Chapter 150
I was so grateful for their unwavering faith in me. My chest felt heavy, as if a weight had been lifted.
I wanted to repay them for their steadfast belief.
“About my situation, it’s a bit complicated, so I wanted to explain it properly when I met The Saintess…”
I sighed, racking my brain trying to figure out how to explain it all.
“The Saintess seemed to have experienced something related to me as well. I think it would be best to talk to her first.”
Looking back, it was strange.
Even though I had possessed someone else’s body, I had accepted the past memories of that person without any difficulty.
It was as if I were the original Margaret, and even though the memories were mixed up, I accepted them without any sense of incongruity.
It didn’t make sense, but now I knew why. It was possible because I was the real Margaret.
I bit my lip and lowered my head. Then, I calmly began to explain everything I had experienced and the conversation between Anata and Yuanna to the three men.
The three men listened to my story and remained silent for a while, unable to speak.
After I had even told them about living in another dimension and about <What's More Important Than Survival> that I had read back then, I couldn’t help but feel like a fool and an idiot.
To think I had firmly believed that I had possessed the world in the book. I had been worrying unnecessarily and excessively suspecting them all along.
“I’m sorry for deceiving you all this time.”
Frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything even if the three men felt betrayed after hearing this.
“…I didn’t want to die.”
Enoch stared at me silently.
It was Luzef who broke the silence with an unexpected word of comfort.
“As I said, we trust you, Lady Margaret. So please, trust us as well.”
Luzef carefully took my hands in his, as if in reverence, and whispered. His eyes were also filled with trust.
My cheeks flushed, out of embarrassment.
I bit my lip and simply nodded. My eyes welled up. Luzef smiled at me and patted my head.
“You must have been scared.”
Enoch spoke then. I looked up at him again.
“Thank you for answering. You’ve suffered a lot, carrying such a heavy secret alone.”
I had vaguely thought that Enoch might believe me. After all, I trusted and relied on them.
“And I’m sorry for not realizing it.”
Enoch’s words brought tears to my eyes again. I clenched my teeth and frowned.
Sniff.
In the end, I was overcome with emotion and burst into tears once more.
“Margaret, I told you not to cry.”
Kaiden gently wiped away my tears with his thumb. His touch was so warm that tears flowed again.
Luzef, who had been listening quietly, also continued to stroke my hair in comfort. He didn’t say anything in particular, but his gentle touch was a great comfort. So, in the end, I burst into tears again this time.
I felt like a seven-year-old child. I didn’t even know how many times I had cried since coming here. I was starting to worry if my tear ducts were broken.
Enoch added another word.
“Stop crying. Your pretty eyes will get all swollen.”
Pretty eyes. Enoch was always a person who spoke kindly but plainly, but for some reason, his cheesy words finally made me stop crying.
“But I have a question.”
I looked at Enoch with a puzzled expression. He opened his mouth in a low voice.
“About the story in that novel.”
Novel? Ah. He must be talking about <What's More Important Than Survival>. Enoch looked straight into my eyes before slowly lowering his gaze. His eyes lingered on my lips.
Enoch chuckled and gently rubbed my lips with his thumb. He slowly raised his gaze with a languid movement and looked at me as he asked.
“Was I really that strong? So much so that you thought of me as the male lead in an adult romance novel.”
“Y-You what?!”
He burst out laughing when I asked back in surprise. He laughed innocently like a child.
The emotions that had been making me feel sad just a moment ago melted away at once.
“Wait, the male lead is Crown Prince? Don’t lie. My skills are better, Margaret. That novel is all lies.”
I turned to look at Kaiden with a dumbfounded expression at his following words.
“It’s easy to say things that can’t be proven.”
Enoch said provocatively, and Kaiden’s face twisted roughly.
“Why is it impossible to prove?”
Then Kaiden turned to look at me again.
“Margaret, don’t you believe me either? If you need proof, just say the word. I’ll show you as much as you want.”
Kaiden spoke as if he was about to take off his clothes at any moment, so I shook my head violently.
“I don’t need it.”
Kaiden was not discouraged by my firm answer. He glared at Enoch again, and Enoch’s eyebrows raised disapprovingly.
“It’s really my first time seeing a Wizard who acts before he speaks. And that’s not a compliment, by the way.”
“Of course it’s not a compliment, who do you take me for?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
Luzef sighed and diverted the attention around him as Kaiden showed signs of rushing in with a snarl.
