Suddenly, his fingers felt clammy.
Eugeo spread open his left and right hands, lifted before his eyes.
Despite the lack of illumination, he could clearly see the deep red blood stickily dripping off his ten fingers.
"...Aaaaaaah!"
Eugeo jumped up with that scream.
He was engrossed in scrubbing his two sticky hands against his shirt. Only after wiping them countless times while screaming out, did he notice the moisture on his hands was not blood, but merely sweat.
Was that a dream-even after arriving at that conclusion, he still took some time before he thought to restrain his heart, beating like an alarm bell, and the cold sweat seeping out from 186.
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himself. The lingering memory of that absurdly terrifying nightmare clung to his back with no sign of fading.
-Mother and father... I hadn"t even thought of them much since I left the village.
Muttering so in his heart, Eugeo closed his two eyes tightly and kept his breathing shal ow.
When he was a young boy in Rulid, his mother worked on the fields, tended to the sheep, and even did the housework on top of that, hardly cuddling gently with Eugeo. They had slept in different beds even before he even achieved maturity and Eugeo had no recollections of being unsatisfied over that.
-So why did I see such a dream after al that...
Eugeo strongly shook his head and stopped his trail of thoughts. Dreams were up to the caprice of the moon G.o.ddess, Lunaria. This nightmare surely held no significance.
After his breathing had calmed down a little, the doubt over his current location bubbled up. He softly lifted his eyelids while still crouching.
What first entered his vision was a deep crimson carpet with an astonishing amount of density and an intricate pattern weaved into it. The carpet that he couldn"t estimate the value of, if bought at the textile shop in the fifth district of North Centoria, stretched on and on in his vision no matter how he tried to find its end.
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He finally saw the far away wall only after he looked straight ahead.
Even if it was a wall, it was made from neither wood nor stone. Golden pil ars in the shape of gigantic swords stood at regular intervals with gla.s.s panes inserted between them. As such, it could actually be considered as a line of windows rather than a wall, but a room where valuable gla.s.s was used this freely couldn"t be found even in the castles of the four emperors, could it?
Numerous clouds, dyed blue by the moonlight, were floating beyond the wall entirely composed of gla.s.s. This room was apparently higher than even the clouds.
He saw a bluish-white full moon floating in a corner of the night sky when he brought his sight up higher. An astonishing mult.i.tude of stars were silently flickering away around it. The light pouring down from the sky richly filled with stars was far too bright; he took a while before noticing it was the middle of the night. Judging from the height of the moon, it should be a little after twelve. The date had apparently turned while he slept and it was the twenty-fifth of the fifth month now.
Finally, Eugeo looked straight up. The ceiling drew a perfect circle far above and he couldn"t spot any stairs to proceed to the next floor. That could mean that this room was the highest floor of the Central Cathedral.
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The wide ceiling vividly depicted a splendid piece of art.
Knights glittering with light, monsters being driven away, and a mountain range splitting the earth... it seemed to il ustrate the story of creation. Each place even had crystals embedded there, sparkling like the stars.
But for some reason, the presence of what should have definitely been essential for the subject of the painting, Stacia, the G.o.ddess of creation, was not in the middle as she should have been. That section had been painted out pure white and what would be like a void ruled over the entire painting.
Eugeo frowned for a short while before turning back. Raising his upper body from his posture of crawling on fours, his back came into contact with something and he looked behind in a fl.u.s.ter.
Eugeo was at a loss for words, with his body still twisted.
Right behind him was the side of an astonishingly humongous bed.
The bed, circular in shape like the room, seemed to measure close to ten mel. Four golden posts propped up the canopy, golden as well, and flimsy, violet drapes dangled off that, creasing over each other. A pure white sheet, resembling silk from the east empire, covered the bed and faintly gleamed with the starlight streaming in from the windows.
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And-a single silhouette lay down in the middle of the bed.
He couldn"t see much more than vague contours, obstructed by the translucent, flimsy cloth hanging from the canopy.
Eugeo swallowed his breath and his body jerked up. He couldn"t believe that he didn"t notice someone else"s presence, despite being so close by for these few minutes. No, before even considering that, he had apparently been sound asleep for hours, leaning against this bed. Just how did it end up this- Getting to that point in his thoughts, Eugeo finally recalled the final scene remaining in his broken memories.
