Naturally, Karte did not enter the mansion.
His objective had been to bring those two here. There was no reason for him to enter the mansion and help them search for Darren.
“Darren is supposed to be in here…?”
An unnaturally cold chill permeated the mansion.
The temperature inside had plummeted. White breath escaped Didia’s lips whenever she exhaled, and her ears turned red, making her feel as though she were walking outdoors in the middle of winter.
She would never have believed it without seeing it for herself.
They had imprisoned a young child who had not even finished growing in a place this cold.
Anger welled within her.
Suppressing her boiling rage, Didia clutched Kyria tightly in her arms and crept through the mansion at a turtle’s pace.
Regardless of the anger she felt, she could not deny that she was terrified.
Thick layers of Dust covered the floor of the abandoned mansion, and rubbish lay scattered everywhere.
All the wooden furniture had been reduced to splintered wreckage. Unfamiliar portraits hanging on the walls gave her the chilling impression that their subjects were watching her.
Countless tiny, unidentified insects crawled across the ceiling. Filthy, tangled cobwebs hung from the corners, and a spider that had spotted its natural predator hurriedly retreated into hiding.
SQUEAK!
A rat that sensed someone approaching fled from a room whose hinges had been torn loose.
Startled, Didia screamed loudly.
Kyria was a weasel-type Monster and preferred meat.
She was often fed rats, so she would normally have chased after it. Yet she remained completely still in Didia’s arms.
“Damn it! Why did it have to jump out like that?!”
She had already searched half of the first floor, yet the only things she had encountered were small animals.
Didia suppressed the urge to run out of the mansion immediately and continued creeping down the corridor like a frightened turtle.
“Why is this room locked?”
As she walked along a straight corridor, Didia noticed a room with its door firmly shut.
She pushed down on the handle, but it would not move. The door appeared to have been locked from the inside.
There was no key in sight. This was an abandoned building, so it would not matter if she broke the door.
“Kyria, could you open this?”
“Skree! Skree!”
Kyria shook her head and adamantly refused.
She normally obeyed everything Didia asked of her. This was the first time she had ever been frightened enough to refuse her so completely.
An icy sensation brushed across Didia’s skin.
She wanted to pretend she had seen nothing and walk away. However, she could not bring herself to ignore the room when Darren might be inside.
“Is there… something in there?”
She could not sense anyone’s presence.
Didia pondered what to do before using magic to blast the door handle apart with a CRUNCH!
Creeeeak.
The door opened.
Didia struggled to steady her flinching body and assumed a combat stance.
In horror novels, something always leaped out during moments like this.
Contrary to her expectations, however, there was nothing inside. The tension enveloping her body melted away as cleanly as snow.
Looking slightly deflated, Didia entered the room as though entranced.
It was small.
Surprisingly, that was the first impression that came to her.
The room contained neither a window nor any furniture. The space, narrower than a bathroom, resembled a solitary cell meant for a vicious criminal.
It was quite literally an empty room.
Even so, for some reason, Didia felt no desire whatsoever to leave.
It was almost as though some inexplicable force were drawing her farther inside.
Kyria bit the hem of her clothes and tugged at it, urging her to leave quickly.
Thanks to Kyria, Didia barely came back to her senses and immediately attempted to run out of the room.
The door whose handle she had destroyed suddenly slammed shut on its own.
BANG!!!!
He could sense a human lifespan.
Darren was undoubtedly somewhere inside the mansion. Why, then, did Rud feel as though he had been circling the same place all this time?
Every corner led to the same sight. He was certain he had already seen the Vase resting on the old shelf at least five times.
“Is this Illusion Magic?”
Rud stopped walking and calmly assessed the situation.
There had to be a device somewhere.
He believed the illusion would disappear automatically once he disabled it.
At that moment, the floor rapidly grew colder, as though it were being flash-frozen, and solid ice erupted beneath Rud’s feet.
CRACKLE… CRUNCH!!
Without showing the slightest sign of alarm, Rud shattered the ice with a Shockwave.
His freedom did not last long. This time, ice began blooming from the corners of the walls.
“…?!”
The door would not open.
Didia alternated between magic and physical force as she attempted to escape, but it would not move, as though something were holding it shut.
The ice covering her feet had already risen to just below her knees. Ice was also spreading across the ceiling, slowly consuming the room.
“Is anyone out there?! Loeb! Loeb!!”
At this rate, she would become a frozen statue within minutes.
“Kyria, melt this ice quickly!”
FWOOSH!!
At Didia’s desperate cry, Kyria, who had been trembling in her arms, immediately leaped to the floor and breathed scorching Flames from her mouth.
Her sense of duty to protect her master had overcome the fear in her heart.
However, as though that amount of heat were nowhere near sufficient, the ice continued freezing the room without losing momentum.
“Th-This cannot be happening!”
Refusing to surrender, Kyria raised the intensity of her Flames.
The room, which had been bitterly cold only moments ago, instantly became as warm as midsummer.
Even that was not enough to melt the ice. It continued spreading and had already descended halfway down the room.
Kyria’s legs also began freezing solid.
Startled, Kyria closed her mouth and cut off the Flames.
The ice that had formed beneath Didia’s feet had already risen past her waist.
She could not move.
Even when she tried to force her body to move, she remained completely immobile, as though trapped inside a narrow mold.
The hand she had placed against the door also began to freeze.
At this rate, she would suffer Frostbite, and her skin would begin to rot.
“Wh-What should I do?”
The entire mansion was rapidly freezing over.
