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Chapter 199:
Chapter 199:
Chapter 199:
Chapter 199 “…”
Maybe it was because she was still stunned.
The secretary stared at me blankly for a while.
She had gathered the thorns of the Infinite Hell once.
After realizing that they were still under her control, she asked me with curiosity.
“This is the first time this happened, right? I’m still the master of this barrier…”
“I just became another master.”
“Huh?”
“That’s why I didn’t point out the last ancient rune. I didn’t modify it, I replaced it with a new one.”
“Ancient rune…”The secretary tilted her head and asked.
“Flan, did you say anything about the ancient rune? No, you know it. How did you use it to become a co-master of the original barrier?”
“I’ll tell you that part later, if I get a chance. You’re not in a position to ask questions right now.”
“Why?”
I said calmly to the secretary.
“I told you before, evaluate me when you’re ready to take responsibility.”
“Responsibility… Flan, did you mean that when you said to spill everything you know?”
The secretary nodded.
“I got it. I’ll gladly do that. You’ve proven yourself anyway. You deserve to be treated as a guest of the void.”
Fortunately, the secretary was not a person who would deny or reject her confusion.
Rather, she quickly accepted it and prepared to leave.
She nodded once.
“Flan, let’s go right now.”
“I told you to spill everything you know.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you by showing you the place instead.”
She didn’t look like she was lying, so I agreed.
Of course, I was confident that I could overcome it even if it was a trap.
We left the academy and headed to a deserted mountain slope.
“It’s a very secret and sensitive place. It takes quite a lot of time to move, so please understand.”
The secretary drew a large red octagon on the ground.
She concentrated her mind and applied runes to each corner until the sun rose high after the night and dawn.
I quietly observed her behavior.
It was unfamiliar, but not difficult.
There were quite a few parts that I could figure out by just watching.
I muttered quietly.
“Is this a magic circle for teleportation?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“It’s interesting that it’s an octagon, not a hexagon.”
“As I said, the place is very sensitive. A hexagon won’t do. You have to add two vertices and fill in 128 runes…”
The secretary, who was continuing her speech, suddenly turned to look at me.
“…But, this is black magic, right? How?”
“It’s just a different tone.”
“That’s amazing, that’s really amazing…”
The secretary muttered and focused again.
I wanted to shorten the time as much as possible, so I did my own assistance.
I created a barrier around and induced the internal flow to be smooth.
The secretary looked at me again.
Her asymmetrical blue hair covered one eye, and the other eye stared at me strangely.
“Flan, what are you doing?”
“This is enough to make you concentrate fully. Isn’t it?”
“So, you’re helping me right now?”
“It must be a feeling close to frustration. You’ve become slow.”
The secretary stared at me silently for a while.
I felt that this time was too precious to waste, so I urged her again.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Just…”
“Just?”
“I think I understand a little bit why Maiev was fascinated by you. You have a talent for seducing females.”
I didn’t answer.
It was absurd.
The conversation ended there and the secretary focused again.
Eventually, the octagon was filled with runes when the sun was high at noon.
“Manifestation?.”
The world slowly flipped clockwise and the view changed. It was just the dark emptiness of nothingness.
This was the destination that the secretary had mentioned.
She looked at me.
“Are you okay? Is it hard to breathe?”
I nodded vaguely.
It was a dark space, but the secretary set up thorns that emitted light on both sides.
The red thorns acted like street lamps and made a path.
“Flan, let’s walk for a while.”
We walked without talking for a while.
The path was not always straight.
There were sections that curved and sections that twisted like a spiral.
The secretary suddenly called my name.
“Flan.”
“What is it?”
“We’re here. But we’re not here yet.”
I knew right after the conversation that the secretary was not joking.
The narrow corridor widened and took the shape of an exhibition hall.
Tick?
Tick?
The lights turned on one by one and the corridor gradually brightened.
The wall was very wide and white, and there were countless murals on it without any boundaries.
