The part that worried me was that this rat's blood was acidic. If this blood was smeared on all the walls, my hands and feet would melt on the way. I threw a small stone and confirmed something peculiar.
"... When did they do this."
It's all dried up. Except for the wall the rat first melted, the dried, browned walls gave off a nauseating, rotten smell. This means the hole was a shortcut prepared in advance.
Also, where I would be imprisoned in this underground dungeon was completely random. This means they had done this to almost every cell. There must be more than one or two of these.
I could see now that the organization called Red Lotus had been preparing for a very long time. Did they say it was a group that only appeared in fairy tales? I don't know if it's the same one, but if it is...
I shook my head to clear away the stray thoughts. There was a bigger problem at hand.
"Tsk."
That I had to crawl through this horrible place myself. Escaping from reality wouldn't help. I pushed my small body in and, holding my breath, crawled through the small passage.
Fortunately, unlike how it looked, the passage widened as I crawled. It became wide enough for even an adult man to pass through, so aside from the stench, I could move more comfortably than I expected. Then, another question arose.
Where on earth did this lead? In any case, escaping the Imperial capital through this small passage was next to impossible. And soon, a guard would notice my escape and sound the alarm.
At most, I had about 30 minutes left. There had to be a worthy plan at the end of this. With a bit of anticipation, I reached the end of the passage and saw a small wooden door. -Creeak...
"Hmm?"
Instead of an exit, a similar dugout appeared. A dim lantern hung from the ceiling, the air acrid. In the dugout, which couldn't have been more than a dozen square meters, a pale-faced man turned to look at me.
The man was squatting with a long pipe that gave off a very strong smell in his mouth, and he looked at me with a dazed expression.
"What, you really came."
"Red Lotus?"
"Well..."
The man trailed off, his expression turning blank. As if he'd forgotten he was just talking to me. What's with this guy?
I looked around the dugout. There were several wooden doors in the dugout. It seemed they had made holes so that no matter which cell one was imprisoned in, they could reach this place.
And giant sacks. Sacks of medicinal herbs were packed tightly, filling the space. The man, who staggered up in the space with barely any room to stand, took some of the herbs and put them in his pipe.
Even without being lit, they started to burn, releasing an unpleasant scent. Just the secondhand smoke was enough to make my mind hazy.
"Haa..."
I was momentarily bewildered watching the man sit down again. This place had no exit other than the small passage. And, if all those passages led to prison cells?
"How long have you been here?"
"Hmm, I don't know."
The man with the dazed expression, the amount of herbs he just used for his smoke. The herbs packed in one sack. And based on the empty sacks around him, I made a rough estimate.
The conclusion was that this fellow had been doing nothing but smoking in this place for several years. The end of my escape from prison was a confined space even more terrible than the prison itself. What on earth.
As I looked around with a confused expression, the man glanced at me and nodded as if he remembered something.
"Right, that was the deal."
"What?"
"Come here."
The man beckoned with his finger. After a moment of hesitation, seeing no other choice, I approached him. He gathered the nearby herbs and stuffed them into his pipe.
One handful, two handfuls, three handfuls... almost an entire sack. Strangely, all those herbs fit into the pipe. As I watched in amazement, he inhaled.
"Don't resist. It'll get annoying."
I blinked once. The moment he exhaled, my Deep Sea filled with something cloudy. A liquefied gas.
Intervening in my Deep Sea meant only one thing. I stepped back in shock.
"The Great System? Why is someone from the Great System here?"
"... Size alone means nothing."
The man's smoke touched my body. At the same time, I felt a burning sensation. As I frowned, he added.
"I told you not to resist."
"I'm... not resisting."
When I answered through gritted teeth, he tilted his head.
"You're right. Then why is this so difficult..."
I kept my mouth shut and endured the pain. Soon, my arm fell off with a snap.
"?"
No. That's not it. My arm felt so light that I thought it had been severed, but it was still properly attached. It had just become faint.
As if it had blurred into the world. It didn't take long for my entire body to become like that. Having turned translucent like a ghost, I stretched my body this way and that before I realized.
I had now become something like smoke. It was an indescribably strange feeling. My body was beyond light; it felt like I could fly anywhere with just a few leaps, and that I could squeeze through any tiny crack.
Hoo, taking that chance, the man let out a small breath. The breath turned an azure color and rose through a small crack in the dugout's ceiling.
