The Outer God Needs Warmth-Chapter 169: Don’t cry. Don’t cry (9)

As I walked through the dark cave, I could see light in the distance.

Splash.

As I walked forward, I suddenly heard the sound of water. It was dark in the cave, so I couldn’t see well, but there was water pooled on the ground.

Fortunately, it wasn’t deep, so I could walk through it. As I stepped into the water, it rose up to my thighs.

The water was extremely cold.

If I were an ordinary person, my body would have turned blue by now, but I was fine. As I continued to push through the water, something caught my foot.

Thud.

It felt like something heavy was caught on my foot.

Curious, I touched it, and felt something soft and something hard, along with what seemed like cloth. It wasn’t dangerous. After all, there was nothing alive around here.

If there had been life, there would have been light.

But this place had none of that.

Thud.

Soon, I came to the entrance. There were many trees scattered around the entrance, making it darker than what I had seen in the cave, but once I stepped out, I could at least see my surroundings.

When the light shone, the identity of what had been flowing into the cave became clear.

A bloated corpse, half-melted by the water, was floating by. It was a boy and girl wearing clothes I had often seen at the Royal Academy. But I didn’t recognize their faces.

Moreover, their clothes were a mess, as Kanna’s memories would say. The styles were from different eras, entirely mismatched.

This wasn’t a real corpse; it seemed someone had staged this for display. The only one who would do such a thing would be the witch.

If you're going to do it, at least pay attention to the details. It looked like a cheap amusement park, as if no money had been spent on the setup.

Is the theme horror?

I thought to myself as I walked, as if directed to go that way.

There were no tree trunks along the riverbank, and I emerged outside, where the ground was littered with bird corpses, each with mismatched bodies and heads.

It looked like someone had clumsily assembled them, the cuts and necks not aligning.

The meat was realistic, and the smell of blood was carefully done, but none of it had been made with living materials. A hunter or butcher—experts in such matters—would recognize this as not real meat.

I tried to ignore it and move on, but there was nowhere else to go.

The path was blocked. The heads were scattered haphazardly. It was like a puzzle.

I grabbed a head that had fallen on the ground.

Caw! Peep! Chirp!

Every time I grabbed a head, it made bird sounds. The sound effects were amusing. The fact that it made noise without lungs, or that the blood was unusually fresh and flowing, kept flashing in my mind.

After fitting the bird's heads together, a jar of jam, with a lid open, emerged from the thorny bushes surrounding me. It was a child.

The child crawled forward, tore off its clothes, and dipped its head in jam before offering it to me. When I took it, the child pointed to the hole it had crawled out of.

A fairy tale came to mind. I think it was about medicine.

I placed the jam in my mouth.

It was marmalade. The clothes tasted like bread.

Well, there was no actual food entering my body. The sensations from my internal organs felt empty. Instead, it seemed like the body had acted as if it was following the right procedure, and it shrank. The hole the child had crawled out of grew far larger than my height. I walked toward what had become a cave.

Coming out of a rabbit hole, I saw a gigantic palace in the distance. Was that my destination? It felt like a well-crafted story.

I wasn’t sure what the purpose was, but it felt like walking through a fairy tale.

There were plenty of corpses, but doesn’t the overall structure still match? The birds in the cockroach race were all dead, and the mouse had already withered where it first fell.

Next, will the potion grow and the house shrink?

“Who are you?”

While walking, someone suddenly spoke to me.

I blinked. A small girl with long white hair. But she looked exactly like someone from my memories.

I recognized the face. From long ago. A witch who had never existed in this world.

Hyukkesuni.

This dismissed the theory that this was merely a witch's illusion. At least something had been done to my mind.

All life in the third world, including Victoria, had stopped. Of course, even though objects moving fast, or supposed to move fast, were barely moving, it seemed time was just moving very slowly.

I thought the world had stopped, but it was just what had been done to my mind. The scale was smaller than I expected.

Above all, the presence of Hyukkesuni in front of me shouldn’t have been possible. She had fallen to the ground and melted away.

“It's hard to explain because it has changed many times.”

“Who hasn’t changed? That’s why there’s something to define. A name. A name.”

She asked for my name. I had never gained memories, so I wasn’t sure if this was really her or just an illusion. Let’s try it anyway.

“Bell. Chosel, Rebecca. Choose.”

