Book 2: Chapter 379
Translator: Seven
Editors: Ana_Banana, Sei
The sand fell and someone appeared.
It was at that moment that the miglings excited expressions became those of disappointment instead. Lowering their outstretched hands, they muttered despondently.
“Not, Trowman.”
“Yeah. Not.”
“That, white one.”
White one?
Lukas took a closer look at the person that had fallen from the sky.
“That’s…”
It was a man.
He had flowing white hair, but he wasn’t old. He didn’t even look middle aged.
It was a man with a young face. In fact, it was a face that Lukas knew.
“Schweiser…?”
Without a doubt.
There were some subtle differences, but this man was definitely Lukas’ friend, Schweiser Strow. But he didn’t look very good at that moment. His entire body was a mess as if he’d fallen into a grinder, and blood dripped down like the rain.
He seemed to be unconscious, his limbs shaking violently like tree branches in a hurricane. This proved that there wasn’t even the slightest bit of tension in his muscles.
It would be dangerous to fall in that state.
Lukas cast a spell.
In an instant, a gentle breeze seemed to blow over, and Schweiser’s body, which was accelerating dangerously to the ground, lost most of its momentum in an instant. Soon after, he fell to the ground as lightly as a feather.
“Wow!”
“Magic! Magic! Magic!”
“Oh my! Magic! Magic! Magic!”
“Oh my! Oh my! Oh my!”
Ignoring the excited miglings, Lukas looked at Schweiser. And swallowed a mouthful of saliva without realising.
Up close, his condition looked much worse.
Heavy bleeding, fractures, bruising… If that was just the damage that was visible on the outside, he couldn’t help but wonder how serious the situation would be on the inside. He thought about wrapping the wounds first, but several miglings surrounded Schweiser.
Unlike before, they all wore serious expressions. He looked at them carefully to see if they would seriously treat him, but one migling simply took something out of his pocket.
It was something that looked like jerky… no, not looked like, it was jerky.
The miglings then stuffed it roughly into Schweiser’s mouth.
“What…!”
Startled, Lukas tried to stop them. In his current condition, Schweiser would have a hard time swallowing water, let alone food.
But Pale, who was beside him, stopped him.
“Let them.”
“Why?”
“That is the best method.”
“…is that jerky effective?”
“Maybe?”
Pale shrugged with an uncertain answer.
Swallowing his spit once more, Lukas turned to look at the miglings again. Those were all sitting and chatting amongst themselves.
“Serious wounds.”
“Yeah. Very serious.”
“And white one lost flesh.” (TL: A slang for losing in a fight, usually in a game.)
“Yeah. Lost a lot of flesh.”
“Why not, Trowman?”
“Don’t know.”
“Think, think something happened.”
At that moment, one of the miglings raised his head and spoke in a serious voice.
“Must report to Lord.”
Then the miglings picked Schweiser up and began running towards the city. Lukas could tell that they were going to Michael.
In the blink of an eye, there were only two of them left there, Lukas and Pale.
“Mmm.”
Pale hummed softly and seemed to be in a daze, but after a while, she turned to Lukas with an innocent expression.
“So, what’s your answer?”
It took Lukas a while to realise that she was continuing their conversation from before the miglings interrupted them.
The proposal for them to go treasure hunting.
It seemed that Pale really didn’t care about what was happening in the underground city.
It amazed him. He’d never met a woman like this before. Even right after they’d met, Iris hadn’t been this indecipherable to him.
Nevertheless, Iris and Pale were fundamentally different.
If it felt like Iris was intentionally hiding herself behind a false persona, for Pale, it was hard to understand the principles behind her thinking or her sincerity even when she revealed everything as it was.
“If we leave this place, can we come back?”
Lukas asked cautiously.
“We could request a guide and the Lord’s permission again. But why?”
“I’m wondering if there is any other place in this world as safe as here.”
“Ay. So that’s what you’re worried about. Of course, there is.”
Pale answered in a low voice.
“Besides, there is no absolutely safe place! This place is also quite dangerous. Looking at the condition of big brother white one, he must have taken part in a border war.”
“Border war?”
“The losing side loses everything.”
“…”
She was saying they were at war.
If that was the case, then Pale was right. It would be more dangerous in this place than in the grey desert.
…Of course, judging from Michael’s words, Schweiser was likely not the same Schweiser that Lukas knew. No. It was safe to say that it wasn’t just likely, it was almost certain.
He was probably a different possibility of Schweiser, from a parallel world.
‘If that was the case, then why?’
Why did he want to meet Schweiser?
Michael knew about Trowman. The miglings were the same.
Now he understood.
The reason the miglings were so kind to him since the beginning.
And the reason why Michael was only interested in the last name Trowman.
—In this city, there must be another Lukas Trowman.
Of course, that Lukas and him would be different. The same was probably true for Schweiser. He had a similar appearance to the Schweiser that Lukas knew, but he couldn’t guarantee that they would be the same on the inside.
He could tell that much after seeing Lord, no, Michael.
However, despite knowing that.
That Schweiser might still remember ‘a’ Lukas. He may not have been forgotten.
It wasn’t just Schweiser. There was a good chance that there were other people that remembered Lukas.
There might be many ‘beings with different possibilities’ that shared the same ‘fundamental universe’ as him.
Lukas felt a wave of emotion as he had that thought.
Disgust, anger, curiosity, and above all, jealousy.
It was a strange feeling.
There was no way he was jealous of his other self.
Shaking his head, Lukas spoke to Pale in a firm voice.
“I agree.”
“Huh?
