Looking at the familiar house before him, Lynch felt an urge to laugh, though he couldn't quite bring himself to.
It was far too familiar; the four of them had been staying right here for the past few days.
It was Dr. Sven's home.
Unexpected, yet completely within reason.
Jett Sven, the stubborn farmer who had refused for years to move into the city with his daughter, had finally changed his mind and moved into her home.
Though he hadn't informed her beforehand—and had likely brought a friend along—his daughter surely wouldn't mind. Dr. Sven, who had always worried about her elderly father living alone on the farm, could finally put her mind at ease. Truly a cause for celebration.
Lynch sighed softly. If only that were truly the case; then Dr. Sven in history would never have perished alongside the city in painful agony.
Spending the last few days with her had made Lynch develop a slight liking for this abrasive ghoul doctor. Unfortunately, this world never understood warmth—and neither did Old Sven.
He hadn't come to visit his daughter. His hiding place was none other than the four's residence over the past few days: Dr. Sven's house.
Did that make any sense?
Actually, it was perfectly logical. To Old Sven, this was the safest place in all of Norin right now, a spot where he was almost guaranteed not to be discovered.
Dr. Sven was busy compounding medicine and couldn't possibly leave the military camp, leaving her with no chance to return and discover him. And no matter how chaotic things got outside—even if Terry led a city-wide manhunt—no one would search the residence of the doctor who was actively saving the city. No one would dare step foot inside her home.
It was hiding right under their noses. Fortunately, they had Miss Diana's arcana; otherwise, finding him would have been next to impossible.
Lynch had come alone. He intended to rely on his Authority of Concealment to sneak inside first and assess the situation. He didn't want to barge in with the three women, because only after asking Dr. Sven had they learned that her home was actually quite troublesome.
The house had been built by Old Sven when he was young. It was built on such a grand scale to serve as a liaison office for the ghoul tribe in the city, expanding significantly underground as the first step for the ghouls to infiltrate the urban area.
However, the city's ghouls eventually returned to their tribe one by one, leaving only Old Sven's family in Norin. The liaison office fell out of use until Dr. Sven returned from her travels and decided to make it her home.
As a result, the underground section of the house had been abandoned for years; even Dr. Sven had never thoroughly inspected it. She only realized it when the four brought it up, and she strongly suspected her father hadn't hidden down there recently—he had likely been living in it for a long time.
So over the past few days, while we were living upstairs and searching everywhere for the mastermind and little Jack's corpse, they were actually hiding under our feet, laughing at us?
Lynch finally understood. When the mad old man had resolutely refused to approach Dr. Sven's house earlier, it likely wasn't because of Dr. Sven herself, but out of fear of the two monsters beneath their feet.
Because the situation was unclear, all four of them barging in would likely lead to an ambush, or at the very least alert the enemy. That was why Lynch planned to leverage his Divine Authority of Concealment to act as the vanguard and scout the path himself.
Yet it was precisely over this decision that a fierce argument had broken out between him and two of the ladies.
The two ladies had adamantly opposed it. It was far too dangerous and entirely unnecessary. If their only goal was the human-faced fruit, the four of them could simply head into the woods outside the city right now, ignore whatever happened inside, and successfully harvest the human-faced fruit tomorrow before returning to the mortal world.
Both ladies believed Lynch had invested too much emotion into the people within the memory, prompting him to take such a huge risk to help them solve their problems—even though this was merely a false memory. In truth, they felt the same desire, but reason held their reckless impulses back.
While that was indeed a factor, Lynch was also concerned that if they hid outside the city and things inside spiraled out of control, the ghouls entering to perform their purification would immediately sniff out the four of them outside using their keen sense of smell. They would then target them first. Facing hundreds of ghouls head-on in an open, defenseless field, Lynch worried there wouldn't even be enough of their corpses left to go around. Though he could slip away using Concealment, the three ladies would almost certainly die.
Yet the ladies felt that issue could be handled in other ways and firmly refused to agree. It was their first heated argument, and neither side was willing to back down.
In the end, it was Judy who put an end to the argument—or rather, Inner Judy suddenly surfaced and shared a piece of occult theory with everyone.
For those attempting to suppress an out-of-control mystery relic, one option was to wait until the relic's memory concluded and the plot reached its conclusion, enduring the danger until being thrown back into the mortal world. There was no need to worry about the memory's storyline straying off course; the inertia of history would correct any deviations and pull everything back on track.
Alternatively, fulfilling specific conditions could terminate the relic's memory, directly suppressing the out-of-control mystery relic and returning them safely to the mortal world. These suppression conditions were, in truth, key events capable of overcoming historical inertia; fulfilling them one by one was enough to alter the memory.
So here comes the question, Judy had posited softly. Is it possible that doing certain things might break historical inertia so that the memory fails to resolve into its historical outcome, yet also fail to trigger an early end to this fearful past—instead allowing the terror to persist? If such a possibility exists, can those who entered the memory still escape at the time the relic was supposed to end? And if they can't, what will happen then?
As the three stood speechless, unsure of how to answer, Judy added in a quiet, eerie tone, “Over millions of years, it's impossible that no one ever tried. Yet this question has never had an answer. Care to guess why? Because not a single living soul who returned from a mystery relic ever did such a thing. Heh, so your argument is entirely meaningless. From the moment the plot inside this memory began to shift, we had already lost our path of retreat.”
No living person knowing the answer was the answer itself.
Now, the plague might erupt early tonight. The ghouls entering to purge the city would no longer be facing eight thousand ordinary civilians, but an untold number of maddened infected—who could infect them in turn, turning them into lunatics. Meanwhile, the military, their other safeguard, had failed to deploy. Under these conditions, could this memory truly conclude according to history's course?
No one wanted to find out.
The two ladies were reasonable people after all. Despite their worries, they ultimately conceded. They remained in the stronghold to assist Dr. Sven while standing by to offer backup at a moment's notice.
Lynch had one hour. That was the limit of how long Dr. Sven's arcana could suppress his scent. It couldn't eradicate it completely, but fortunately, Lynch had stayed here before, so his scent was already present in the house. With the arcana's help, it wouldn't arouse Old Sven's suspicion. Otherwise, given a ghoul's keen sense of smell, even if his Concealment was empowered by Divine Authority—capable of erasing even the presence of his scent—the indirect scent left behind whenever he touched an object would still betray his location.
One hour was enough. Now, let's see what you two are up to.
Taking one last look at the architectural diagram drawn by the doctor, Lynch slipped around to the back of the house, noiselessly climbing through an open window into Dr. Sven's home.
“I'm inside,” Lynch whispered to the Telepathic Conch on his chest. “Everything is going smoothly. The place looks exactly as it did when we left yesterday, with no signs of forced entry.”
“Please be extremely careful, Mr. Lynch. We are still... waiting for you to come back.”
“Don't worry. Once I finish looking around, we'll head back to our home... Hm? Someone's here.”
A rustling sound came from the front door as the lock turned, and the door swung open.
Lynch immediately took several steps back, hiding himself in the shadows of the furniture.
Who was it?
Rate on N.U.
