Chapter – 07
It was a sentence from the Istalanicia Chronicles describing Eileen, the daughter of the Saintess.
[The one who lifted the veil of night and appeared was a truly lovely girl.
Her silvery-white hair, wavy and cascading down to her hips, was nothing short of art.
Her petite nose was so cute you’d want to roll it in your mouth right away, and the contrast between her pure white, yet not pallid, skin and the rosy blush on her cheeks strangely drew the eye.
Her fragile body, which evoked a protective instinct, and her well-shaped legs were charming, and for some reason, just being by her side gave you the illusion of warmth, making her an impression of beauty and a very mysterious atmosphere.
However, even she had her flaws.]
[Those who saw her for the first time all experienced three surprises: first, at the beauty of her appearance; second, at the lack of light reflected in her pupils; and finally, the third…]
[So, you’re the survivor from that city that was destroyed, I hear?]
[With a cantankerous way of speaking, bluntly spat out like an eighty-year-old crone.]
It had already been four months since I witnessed the Sword Saint’s secret technique in the pouring rain.
Having devoted myself to nothing but relentless training every day, I felt my sword tip had become quite sharp.
The palms of my hands, once soft, were now covered thick with calluses,
and the bonus was that lean muscles had developed all over my body, including my abdomen and forearms.
This was something I couldn’t have even dreamed of before.
I never imagined I would possess such tenacity myself.
No doubt, the influence of my traits couldn’t be ignored.
I idly fiddled with the old sword scabbard moderately tied at my waist.
It had already been six months and two days since I 『Transmigrated』 to this world.
In other words, one hundred and eighty-five days.
Put differently, it was also the date a new incident would begin.
I felt nervous, I felt worried.
Could I do it well?
Then I changed my mindset.
If I don’t do it, who will?
In a world where even the protagonist ultimately failed and fell, who else could save me if not myself?
It was a matter of survival, even before it was a mission.
I slowly relaxed my tense body with a few deep breaths.
Then, I knocked on the chairman’s office door.
“Come in.”
As always, the sight was mundane: a desk, shelves, a table, and other furniture that seemed rather boring.
If only there was a painting of a landscape behind the desk, or at least a potted plant or a vase, this barrenness would be somewhat alleviated, but the old man didn’t seem interested in such things.
In the chairman’s office, where usually only the old man or his secretary, Hesse or Kang Joo-hyuk, would be present, a new figure had taken a seat today.
Sitting in a position where only the back of her head was visible from the door I entered, she didn’t seem interested in checking who was coming and going, as if she couldn’t care less.
Silvery hair blooming from her round head.
That alone confirmed my suspicion that she was indeed the person I had guessed.
I sat down opposite her, following the old man’s suggestion.
After confirming I was fully seated, the old man spoke.
“Sorry to call you out so suddenly. Do you remember that place? The ruined city. Franz, was it? The skeletons and wraiths. You mentioned a strange eye.”
“Yes. It was a sight harder to forget.”
“I didn’t tell you, but I sent a letter to the Papacy about it. It seems the Papacy wanted to know the details more closely. They dispatched a representative to Pungrimhwasan. That would be this person here, Eileen. Miss Eileen. This young man is Lee Woo-hyun.”
It was only then that I looked directly at her face.
She’s pretty.
That was my first impression.
I acknowledged once again that the world within the book was portraying my descriptions perfectly, or even better.
But I quickly composed myself.
Because my descriptions being perfectly embodied also meant that her personality had significant… peculiarities.
“So, you’re the survivor from that destroyed city, I hear?”
“Yep.”
Beautiful blue eyes reminiscent of the ocean scanned me,
or more precisely, the space around where I was.
It seemed as if she was probing.
I looked straight into her pupils, where no light was reflected.
A battle of glances, where our gazes didn’t quite meet, continued, and ultimately, she was the first to speak.
“You’re a strange one.”
To think that a person who should be second to none in strangeness would give such an assessment with a single remark made me admittedly a bit upset.
With an elegant gesture, she gauged the position of the teacup in front of her a few times before grabbing it, and then spoke as if she had read my mind.
“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not about your face.”
“I never had such a misunderstanding…”
“As long as you have ears, eyes, a mouth, and a nose properly attached, that’s enough. What does appearance matter so much? Don’t worry too much. Even if you were a peerless handsome man, my attitude wouldn’t have changed. Don’t blame yourself so much for being born ugly.”
“I’m not ugly?”
“Seeing how you flare up, it must be true, I suppose? Seeing you dig your own grave, you don’t seem too bright either. A lamentable state of affairs. Why did God give you nothing? Did you sell a country in your past life?”
“……”
I was getting a bit tired of her endless sarcastic remarks.
So this is what it feels like to meet her in person.
Writing is one thing, but verbal sparring or eloquence isn’t my forte.
As I stood there dazed for a moment, the old man, seemingly unable to watch, intervened.
“When I went, the city was already completely devastated. The last time I visited was two days prior. I don’t know what happened in between.”
“I heard there were two survivors. Where is the other one?”
“I sent him out on an errand for a bit. He should be back soon.”
The sight of a girl, who should be about eighteen now, speaking casually to a white-bearded, grandfatherly old man was a bizarre scene that defied common sense.
It should have been offensive, but the old man didn’t seem to mind at all.
Well. That was their personality. The Sword Saint. And Eileen.
“Then I have no choice but to ask you. What happened?”
I told her once again what I had explained to Gared on my first day of transmigration.
The march of skeletons and wraiths.
The pitch-black sky and the giant eyeball.
Things like that.
After listening to my entire story, she told me to let her think for a moment and then propped her chin.
Up to this point, the conversation between Kang Joo-hyuk and Eileen in the ‘Istalanicia Chronicles’ wasn’t any different.