The secretary murmured.
“We don’t need to walk from now on.”
She gently touched the mural with her hand.
“If you appreciate the mural, you’ll enter automatically.”
“Quite interesting.”
My eyes slowly moved towards the mural.
It was so huge that I had to overlay mana over my cornea to gauge its size.
As soon as my gaze touched it, the mural started to move.
The humans in the crowd were dressed poorly.
They wore clothes made of leaves and other things, and they were endlessly fascinated by the fire they lit.
I muttered quietly.
“Humans… before civilization developed.”
“Yes.”
As we admired the mural, the wall moved and brushed past us.
The mural followed a chronological order.
People established rules, adopted formalities, advanced their civilization, and repeated learning and research.
The secretary asked quietly.
“Flan, have you figured out what kind of mural this is?”
“So far, it’s a normal record.”
“The important part is coming up.”
At some point, the ones called knights finally manifested their unique abilities.
The ones who were left behind realized the existence of mana and learned magic later.
“Flan, do you see? Humans have always developed themselves in their own way, but… compared to unique abilities and magic, they are nothing. That was a leap of a different kind.”
“Indeed.”
“It was indescribably groundbreaking, but humans didn’t have to pay any price for it. It was a miracle.”
The secretary’s eyes were immersed in admiration.
On the other hand, my reaction was indifferent.
“It was just something that was bound to happen.”
“If you take it for granted and move on, it would be nothing, but the more you think about it, the more amazing it is. Isn’t it? Why was this miracle given?”
The secretary pointed his index finger at the ceiling.
“Flan, the answer is in this mural.”
Murals started to flow from the sky as well.
This time, it was not humans, but vampires that were depicted.
The vampires always moved flawlessly.
When humans were amazed by fire, when they established rules, when they founded various institutions… always.
The secretary said.
“Plan, what is discovery? Isn’t it finding something that hasn’t been revealed yet?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then where did the ‘unrevealed things’ come from? Humans don’t care about that.”
The mural soon showed the vampires infiltrating the human world.
They placed various things in the human realm, including magic books.
Around then, I seemed to understand what the secretary wanted to say.
“You want to say that magic was passed down from the vampires.”
The secretary smiled slyly.
“That’s exactly right. The knights’ unique abilities were natural, but magic was not.”
If this was true, there was a huge difference between the previous world and the current world.
‘Origin.’
In the previous world, magic was a unique product created by humans. But if the secretary was right, then the magic of this world was nothing but a plan intended by the vampires.
The secretary murmured.
“This is just the beginning.”
The corridor collapsed like a partition and fell backwards.
I quietly looked around.
There were circular display stands that rose in a staircase shape, and inside them were books and objects and so on.
It was a scale that I couldn’t measure the height and size of.
I asked the secretary.
“What is the name of this space?”
“Just like I don’t have a name, this space didn’t need a name either. But if you ask me if there is none at all, that’s not true.”
She spoke slowly.
“There is a name that others gave it.”
“I can roughly guess.”
“…History. That’s what humans call it.”
“As expected.”
I felt complicated.
If her words were true, then the humans of this world had been in the clutches of the vampires all along.
“Flan, did you say you wanted to dig up everything? Fine. From now on, I’ll tell you the most important thing, and I’ll also ask you the most important question.”
The secretary rested her chin on one of the bookshelves.
“It’s ancient runes. It’s actually not practical.”
One eye that was only exposed turned towards me.
“We didn’t reveal everything to the world. It’s a secret even among the vampires. It’s because the princess didn’t plan for the continent to use the power of ancient runes.”
There was a suspicious light in the secretary’s eye.
“We never revealed it, but… a human who understood ancient runes appeared. It’s incomprehensible.”
In that suspicion, there was a mix of expectation and hostility.
“Flan, how do you know ancient runes?”
A heavy silence settled.
“…Are you our friend, or our enemy?”
She asked me that.