Inside was another box. What was this, some kind of matryoshka doll?
Its dull black color, without even a common decoration, made my expectations sink even lower.
“......Damn it.”
“Oh, tsk, tsk. What could be hidden away so tightly? Why not open it here instead? I will only watch from far away. Hmm?”
In a gentle voice, as though coaxing a child, the old woman urged me.
Naturally, my answer was......
“I don’t want to.”
“Y-you do not?”
“No.”
“Why not? Are you afraid this old woman might steal it?”
Instead of answering, I took out the box and tucked it beneath one arm.
“Goodness. You are an unusual fellow in every way. I will not touch so much as a speck of it, so do not worry.”
The old woman clicked her tongue as though she found me absurd and walked ahead.
I hurriedly followed behind her.
I promised myself that I would put off properly checking the box until after I returned to the dormitory.
Instead, something had been bothering me from earlier, so I asked the old woman.
“You spoke as if you knew a great deal about it, but I suppose you do not know exactly what it is?”
The old woman walking ahead answered.
“There is only a story tied up with it. It was the first item I received after I began the pawnshop.”
“The first?”
“It must have been more than sixty years ago. This old woman was around twenty when I began the pawnshop.”
......Sixty years?
It had been that long ago?
“A pretty woman came looking for me, I believe. She was so bold and rowdy, tsk, tsk.”
“......”
My slowing steps soon came to a complete stop.
HALT.
I did not know why.
Even while thinking it could not be true, I was asking almost instinctively.
“That woman...... Do you know her name as well?”
“Her name?”
“Yes. Could it perhaps have been Yoo So......”
“For heaven’s sake, young man. What pawnshop receives an item under a real name?”
The old woman, who had also stopped, turned back and grinned at me.
......That was true.
In truth, it had been ridiculous.
It had happened sixty years ago.
Yoo Soyoung had come to mind without my realizing it, but other than their gender and somewhat similar personalities, there was no point of contact at all.
This was why I should not harbor false hopes.
The train of thought refused to follow reason and kept drifting toward whatever I wanted.
Just as a hollow chuckle escaped me at my own absurdity,
“However, I did hear the title the people around her called her.”
At the old woman’s next words, all my senses froze.
“Lea...... I believe that was it. It was a long time ago, but she was my first customer, so it stayed in my memory for a long time.”
It was her baptismal name and pen name.
Another name Yoo Soyoung had used at the very beginning......
***
When the customer who had come after so long dashed out in a frenzy, silence settled over the place as it always did.
The old woman was looking toward the entrance when she heard a voice calling for her and turned her head.
“Madam.”
The excited voice came from the exact opposite direction of the door.
The dark wall beside the iron bars suddenly rippled, and a woman dressed in black night garb stepped out.
It was startling enough to make anyone faint, but the old woman merely chided her calmly.
“Have I not told you to use the door normally?”
“I apologize. I was in a hurry......”
After quickly prostrating herself, the woman spoke again.
“What happened to the prophecy?”
“It was true. He really came on the final day.”
“Then that person truly is......?”
“He has definitely inherited it. He was slow, but he made it rather well.”
“Ah......”
The woman trembled faintly, then bowed once more and cried out,
“Congratulations, Madam. Now that even the Forgotten Legacy has been delivered, we have laid the foundation for a leap forward.”
“What congratulations? I merely did what I had to do. Nothing will change at once, will it? However......”
The old woman, who had continued as though it were nothing unusual, suddenly gave a self-mocking smile and looked at the woman.
“I suppose I really am old. I cannot even control a single emotion properly, yet I speak of accomplishing some great undertaking. Tsk, tsk.”
“What do you mean by that......?”
“Tsk, tsk. I carelessly mentioned that person’s name.”
“......”
The woman could not give any answer to the old woman’s words.
Mentioning “that person” was a sensitive and delicate matter, and she feared making a mistake.
“Tsk, tsk. Why treat it as such a great blasphemy? How is the Commander’s side moving?”