-That"s right... I was fighting with that hero of that old story... with Knight Commander Bercouli.
-I was stuck to the knight commander by ice due to the Blue Rose Sword"s "memory release art"... then that smal man wearing those gaudy jester clothes appeared before our Lives ran out... apparently called Chief Elder Chudelkin, who said those weird things. Then he stamped over the ice roses with his shoes as he came closer... and after that...
It seemed his memories stopped there. That jester might have carried him here, but he didn"t know why. He instinctively felt around his waist, but the Blue Rose Sword had disappeared away somewhere.
Bearing the sense of helplessness that a.s.sailed him in that moment, Eugeo focused his eyes towards the silhouette on the 190.
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bed. Was it an enemy, or an ally... no, this was unmistakably the Central Cathedral, and likely the highest floor at all. Anyone in such a place couldn"t possibly be an ally.
He figured it best to escape the room while m.u.f.fling his footsteps now, but his desire to know the ident.i.ty of the sleeping silhouette won out. However, no matter how high he stretched out, he couldn"t see the face hidden behind the flimsy cloth dangling at the center of the bed.
Silencing his breath, he softly placed his right knee onto the bed.
Sinking deeply into the white silk sheet as though it was snow, Eugeo extended his arms in panic. Those hands, too, ended up sinking into the smooth fabric.
The terrifying nightmare from earlier vividly came back to Eugeo as he felt himself swallowed by the bed and his back involuntarily trembled before he quietly lifted his left leg onto the bed as well. Getting onto fours like that, he slowly, slowly headed towards the middle.
Cautiously crawling across the unbelievably ma.s.sive bed, Eugeo couldn"t help but imagine how much down of the highest grade had been tucked in, under the sheets. It took a whole half year to produce a single, thin futon after slowly gathering the feathers that came off the domestic duck reared in his family"s rear garden back in Rulid Village, day after day.
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Stopping his advance in front of the flimsy cloth dangling from the canopy for the moment, Eugeo shifted his attention to his ears. Though extremely faint, he could hear the regular sound of breathing. It seemed the other party still remained asleep.
Timidly, he reached out with his right hand. Sticking his finger under the flimsy cloth, he gently, gently lifted it up.
The moment the bluish-white light reached the middle of the bed, Eugeo opened up his two eyes.
A single female laid there.
Clad in light clothes in a shade of pale violet-the exact same color as the "Stacia Window"-and hemmed with silver thread, she had her pale, slender hands crossed over her body. Her arms and fingers were slim like a dol , but the two mounds propping up the flimsy fabric immediately above them were bountiful and he turned his sight away in panic. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, peeking out from her unreservedly opened neckline, too, shone white.
At last, Eugeo looked at the female"s sleeping face.
A sensation like his soul being sucked out descended upon him in that moment and everything else left his vision.
How could it be so perfect? He thought it beyond the limits of humans. Integrity Knight Alice, whom he fought on the eightieth floor, had faultless good looks as well, but her beauty still 192.
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remained within the realm of humans. That was only natural; Alice was human, after all.
However, this existence sleeping a mere mel away was- Could the greatest carver in the capital even bring forth such artistry after an entire lifetime of effort? Eugeo couldn"t find the words to describe even a sheer fraction of her beauty. Even if he tried to liken her lips to flowers, a flower with curves so lovely couldn"t be found anywhere in the Human World.
Both those eyebrows framing her shut eyelids and her long hair flowing onto the sheets looked as though they had been casted in pure silver. They gave off a cold gleam, reflecting blue from the dimness and white from the moonlight.
Before he knew it, Eugeo had his rationality stolen, like a fly captivated by sweet honey.
Only the desire to touch these hands, this hair, these cheeks filled his emptied head.
When he languidly drew closer on his knees, a fragrance he had never smelled before softly drifted in the air.
The fingers on his stretched out right hand would reach in just a little... reach that smooth skin in a little bit...
You mustn"t, Eugeo.
Run!
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He heard someone shout from somewhere far away.
Smal fireworks went off at the core of his mind and swept away some of the thick fog enveloping his consciousness. Eugeo opened his two eyes and instinctively drew back his right hand.
-This voice... where have I heard it before...
As he wondered so in a daze, his ability to think slowly returned to him.
-What... had happened to me...? What was I doing here...?