---
Takumi moved through the dungeon's eastern wing like a whisper. The level-up notifications still hung in the corner of his mind like dust on a mirror, but he ignored them. He refused to open his Stat Menu until he reached Level 20. It would be cleaner that way. Four sets of five. A pleasing multiple.
Seventeen was a wretched number. Prime. Jagged. Inelegant.
The architecture had started to change. Less rot now, fewer uneven walls. The deeper he went, the more ordered the dungeon became—as if someone had been cleansing it from the inside.
It wasn't him.
That both intrigued and disturbed him.
Then he smelled it: ink. Burned parchment. Chalk powder.
A room ahead was glowing with soft blue light.
He approached, steps perfectly silent.
---
Inside, a girl sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by scattered scrolls, spellbooks, and loose pages, all scribbled over with symbols and margin notes.
She had wild, ginger-blonde hair pulled into a messy side bun. Ink stains dotted her fingers, cheeks, and robe like freckles. One boot was untied. Her spellbook—Takumi noticed with a silent spike of irritation—had bent corners and uneven spacing between every written line.
She was humming off-key.
Takumi's eye twitched.
She didn't see him yet.
Instead, she was holding a glowing rune between her fingers, whispering to it like it was a friend. A circle of light rotated around her, dim and flickering.
> "Subject 37: Resonance levels unstable. Core structure failed to form."
She sighed.
"Stupid dungeon. Everything here degrades so fast—nothing holds a pattern."
That sentence stopped him.
He stepped forward.
The rune sputtered and dimmed. The girl jumped, startled. She scrambled to her feet, pulling a curved dagger from her belt.
Then froze.
They stared at each other in silence.
Takumi—calm, expression unreadable. Pale tunic spotless despite hours in the dungeon. Hair perfectly in place, eyes sharp and unwavering.
The girl—hair in tangles, sleeves ink-smudged, scrolls piled behind her like a paper avalanche.
She tilted her head. "Whoa."
He raised an eyebrow.
"You're… symmetrical," she said, with something like awe.
He frowned. "You're not."
---
Silence again.
Then she broke into a crooked grin.
"I'm Lisette. Apprentice to Magister Volya. Scribe, spellcrafter, and first-year chaos theorist. You?"
Takumi hesitated.
"…Takumi."
Her eyes widened. "That's not a local name. Are you from Rythia? Westfold? Wait—wait—are you a worldwalker?!"
He said nothing.
She began rummaging through her notes, flipping through pages, muttering to herself.
"'Anomaly signatures expected to appear within 300 cycles of a soul-dump into the dungeon's echo-folds.' You—You are one, aren't you?!"
She held up a parchment. It was wrinkled. Crooked. There were six diagrams, all unaligned.
He took it from her without asking.
Sat down.
Then began straightening it.
Line by line. Edge by edge.
Lisette watched, wide-eyed, as he spent nearly five full minutes silently smoothing, aligning, pressing the corners until the paper sat flat and centered on his knees.
"Uhhh…" she said.
He looked up.
"These diagrams are wrong," he said flatly.
Her mouth opened. "Excuse me?"
"You're mapping spell sigils onto a non-radial grid. Your central rune anchors are offset. You're missing a mirrored inversion here—" He jabbed a finger at the page, "—and here."
Lisette blinked.
Then smiled.
"Oh my gods. You're insane."
---
He stood up, folding the parchment perfectly.
"I'm leaving."
"Wait! No, no, wait! I didn't mean that in a bad way—uh—Look, please, I've been trying to map dungeon magic flow for a year and everything breaks after a few hours because the architecture twists itself. But you..."
She looked around the room, then back at him.
"You're not… twisted. You're like… straight lines. Vertical symmetry. Balanced steps. Like the dungeon didn't touch you."
He frowned. "The dungeon is flawed. I cleanse it."
Lisette slowly raised both eyebrows.
"You're not a mage, are you?"
"No."
"Fighter?"
"No."
"Then what are you?"
He hesitated.
His words came low and quiet.
"Broken."
---
For once, she didn't answer with words.
She sat down.
Pulled her scrolls together in a messy pile.
Tried to smooth them out.
Failed.
Then looked up at him sheepishly. "Help?"
He didn't want to.
Her mess made his skin crawl.
But he sat beside her.
Together, they sorted her papers into neat rows. One page at a time.
---
> [Mental Load reduced by 6%.]
[Trust Seeded: Lisette]
---
"I don't like people," he said after a while.
Lisette snorted. "Good. I'm not a person. I'm a goblin in disguise."
Takumi didn't smile.
But his fingers twitched slightly less.
---
🔹 End of Chapter 4