"What on earth is going on, Leca?"
Mia whispered, barely breathing.
At the same time, the room of gray brick returned to its original state—a cold, empty space filled with chilling air.
Jakiel was gone. So was Selene's transparent corpse.
"Let's go back to the room with the altar. There might be something there we missed."
The altar room.
It looked like Jakiel's research lab. Stacks of papers were scattered across the desk.
Most of them contained notes on magical research, though here and there were also some administrative documents.
Mia and Leca tore through the room, searching frantically. Between books, behind drawers, in every possible spot—but nothing stood out.
Exhausted, Mia collapsed into a chair.
"If only I had a sip of water…"
At that moment—Something caught Mia's eye.
On the wall beside the desk was a piece of old, faded paper, pinned in place.
Mia walked over and read it.
—Yulcersol, 1/2 unit
—Five buds of Nonofudia
—One tablespoon of ground nutmeg
—Powdered stone of Ravellus
—Raw liver of Chirore
"…That's strange. Is this a recipe?"
Mia, covered in dust, called out to Leca, who was buried in a bookshelf.
"Leca, come take a look at this."
"Yes?"
"There's something odd here. What is this supposed to make?"
Leca read the list that Mia pointed to. She asked,
"What's a Chirore?"
"A divine beast. It has the form of a bison… Nearly extinct, so it would be incredibly hard to find."
"Do you know what the others are? Like Yulcersol or the stone of Ravellus?"
"Yulcersol is a poisonous plant. Even a small amount can be lethal. As for the stone of Ravellus… I have no idea."
"Let's take this and show it to someone. It gives me a really bad feeling."
Mia pulled the paper off the wall and stuffed it into her cloak.
And when she did—She noticed a palm-sized door on the wall. A red door embedded in the gray stone.
Mia gasped. "Isn't this… a safe?"
"Looks like it. It may be magically sealed…"
The door was a double panel, but had no handle. Leca hesitated for a moment, then gently pushed on it. Of course, it didn't budge.
Without hesitation, he conjured a flame.
—Boom.
A flash of searing light exploded, and one of the door panels broke off. Inside, there was only a single sheet of paper.
Leca pulled it out, and he and Mia read it together.
—Rosalène Phoebus Rachvaldi, age 18, completed
—Meloy d'Arbarois Visconti, age 15, completed
—Louisa Mérioche Lotni, age 16, completed
—Elizabeth Dissora Bilady, age 17, completed
—Feliska Roltre Neumandorf, age 15, completed
…
The list went on and on. And chillingly—At the end, it read:
—Mithys Souverios, age 20, failed
—Mia Hempson, age 22, in progress
Mia instinctively remembered what Leca had said earlier—The 108 sacrifices.
She glanced at Leca, whose face had gone pale. Was he thinking the same thing?
Mia slowly began to count. Two, four, six, eight, ten…By the time she reached her own name—There were exactly 108 names.
"..."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Mia folded the paper and tucked it into her cloak with the other sheet.
"It's strange, though. What is Jakiel doing that he's just leaving us alone?"
"Maybe he's seriously weakened. All of his hundreds of mirror clones were burned to ashes, after all… That would surely affect his physical body."
"If that's all it is, we're lucky. The real problem is figuring out where his true body is."
Mia looked around the eerie laboratory with a hint of regret. And then suddenly, she froze.
"Wait a second, Leca. Do we even know how to get back?"
"What? Oh…!"
"Right! We left Roy and the salamander in that attic room. To get back to them, we have to restore space and time to how it was! What do we do?"
Both Mia and Leca turned pale. They had been so focused on finding Jakiel that they hadn't figured out a way back.
Now they were trapped in a temporal rift.
"When you threw the mirror shard into the flame, this room and a different dimension opened up. That must be how Jakiel's been coming and going all this time."
Mia nodded.
"Right.
From the outside, it probably just looked like a room with an altar—But with some kind of trick, it transformed into this place. Now the question is: what kind of trick?"
"Should we try going back to the Cave of Pitch? Maybe there's something we missed…"
"But we found nothing last time. There's no point in going again. If we waste time and run into monsters—wait, hold on."
Monsters in the Cave of Pitch?
The zombie they'd met at the fork in the cave.
