Swooooosh-!
A small house falls across the sky.
Thud!
It crashes down into the land of illusion.
It has fallen here many tis, worn and weathered.
Bang! Suddenly, the door bursts open, and a girl with a sword walks out, muttering.
“Another fun hunting ti, I see.”
…
POV Switch – Alice
The inside of the facility was dark.
The long, narrow corridor made it difficult to know where we were, making it feel even more secretive.
And here and there, between the corridors, we saw people who had beco illusions.
They didn’t seem to react to us particularly.
It seed to be the nature of the changed people.
However, as it doesn’t always have to be that way, there were also aggressive illusions.
A dinosaur-like illusion blocked our path.
“Battle!”
While I was thinking about whether to punch it and get rid of it, I thought it would be good to let the kids fight so they could adapt to their changed forms.
Suho, who had beco a Dullahan, raised his newly transford shield and was already stepping forward in front of us.
Suho had always fought opponents bigger than himself.
So, even with a shield, he mainly protected the children as a tanker who faked or deflected attacks, focusing on evasion.
But this ti.
Whoosh-! Clang!
“Oh!”
The tail swung by the dinosaur illusion was easily blocked by Suho’s shield.
Suho also let out an exclamation of surprise, not really expecting it to work.
He’s beco much sturdier!
Or so I wanted to say, but Suho’s head fell.
Kyeong-min caught it and quickly put it back on.
The scene was chilling, as if it were a taphor for Suho as a tanker, the position with the most life-threatening risk.
Anyway, we have to attack while Suho is blocking, but Kyeong-min’s arms have turned into wings, so he can hold a book but not open it.
“Wait, how am I supposed to fight when my arms are wings!”
“Since you’re a Tengu, can’t you use so kind of magic?”
“They have arms too!”
Hmm, now that I think about it, Tengus had fans shaped like maple leaves, so they did have arms.
“Should I step in if you need ti to adjust?”
Kyeong-min shook his head as if he didn’t want to step in.
I smiled and stepped back again.
“There’s sothing I want to test for a mont.”
Instead of opening the grimoire he had, Kyeong-min devised a way to open it automatically.
That was to replace the book with a scroll.
It was hard to say how that was possible, but the legendary Tengu were said to be skilled in magic, so it couldn’t have been completely without influence.
“Sothing ca out!”
A strong wind ca out of the unfolded scroll and pushed away the dinosaur illusion.
It seems like he can adjust the output, so if he practices a little more, he’ll be able to keep the enemy in check in a different way than the chains.
“Besides pulling, I can push too. I have more options!”
“I’m more comfortable overall because I’ve beco more solid, too? But my head keeps falling off.”
“Then how are you standing?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like I’m not restricted by my field of vision.”
That’s a pretty helpful trait.
However, since it is easy to fall, he should take extra care of his head.
“Eun-jeong is just playing around.”
“No, I’m not! Here, take this!”
Pyororong~
“Oh… healing!”
Eun-jeong fluttered around.
There was a tradition that fairies followed travelers, playing pranks or bestowing helpful blessings.
Eun-jeong, who is the most afraid of us and hates to confront anything, but follows the adventure if there are friends to face it together, seems to have her psychology clearly reflected.
With this, Eun-jeong has speed increase, purification, and healing abilities.
Considering the characteristics of a fairy, it seems like she can also bestow blessings related to luck.
It’s hard to confirm, so I’ll have to test it more.
Next is Ha-rim.
Ha-rim transford into a Dragonkin, highlighting her extraordinary nature.
Usually, even if Ha-rim had to fight alone, she had the capacity to overco it sohow.
But when she was with the kids, she borrowed the power of tools to deal direct damage, or she answered the quiz-like crises like a monster.
It was difficult to deal direct damage as the opponent got stronger, but this ti…
Thud-!
The dinosaur illusion fell with one punch from her.
The children and Ha-rim were surprised and opened their mouths.
I stroked Ha-rim and gave her a warning.
“Don’t hurt them too much. They’re people after all.”