Rud repeatedly fired Shockwaves to break apart the ice when—
Rustle.
He sensed an eerie presence behind him.
“…?”
When he turned, there was naturally nothing there.
Rud tilted his head.
Perhaps he had imagined it.
The mansion was so decrepit that it would not have been surprising for something to leap out at him.
Rud paid it little attention and turned his gaze forward once more.
At that very instant, an Icicle with a tip as sharp as a spearhead tore through the air directly before his eyes.
“…?!”
CRACK!!
The Icicle shattered with a heavy sound.
It had happened in the span of an instant.
Had Rud reacted even slightly later, the Icicle would have pierced his face and killed him instantly.
Rud carefully straightened his upper body after hastily ducking.
“…”
He silently looked down at the fragments of the Icicle that had missed him and shattered against the wall.
The temperature inside fell even further.
The corridor was also freezing at an increasingly rapid pace.
Within the tangled maze, Rud exhaled a cloud of white breath and steadied himself before abruptly turning around and unleashing a Shockwave.
BANG!! CRACK!!
The Shockwave from his fingertips pulverized three Icicles flying toward him from the direction opposite his gaze.
Fragments of ice fell at his feet.
Rud stared down at them before swiftly leaping backward.
TAP!!
Three pointed Icicles dropped onto the place where he had been standing only moments before.
“What kind of…”
Remaining here seemed unwise.
Without setting a particular destination, Rud began running straight ahead.
Several Icicles formed behind him and pursued him closely.
CRACK!
The sound of something solid striking a surface reached his ears.
Rud had turned a corner with remarkable speed, causing the Icicles flying in a straight line to lose their target and crash into the wall ahead.
He fixed his gaze on the floor.
The longer he kept it there, the more Icicles poured from the ceiling like a torrential downpour.
RATATATATATATATAT!
He had no time to look behind him.
The walls and floor were almost completely covered in ice. Barely a meter of traversable ground remained.
At most, he had only a few seconds left.
Rud continued running without any thought of stopping, keeping his eyes fixed downward.
Then he noticed an intense chill seeping through the gap beneath one of the doors.
‘That is it!’
Rud abruptly stopped and shattered the door with a Shockwave.
Inside the room, which was being completely encased in ice, a single Magic Circle remained perfectly intact on the wall, entirely unaffected.
Three Icicles formed above the crown of his head and dropped toward him.
Rud ignored them, kept his gaze fixed ahead, and blew away the entire room with a Shockwave.
BANG—BOOOOM!!!!
A thunderous explosion like the detonation of a massive bomb reverberated throughout the mansion.
A large hole remained where the room had once stood, revealing the exterior beyond it. Crumbling debris fell helplessly to the ground.
Rud briefly caught his breath and slowly surveyed the area.
The rain of Icicles had stopped.
The corridor that had stretched endlessly in a straight line had returned to its original state.
The ice covering the entire building had also disappeared without a trace.
Elsewhere, Didia, who had been encased in ice up to just beneath her face, collapsed onto the floor as though she had narrowly escaped death.
Unaware of this, Rud steadied his breathing and muttered to himself.
“I should have realized it immediately.”
He had left Didia on the first floor and gone up to the second, only to encounter a dead end without warning.
While searching for another route to the third floor, he had become trapped in a corridor that continued endlessly like a maze.
Whoever had constructed this trap had done an extraordinary job.
The Icicles had formed in the exact opposite direction from Rud’s line of sight.
To put it simply, when he looked toward nine o’clock, an Icicle attacked from three o’clock.
When he looked toward six o’clock, an Icicle attacked from twelve o’clock.
That was why Rud had run while looking only at the floor.
Had he divided his attention among multiple directions, Icicles could have attacked him from every side. He had been forced to avoid looking ahead altogether.
All that had remained was to deal with the ice consuming the mansion and resolve the endlessly extending maze of corridors.
Rud had found the clue in the cold.
No matter how decrepit the mansion was, if a device capable of freezing such a large building all at once had been concealed somewhere inside, it would inevitably require a safeguard.
If the Magic Circle itself froze by mistake, the spell would automatically be dispelled.
It had been a precarious struggle against time.
Had Rud taken any longer, he would have become a pure-white statue of ice, frozen in place as though time itself had stopped.
‘Was the cold also producing the illusion?’
A Dual Magic Circle.
It was an advanced technique that installed two spells within a single Magic Circle.
‘I need to find Darren and leave before another trap activates.’
Without taking even a moment to rest, Rud immediately ascended to the third floor.
Unlike the second floor, the third had an even more sinister atmosphere.
Shattered pieces of glass lay scattered everywhere, and the dark stains covering the walls resembled old, smeared bloodstains.
A Lifespan was close.
Ignoring every other door, Rud walked directly toward the place where he sensed a human presence.
He did not lower his guard.
It would not have been strange for another form of magic to have been placed here.
‘Here.’
Rud stopped before the door at the far end of the corridor and cautiously pushed it open.
Creeeeak…
At the center of what appeared to be an Attic Room, a familiar silhouette sat motionless in a chair, staring blankly out the window.
Rud could see only the back of the figure’s head, making it difficult to be certain. However, judging by his size and build, he was undoubtedly a young boy around ten years old.
“Darren?”
Rud spoke softly and moved closer to see his face.
It was unquestionably Darren.
His face perfectly matched that of the boy in Rud’s memory.
However, something was wrong with him.
Even after clearly seeing Rud’s face, Darren showed no reaction whatsoever.
He merely continued staring blankly out the window.
“…Darren?”