The Silt of Memory, the Mirror of Illusion

Rustle.

Lucalis dashed swiftly through the damp forest trail.

It was already his thirty-second escape attempt.

Every time he ran, he meticulously chose a different route; among them were paths that deliberately cut deeper into the interior of the forest. The mage, in all his foolishness, had gone out of his way to explicitly explain that structural layout to him. Thanks to that piece of information, by his sixteenth attempt, Lucalis had managed to piece together the general framework.

‘If I head southwest, I’ll hit it.’

That was the absolute shortest trajectory to breach the perimeter of the Monster Forest. To make matters worse, the mage had spent the entirety of yesterday afternoon repairing the leaky roof, leaving him so thoroughly drained of energy that he had practically collapsed into sleep. The mathematical probability of him waking up before the sun was high in the sky was close to zero.

The mage’s craftsmanship with a hammer was laughably clumsy. His physical grip was just as dangerously fragile as his baseline stamina, and he seemed entirely incompetent at any task requiring manual labor. Whenever Lucalis would look up after a long interval, expecting the work to be wrapped up, he would merely find a single wooden plank nailed down at a completely crooked angle.

…At that agonizing rate, it would take centuries to fix the entire place.

‘Can’t you just resolve this with magic?’

The moment those words slipped past his teeth, Lucalis had flinched in utter surprise. The mage had looked just as startled, his body wobbling precariously where he sat perched on the roof. Unconsciously, Lucalis had shifted his weight, dropping into a low stance ready to spring forward to catch him—a realization that left him far more horrified than his initial slip of the tongue.

‘Magic is highly versatile, you know. Logically speaking, I could easily handle the cleaning, the laundry, and the cooking with it. However, it never yields a result as intricately detailed as doing it by hand. A magical cleaning spell always leaves a thin layer of dust neglected in the corners, and a laundry spell leaves behind faint stains. As for cooking, it severely lacks depth of flavor.’

Therefore, he had argued, it was infinitely better to handle the core framework with one’s own physical effort. He had offered a bright smile, hammer and nails still gripped tightly in his hands.

‘Even using magic would yield a better result than the absolute tatters we’re currently looking at.’

‘…….’

The mage had worn a deeply wounded expression. The sudden wave of guilt had caused an alarmed Lucalis to reflexively stammer out an apology, only for the man to burst into a radiant, flawless smile the exact millisecond the words left his mouth. Even though he realized a moment later that he had been completely played, for some strange reason, it didn’t irritate him.

It was simply because this was the Monster Forest.

A primordial expanse of land teeming with rare beasts and supernatural anomalies.

A place where the weather was notoriously volatile—one moment the sky would be completely clear, only for a torrential downpour to erupt a second later, which would then spontaneously warp into heavy hail.

More than half a year had already bled away since he first stepped foot into this mysterious, ancient territory. Back in the outside world, the current season was practically the peak of the dry spell, yet the forest had spent the entire night being battered by a savage storm.

Awakened by the violent drumming of the rain, Lucalis had stared blankly up at the dark ceiling. It looks like an absolute mess, but I suppose he managed to fix it properly after all… The thought had barely formed in his mind before a dark stain rapidly blossomed along the wood, and water began to drip heavily onto the floor right beside his pillow.

‘…Of course.’

Sweeping his hair back with a hand, he pushed himself up. Instead of waking the mage, who was currently dead to the world from sheer exhaustion, he picked up a flower vase resting across the room and placed it directly beneath the leak.

Drip. Drip.

The hollow, rhythmic thud of water striking the ceramic base didn’t last long, quickly dissolving into the soft cadence of water merging into water.

Splish. Splash.

Sinking back onto the mattress, Lucalis furrowed his brow. The roaring of the storm outside his window felt uniquely grating to his ears, but the soft echo of water gathering inside the vase was infinitely more distracting.

Should he have just woken the mage? If he had done so, what would that man have said?

No, that wasn’t it.

That sounded highly plausible… but it still wasn’t quite right.

Swish.

A long, slender, and beautifully sculpted hand—unmistakably a man’s, yet remarkably elegant—gently settled over the crown of his head. The soft, sweeping motion left a ticklish warmth blossoming deep within his chest.

The magnificent mage—a man so breathtakingly beautiful that every single passerby would inevitably turn their heads to catch a second glimpse—offered a soft, crinkling smile.

He would have undoubtedly uttered those exact words.

Rustle.

Pulling his small hands tightly against the edge of the blanket, he hauled it up to his chin.

For some inexplicable reason, the rain dripping into the vessel began to sound like a beautiful, orchestrated melody.

Splish. Splash.

Lucalis could feel a quiet reservoir of water beginning to pool within the recesses of his own heart as well.