“Sorry. Usually, the enemies we face often don’t get hurt even if we hit them with all our might.”
We identified our abilities and moved forward defeating the aggressive illusions that rushed at us in order to get used to them.
As we adapted to so extent and went deeper, we realized that the illusions attacking us had clearly decreased.
The number was actually larger, but they were all just staring blankly at us.
“They look lethargic.”
These were officials of the Institution, and many of them were suffering from lethargy.
I was convinced that it was the result of that being projected.
Seeing them so lethargic was heartbreaking.
It was like watching a fire that was going out.
The cause is the abuse of mory erasers without facing fear, but the head of the Institution who I talked to said that wasn’t the only reason.
Another reason similar to mory erasers.
I felt like I could find out the reason in the deepest part.
After a long ti, we faced another door.
Next to it was an illusion that looked more listless than any illusion we had seen so far.
It looked at , its eyes cloudy, and handed over a card key as if throwing it.
“…”
This illusion is…
“Card key!”
Ha-rim, who always puts keys and junk in her bag no matter what, reacted first.
She picked up the card key as if snatching it and held it up to the identification door lock of the door.
Bip! The door opened with a sound.
We imdiately went inside the door.
Is this the deepest part?
“Look at this, the number is huge.”
What do you an the number is huge?
I looked at where Eun-jeong was pointing.
A square machine was displaying a number of about 8 billion.
The number was constantly changing.
Hmm, is it a aningful number?
8074235615 ㅡ> 7842555120
“Oh. The number has decreased.”
“I think this looks more important?”
I found a button that looked more important than the number.
Anyone could tell that it was important by the way it was sparkling.
A button that shines in rainbow colors that children can never resist.
As if possessed, I pressed the button, and a video started playing on the large monitor in the center.
What appeared in the video was the head of the Institution who had talked to .
“Good to see you, Alice. The fact that you ca here must an that day has co.”
As expected, the head of the Institution knew about this situation.
“Before talking about this situation, there is sothing I need to explain.”
At his gesture, another video titled Docunt No. 1 started playing next to the screen.
What is it that you have even prepared the docunt for?
Docunt No. 1 – Angels and Demons.
[Angels.
From the ti that anomalous monsters began to appear, they rose to the sky and left us.
But the demons remained.
It wasn’t for us.
Angels and demons existed from the beginning, but anomalous monsters suddenly appeared one day.
Therefore, it was speculated that the demons did not want to acknowledge the monsters that deviated from the rules.
Around the ti when powerful individuals among the anomalous monsters rampaged.
The demons waged war to eliminate the monsters.
The demons succeeded in reducing the number of monsters, but they left only corpses behind, with no survivors.]
Rattle.
Simple photo data passes by, and it imdiately moves on to the next video.
Docunt No. 2 – Singularity
In the video, a woman wearing a witch’s dress draws complex calculation formulas and shows a graph.
Her graph showed the current point in ti as the flat part of the graph.
Then, she emphasized the part that bends exponentially and rises so high that it seems to penetrate the blackboard.
[Singularity.
It is the point at which irregularity increases rapidly.
It has been found that even the anomalous phenona, including the ruler-class entities that are happening right now, are only a flat phenonon just before the singularity.
The increase in nurical value has exceeded 1,000,000 tis and asurent was impossible.
Seeing this, the Institution knew that the singularity was a future that they could never handle.]
Docunt No. 3 – phistopheles
[And phistopheles appeared before the head of that Institution.
Even though all the demons should have died, he appeared casually, claiming that he ca from a higher world.
He knew the Institution very well, as if he had belonged to it.
He proposed a way to continue the world beyond this singularity.]
When the docunt video ended, the head of the Institution in the video finally opened his mouth.
“The proposal phistopheles made was this. As long as we don’t reach the singularity, it’s okay. He said that if we just keep going around in circles without reaching it, the world will continue. We accepted it and started the loop.”
The part about the singularity was shocking, but they created a loop?
How?
“The way to create the loop was to use this phenonon that was bound to happen in the future that he observed with the girl he brought.”