Afterwards, Eileen, saying she couldn’t make sense of it with just talk and that she needed to see for herself, heads for Franz, but then receives an urgent summons from a Cardinal, drops the inquiry, and returns to the Papacy.
In my judgment,
Changing the world had to start from now.
Right from this very moment.
I re-threaded the first button.
“But. Chairman. There’s something I didn’t get to tell you last time…”
“What is it?”
Leaving her, who was still lost in thought, I spoke to the old man with feigned nonchalance.
“In the sky. I mean, before that eyeball appeared. There was a strange pattern drawn.”
“Can you remember exactly what shape it was?”
“Well… It’s a bit hard to describe in words.”
“Miss Hesse. Please bring something to write with.”
At the old man’s words, Hesse took a quill pen and a piece of parchment from her bosom and handed them to me.
I took them and pretended to not remember well.
Was it like this? Was it like this? I drew and erased strange shapes several times.
Did I repeat it five times?
I hesitantly handed over what I had somehow managed to draw, and the old man who took it grumbled.
“You’re really bad at drawing.”
“……”
“Well, anyway. I don’t really know. It’s a pattern I’ve never seen before. Miss Hesse. Does anything come to mind?”
“No. There’s no merchant group or Mage Tower clan I know of that uses such a pattern.”
“Is that so……”
“Let me see that for a moment.”
Eileen took an interest in the pattern.
Just as planned.
Would she really be able to figure it out?
With an anxious heart, I watched her reaction.
She picked up the yellowish parchment with her slender arm, then shook her head from side to side.
‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
Naturally, my expression darkened.
Because if I couldn’t use her, I had no idea where to even start setting up the board.
“My eyes don’t see. Describe it to me.”
Ah. That’s right.
Her actions were so natural that I had forgotten.
It seemed I was quite tense.
Well, it would be more strange if I weren’t tense.
For some reason, Eileen smiled crookedly, as if finding something amusing.
To try and tease someone in this situation, she really was a woman with a nasty personality.
As I made a sullen face, she told me not to frown and make my ugly face worse, as if she knew.
How did she even know?
She was eerily perceptive in strange places.
“So, there’s a triangle inside a circle, another circle inside the triangle, another triangle inside that circle, and a dot-like thing in the center of that triangle.”
“Sounds like you’re giving a riddle. Give me the pen too.”
“Here.”
She drew what I described on the parchment.
It was crooked, but roughly similar to what I had drawn.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yep.”
Eileen asked again.
“Really?”
I answered yes again, and she fell quiet once more, suddenly lost in her own thoughts.
A strange silence filled the room.
“……”
…I lied.
The eyeball.
Before the Calamity of the End appeared, this pattern did not exist in the sky.
There was no such description in the novel either.
The protagonist and his party investigating the ash-covered Franz happens much later.
That was too late.
At that point, there was nothing that could be changed,
Ah, so that’s how it was.
You just realize it.
It was meaningless.
So I moved it up.
From Eileen’s serious expression, I sensed that my plan had worked.
Now, she would head to Franz, disregarding even the Cardinal’s summons.
And she would discover it.
The clue to the calamity.
That alone was enough.
And then.
An indescribably eerie sensation swept from my spine to the back of my neck.
My brain felt cold, as if submerged in ice water.
An unknown gaze constricted my body.
My vision. The world felt distant.
A unpleasant feeling enveloped my entire body.
It was so instantaneous and yet so natural,
it felt like an attack I had no time to defend against.
My hand resting on the chair didn’t even twitch.
The colorful world-view gradually turned greyish.
I couldn’t do anything,
no, I didn’t *want* to do anything.
I just remained still, frozen.
The rough texture of the table I was touching, the greyish vision, the sounds from the people around me—everything faded away like that, and finally, the world sank into complete silence.
Until ‘It’ took notice of me.
“Guh…!”
The strange sensation didn’t last long before disappearing.
A drop of cold sweat trickled down the bridge of my nose.
It was an experience I never wanted to go through again.
It got Its attention.
It must have sensed the anomaly.
My head spun.
The stopped second hand, as if realizing its duty, began to flow normally again.
As I barely managed to pull myself together, I felt Eileen staring intently in this direction.
“……”
She didn’t say a word,
but precisely because of that,
I felt as if her lightless pupils were seeing right through my inner thoughts.
Facing her expressionless face any longer, I felt as if all my thoughts would be laid bare, so I turned my head away.
The old man, sensing the strange atmosphere between her and me, looked at me and then spoke in a slightly surprised voice.
“Why is your face so pale? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“Ah. No.”
“What do you mean, no? I told you to take care of your health. You’ll collapse at this rate. It seems the discussion is wrapping up, so you should go in and rest now. Miss Eileen, would that be alright?”
“As you wish.”
With no other choice, I got up from my seat and left the chairman’s office.
I walked down the corridor, opened my room door which wasn’t far, entered, and closed it.
And finally, I collapsed.
The trembling of my shaky legs wouldn’t stop.
It,
or They,
or That.
Had looked at me.
Visible yet simultaneously unseen,
Nowhere yet simultaneously everywhere,
Not real yet simultaneously undoubtedly existent,
The mastermind behind the Istalanicia Chronicles.
The Great Old Ones.
Having noticed something that shouldn’t be known, It must have taken an interest.
Now that It has taken an interest, if I cause a similar incident again, It will be wary of me, and depending on Its judgment, It might directly intervene to restrict my actions, or if it gets severe, there’s even a possibility of being killed.
Like the supporting character in the novel who attempted time travel.
So from now on, I must be even more careful with every single action and word I utter.
I had no regrets.
After all, today I also became certain of Its existence.
I forcibly pulled up the corners of my mouth, which had no strength, and tried to smile.
The journey to save the world was just beginning.