"Follow that..."
After saying that, the man slumped down again and put the pipe in his mouth as if his work was done. Before leaving, I asked one last question.
"The guards will soon notice I'm gone, won't they?"
He exhaled a second breath instead of answering. The breath became me. The smoke, taking on my form, was sucked into the passage I had come from.
A deception.
Even if it was discovered... ...there was no way this fellow wouldn't be able to get out. I glanced at the man who no longer even looked at me, and pushed my body into the crack through which the azure breath had escaped. I could levitate naturally.
Passing through the crack, I came out into a small back alley. The azure breath didn't go anywhere. It just shot straight up into the sky and then—vanished from sight.
I hesitated for a moment, then kicked off and soared.
"... Ha."
I had to admit it. That smoker's ability was quite enviable. My childhood wish to fly freely through the sky with my own body, now that it was actually happening, was not something to be dismissed as a simple childhood dream.
It was a sense of liberation incomparable to being on an airplane. I looked down at the capital, embroidered with the lights of countless lanterns, thinking this must be why people do things like paragliding. But there was no time to get lost in sentiment.
The breath moved at a speed similar to the wind, and to not lose it, I too had to move with all my might. My body scattered and reassembled itself several times. Flying was nice, but honestly, this was a difficult sensation to accept.
It felt like my ego was scattering. If I were to split and fall apart—it felt like two versions of me with different thoughts would emerge. That would no longer be me.
I would disappear, and two new people would be born. Is this why they don't use that guy often? I held on tight to my consciousness and followed the azure breath until I reached a forest.
The breath dissipated at the mountain's summit, under a tree.
"Cough, cough... Ptui!"
I fell to the ground, grabbed onto the tree, and spat. Upon reaching the destination, my body had already returned to its normal human form. What just happened felt as unreal as a scene from a dream.
Yes, something from a dream. How could a person fly in the sky and crawl into a crack narrower than a thread? If one lived their entire life in such a world— "It's no wonder he's so dazed..."
I could understand that fellow's vacant attitude. A reply came to the words I muttered while pulling myself together.
"Still, you're one of the better ones. The mentally weak ones either scatter along the way or end up as broken shells afterwards."
"...!"
I spun around quickly. Above me in the tree, a woman with a serpentine impression was sitting on a branch, looking down at me. Literally a snake.
White-bleached hair reaching her waist, red eyes, and a black uniform like an assassin would wear. Her thin, vertical pupils looked at me and smiled.
"We have no use for people like that. Our goal is to help each other live, so there's no reason to accept useless trash that we'd have to help one-sidedly, is there?"
"Were you waiting for me?"
"Yeah. Suirak specifically said to wait here."
She leaped down lightly, approached, and held out her hand.
"Damyu. My world is a swamp."
"-is?"
"Yes, it might be easier to understand if I call it a quagmire."
Feeling the solid ground beneath me, I looked down at the hand she offered with a bright smile. I didn't take it.
"Jern. I don't know my world."
"Hmm, there are three things I want to ask."
Damyu didn't lower her hand and asked as if curious.
"Aren't you Jern Aspandil?"
"I have abandoned that name."
According to the story, I fought with my Master. I must not forget that. After confirming the anger in my eyes, Damyu asked her second question.
"Why don't you know your world?"
"It's just as I said. I don't know."
"Really? But you should naturally know where you are, right?"
"No matter how many times you ask, the only answer you'll get is that I don't know what I don't know. What's the last one?"
"My hand is getting sore."
Her pupils dilated like an animal's. "Aren't you going to take it?" It seemed she wouldn't lower it until I took it. Having no choice, I took her slender hand.
It was a cold hand that didn't feel like it belonged to a living human. The murderous atmosphere from a moment ago vanished in an instant, and Damyu, smiling brightly again, shook my hand vigorously as she explained.
"Welcome to the group! Well, you still have to pass a few more tests, but I think you'll make it through."
"Tests?"
"Yeah, tests. But you only have to do one! Suirak vouched for you, after all."
"Is that so? What is it?"
"Hmm, what should it be..."
Damyu, who was tapping her chin in thought, threw out a suggestion as if in passing.
"How about escaping from there?"
Before I could even wonder what she meant, I noticed something. My height was shrinking. Not just my height, but the surrounding trees and rocks too.
Everything was slowly sinking into the ground.
