Saying that Jeongdae was packed was an understatement.
The promenade along the seafront was lined with pavilions, historical reconstructions, food stalls, street artists, even a ship open to the public.
I'd equipped both a concealment artifact and a magic masking one before leaving, and Penguin had his on too.
The exhibition was housed in one of the newer cultural centers near the harbor, a short, sleek building that managed to feel modern without clashing with the older architecture around it.
I followed the crowd inside.
The entrance hall was bright, with huge banners hung overhead, all reading: Llewellyn: Innishae's Hero—A Retrospective.
It looked great. Llewellyn would absolutely hate it.
…I snapped a pic.
Beyond the entrance, the exhibition space opened into several connected rooms.
Was there a map somewhere?
Penguin chirped, pointing to some leaflets in a corner.
"Amazing," I told him. "Thank you."
Penguin chirped again.
Let's see now.
Okay, room one.
The first section focused on Llewellyn's early fights. There were grainy photos, news clippings, speculations about his training methods at the time, the first time his sword had appeared in the public eye…
It was decently thorough.
One display featured a life-sized photo of him, coat fanning out, sword blazing. I stopped in front of it and just stared.
Penguin chirped from my pocket.
"Yeah," I said. "He looks good."
Obviously I had to take a picture.
Okay, maybe a few more, just in case.
Then I moved closer and took one more from a different angle.
"How is it going?" Llewellyn's voice said telepathically.
I jumped.
"You said you didn't want commentary!"
"I changed my mind. What are you looking at?"
I grinned. "You."
A pause.
"What? There's a whole exhibition. I'm going to look."
Llewellyn groaned through the bond and I bit back a laugh.
I moved to the next section.
This one had all the early Distorted Realm sites he'd neutralized, timelines mapping the escalation of the Knots alongside his appearances, and even a picture of that small mountain he'd somehow pulverized—or… well, that was what people said. I'd never asked.
"So what did happen with that mountain?" I asked.
"Mountain?"
"That one in New Zealand? All the labels here say you evaporated it or pulverized it or something."
Llewellyn frowned.
"It was a small hill at best, and it wasn't exactly my doing. The Distorted Realm had half collapsed. I think they thought it was me because I managed to use the collapse to get rid of the remaining Elemental creatures with it. And unfortunately, of that hill."
"So you did do it," I said. "And it looks like a mountain to me. It says it's a mountain here, anyway. They should be able to tell that at least."
Llewellyn groaned a bit.
"I didn't have my sword at the time," he said. "There was no System Shop yet. So I had to make do with whatever Elemental Magic I could wield and the environment around me."
Huh. I'd never thought of that—that the System might have not even had a shop before. So what, did it add one because of Llewellyn?
"Possibly," Llewellyn said. "But it's more likely that when it started sending more people to tackle dungeons, it needed weapons and potions for them too."
That made sense. If Dungeon Adventurers these days were mostly ragtag teams, I didn't imagine the first ones were any better. In fact, they'd probably been way worse.
The next section had artifacts—or rather, replicas of Destabilized Artifacts Llewellyn had recovered over the years and handed over to KARMA. They were displayed in glass cases with plaques explaining their origins, but… How did they even find out about these? I mean, a spyglass? A remote control? Was that a paperclip?
"Are any of these right?" I asked Llewellyn.
"Any of what?"
I texted him a pic.
"I found a spyglass once," Llewellyn said. "But it looked nothing like that one. I never found any Destabilized paperclip or remote control, or any of those other things in that glass display."
Thought so.
Well, at least they weren't pretending to know which artifact he used in combat. In fact, I wasn't even sure he used any, and if he did, he probably swapped them around like I did.
"Yeah," Llewellyn said. "I don't have any fixed equipment aside from my sword."
Anyway. There was another giant banner of Llewellyn so I took a few more pictures.
The replica of his sword came next.
"Here it says your sword doesn't have a name," I said. "How come?"