‘Come to think of it… has it truly been that long since my last escape attempt?’

When he mindlessly tallied the dates in his head, the mathematical calculation revealed that nearly half a month had slipped away. Lucalis was hit by a profound wave of internal shock.

Biting his lip hard, he bolted upright. Sitting in the oppressive darkness of the room, he single-mindedly glared at the opposite wall for a long, quiet interval.

When he thoroughly analyzed the trajectory of his time here, it was undeniable: his escape attempts had been significantly more frequent during the initial phases when his physical constitution was at its worst. In the beginning, he had broken away every single day, or at most at intervals of three to four days, establishing a relentless cycle of running away only to be promptly caught and brought back.

Yet, without him ever consciously realizing it, that operational window had gradually expanded, and now an entire fortnight had passed without a single attempt.

Lucalis slowly, deliberately swept his eyes across the small, cozy room.

When exactly had this narrow space—a room containing nothing more than a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a tiny shelf protruding from the wall—become infinitely more familiar to him than his grand quarters within the Imperial Palace?

Everywhere he looked, he could see the distinct imprint of his own presence. His physical body recognized the precise contours of the mattress before his conscious mind could even register it. Even if he walked toward the washroom in the dead of night with his eyes half-closed from sleep, he never bumped into a single piece of furniture.

He had become completely, utterly acclimated to this place.

The very instant that realization clicked in his brain, a profound, nameless terror seized his soul. It was the sole reason he had suddenly launched into this completely unplanned, spontaneous escape.

Lucalis ran relentlessly through the ancient forest, which still bore the heavy dampness of the night’s storm.

He didn’t even grant a passing glance to the low-to-mid-ranking monsters lingering along the trail. True to its fearsome moniker, the Monster Forest utilized venomous stags as its baseline equivalent of common rabbits, while giant shrews occupied the ecological niche of ordinary deer.

As for the apex predators at the top of that food chain?

Grrrrrr!

They were cataclysmic entities capable of plunging an entire fortified city into a state of maximum martial emergency if even a solitary specimen materialized near the walls. A colossal, wolf-type mega-species—its massive frame half-shrouded in heavily calcified, armored fur—slowly shifted its glowing golden eyes to stare directly down at Lucalis.

A cold sweat broke out across his skin, yet his pulse remained entirely steady. True to the mage’s absolute guarantee, the monsters made no move to attack him. The colossal beast merely leaned down to catch his scent, staring at him with its massive irises, but it did nothing more.

Grrr. Low growl.

The wolf let out a low rumble of dissatisfaction deep within its throat, but quickly snapped its head away, thoroughly ignoring his existence. Lucalis darted past its towering flank and continued his sprint.

Before he knew it, the dawn began to break. The deep indigo sky rapidly bled into a brilliant brightness, and the golden rays of the morning sun began to pierce through the gloomy, oppressive canopy of the forest.

Lucalis suddenly noticed a distinct shift in the morphology of the surrounding flora. The twisted, gargantuan trees that looked as though they existed solely to devour passing humans had completely vanished, replaced by a dense gathering of relatively ordinary trees.

His instincts screamed the truth. The edge of the perimeter was close. Truly close.

If he maintained this exact trajectory and kept running, he would cleanly breach the boundary of this prison.

Yet, the precise moment that realization solidified in his mind, Lucalis’s steps began to falter. His physical frame, which had been cutting through the treeline with the piercing velocity of a launched arrow, slowly ground to a complete halt.

Standing frozen in the middle of the forest path, he stared down at his own feet with wide, hollow eyes.

What are you doing? Why on earth are you stopping?

Lucalis was utterly bewildered. His heart hammered violently against his ribs. Lowering his head, he glared at his stationary legs as if they belonged to an absolute stranger, desperately urging them forward in his mind—yet no matter how deeply he interrogated this bizarre phenomenon, no logical answer manifested. Was this some intricate trick woven by the mage? No, it wasn’t. This was fundamentally a conflict born within his own psyche.

‘A conflict? What conflict could I possibly have?’

Rustle!

Right as he was beginning to drown in the absolute abstraction of his own panic, the thick brush facing the exterior of the forest violently shuddered. In a place like the Monster Forest, the rustling of bushes by wild beasts was an incredibly mundane occurrence, but this was entirely different. The underlying presence filtering through the leaves did not belong to a monster.

“Ah, for god’s sake, we’re barely at the threshold of the perimeter and the brush is already this thick—huh?”

“…….”

“…….”

Lucalis swiftly, mechanically evaluated the stranger’s martial armament. The literary trope of a man wielding a ragged, chipped blade turning out to be a legendary Sword Master was a statistical anomaly that rarely manifested in the harsh reality of the world. A warrior’s true capability was always explicitly broadcasted through the quality of their gear.