That zombie had said something—
He had offered to share a secret as thanks for their help:
—If you ever find yourself fighting dark magic, break the mirror first. Do that, and your enemy will die—and you'll win.
And then it all made sense.
When Jakiel first appeared during the game of hide-and-seek—he had come from the mirror.
In the Cave of Pitch, his clones had spread like countless reflections. And when they returned to the room, the two mirrors were suddenly gone.
The space-time shift had occurred when they threw a shard of the mirror into the altar's flame.
"…Damn it!
If I'd remembered that sooner, we wouldn't have had to go through all this hell!"
Mia bolted out of the room and ran toward the gray attic. Leca, not knowing what was going on, followed her in haste.
The more Mia thought about it, the more furious she became. How could she have only realized it now?
She and Leca returned to the attic room, filled with ominous energy. The space remained desolate and cold.
Two beds, two vanities, a painting on the wall—everything was as it had been.
Mia turned to Leca.
"Leca, make your flame as big as possible and destroy those mirrors. Both of them!"
Leca conjured a massive ball of fire and hurled it at the two vanities.
—Kyaaaaaaaaah!
As the mirrors shattered with a loud bang, a chilling scream echoed through the air.
It was impossible to tell whether the cry was human or beast.
The scream tore through their eardrums and echoed endlessly. At last, even the echo faded.
"Salamander?"
"Roy!"
The room had returned to the state it was in when they left. The two vanities now stood without mirrors, the interior scorched and reduced to ashes.
But the salamander looked lively, his eyes bright and alert, and Roy wore a confused expression.
"Was that teleportation or something? You just appeared out of nowhere…"
Roy said. Mia rushed over to the salamander.
"You're okay now? You look completely healthy!"
"Yes. I'm completely back to normal. Which means… don't tell me… you already defeated Jakiel?"
The salamander asked, sounding genuinely amazed. Mia scratched her head.
"How much time has passed?"
"Hmm… About fifteen minutes, I think?"
Mia smiled faintly.
"We went on a little time-traveling detour."
"Lady Mia, you must be some legendary hero. You resisted the temptation of dark magic, and then you tracked down and defeated the kingdom's most powerful dark mage in just fifteen minutes…"
The salamander blinked in awe.
"That dark magic thing didn't seem to require much. What would've happened if I had accepted?"
"What did it ask for again? A few drops of blood?"
"Oh, right!"
"Offering blood means submitting yourself to the demon god Bastet. With every drop you give, your soul gradually falls under Bastet's control."
"What happens then?"
"You become consumed by evil thoughts. Eventually, you turn into a completely different person—a villain obsessed with achieving your desires by any means necessary."
"So that's what happened to Jakiel…"
At Leca's words, the salamander nodded.
"Bastet's cat always offers temptations too good to resist. Jakiel probably wasn't like that in the beginning…But once you become a dark mage, the path of corruption is inevitable."
"Haaah…"
At that, exhaustion washed over Mia. She closed her eyes and collapsed.
Her body was drained, and she couldn't even lift herself.
Leca quickly produced a potion and poured it into Mia's mouth. After regaining a bit of strength, Mia sat halfway up and stared at Leca quietly.
"I've been wondering… How did you even know to come save us, Leca?
And how did you suddenly regain your strength?"
"My father came to me. He gave me something that restored my mana."
Leca smiled as he held up a silver ring set with a glowing red gemstone.
But then his expression turned grim.
"I… might have to go into hiding in Sibareth. Though I don't even know if that's possible."
"Go into hiding? Why?"
"It's a long story. In any case, Salamander, it's time for you to return to your world. You've done well."
The salamander spun once in the air and bid farewell to everyone. Roy nearly cried, not wanting to part with him.
Once the salamander had left, Leca stood up.
"Let's go, Lady Mia. Even if I have to hide later… For now, we must report what we've discovered."
Mia pulled out the two sheets of paper from her cloak and read over them again.
"Will they even believe us?"
"…We can have them read Roy's memories if necessary. That gives us a chance."
Leca replied casually.
Roy flinched in horror, and Mia looked dumbfounded.
"Wait—then we didn't even need to go find evidence in the first place?"
"They could just claim we tampered with his memory. Someone like you, Lady Mia, might be accused of having such a power. That's why… the more evidence we have, the better."
Mia sighed deeply. The fight was just beginning.