Chapter 70
I frowned slightly. “You don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. You were trapped in here by that knight.”
Her lips tightened for a moment. “I’m well aware of that. You must have come running shortly after, correct?”
“Of course.”
It wouldn’t do well to say I had been there all along, so I lied.
“Then, you were also trapped.” She concluded. “You’re probably worried about your sister, but you don’t need to be.”
“Why is that?”
“My brother… has likely already rescued her.”
“Your brother was drugged unconscious.”
“The knight who drugged my brother underestimated him. My brother isn’t so easily defeated. He has likely already woken up and rescued your sister.”
“I have encountered Erika. She suggests her brother is already awake.” I spoke inwardly toward my other self.
She didn’t exaggerate. He has already appeared. Mara is trying to explain to him about the box.
“What about you?”
I decided it’d be better if we were not seen on both sides by both siblings. I’ve chosen to hide and observe.
“Good, then I will concentrate on escaping with Erika.” I turned back to Erika, my internal conversation only taking the blink of an eye.
“In that case, we should concentrate on escaping,” I told her. “The bandit gave the box a name before he… captured me. They call it the Schrödinger’s box.”
She glanced up. “A Schrödinger’s box?”
“You don’t seem worried. Isn’t there no way to leave the box without dying?” I inquired.
In truth, I was probing her for information. I didn’t know enough about the box. I had no magical ability either, and my knowledge from my world didn’t help either. She was an academic from this world though. If she understood more about its nature, it might help me figure out how to escape.
“Of course, the Schrödinger’s box has a method of escape.” She blinked. “Why would you build a box that could only kill someone upon escape? Why not just kill them in the beginning?”
“There could be many reasons. You could be trying to extract information from them, or punish them.”
“You think they would send someone to a palace as punishment?” She asked, looking around the rather grandiose library.
“Perhaps…” I frowned. “For a king… or…some kind of…”
“An immortal!” Her eyes flashed and she looked at one of the bookshelves, scanning for a book. “Yes, that makes sense. This must be the former residence of some great immortal. I immediately felt something off about this place as soon as I arrived. The magical remnants feel old but majestic.”
“You seem confident in that…”
“It’s very common for highly evolved paragons to create pocket dimensions as a place of storage. Storage rings are only the beginning.”
She lifted her hand, showing a ring on it. Was that a storage ring? That explained how she had ended up in clothing despite having only been in her towel before.
“I see…”
“Someone at the level of an immortal can keep an entire landmass inside a pocket dimension. These kinds of things exist everywhere, and long after their master is gone, cracks break open. Powerful paragons sometimes enter these cracks and explore these abandoned ruins looking for opportunity.”
“Exactly what level is an immortal?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She admitted with a blush. “Immortals are very powerful and I’ve never met one. I’ve only read about them in books. Like… the lightning immortal, which is what the Audra Lightning Province is named for.”
“This province is named after an immortal?” I inquired.
“Yes… about three thousand years ago, a massive tribulation came and tore the land asunder. Come to think of it, it wasn’t much different than the one that struck recently, except that it was weaker… probably a seventh evolution.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You might have felt it a month or so ago when the land went dark. That was the tribulation of a powerful being, an immortal. Most likely, the immortal’s tribulation was interrupted though, so I guess he wouldn’t be a true immortal.”
“Interrupted, by what?” I asked, more interested now that the conversation was on me.
“A lot of people think he died.” She tapped her lips thoughtfully. “But, I think he survived. The tribulation was interrupted too abruptly, and then there was the mana fall. It was caused by the mortal barrier.”
“A mortal barrier?” I was hearing a lot of new information.
Without Tyler there to get jealous and interrupt, Erika was an open book and I planned to learn as much from her as possible.