“Um, everyone… First of all, we need to sort things out and find Sir Diego as soon as possible.”
At Luzef’s words, Enoch and Kaiden finally stopped their reckless bickering.
So, we finished the meal we were having and packed our things.
“We should take a look at the map.”
At Enoch’s words, I took out the map from my crossbody bag and unfolded it. The Bunker we took out was probably the place where the supplies were.
Then I remembered what Zenas had said about the Monster Mother being at the eastern end of the North Island.
I had a bad feeling that Diego might be there.
“Could you tell me in detail how Sir Diego disappeared?”
I looked at Luzef while looking at the map. He, who had been cautiously watching me like a docile sheep, answered with a face that was trying to recall his memories.
“It must have been in the middle of the night. I couldn’t find you either, Lady Margaret, and I thought we should find a place to sleep, so I was exploring the area when I saw something strange.”
“Something strange?”
Kaiden, who had been staring intently at the map, raised his head and asked back. Luzef lowered his voice in a serious tone.
“What are you talking about?”
This time, Enoch nodded his head as if telling him to get to the point quickly without delay.
“An elderly gentleman was calling us from the bushes. He had the form of a person, but his form was faint, as if he were a ghost.”
Luzef lowered his voice even further.
“At first, I really thought it was a person and tried to approach him. But Sir Diego stopped me. He said that the old man’s feet were not visible.”
Gasp.
I listened to his words seriously and gasped, getting goosebumps.
‘Seriously, why are there so many ghost-like things on this island?’
I remembered seeing a woman presumed to be the Soul of Anata in the Bunker and Zenas's Cabin.
Besides, there were moving skeletons in the basement of the Bunker.
Could it be… that they were the Souls of those who died after being used as test subjects on Alea Island? Experiments had been going on for a thousand years, so how many people must have died on this island during that time?
“We tried to ignore the existence as much as possible and moved on. We passed the old man and walked for a long time, but at the end of the road, the old man was standing there again. We had clearly passed him, but there he was.”
It was a creepy story, but Kaiden didn’t react much, and Enoch just listened to the story with a calm expression without any particular agitation.
“The problem was what happened next. Suddenly, countless people began to surround Sir Diego and me.”
“What? Countless people?”
“Actually, I don’t even know if they were people. I don’t know where they appeared from in the forest, but suddenly, human figures with faces that were difficult to recognize began to increase one by one and surrounded us, approaching us.”
“Hmm, isn’t this also a hallucination? Maybe the two of you inhaled the poisonous gas of the Anaconda Monster.”
Kaiden, who had been listening quietly, cautiously raised a question. It was a plausible inference. Perhaps this was more likely.
We had seen countless strange things here. So much so that it could be called an island of hallucinations.
“I don’t know much about encountering Anaconda Monsters, but hallucinations may be right. There have been so many things like that on this island.”
Luzef ran a hand down his face with a haggard expression.
“They seemed to be looking for someone. They just wandered around us for a while before disappearing.”
They seemed to be looking for someone. This time, I couldn’t shake off the ominous feeling that the someone was me.
It might be a similar context to how the Monsters liked me because of my Mana.
“In the end, we couldn’t sleep and spent the night wandering through the forest. Fortunately, no Monsters appeared during that time. It was as if the Monsters were also avoiding the ghosts.”
“……”
“After wandering around all night, we found a river and took a short break in front of it. Perhaps because of the accumulated fatigue, we fell asleep while taking a short break.”
Luzef ran a hand down his face with a haggard expression. He really did look tired.
“Then I woke up, but Sir Diego, who had been sitting next to me, was nowhere to be seen. He disappeared, leaving only this sword behind. A knight who has been holding a sword his whole life, and even the Imperial Guard Commander of the Imperial Family, left his sword behind on this dangerous island and disappeared somewhere, isn’t that too strange?”
“So you couldn’t find Sir Diego?”
At my question, Luzef shook his head with the face of a war veteran delivering tragic news.
“No matter how long I waited, he didn’t appear, so I eventually went looking for him, and this map was dropped nearby.”
“Map?”
At Enoch’s question, Luzef rummaged through the pockets of his priest’s robe and took out a piece of cloth and unfolded it.
My map only had the Bunker marked on it, but the map that Luzef took out had a mysterious monster-like drawing on the eastern side of the North Island.
Suddenly, I remembered the story that Zenas had told me about the Monster Mother.