Shirone's mind was deep asleep, lost in a world inside his own head. This place was known as the eleventh level of the human mind: Surface Psychology.
Qurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
A huge crash of thunder shook the air. Rain was pouring down in heavy sheets. Thick, dark clouds covered the whole sky, making it impossible to tell if it was day or night.
In the middle of this storm, Amy looked around the strange street. The city was definitely a place she had never seen before, but for some reason, it felt familiar. Rows of buildings stood along roads paved with bricks. Whale oil torches hung by each shop, but their flames flickered weakly in the strong wind.
All the usual beggars had found shelter from the storm. The only people outside were men in thick coats, hurrying along with their collars pulled up high. In the distance, a carriage covered with a rainproof sheet was heading for the city gates, trying to get out of the rain.
'It must be daytime,' Amy thought.
Amy and her friend, Reina, looked at each other, shivering. Their rain-soaked clothes were stuck to their bodies, and their hair was plastered to their heads like drowned rats.
"What in the world is this place…?" Amy asked, her voice trembling.
"You came inside this place too?" Reina replied.
The two women instinctively crossed their arms over their bodies and turned away from each other. Even though they were wearing clothes, the wet fabric made them feel exposed, so they couldn't help but feel wary.
Just then, a masked man stepped out of the shadows in a nearby alley.
"I've been waiting for you. I had a feeling you would come," the man said.
Amy immediately asked, "Who are you? What is your relationship with Shirone?"
Instead of answering, the man slowly took off his mask. Even with the mask off, they couldn't see his face properly because a thin bandage was wrapped over his eyes. He had been blind from the start.
"My name is Generaid Armin. I have a small connection to Shirone," he explained.
Amy tilted her head, confused. A connection to Shirone? Of course, Shirone probably had friends she didn't know about. But if he knew someone as mysterious as this man, why would he have never mentioned him?
"How can we believe that? Shirone never said anything about you…" Amy said doubtfully.
Armin ignored her question. He turned his head as if looking at something, and then pointed at each of the two women.
"First, let's get out of this rain. Please, follow me," Armin said.
After standing in the heavy downpour for just a few minutes, their body heat was dropping fast. They were freezing. The two friends had no choice but to follow him. Besides, neither of them wanted to stand around looking so embarrassed in front of each other.
Armin led them to a building that was both a restaurant and an inn.
Before going inside, Amy quickly checked the sign hanging above the door. The words were similar to the Tormian language, but just different enough that she couldn't understand what they meant.
"Welcome," a woman in her 40s said in a formal tone. She was sitting behind the counter, knitting.
From the outside, the building looked narrow, but inside, it stretched far back. The main hall was a cozy space with three tables where a group of hunters were warming themselves with cups of hot wine.
After passing through the hall and turning a corner, they found a corridor that led deeper inside. Here, part of the floor had been dug out to make a fire pit. A drainage ditch kept the rainwater from flowing in. Square tables were placed around the fire pit, where people dressed as travelers were sitting and eating.
Armin offered an empty seat to Amy and Reina. Then he walked around the table and sat down across from them.
Near the warm fire pit, a musician wearing a tall, conical hat began to tune his four-stringed instrument. Inns like this, which were popular with travelers, often hired a musician. They had a deal to play music when a certain number of guests were present. Even if the crowd was small, if someone paid him directly, he would play.
The musician began to play, singing in a low, sad voice. It was a song about a knight who had lost the person he loved, going on a journey to find a place to die. The melody was calm, but the words were very sorrowful.
Reina was surprised. She realized the musician was very skilled. However, the music was a strange variation, mixing several different songs into one. It was messy and didn't follow the usual rules of harmony.
But the other travelers didn't seem to notice or care. In fact, they didn't seem to care about anything at all—they didn't even glance at the two women with their clothes clinging to them.
This made Amy wonder. Of course, she didn't think men would always stare if she showed some skin, but this whole situation was just weird.
When she looked more closely, she saw the travelers weren't really eating. Their forks just moved back and forth, pointlessly, between their plates and their mouths. The reason it looked like they were eating was because they kept mumbling to themselves with sad, depressed expressions on their faces.
The unreadable sign. The strange, mixed-up song. The people who weren't really eating. Their sad faces.
A sudden chill of fear ran down Amy's spine. For the first time, she truly understood that this place was not like any world she had ever known.
"Hey, where are we?" Amy asked, her voice urgent.
Armin nodded, as if he had been waiting for her to ask.
"This is inside Shirone's mind. I checked before you arrived. It seems to be level 11 of the 12 levels of the human psyche, which is called Surface Psychology."
Amy remembered hearing about this from Arin back in Galliant—that the human mind is divided into 12 levels. But right now, that wasn't the important part. The important part was that they were inside it.
Reina, thinking the same thing, asked, "So, you're saying all of this… is Shirone's consciousness?"
Armin simply nodded.
Explaining such a strange world was easier if people just believed him, rather than if he tried to convince them with long arguments.
