The holographic screen flickered, the light stabilizing into the image of Kim Hajin. He looked exhausted, his face pale under the mask which he had momentarily pulled down.
"If you're seeing this," the recorded Hajin said, rubbing his neck, "it means I'm out cold. I'm going to be constrained for about a week. I plan on trying to injure Baal... or at least annoy him enough to slow him down."
'Out cold? What a cliché. No wonder he's bad at writing novels…' Klein lampooned inside his head remembering one particular detective novelist of Door Pathway from his Universe.
Dokja and Klein exchanged a glance.
Hajin continued. "By now your stats should've reached the original ones. I will return in a week, I hope you guys chose good skills, so you'll need to train them. But if anything unexpected happens because of me…"
"He is surprisingly self-aware," Klein muttered.
"You'll need to help stabilize the situation, I believe in you, after all you are my companions."
[Story 'Life and Death Companions' likes this companion more.]
"I didn't have time to make you guys new armor," Hajin said, looking almost apologetic. "Ask Tomer. She has a stockpile of high-level gear. She'll complain, tell her I said 'The debt is accumulating interest,' she'll know what it means."
Tomer, standing nearby, twitched. "That little..."
"Crucial info," Hajin's voice turned serious. "If things get urgent—and they will—contact the Secretive Plotter. He's the leader of 'The Apocrypha'. I signed a temporary cooperation agreement with him to crush the Devils Alliance. I don't know if it'll succeed, but I'm putting everything I have into that shot. So don't worry about me. Focus on your training. Choose your skills wisely. If you're broke, ask Tomer for money. I left some funds with her."
"He treats me like a bank," Tomer sighed, though she didn't deny it.
"Also," Hajin added, "I promised the Plotter my help. In return, he promised me something. I don't know what it is—my [Book of Truth] couldn't read it—but he's supposed to bring it to Tomer after the mission. You guys can have it. Consider it another gift."
The hologram flickered and vanished. "That guy..." Dokja shook his head, smiling.
Suddenly, Klein's [Spirit Vision] screamed.
It wasn't a warning of attack. It was a warning of presence.
Something dense, ancient, and terrifyingly heavy had just stepped into reality nearby.
"Someone is here," Klein whispered, gripping the [Cane of the Depraved Monarch].
The garden gate creaked open.
A man walked in.
He wore a coat similar to Dokja's, but where Dokja's was a storm-cloud gray, this man's was the snow-white void itself. Sparks of Probability crackled around his boots as they touched the grass.
The Secretive Plotter.
He stopped. His eyes, containing the weight of 1863 lifetimes, swept over the group. Then, his gaze landed on the lingering particles of the holographic screen.
The image of Kim Hajin's face was just fading away.
The Plotter froze. "Is that...?" His composure cracked for a fraction of a second. "Fenrir?"
Klein and Dokja stiffened. 'Fenrir?'
"You know him?" Dokja asked, his voice carefully neutral.
"Know him?" The Plotter's expression was a mix of disbelief and amusement. "So that madman is your party member?"
"Yes," Klein confirmed.
"I see," the Plotter let out a short, dry laugh. "You have a truly chaotic party. You should join the Apocrypha. You fit right in." He shook his head. "I didn't realize he was in the Demon Realm. I heard about him from Chae Nayun when she got drunk. She had... a lot of complaints."
'Even the Outer God knows about Hajin's drama,' Dokja thought, amazed.
It seemed the Plotter hadn't connected 'Fenrir' to 'Black Lotus' or 'Extra7'.
He saw them as separate entities.
"I am here for two reasons," the Plotter said, stepping forward. The pressure in the garden increased ten-fold. "First, the Reward. Second, Answers."
He looked at Kim Dokja.
"We have unfinished business, Reader."
Tomer stepped back.
She was a Duke of Crevon, powerful in her own right, but her instincts screamed that this conversation was happening on a narrative level she couldn't touch.
"I'll... take Mr. Moretti to the armory," Tomer said quickly. "You need that armor Hajin mentioned." She grabbed Klein's sleeve. Klein, sensing the tension between the two nodded and allowed himself to be led away, giving them some privacy.
Alone, the two stood facing each other.
"I propose the [Three Divine Questions and Answers]," the Secretive Plotter said.
System messages began to materialize in the air, written in a font that looked like ancient code.
–The Divine Three Questions and Answers has begun.
–Both sides will exchange three questions and answers.
–All questions should only be answered with the truth.
–Both sides can refuse to answer one question.
–The conversation won't end until the questions and answers are fully exchanged.
Usually, this ritual enforced absolute truth. But Kim Dokja, looked at the Plotter with his gray eyes. "That's boring," Dokja said. He raised a hand. "Let's make a rule instead, we are able to lie"
The Plotter raised an eyebrow.
