I said it, I knew I was asking for the impossible.

"…So this is the world of three hundred years ago?"

She asked again, as if she still couldn't believe it. I nodded without a word.

She sat on the bed with an expression I couldn't begin to put into words.

"And you've decided to work with Milited? Not our world's Milited — this world's?"

"That's the plan, for now. Using the pendant requires a Seven Calamity's core, and there's no easy way to get one of those. On top of that…"

I was struggling inwardly with how to explain it —

"I know what you're trying to say, Ji-hyeok."

Han Su-yeong said it confidently.

"We need to get back as fast as we can, right? And we can't go around picking fights here, so going after another Seven Calamity is out — killing one is going to cause shockwaves on a massive scale, and there's no way to predict what happens next."

She nodded as she finished, then flashed a grin at me when she caught my surprised look.

"Hey, I'm a spatial-type ability user. Parallel worlds, multiverses, all that theory — I know it."

"Right, you would."

I was thinking it was a relief she was taking it more steadily than I'd dared hope —

When, just by chance —

Out of pure coincidence, I noticed that the teacup she held with both hands was trembling.

"……"

…Right. Of course she wasn't unafraid.

Looking back, this was my second time going through something like this, so I'd had it easier. For her, it was the first. It wouldn't have been strange at all if she'd panicked right there on the spot.

But she was putting up a brave front, not wanting to worry me.

I pretended not to notice the effort and offered her a small, easy smile with my eyes.

"It's all right, Su-yeong."

"Hmm…?"

"It's all going to work out."

The way it always had.

Her lips parted slightly at that, then curved into a faint smile. Color came back to her face, and she nodded slowly, looking brighter than she had a moment ago.

"Yeah. I'll trust you this time too."

"Good. You should."

For some reason her reaction made me self-conscious, and I cleared my throat a few times.

"…All right. Let me tell you what we're going to do from here. First — like I said, we keep working with Milited."

"Yeah, I think that's the best move too."

"But right before you woke up, it told me it had something urgent to deal with and took off. Said it'd be about a week. Honestly, that's the best thing for us. While it's gone, you spend the time recovering the rest of your strength. I'll see what else I can dig up about this world."

Han Su-yeong nodded in understanding.

Then she noticed a small crystal orb sitting on the table where someone had set it down absently, and tilted her head.

"What's that? I can feel your mana and presence on it."

"Oh, this?"

I picked up the apple-sized crystal sphere.

I'd picked it up as a reward through Lee Yu-na's awakening, just before getting dumped into this world.

[You have fulfilled Lee Yu-na's awakening condition!]

[Awakening condition — Guide Lee Yu-na to hear the voice of nature and grasp the truth.]

[You have fulfilled a total of three persons' awakening conditions.]

[As a reward, you acquire a Legendary-grade item.]

[Guide's Crystal (Legendary, Unique)]

• A tool that lies outside the laws of cause and effect: it glimpses the owner's future and changes color of its own accord to warn them when danger or a great event is about to descend. At first, it predicts only the future about to break upon you, but with practiced use, it may show fragments of a distant or chosen future. It predicts only the owner's future, and the one who carries it gains a significant boost to mana and mana recovery.

"It's a fortune-telling thing. I just happened to pick it up…"

"Huh? It changed color, didn't it? That's neat — it looks like someone dumped lye into it."

"……"

At her words, I looked down at the crystal in my hand.

The orb had been transparent just moments before — and now, exactly as she'd said, it was clouded over a milky white.

According to the description, the color changed when danger or some great event was about to descend on me.

Danger or an event that was right on top of me.

A vague unease made me drop it into my pocket — and that was when —

"Honored one — pardon the intrusion!"

The door slammed open with a heavy thud.

A man rarely seen flustered now wore exactly that expression. He dropped to his knees at once and bowed his head, as if to atone for the rudeness.

"Forgive my discourtesy. Given the urgency of the moment, please pardon my behavior, honored one!"

"What is it?"

"It — it's…"

Landschi swallowed thickly and went on, picking his words carefully as he watched my face.

"M-Minerva is heading straight for this place."

"…What?"

[Hm?]

Inside me, Minerva let out a startled sound, as if to say what nonsense was this.

[What sort of drivel is that? This one? What in the world would this one come flying to Milited's stronghold for?]

"And according to the report from the scouts… o-our lord is being brought along, in her custody."

"……"

"And combined with her burning down a city under our rule a few days ago, it seems clear that the hostility is directed at us, here…"

I managed to pull my thoughts together and nodded.

"So what you're saying is, we run, fast?"

There was no reason in the world to pick a fight with Minerva.

Especially not the Minerva of her prime, with every ounce of her power recovered.

This wasn't an exaggeration — one wrong move and our lives were gone.

She was, quite literally, a calamity. A natural disaster in everything but name.

The sane play, when something like that came at you, was to get out of the way.

"……"

But Landschi said nothing.

He just kept his head bowed as if trying to drive his forehead into the ground.

In that instant, a creeping, indescribable dread shot through the back of my mind.

You can't mean —

"She…"

Landschi opened his mouth slowly.

"She — she said to bring the honored one before her."

For a second, I couldn't believe my ears.

"What?"

"And if her demand is refused, she said she would burn our lord's life away — along with everyone gathered here…"

I just stared, dumbstruck, as Landschi pressed his forehead lower still, as if he'd run out of any face to show. Beside me, Han Su-yeong's breath caught audibly, and Rauné gave a small, trembling shudder.

[…You were impressive even back then.]

Sbeungali only murmured it quietly.

His tone carried the dry edge of someone gently scolding another.

[T-three…]

[Please don't say things like, 'three hundred years ago I was just hot-blooded' or 'I was young then.']

Sbeungali cut Minerva off mid-stammer in the flattest tone imaginable.

[I'm advising you sincerely here — saying that sort of thing is only going to make you look worse.]

[…….]

Minerva said nothing.

The arrow had clearly hit dead center.

Then — a thunderous voice rang out, loud enough to split eardrums.

[How long do you mean to keep this one waiting?!]

Venomous, sharper than a blade, the kind of voice that made a body shrink instinctively.

And yet — familiar to the ear, beautiful as a song.

It was, without mistake, Minerva's voice.

The Minerva of three hundred years ago was calling for me.

And…

[A-aah…!]

The Minerva from three hundred years after this era let out a small, mortified groan, as if dying of embarrassment.

[Wh-why on earth is she doing this…]

It was the voice of someone genuinely lost, genuinely wronged.

There had never really been another option.

I walked slowly out through the doors of the great mansion.

It should have been broad daylight, the surroundings bright — but everything was sunk in shadow.

Because something the size of a mountain was blotting out the sky.

"…Minerva."

I murmured it weakly and lifted my eyes to the heavens.

Who could have imagined I'd end up face to face with her like this — twice in one lifetime.

Before me stood the one who could be called the strongest of the Seven Calamities without a hint of overstatement.