“Our world is mortal. The laws of our world inhibit the rise of immortals. The power of the tribulation exceeded the limits of our world… so they were interrupted. The Lightning Immortal’s tribulation was a bit weaker, so the Lightning Immortal’s tribulation wasn’t interrupted. It caused a cataclysm to the land, and the immortal left this world without a word. In the end, no one even knows his name. Unlike many other immortals, he didn’t even leave behind any pocket realms or legacies.”
“So, you believe this box is a legacy left behind by one of these immortals?” I decided to bring the conversation around.
It had been difficult to gauge time inside the pond, but wouldn’t my seventh evolution have been around that time? If that’s the case, wasn’t the lightning immortal this woman spoke of me? It seemed hard to believe considering I hadn’t even noticed the tribulations, but they might have done more than just clear out the immediate area. It was even possible I did start in an ocean, and after a particularly bad tribulation, I ended up in a puddle.
“I do… if we can find it, we might be able to find the legacy of an immortal.” She declared. “I’m going to continue to look through the books if you’d like to explore the castle…”
“What if it was just a prison for some powerful monster?”
“Even then, we might be able to find something of value.” She declared confidently and then made a face. “I know, as a mortal, you don’t have these kinds of aspirations, but we paragons must bet everything on opportunities like this. If you take the risk and look around, you may have the chance to become a paragon.”
“Is that so…” I asked, feeling slightly amused.
Her face turned pink. “I’m sorry. You’re just a mortal man. I shouldn’t put too many expectations on you. If you’d rather stay put, I believe the library is safe and I will be here for some time.”
“I’ll go.”
She looked at me in surprise. “You will? It might be dangerous… a mortal shouldn’t wander around.”
“If I see any trouble, I’ll come running back,” I smirked.
Her revelation that this is some kind of immortal abode caught my interest. I did want to get a better understanding of what kind of power was behind this world. I had already gotten the sense that I was strong, but perhaps this so-called immortal wasn’t any weaker. At the least, there was still a me on the other side to watch after Mara while I explored.
“I’m going to be looking around. Erika suggests there may be something worth obtaining in here.”
Very well. Mara and Tyler have continued their trek to Stormberg. Tyler believes that there is someone there who can help his sister escape the box.
That gave us about a week to investigate the palace. I nodded to myself and then left Erika and the library room. I didn’t feel very much risk here. Part of the reason I agreed to Mara’s request was because I wanted to get a better understanding of such tricks. If someone could be so easily captured and killed, I wanted to understand it better. Erika may have had confidence in her brother, but if I had been sucked into the box and was unable to protect Mara, I’d feel decimated.
Thus, I arrived intending to gain a better understanding of this particular type of magic. Since Erika had similar ideas, then it was fine if we both conducted research in our way. She could waste her time reading tomes while I’d explore.
I spent the next few days exploring the obvious rooms. As expected, everything was empty. If someone had lived here before, they had moved out. I was surprised to find the entire place was completely bare. There was nothing inside. Not even a scrap of cloth or a piece of paper was left. Only the bare furniture remained, and it was enough to have a place to spend the night, there didn’t appear to be anything magical or immortal about that. There were no traps or monsters that I was able to discern. There were no magical circles or scripts.
That inevitably brought me back to the courtyard, and the magical arch that I had entered. There was something unique there that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, the skeletal remains. At first, I had presumed that people were teleported here and died. However, why were they all in the courtyard? Wouldn’t they have spread out across the palace? Yet, every corpse happened to be in this courtyard. Furthermore, they were all about the same level of decay. One would think if different people were caught at different times, then every single one of them would be at different levels of decay. Yet, all of them had been picked clean down to the bone.
If there was any mystery to be gleaned, then it needed to come from the archway. Unfortunately, I didn’t know whatever magical language they used and I couldn’t read any of it. I thought about returning to the library and asking Mara for help. However, at that moment, several runes started to glow, one after another. It had a form to it like someone typing in a phone number.
“You aren’t trying to open the box, are you?” I asked the other me.
The box is in Tyler’s possession. He would not open it and risk killing his sister.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
It meant that something else was coming in.
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