"Yep, you weren't lying. It's clear you don't know. Then listen carefully."
Damyu held up one finger and explained.
"The fallen ones are each a world unto themselves. Making direct contact with a world? That's the same as saying you'll step into their world. It's something you must never do."
"Well, some of those from the Great System expand their worlds to forcibly invite others in without contact. But there are only four who have reached that realm, including Suirak. If you're not confident, you shouldn't touch them."
As I calmly listened to her explanation, I had already sunk up to my knees. Damyu looked down at me and twisted her lips.
"If you thought you wouldn't sink by standing still, think again. You're sinking even now, aren't you?"
"That is true."
"The test period is one month. While my world is maintained, survive by any means. Whether you run, climb, hide, or sleep. Everything where you are will sink."
I didn't answer and thought. What is the purpose of this test? At this point, when Suirak has already scouted me, does a test even have any meaning?
I thought once more about the organization called Red Lotus. A den of devils where mentally ill, terminally ill patients have resolved to survive, even if it means giving up everything else. Simply put, it's a vision of hell.
I couldn't describe a place where fanatics who could easily destroy a city, sociopaths, and schizophrenics gathered as anything other than hell. While I continued to ponder, I sank up to my chest, making for a ridiculous sight. Seeing me like that, Damyu frowned.
"... If you stay like that, you'll really die, you know? In there, you can't even breathe—" "I get the gist of it."
"What?"
"There's no test, is there?"
She looked down at me with a surprised face for a moment, then— "—Heh, I guess you're not a complete fool." She soon squatted down and sneered.
"That's right. To be honest, I was pissed off."
"About what?"
"Who do you think you are? You weren't born among us, and you don't even know what a world is. And you're a noble? You must have eaten and lived well, huh?"
"My mother abandoned me in a swamp, and for three days, I survived by eating a dog that was abandoned with me."
"A dog?"
"Yeah. It was the creature I loved most in this world. But it's gone now."
It was hard to describe all the negative emotions mixed in her expression. I had expected this to some extent. Except for special cases like Suirak, this was the last refuge for the abandoned and broken who had gathered to survive.
This meant that, apart from their strength, only those whose personalities were broken beyond just being eccentric—so broken that they made Dersia seem cute in comparison—would be gathered here.
"So get up already. Try struggling like I did. At least you have hope, don't you? Who knows, maybe your world will deepen."
The bubbling ground reached my chin. Yet, as I remained calm, a look of puzzlement appeared in Damyu's eyes, and around that time, I opened my mouth.
"There seems to be a misunderstanding. I am not a noble."
"Yeah, I know. You were just the Great Mage's disciple, right?"
"No. I am not a commoner either. Before I was Dersia's disciple, I was an orphan."
"Lies. How does an orphan meet a princess?"
It seemed not everyone in Red Lotus knew the details about me. Thinking about it, it was obvious. The person Red Lotus cared about was Dersia, and if I had to be specific, the only ones who cared about me, Dersia's pet disciple, were Suirak and Mass.
Wihwa would also know me as the one who was killed by him. Rather, the fact that she knew anything at all meant Damyu held a fairly high position within Red Lotus. Though it seemed even she didn't know the details.
In that case. I realized the posture I needed to take within Red Lotus.
"You're not expecting me to pull you out if you're about to die, are you? If you die, I'll just say you scattered while you were smoke—" "Ha, haha..."
"... You're laughing?"
Killing intent filled Damyu's gaze. I shook my head and apologized.
"My apologies. I was actually expecting something."
"Expecting what?"
"An expectation that someone from Red Lotus would have a slightly more—yes, a more magnificent world."
"...?"
"Claiming something as pathetic as this is a world... it's just a little funny."
I took a step. There was no ground to step on in the swamp. But, I unmistakably stepped on solid ground.
It was a simple task. As much as the swamp sank, I just had to lift the soil with my currents, creating a foothold for myself. With each step I took, one, then two, slowly walking up to the surface, the killing intent in her eyes was replaced with astonishment.
"I envy you."
"... This, h-how?"
I had overcome the burden that drove Damyu into her hell with far too much ease. I dusted off my clothes, not a speck of dirt on them, and watching her eyes tremble, I murmured quietly.
"With a burden like this, life must be truly comfortable."
If this is a place where only beasts have gathered anyway. Even if I seem a bit rude, in a world of the survival of the fittest, it would be better to show who is superior.