"Call it a game," Dokja smiled. "Truth isn't fun if it's forced."
The Plotter stared at him, then smirked.
[Agreed.]
[Question 1 - Secretive Plotter]
"Are you the reason the universes collided?" The Plotter's eyes bore into him.
Dokja didn't blink. "I don't know." [Truth.] Even he didn't know the full extent of his subconscious dreaming.
[Question 1 - Kim Dokja]
"Why are you helping us?" Dokja asked. "You could have let the Devils destroy Crevon. You could have let Baal win."
The Plotter looked up at the sky. "Because," he said softly. "I want to see a different conclusion." [Truth.]
...
After Dokja and Plotter finished, Klein and Tomer returned.
Klein was carrying two sets of sleek, high-tech armor. "It is [Lv.8 Armor of the Red-Lit March] and [Lv.8 Regalia of the Scarlet Court]," Tomer explained. "I wore it before. It adjusts to body size and regulates temperature. It's the best I have."
They entered the room just as the Q&A ended.
Klein threw [Lv.8 Armor of the Red-Lit March] to Dokja.
Klein looked nothing like the wandering mystic he once was.
The Regalia of the Scarlet Court wrapped around him like the ceremonial armor of a forgotten emperor—sleek, sharp, and impossibly elegant. Layers of deep crimson plates overlapped like lacquered petals, each etched with faint clockwork filigree that pulsed with scarlet.
Every movement caused the engravings to shift like living things, as if each line were a sentence from a forgotten prophecy rearranging itself in real time.
Besides, it perfectly complimented his top hat and cane.
Dokja on the other side, looked like a protagonist stepping out of a battlefield lit in red.
The armor itself was ash-black, fitted sharply to his frame, with thin lines of red light pulsing beneath each plate. It didn't shine—it smoldered. The glow intensified whenever he hardened his resolve, as if responding to the decisions he made.
His gauntlets were practical and reinforced, made for both shielding allies and striking down obstacles.
He put on his black coat, that barely suited his armor.
"Here," the Plotter said. He reached into the space of his white coat and pulled out an object. It was a Colorless Crystal. It was small, the size of a fist, but the [Spirituality] inside was so dense that even Klein's [Spirit Vision] couldn't penetrate it. It looked like a hole in the world.
"The reward I promised him. He isn't here, so you take it," the Plotter said.
Tomer looked at it nervously. "I... I don't know what that is. Since you are his companions, you keep it."
Klein stepped forward. He was holding his new cane, the [Cane of the Depraved Monarch], in his right hand. He reached out with his left hand to take the crystal.
"Thank you," Klein said.
He placed the crystal on the table to observe it.
But as he withdrew his hand, the tip of his cane brushed against the table's edge, just inches from the crystal. The [Left Hand of Decay] aura, which passively withered the surroundings, wafted over the crystal.
Hiss.
The colorless shell of the crystal... rotted. It was a microscopic decay, a tiny crack in the shell of the item. But for an item containing this much power, a crack was fatal.
"Wait," the Secretive Plotter said, his eyes widening. "What did you do?"
Dokja's [Fourth Wall] suddenly screamed.
[The 'Fourth Wall' is warning you!]
[The 'Fourth Wall' says: "Run, you stupid Reader!"]
Klein's [Spirit Intuition] flared like a siren.
Danger.
Absolute Danger.
CRACK.
The crystal didn't explode.
It inhaled.
The magic power inside began to leak, but it wasn't normal mana.
It was Time.
It was the weight of a history that had been recorded and compressed. The space in the room began to warp. The furniture aged a thousand years in a second and turned to dust.
"You stupid..." the Plotter cursed. He lunged forward. "It's leaking! The shell decayed!" He looked at Klein's cane. "That thing—!"
Klein tried to teleport to the Waiting Room.
[System Error.]
[Space-Time Coordinates unstable.]
[Teleportation Failed.]
Klein snapped his fingers trying to use flames to teleport. But all of the laws seemed to bend under the influence of the crystal.
"Grab on!" the Plotter roared. He grabbed Dokja's shoulder. He grabbed Klein's arm. "Hold tight!"
The crystal shattered completely. A vortex of white light swallowed the room. The floor, the walls, Tomer, Crevon—everything vanished. They were falling. Not through space, but through pages. Through time.
As the world collapsed, a system window flashed in front of Dokja's eyes, identifying the item that had just consumed them.
===
[Continental Fragment]
[Rank: Myth (Consumable)]
[Description: A condensed remnant of a Tower that conquered Time.]
[Effect: You can use this fragment to return to the Recorded Past – Eastern Continent (Pre-Cataclysm).]
===
The light swallowed them whole.
[Transferring to Recorded Past...]
[Timeline: ???]