Not entirely displeased by the woman’s reaction, the old woman swiftly changed the subject.
“They have been quiet. As expected, they did not seem to know of the Forgotten Legacy’s existence at all.”
“Tsk, tsk, I see. Even that mad bastard is only human in the end. Let us forget about it for a while as well.”
“Pardon?”
Unlike the startled woman, the old woman added calmly.
“If we are conscious of it, it will show all the more easily. Leave it alone. That will be safer. The seed has been sown, so it will grow well on its own.”
“Even so, we must secure his identity......”
“Do not talk nonsense. The connection has already been formed. If we trust and wait, he will come to find us on his own before long. Tsk, tsk.”
Certain of it, the old woman smiled brightly, showing her yellow teeth.
***
The current time was 11:57 PM.
It was a night when only a few lights remained to illuminate Taehak.
When I closed the door to my dormitory room, a sigh as deep as my complicated feelings escaped me.
“Hah—”
It had been a truly exhausting day.
THUD—
I set the box on the desk and drank a glass of water.
With my mind somewhat clearer, I spoke the name I had been turning over in my mind the whole way back.
“Lea......”
Was that person really Yoo Soyoung?
Was this box something Yoo Soyoung had left behind?
They had said it was the reward I absolutely needed......
If Causality was the obstacle standing between Yoo Soyoung and me, and the boundary crumbling meant a connection between us, then it was a fairly plausible hypothesis.
“But.”
There was a grave error here that I could not possibly overlook.
Time.
The old woman had said that she received the box roughly sixty years ago.
“Seriously......”
No matter how I considered it, that was a gap with no answer.
Yoo Soyoung, who had entered first, had become a person from sixty years ago?
There was only so much bullshit I could take.
If someone had invented a time machine, it might be another matter, but that was only a joke.
This was not some science-fiction novel. Could the probability even be 0.001%?
So there was only one answer.
“They just have the same name.”
It was not as though Yoo Soyoung was the only person in the world named Lea......
But the problem was that, even knowing this, I kept being drawn to it.
As though that 0.001% possibility applied to my own situation.
“I have really become an idiot. Just because I happened to find one thing, I am getting lost in absurd fantasies.”
I could not keep doing this, so I decided to check the item first.
I looked at the box on the desk.
Judging by its size and weight, was it some kind of accessory?
RATTLE RATTLE.
When I carefully shook it, the object inside did not feel small.
CREEEAK—
With some anticipation, I pushed up the lid of the box.
Then, accompanied by an old, acrid metallic scent, its interior was revealed.
“......”
I fell silent for a moment.
No, I could not help but fall silent.
There was nothing there at all.
“That cannot be......”
Had I not clearly heard something when I shook it?
To check, I put my hand into the box again.
GRAB.
Then, incredibly, I caught hold of something.
It was a bizarre sight, like grasping empty space, but the solid volume and smooth surface that came through clearly proved that something was there.
“What is this......”
It was an object that could not possibly exist within the limits of my knowledge, so I activated my Trait at once.
[Trait, Reading activated.]
[Search successful.]
[Reading as much as possible.]
[Pandora’s Box]
[Grade: ???]
[Description: A box called either the Source of All Evil or the Only Hope. One final remaining desire sleeps within. It can be opened with its owner’s blood, but further information is veiled.]
Good grief.
Its Grade was question marks, and the rest of the information was secret.
No particular setting came to mind, but the name itself was familiar.
Pandora’s Box was a famous treasure from Greek mythology.
The story I remembered went like this.
Zeus, who had been displeased that Prometheus gave fire to humanity, gave his brother a beautiful woman called Pandora.
The brother fell head over heels at first sight, and Zeus gave Pandora a small box.
Along with the instruction never to open it......
But how could she possibly help herself?
It was a gift from Zeus, the supreme god no less.
Of course, Pandora became so curious that she was driven to the brink of madness.
When she felt as though she would die if she did not open it, she finally opened the box.
