---

***

Third World.

There, Bell took off from the nest.

Having resolved to wait safely all this time, I had decided to hold my breath and sit still, but just a tiny bit of warmth seeped in, and the frozen rationality I had built up melted away.

Being human, unfortunately, meant being human-like.

Originally, I wasn’t particularly special in any way; in fact, it was odd for me not to be human-like.

That person never became great by simply training their mind.

One day, they suddenly became something terrifying and ended up in a terrible state.

A creature acting without any noble will or malicious intent, merely chasing warmth.

An existence that sounds celestial, like those from myths. We use the term “Outsider,” which directly translates to “Outer God,” but in reality, it’s just a beast.

They possessed the same intelligence as a regular person and could feel like one too.

But the fundamental principle was twisted. If a person had driven themselves insane through horrific torture and fell to the level of a beast, it would be easy to understand.

In fact, their current actions could be likened to regular behaviors.

When they ran out of money, they would halt their hobbies and get a job, and as soon as they had some spare change, they would barely scrape by while indulging in their hobbies.

Conveniently labeled as an Outsider, but they don’t possess that much mental capacity.

Always engulfed by the impulse to escape the cold, their thoughts were perpetually vague.

They had simply become what they had once scoffed at, unable to escape it themselves.

Thus, they made many mistakes.

In the first world, they were completely insane, so they hardly behaved human-like. Inhumanly, they made fewer mistakes.

They passed time that meant nothing, remaining in a completely mad state.

If they seemed normal, it was merely because they viewed madness in a biased manner.

Even if they claimed to love a complete stranger and stabbed them to death, maintaining a composed facade,

or if they loved only a girl’s wrist, killed her, and just took her wrist,

or committed suicide after killing their entire family and setting the house ablaze due to a lack of money,

or ran around naked screaming nonsensical cries,

all of these would simply be deemed as madness, used to express that there was no other way to denote it.

In such a state of insanity, summoned into the first world, the Outsider truly learned a lot.

That one could rise from the bottom if summoned into someone else’s body.

That one could insert themselves into another’s light.

It means that one gains memories.

When the white light gets dyed purple by oneself, there are trivial side effects, but all of the other’s wounds vanish.

Occasionally, the other might gain psychic abilities.

And most importantly, one could crush reality and do anything.

Though the world has some minor cracks, since most psychics would prioritize reality manipulation over trivial voyeuristic abilities.

But the Outsider placed more importance on voyeurism.

To never tremble in cold again, they watched the other, scouted for prey, and after a paranoid wait, devoured them.

From there, they gained various knowledge and thrived by well-latching onto religion, increasing their harvesting machine…

But they failed.

Strictly speaking, it was an accident. They didn’t know that having too many harvesters would break the world.

And with the warmth gained from the world falling whole into their mouth, they briefly found their original self.

That warmth made them forget the coldness that drove them mad. Their heart tilted a bit more towards humanity.

But that was only for a moment.

They sank back into the coldness. The period of insanity was too long, and now that insanity had become the normal state.

In that sense, they returned to normal. Almost, normal.

And next, after a long wait, they arrived in the second world.

There, they “devoured” the memories of Daegon, a transcendent being traveling across worlds, and also consumed the memories of the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign, who had defeated that transcendent being.

In their opinion, that was all they gained from the second world.

Nothing else.

Though they remained unaware, their memories, or rather, within their records, there were no memories of Soo-oh. There were only the memories of that person from Soo-oh’s perspective.

And likewise for Cheonma, a person who went by the name Jeongha.

So there were no signposts to inform them of how they had changed.

They hid it well, but it was odd how much they grasped their own situation and how they brought what they needed while avoiding their blind spots, which meant both Soo-oh and Cheonma recognized their uniqueness.

Moreover, the flames they had created showed no signs of logs being added, yet the water in the nearby bucket flowed out in painfully clean streams.

It was ridiculously funny how someone with such strength would pretend to be like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand.

Both of them lived with their eyes closed to that part.

And at the final moment. One person didn’t care what kind of person they were, simply wishing for their success.

The other was crying but, having no tears, simply took everything that was there and left behind just a small gift.

No matter how you look at it, the gap between faded memories and the present was unbearably vast.

Thus, lured by the desire for warmth, Bell forgot about someone’s heart and drifted away.

They were just a human with powerful abilities.

Victoria remained at the Royal Academy.

Because Victoria knew.

If you’ve lived with someone for months, there’s no way you wouldn’t know them.

Not only Victoria but also those who worked at the guesthouse, which Bell referred to as accommodation, and even Morris and Beatrice were aware that Bell had a broader perspective than what she let on.