The man appeared to be in his early forties, an advanced crossbow bolted securely to his left wrist, while his other hand gripped a heavy, masterfully curved scimitar. The maintenance of his weaponry was pristine, and his defensive armor was of exceptional craftsmanship. While his overall silhouette screamed that of a tracker or a hunter, he was undoubtedly no ordinary woodsman.

‘A monster hunter.’

The precise millisecond Lucalis finished compiling his assessment, the hunter suddenly took a violent step backward—and promptly bolted in the opposite direction at maximum velocity.

“…….?”

Left standing in a state of sheer, absolute bewilderment by the bizarre reaction, a delayed realization flashed through Lucalis’s mind, bringing forth the memory of the talking drake and the casual mage who called it by a friendly nickname.

Before his conscious brain could even formulate a thought, his physical body had already exploded into motion. Without a single shred of hesitation, he pivoted on his heel and began sprinting backward along the exact blood-drenched trail he had spent the entire night traversing.

He didn’t understand the underlying logic dictating his actions. He only knew that he needed to return to the mage’s side as fast as humanly possible, and report the presence of that tracker.

Clack-clack!

“Good morning, Dracurach.”

Click-click!

I had absolutely no mathematical inkling where ‘thwerrre’ was supposed to be, but I gently caressed the massive contours of the drake’s neck to praise him regardless.

“Thank you. I feel as though I am constantly surviving on your endless generosity.”

“You are always such a perfect gentleman, your manners are absolutely impeccable. The absolute half-wits infesting the capital truly need to sit down and take notes from you.”

“…Could you perhaps prioritize taking me down first?”

Lucalis let out a savage, murderous snarl from above. Startled out of my wits, my fragile sunfish heart nearly stopped flat in my chest.

“Y-You were awake?!”

Click.

Staring at the immensely mischievous glint in Dracurach’s eyes, and looking at Lucalis who was currently dangling from his jaws like a tiny, disgruntled hatchling drake, a sudden wave of playfulness seized me as well.

“Oh, come on. He looks incredibly secure up there, just keep holding him in your mouth.”

“If you don’t order him to put me down this exact instant, I will kill you!”

It was a harmless joke, but looking at the way his eyes flared with absolute, unadulterated murder, this ancient, fragile sunfish felt deeply wounded…

Ptooey.

Dracurach casually released his grip. Landing flawlessly on the damp earth, Lucalis immediately bounced backward, positioning his frame securely behind my back. Seeing how he continued to tense his muscles, it was clear he was still deeply terrified of the massive beast despite trying his best to hide it.

“Wow, truly?”

“Ah, has that window already arrived? Time truly flies.”

‘Parasitic Ragora’ was a scientific designation I had personally coined. They were a unique species that primarily anchored themselves onto the thick scales of large, reptilian mega-species. If one processed them using a highly specialized alchemical formula, they transformed into a legendary restorative tonic capable of pulling a person back from the very brink of the grave.

“Thank you.”

Stepping onto his massive, flattened palm, I happily climbed onto his back and began extracting the mature organisms rooted deeply between his dense hide.

Screeeech!

The distinctly human-shaped roots let out an agonizing, piercing shriek. While their physical morphology and behaviors closely resembled their cousins, the Mandragoras, their vocal cords lacked any lethal, soul-shattering capability. Instead, they possessed a far more aggravating psychological defense mechanism.

The surrounding scenery violently distorted in a fraction of a second, tearing away the forest to reveal a colossal, sweeping corridor. It was the ruined, desecrated remains of an ancient temple dedicated to a forgotten deity.

Due to the sheer violence of some prehistoric conflict, not a single pillar remained intact, and the mangled, frozen corpses of both demons and angels littered the floor as far as the eye could see.

And that person was standing right at the absolute epicenter of that desolation.

Her left arm had been cleanly severed from the shoulder socket, the blade gripped in her remaining right hand was shattered to pieces, and a hollow, gaping void remained where her heart should have been. Yet, through sheer force of will, she remained alive. Simply because there was one final soul she was destined to gaze upon before the end.

Jay.

It was me.

It was a lie. A complete, absolute lie. If I had truly arrived on time, I wouldn’t be staring at your dying frame; instead, I would have met you as you sprinted toward me with every ounce of your strength, throwing yourself into my arms.

Offering a soft, incredibly tender smile, she whispered her final words.

Be –.

I moved without a fraction of a second’s delay.

Stomp. Stomp. Crush!

Screeech!

Without an ounce of hesitation, I brought my boot down, violently crushing the root beneath my heel. With a pathetic, dying shriek, the Parasitic Ragora instantly withered into a desiccated husk.

The illusion evaporated into nothingness, leaving the world completely clean.