I mean, even mine had one.
"There weren't that many in the System Shop when I bought it," Llewellyn said. "And it seemed pointless to name it later."
I suppose that made sense.
I leaned in close, comparing it to the miniature in my Core Partition. This one was bigger, obviously, but the details weren't as good. Even some of the characters on the blade were missing. It had all the Elements (土: Earth, 金: Metal, 木: Wood, 水: Water, 火: Fire, 气: Air), but 道: Dào and 德: Dé that enclosed the other characters in both the real sword and in the small replica in my Core Partition were missing.
I took a few other pictures.
The next room had photos of a very young Llewellyn. Almost all of them were school pics, and there were even some from Primary School.
I grinned and took a few pics.
Penguin chirped, wanting to see too.
"This is Llewellyn with his old schoolmates," I told him, lifting him up. "Do you recognize him?"
Penguin scanned the pics, searching. Then he chirped enthusiastically.
He was right. Llewellyn was difficult to miss.
Though… The way his expression darkened and changed from the earlier ones to after the accident was jarring. I tried to stay neutral, but… my chest constricted a bit. Especially the first one after the accident, when he was eight. He looked… pained. It was difficult to look at him. And difficult to look away, too.
"What was that about?" Llewellyn said.
Ah, damn it. I was hoping he hadn't sensed that.
"There are school pics of you," I said, as neutrally as I could. "Want me to send them?"
Llewellyn hesitated.
"Alright," he said. "But send them in a single batch, if you can."
Well, I could do that. I snapped a bunch and sent them all at once.
There was a long pause.
"I wasn't doing very well," he said after a bit. "Whenever I was in school, I couldn't wait to go home. Then my grandparents died too, so I couldn't stand to be at home either."
I could feel him through the bond. It was…
My hand snapped up to massage my chest.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I know," Llewellyn said simply. "It's fine. It's been a long time."
It clearly wasn't fine.
"Keep going," he said. "What else is there?"
The next room had video screens showing recent clips—though some only included the location, not Llewellyn. I recognized a few of the ones I'd been in—Guildford, the industrial site in Belgium, the airport in France, the shrine in Japan…
Wait a second.
"Why do they have clips of me too!!" I blurted out through the bond, without thinking.
I hadn't thought this was a possibility at all!
"They do?" Llewellyn asked, sounding immediately cheered up. "Show me."
Ugh!
I was tempted to tease him and say he should have come if he wanted to see them, but… Well. He sounded better now, so—
I took a short video of the clips looped on one of the walls and sent it to him.
Thankfully there were no huge banners of me. And they hadn't included that video with the reporter.
"…You do realize you're bleeding or collapsing in almost all of these, right?" Llewellyn said after a moment, clearly frowning.
What? Uh.
I mean, they only managed to record us after a fight, so!
Besides, I wasn't bleeding in all of them.
Penguin chirped and poked his head out of my pocket, watching too.
"I know," I said. "Llewellyn already pointed that out."
Penguin chirped in agreement, then tapped at my fingers with his beak, affectionately.
"Are you having a good time?" I asked.
He chirped, more enthusiastically this time, and tapped my fingers again.
Ah, that was good! I suppose I'd been neglecting him a bit lately. We used to spend all the time together, and now I spent almost half of it with Llewellyn, making out and… uh… the rest.
I mean, I wasn't complaining, but that must have been quite a change for him.
Still, it was good that he clearly loved spending time with Lumos. It was also good that he didn't only interact with me all the time now.
Maybe we should visit Gran, TAPESTRY and Gléonwon more often too. What was it that the System had said when we'd bonded? That he needed emotional closeness and environmental enrichment or something? Was he getting enough?
I went through the rest of the exhibition, chatting with Penguin, though the rest of the stuff was less interesting. It was mostly just reconstructions or speculations, more than half of which Llewellyn confirmed were completely wrong.
Then we were done and the final section was…
Merchandise!
Finally!