Amy understood what Armin was doing and decided to push her curiosity aside for now.
'Fine, I'll believe him,' she thought. The most important thing was saving Shirone, no matter where they were.
"We have to go after Arius," Amy said firmly. "And in the real world, Shirone is about to have his head cut off!"
Armin smiled slightly and shook his head.
"There is quite a big difference between real time and time inside the mind. You followed me right away, correct? But I waited here for over 30 minutes for you to arrive."
Amy quickly did the math in her head. If they arrived at almost the same time as Armin, but he had been waiting for half an hour, that meant time here moved much slower than in the real world.
'No,' she corrected herself, 'it means that our thoughts here move much faster.'
Armin continued his explanation. "Shirone will be safe for a little while. I wanted to slow down time even more, but there is a limit to my time field magic…"
Right now, Armin was using his magic to slow time for Keira, who was 14 kilometers away from Kazura's castle. Because of that, he didn't have much power left to slow time here.
If he had used a common slow-time spell, he could have made time much slower here. But that would have been a bad choice in his fight against Arius. That kind of spell uses up a wizard's main power slot. If he filled his only slot with a slow-time spell, he would be giving an advantage to a powerful wizard like Arius.
So, Armin used a different, more passive magic called a Time Field. This magic affects the space around him and stays in effect without using his main power slot, allowing him to react to whatever Arius did next. This was why Arius had been so careful and hadn't attacked right away.
Thanks to this, Shirone didn't die instantly. But now, Armin's own power was almost used up. He only had one trick left.
'All I have left is my Flicker spell. I have no choice but to try with that,' Armin thought to himself.
The reason Armin had waited for the two women was that the state of Shirone's mind on this 11th level was very serious. He didn't want to put Shirone's friends in danger, but since they had come here on their own, he knew he needed their help.
"Of course, we don't have all the time in the world," Armin told them. "We need to find Shirone as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I have almost lost my ability to fight. That is why I need your help. First, I will tell you the information you need to know."
Reina sat up straight, ready to listen. "Yes, we want to help. So please, tell us. Why is Zion trying so hard to kill Shirone? He's even bribing an assassin and working with Arius! I know that Arius is from Orkamp."
"To explain that, I first have to tell you about Arius," Armin began. "His nickname is 'Grave Robber,' and he belongs to a group called the Seven Dark Mages. They are quite famous among criminals on the Black Line."
When Amy heard the words "Black Line," she frowned. Criminals on the Red Line were bad, but they at least followed some rules and tried to build their reputation.
For example, a wizard like Arcane was like that.
But the Black Line was much worse. They only cared about their own pleasure and wouldn't mind if society fell apart to get what they wanted.
"You mean someone like that has been near Orkamp all this time?" Amy asked, shocked.
"Because his skills are very certain," Armin explained. "He is an Unlocker and a Scale Wizard. His main job is to sneak into people's minds and steal their thoughts. He secretly placed a door into Shirone's surface mind. He probably dove into Shirone's thoughts at least once without Shirone even knowing."
Amy knocked on the wooden table. A sharp tap sound echoed.
"You mean everything in this inn… is part of Shirone's consciousness?"
"Yes," Armin confirmed. "It looks like a real object, but in truth, it is a landscape created entirely by Shirone's mind."
Rayna looked around, amazed and confused. "What kind of principle is that? How can a person's thoughts appear in such a concrete, real world?"
"All the thoughts that humans collect as they grow up become materialized here," Armin explained. "Love, anger, even a lukewarm feeling—they are all things. It is safe to think of it as a language, but since this is a world related to the unconscious, 'objectification' is the better word."
Armin gestured to the whole inn around them.
"So, why does the arrangement of objects look so similar to the real world, even though this is a world of thought? It's because everything on level 11 has to pass up through level 6, the REM level. If the unconscious was projected directly here, it would be a completely crazy and mixed-up world."
Amy rubbed her chin, thinking. "Hmm. So, does that mean the human mind goes through a filter called REM, which turns thoughts into objects, before they appear up here?"
"Exactly," Armin said. "REM is the mental state you are in when you sleep, so it's easier to think of it as a dream. Dreams are the dividing line between your conscious and your unconscious mind. So, in a dream, you see both characteristics at the same time. The higher you go from the sixth level, the stronger the consciousness. The lower you go, the stronger the unconscious."
Then, Armin pointed a finger up toward the ceiling.
"This place, Level 11, Surface Psychology, is the highest layer, just below the final shell. So, it is a very materialized world. It feels real, it's complex, and it's expansive."
The musician's sad tune continued to play softly in the background. The music was still a messy variation, but now that Amy knew it had been filtered through a dream, it seemed a little less eerie.
Reina brought the conversation back to the most important point. "You said Arius is a grave robber. What is he trying to steal from Shirone's mind?"
This time, it was Amy who answered, her voice filled with grim understanding.
"It's Ataraxia."