And what was the result?
WHOOSH.
All kinds of calamities poured out.
Greed, envy, resentment, jealousy, and so on.
Stained and corrupted emotions instantly debased a world that had been pure.
It was both a trap and Zeus’s punishment for a mere human taking sacred fire.
That was as far as the story of Pandora’s Box went in my memory.
It had the same name as the one in front of me......
“Hmm......”
But it did not seem to merely share the same name.
The Source of All Evil and the Only Hope, written in its description.
There was an unsettling point of connection in those two phrases.
The Source of All Evil had already been explained, but hope, too, was one of the calamities that had poured out then.
Zeus had judged it from the perspective of a god.
Hope was an evil that made people abandon the present for an uncertain future.
Ironically, humanity had survived because of the expectation produced by that vague variable......
“I can open it, right?”
I stroked the transparent box and thought for a moment.
But if I did not open it?
It was transparent, so I could not even use it as a decoration. There was no reason to keep it.
Once I thought of it that way, there was only one answer.
“It said it could be opened with its owner’s blood.”
I opened the desk drawer and took out a sharp dagger.
It was the armament I had borrowed from Kang Cheolmin but had yet to return.
I did not know how Pandora had opened hers, but as the saying went, even a bull’s horn had to be pulled while it was still hot. Without hesitation, I cut my palm.
With a sharp sting, red blood soon fell and seeped into the box.
DRIP DRIP DRIP.
Again.
And again.
“......”
But nothing changed.
Was this not it?
Just as I wondered whether I had interpreted it too simply,
[3%]
[4%]
A system message appeared before my eyes.
I had suspected it, and as expected, I was right.
DRIP DRIP DRIP.
The number gradually rose in proportion to the amount of blood.
I had thought I had given it quite a lot, but it was only around four percent.
“This is rough.”
In the end, after enduring until five percent, I cut even my other palm.
Blood once again dripped down, but the percentage rose slowly.
It did not seem like this would be nearly enough, so I was wondering where I should cut next when,
[10%]
[First Threshold reached.]
[Pandora’s Box recognizes you as its master.]
[Partially opening.]
Changes occurred as the messages suddenly appeared.
SCREEEECH.
Black smoke rose with a grating friction sound, like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
WISP WISP—
Like a thread-snake gliding along a river, the black smoke leisurely rose upward.
The sight was so eerie and ominous that chills suddenly ran down my spine.
“...Am I fucked?”
It was only natural.
At that moment, I looked no different from a villain dreaming of resurrecting an evil god.
[The final remaining Calamity, “Greed,” sprouts.]
.
.
My intuition had been correct.
WHOOSH.
The black smoke that had wandered aimlessly suddenly descended and burrowed into my right hand.
I did not even have time to feel it.
[You have absorbed Pandora’s Box.]
[Achievement-754: The Man Who Awakened a Calamity]
[Reward: 3 days.]
[Conditions met. Hidden Quest activated.]
───────────────
[Hidden Quest: Master of Calamities]
[Goal: Using the power of Greed as your foundation, find and absorb the calamities of the other Seven Deadly Sins that escaped from Pandora’s Box.]
[Duration: Automatically ends upon death.]
───────────────
“It was real?”
I went rigid, like dry firewood.
And what was this Hidden Quest?
What, the Seven Deadly Sins?
This was not Dragon Ball. It was telling me to find and absorb calamities.
Not only was this a setting that did not exist in the original novel, but it also had no reward, and even its objective and duration were ominous.
“How does ending upon death make any sense?”
It was not as though the result would simply be absorption, either.
Did that not give the impression that I had become someone’s target and needed to survive?
Although I had avoided a disaster in which every calamity poured out as in the legend, it was at that moment, when I thought the losses outweighed the gains.
[Reward: Time Restriction Lifted]
Lifted......?
“Then I have no choice but to take this seriously.”
I stared blankly at my right hand, where the box and Greed had been absorbed and settled.