“The treasure hunt. Let’s do it together.”
This place.
It was not a place that Lukas should stay in. It was no longer a place that allowed Lukas to be here.
Because, in the end, there was only one reason why Lukas wanted to meet Schweiser.
He wanted to hear him call his name.
* * *
It wasn’t too difficult to return to the desert.
There were dozens of holes in the ceiling, and Lukas had memorised which one they had emerged from. All that was left was to go in the opposite direction, but the passage turned out much longer than he expected.
‘I didn’t realise at that time.’
Fortunately, they had no trouble breathing, so it wasn’t difficult to get through as long as they could bear the gritty texture of the sand.
“Huwa!”
As she stuck her head out of the ground, Pale took a deep breath.
“Ah. Sweet air~”
She spoke with a blissful expression on her face before pulling the rest of her body out of the hole and brushing the sand off of her body.
Lukas had been the first out of the hole.
The grey desert was still as empty as before. Just looking at it filled his heart with a lonely feeling and made him feel stuffy.
“What is a guide?”
Lukas asked.
When he’d asked if it was possible to return to the city, Pale had said it was possible with the Lord’s permission and a guide.
The Lord in question was Michael, but he didn’t seem to mind his presence.
So all that remained was a guide.
“A being who can find the way here.”
Pale answered in her usual roundabout manner.
“…the way.”
He looked around.
It was almost certain that there was no map of this world.
After all, if one looked up at the sky, all they would see were constantly shifting colours like mixing paint. There was no boundary between night and day, so it would also be impossible to use the night sky as a guide. There probably wouldn’t be any stars in the first place.
“Are the migling also guides?”
“Huh?”
“Those guys came directly to us before.”
“Yeah. I don’t think so. It’s possible that they smelled you. It’s certainly possible if you are from the same universe.”
“From the same universe…”
When Lukas mumbled those words as if he couldn’t understand, Pale beckoned to him.
“Follow me.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned her body around and began walking away. Lukas followed her.
After taking about ten steps, Pale turned around. And headed back to where they’d walked from.
Just ten steps.
She tapped her feet against the ground.
“It’s not here.”
Lukas understood what she was trying to say.
She was saying that while it might feel like they’d returned to the same place, they hadn’t.
The place they were standing in now was completely different from where they had been standing just before.
What was the reason?
It wasn’t because they were hallucinating or simply mistaken.
‘…countless spaces are overlapping one another.’
The overlapping spaces constantly rippled and changed. The significance of one step in this desert was not light. One might think that they only moved a short distance, but the reality was that they could enter a completely different space with that simple step.
It was only at that moment that he understood why the dwarves, the miglings, moved perfectly behind each other in a straight line.
‘However…’
He had a strange feeling.
Lukas squinted his eyes slightly and changed his point of view.
Then, the sight of countless intertwining coordinates appeared in front of him.
The number of threads easily exceeded tens of thousands.
They all intertwined, creating a skein that was thicker than a boulder.
Trying to interpret the overlapped coordinates was like trying to fully understand how each thread was weaved into the skein.
That was something beyond the realm of simple calculations, but…
“What are you doing?”
He ignored the question. He needed to use the full extent of his concentration.
Analysis was a specialty of Wizards. And Lukas’ calculative ability was probably in the top five among all the beings in the Three Thousand Worlds.
Of course, these coordinates were so complicated that he was hesitant to even attempt to decipher them, but it was possible because nothing in the world was intertwined from the beginning.
‘The miglings.’
They had come to Lukas first.
Even though they weren’t guides, they knew his location, and they knew the way back to the underground city.
…Smell.
He felt like he could finally understand what Pale meant.
Lukas gestured to her slightly with his chin before walking first.
“Aht. Where are you going?”
Pale called out in a startled voice, but she seemed to be following him. Lukas couldn’t afford to answer, so he just kept walking.
“Rather than smell.”
It might be more appropriate to call it a string.
In any case, he could not do this for too long. He wasn’t sure how it would be with an Absolute body, but with his current body, if he were to maintain this state for too long, his brain would be unable to withstand the pressure and burn to ashes.
He naturally increased the speed of his steps.
Then Lukas finally reached the source of the thread.
“Huu…”
He couldn’t help but let out a sigh. His head throbbed.
He felt like he wanted to take a seat more than anything, but he suppressed the feeling for now and regulated his breathing first.
After his condition improved a bit, Lukas raised his head. It was only then that he noticed how quiet his surroundings were.
What about Pale? Had she not followed him?
Lukas looked around. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like she’d had any trouble keeping up with him.
She was standing a short distance away, staring directly at Lukas.
Her eyes were narrowed slightly, and there was a glint of interest in them as though she was looking at a toy that managed to surprise her.
The moment their eyes met, Lukas felt a chill down his spine.
Was that really pale?
Her aura had changed so drastically that he couldn’t help but wonder. The cuddly feeling from before had disappeared entirely.
“Uncle can see the way.”
Her voice was still the same.
When Lukas looked at her again, Pale had returned to the same unbothered manner from before.
“Perhaps you are qualified to be a guide.”
“…no. I think I came to the wrong place.”
After saying that, he turned to look at the ground.
Lukas had tried to return to the migling city. Even if they didn’t need to enter the underground city, he wanted the reassurance that he’d gone in the right direction.
But this wasn’t the entrance to the underground city.
Turning his eyes, Lukas looked at the source of the string.
A woman lay in a crater on the ground. The string Lukas had been following was connected to her.
In other words.
This woman was also a being that shared a fundamental universe with Lukas.