Bell might think of herself as hiding it, but she wasn’t that clever, so it was all exposed.

Thus, those in the accommodation initially felt fear, but soon adapted.

The behaviors cast from her perspective were not exposures or accusations, but trivial aids.

If she had done nothing, perhaps her things wouldn’t have been discovered.

Just very minor things.

Like helping to find dropped items, or opening a door while pretending not to notice heavy lifting inside, or casually grabbing something that seemed about to topple over, or oddly handing over disposable items not counted in inventory.

There was absolutely no consciousness about it.

It was simply too normal for her to have separate thoughts about it.

So, those who witnessed her bizarre strength were, in fact, warmed up to her.

Even Victoria, who had seen the strange shape of Bell many times, had her reasons for coming back.

It was simply that she couldn’t look past such vulnerabilities that appeared so friendly to dismiss them as a monster.

She would express that she had foolishly developed feelings.

So really, who was the truly foolish one?

Because Bell was such a person, or rather such a monster, Victoria did not chase after her outside. Instead, she took the letter Bell left behind, sought out Aurora, and legally occupied Bell’s house.

Bell simply admired that Victoria, pondering she had acquired a free first-class house, had no intention of understanding why Victoria made such a choice.

Because, to him, real estate was something easily obtained by selling off friendships.

He understood it in his way, just like those he often mocked.

Meanwhile, the Royal Academy continued flowing along as though it were unaffected by the disappearance of one person.

Recently, a person named Rabo Pasilie had disappeared, and just like Bell’s absence, no one showed concern.

Polaris thought about what schemes that guy might have but soon wiped it from their mind. He wasn’t the kind to just die somewhere.

After all, it was strange to worry about someone who had just regrown his hand after losing it.

Kanna thought that through various routes, she had heard the contents of Bell’s letter and sighed deeply.

She had been busy with work related to the Raksha Clan and had refrained from saying anything; she regretted that the chance to repay a kind act had vanished just like that.

Mogrei clicked her tongue in disappointment, as her main goal had been to bring Bell back to her hometown.

Initially, it was not during a time to boast in the newspapers that she first became interested in Bell.

It was when she heard information spreading through the fighting community about events that had taken place in Atlan Fortress City.

She never believed anything the media reported, but she trusted the information because it flowed from credible sources regarding what had happened in Atlan Fortress City, things the media hadn’t covered.

Healing wounds that could not heal due to curses inflicted by monsters, and regenerating even the most broken warriors.

Even the rumor that one could gain special psychic abilities.

Her hometown suddenly became inundated with monsters that had begun to move due to drastic environmental changes in the west; various monsters she had never seen before attacked, making it difficult to dismantle curses.

Curses could develop countermeasures through analyzing monsters like poison, but that took time.

And it wasn’t just one or two kinds; if there were countless species she had never seen before, finding out who placed a life-threatening curse was a monumental task.

There was a glimmer of hope that this could all be resolved at once.

Mogrei felt regret, having missed that opportunity.

The unfamiliar formal language she had used for months vanished in an instant.

It wasn’t just the formal language that slipped away; the stress she had gained from being cautious around the unsettling woman beside her ended up as mere pain, which annoyed her a bit.

Victoria.

The person next to her had a strange odor. An intensely salty sea smell beneath which lay the lingering scent of slaughter.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t an odor but a feeling that Mogrei had gained through her life experiences.

Who would enjoy killing humans mercilessly, if they were slaying monsters?

That was why Mogrei disliked Victoria.

And Victoria loathed Mogrei for watching her through the water.

Though they had met because of Bell, they had merely acted like mutual friends, never having a heart-to-heart conversation. So when Bell disappeared, their connection simply severed.

That’s how it was for the Royal Academy.

What about the family—the royal family—whom he thought of as the keepers…

The reaction of the King of this country, Highpion, was as follows.

“Since you’ve returned, it seems our hospitality was to your liking.”

He truly seemed satisfied. From the start, the royal family had resisted with all their might, but once they couldn’t inflict a single wound on Maleficent, who had been sealed, they abandoned the thought of using her.

The introduction made before foreign people was prepared with the idea that having it introduced this way would allow them to benefit somehow if they needed to.

And if Bell happened to turn against them like Maleficent, they had introduced a target to deal with.

Solindiges and Aurora frowned at the news of Bell’s disappearance, finding some comfort in the phrase of his return, but they didn’t pay it much attention.

Both of them were too busy with the dynamic life at the Royal Academy to worry about it too much.

Leaving such a nation, someone unknown set off on a journey seeking new warmth.