I said that. But Hyukkesuni shook her head. She didn’t react specifically to Rebecca’s name and just shook her head.

“No, that’s not your name. What I’m asking for is your real name.”

I wasn’t sure whether this was the person from my faded memories, or if the witch was trying to figure out my name.

“I don’t have a name. If you need a name for my vessel, then come up with one yourself.”

Hyukkesuni giggled.

“Alright. How about this name?”

She jumped off the rock and pointed at me.

“Waisin.”

I had heard the word “Waisin” in this world before. But I was the first person to be called that.

Which one was it?

“That’s what I’ll call you. I want to leave this place. How should I do that?”

I decided to ask the figure in front of me. Then, Hyukkesuni—or the one mimicking her—touched her chin, a gesture Hyukkesuni had never made.

This content is taken from fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm.

At least, as far as I knew.

She then pointed toward the distant castle with her finger.

“Go that way.”

Hmm. Right. This is an easy NPC. There’s no light in her chest. It means she’s not human. I nodded and was about to head that way when I stopped for a moment.

“Excuse me.”

“Why?”

She gave me a look as if to say, “Ask if you have a question.” So I asked her.

“What do you think of people who smile when they’re scared?”

At my question, her expression vanished. And like a broken machine, she stood silently, not saying a word. She even stopped pretending to breathe.

I guess I caused a logical error by saying something unexpected.

I lost interest and headed for my destination.

In the distance, the castle was visible, and there were several places I had to pass through. If I met a person from the past, who would I meet?

“Hm? A kid like you in a place like this? What brings you here?”

It was a one-way road. A door appeared as I walked and opened to reveal a familiar place. Very luxurious, yet modest in its own way.

And in front of me, an old man and dozens of statues with missing heads.

I immediately recognized who it was.

Tisha. But we weren’t exactly close. I could count on one hand the number of times we had met. Even if this was real, there was nothing to talk about. So, I simply stated my purpose.

“I’m heading to the castle outside.”

I pointed toward the castle. Tisha stared at me silently. Then he stood up and walked to one side of the room, taking something and coming back in front of me.

“Extend your hand.”

When I did, he dropped something. A key. The word “Despair” was engraved on the key in relief.

“This is the backdoor key. I hope it helps on your journey.”

“Thank you.”

Tisha then walked to the window and opened it. Strangely, outside the window was not the expected space but a corridor.

A very old and worn-out corridor.

I climbed through the window, stood in the corridor, and saw Tisha inside, wiping down a statue with a towel.

Leaving him behind, I continued through the corridor.

It was suspicious how smoothly the conversation went without any context. What was the witch thinking in making this?

A passage with walls of earth, devoid of decoration.

It was a place I had lived in the first world. But it wasn’t a place from my memories. It resembled it, but the path and the map in my mind didn’t match.

So, after passing through the earthen walls, I came to a small room.

There were two people inside. One was a man as large as a bear, with a pale, thin face. The other person...

“One such as you in a place like this, have you lost your way?”

Joanna.

“I’m heading to the castle.”

“The castle? Do you know where it is?”

The man answered Joanna’s question.

“I know. You’re heading to a dangerous place.”

Yasle. Both Yasle and Joanna in my memories were silent. That means, the one in front of me must be a fake, with a face similar to the real one.

“But to enter the castle, you need an invitation from there. Otherwise, you must get a key from a dangerous person.”

I silently took out the key I had received from Tisha earlier. Yasle looked at it, surprised, and opened a door that had been in a place outside the earth walls of the first world.

“Then you can go this way.”

There were no further questions.

I nodded and waved goodbye to Joanna, who was waving her hand, and Yasle, who was giving me a sharp look, then I continued on my way.

I must be in the center of the underground now, but when I opened the door and stepped outside, I found a city buried in trees. The place where the city once stood was now completely overtaken by trees, and there were no traces of the city left.

Where there used to be a wide street, a narrow stream now flowed.

I walked along it. The surrounding nature began to dry out, and soon I came to a place that looked like a newly built city.

A round plaza surrounded by buildings. In the center, under a statue of a woman, stood a white-haired girl with her back to me, someone I had recently parted with.

Behind her, there was another person I recognized. A girl with a small stature but impressive, large breasts, who looked just like the statue.

Rebecca Rolf.

She waved her hand at me.