He showed a photo instead of a docunt video, and the scene contained in it revealed the phenonon that we are currently facing.
“Observed future. The phenonon of the whole world turning into a fantasy. It is a phenonon derived from a ruler-class entity. The ruler’s alias is phantom pain. It is a phenonon in which the whole world turns into fantasy, with real-world entities turning into things that do not exist. However, it does not simply change, but rises like fantasy, our imagination, legends, and stories, but eventually disappears like illusions, so the world that has beco fantasy also disappears quietly.”
Things that have beco fantasy gradually collapse and disappear like old legends are forgotten.
It is truly a illusion collapse.
The children listening to the story in the video beco agitated by the quite shocking fact.
“Uh, does that an?”
“Are we terminally ill?”
“Huh.”
As he said, if we do not resolve this phenonon within the ti limit, everything will collapse and disappear.
The sudden countdown made my mind dizzy.
But how are we supposed to use this phenonon?
As if hearing my question, he imdiately told a related story.
“The way to exploit this phenonon is Oz. Using a powerful reality bending device, we can turn back ti.”
Oz. It’s a topic that keeps coming up.
I heard a lot about it from Ariel too.
And I know that it wasn’t simply made with the advanced technology of the Institution.
That was a fact I knew.
But… turn back ti?
Like the agents who abused mory erasers without facing fear, this was the reason why even the head of the Institution had to suffer from lethargy.
They didn’t face the horror of the singularity and just kept turning back ti.
Then ca the limit.
“Oz is a powerful reality-bending device, a biodevice made with the corpses of all demons. However, phistopheles tried to do sothing without agreent using Oz, and we tried to reclaim Oz.”
They tried to reclaim Oz.
An event that occurred separately from what phistopheles had proposed.
Perhaps the head of the Institution had so inkling of what was going on separately.
And that may be related to .
If not, there would be no reason to tell these truths.
“During the reclamation process, Oz disappeared and there was no way to get it back. Except for one exception.”
The fact that it disappeared ant that Oz could also act as a living organism rather than just a machine.
I suddenly wondered why this bioweapon was nad “Oz”.
If that is a fusion made with the corpses of all demons, then why did they bother to give it the na “Oz”?
The answer ca imdiately after.
“The reason why this weapon made with the corpses of demons was nad Oz is because the tale-devil that can find it contextually has been decided.”
We could tell from his words, even though the na was not ntioned.
The na of the tale-devil that will be ntioned next.
“The tale-devil who summons Oz and makes a wish to turn back ti. The one phistopheles calls his prototype. Dorothy. Alice. You are the variable that appeared on this carousel. We have high hopes for you. We are regretting that we were satisfied with repeating even though it was not the correct answer. And we cannot stop the carousel that we created ourselves. Please stop Dorothy from turning back ti. Please break the shackles of us who are helplessly trapped.”
…
POV Switch – 3rd person
Kugugugugugu!!!!
“What… is this!”
The city is torn apart by the storm.
Even the people who had beco illusions there are finely chopped and can’t be found.
Pinocchio realized that this phenonon wasn’t just happening in front of her.
This storm is happening all over the world.
Soone walked up to Pinocchio, who had temporarily lost her composure and was just watching the large-scale event, from behind.
With a broad smile.
“Hi?”
The girl who ca on the storm speaks in a familiar way.
Although the voice was young and childlike, the calmness contained within it felt disjointed.
As soon as Pinocchio put the girl in her eyes, she felt her mind freeze.
Fear.
Pinocchio wondered why this emotion was erging.
Even though she couldn’t find any related mories in her quickly revolving mory, she reached an absurd conclusion.
“That’s really rare. You look very different this ti. A girl, huh?”
Pinocchio takes a deep breath and finally opens her mouth.
“…I’ve never seen you… but I rember. You killed … didn’t you?”
Pinocchio had been killed by this girl so many tis.
The appearance of Dorothy, who was shrouded in mystery!
As always, if you spot any mistakes, feel free to let know—and I hope you enjoyed the read!
—Chip>
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