Depths of the Otherworldly Labyrinth (WN) – Chapter 224

Notice. This is a double update this time.

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Before I knew it, “I” found myself standing in a world of only two colors.
A world divided by a horizon into shades of green and blue.
Under the blue sky, a grassland stretched out, exuding a sense of freedom.

“W-where is… ‘here’?”
I was sure I was in the middle of a battle.
I should have been fighting Uzunami in a much more suffocating place, not somewhere like this.
Yet, why am I here?
Why am I… “here”?

To remember, I looked around and found a child sitting alone on the grassland.

The child was laughing.
Seeing that, all my thoughts came to a halt.
The battle and everything else flew from my mind, and I was drawn to the child’s expression.

The child was a girl with a slender body, grass-green hair, and small wings on her back.
I felt like I had seen her somewhere before.
However, I couldn’t recall the girl’s name, though I felt like I could.

“—W-who are you…?”

As I observed more closely, I noticed the child was gazing at something and smiling.
The child was looking into the palms of both her hands.

And in her palms was a small pebble.

It was a semi-transparent stone with rounded edges and a greenish hue. It wasn’t as clear as a jewel, but it seemed like it would catch the light with a unique sparkle when illuminated by the sun.
To an adult, it was just a pebble, but it had an interesting shape that a small child might be delighted by.

In fact, the child seemed to consider it a treasure.
Her expression was blissful, more so than an adult gazing at a jewel.

“Hey, child… won’t you show it to me…?”

Driven by a strange impulse, my mouth moved before I could think.
However, the child I spoke to flinched and stood up, then began to look frightened. She turned her face towards me, trembling with an anxious expression.

That was understandable.
I was a stranger who suddenly spoke to her and asked to see the treasure she held dear. It was only natural for her to be afraid.

“N-no, I apologize. I don’t intend to steal it. I just wanted to see it for a moment…”

I made excuses.
But the frightened child didn’t listen and ran away, showing me her back.
She began to run across this vast grassland.

“Hey! If you run so suddenly, you’ll fall!”

As expected, the child tripped over nothing.
And she dropped the pebble she was holding.

The treasure she cherished so dearly—

The child opened her mouth in a gasp and then chased after it.

“W-wait!”

The child chased the rolling pebble.
But chasing, running, chasing, running, chasing, running—why, no matter how much I ran, I couldn’t catch up?

I, watching from a distance, realized the cause.
This endless grassland was slightly sloped.
Therefore, the pebble followed an unnatural trajectory, rolling further and further away.

Of course, the child continued to chase desperately.
When I saw that scene, I was overcome with a sensation like my blood was boiling.
I sensed an ominous aura of death behind the child and let out a scream-like voice from the depths of my throat.

“Wait! Don’t go!! Beyond that is—”

Beyond that is—the abyss.

“—?!”

As I tried to say it, I realized the child’s true identity.
Why did I know what awaited the child in her path?
Naturally.
Because “I” had walked that road before.

In the past, as a child, “I” had run across this plain.
I had a faint, but definite, memory of it.
I definitely had it.

That is “me.”
It’s me from my childhood.

“I” had run across it before.
This grassland.
Therefore, it was natural for me to know what awaited ahead.

When I understood that, my high vantage point suddenly lowered.
I had been chasing the back of the running child, but before I knew it, “I” was chasing the beautiful rolling stone.
“I” had become the child, running across the grassland.

Ah, ah… I’m starting to remember…
This is my life.
A long time ago, “I” dropped it.
That precious treasure…
That’s why “I” chased it.
I chased it desperately…

And “I” know that running and chasing endlessly is futile.
“I” know that the beautiful stone never returned.

This is because the slope of this grassland gradually steepens.
As if to prove it, the more I chased the stone, the steeper the slope became, and the further the beautiful stone moved away.

Eventually, the beautiful stone disappeared from sight.
By then, the grassland had become a proper slope.
It was a slope so steep that it was difficult to stop if one gained too much momentum.

So, even after losing sight of the beautiful stone, “I” kept running.

Even though “I” knew that if I continued running, the slope would become even steeper, “I” couldn’t stop. My running speed gradually increased, and during that time, the slope of the hill became even steeper.

—Accelerating.

Finally, the slope turned into a cliff, and “I” fell, fell, and fell—and crashed at the bottom of the abyss.

Covered in countless scrapes, with tears in my eyes, “I” got up.
The place I had fallen into was the bottom of a hole surrounded by rocky walls.
The ground was also rocky, and there was nothing else. Well, if I looked closely, I could see various pebbles scattered about. But they were all just pebbles.
Thinking my dropped treasure might be among them, I picked them up, looked at them, picked them up again, and looked at them again. However, none of them were the beautiful stone that was my treasure.
Among the stones scattered here, there were some similar to that one from that day. If I searched with a little patience, I would likely find something exactly like the beautiful stone from before.
But that “beautiful stone” itself would never be found again.
Nothing in this world is exactly the same.
That’s how the world is made.

“No! No…! Why…!!”

—But “I” searched desperately, unwilling to accept it.

“I” searched endlessly, but “my” treasure couldn’t be found.

“W-why can’t I find it…”

“I” searched for decades, for centuries, and finally stopped.
Then, “I” lifted “my” gaze from the ground to the sky.
Looking up at the round sky, open like a gaping hole at the bottom of the pit, “I” finally understood.

That beautiful stone was a treasure that could only be obtained on that grassland, at that time. Once one became an adult, it was impossible to find, no matter what.
Realizing this, “my” face contorted.

“U-uuuh, uuuuuu…!”

But no matter how much “I” grieved, “I” could never return to that time.
“I” had fallen too far.
Before “I” knew it, the grassland had become a slope, and the slope had become a wall.
It was impossible to climb.

Tears flowed in this heartless world.
“I” cried alone at the bottom of the earth.
“I” cried and cried and cried, but “my” cries reached no one.

And so—a thousand years passed.
It was enough time to go mad.

Yes.
That was the end of “my” life.
In the abyss—a dark “hell” where neither life nor death was permitted was “my” world.

In that hell, a weak child with only a large body was crying because they were alone.
It was painful, agonizing, lonely, and sad, “my” mind broke, and “I” couldn’t maintain myself, and in the end, “I” started laughing in the hole…
That was “me”… and “I” am her.

“I” am here, alone, unable to escape for eternity—

“—No.”

—Or so it should have been. But a strange voice echoed from the bottom of the hole.
However, “I” was too weary to even understand it.
“I” had been here too long to think.

Nevertheless, the voice persistently spoke.

“—Rowen, remember.”
“That’s impossible… I don’t understand anything anymore…”

“I” shook “my” head.
“I” didn’t even know what to remember anymore.

“—Do it even if it’s impossible. Just pick it up.”
“Pick it up…? What…?”
“Pick it up and read it…”
“Read…?”

“I” didn’t know what to read.
Besides, there was nothing to read “here.”
There was nothing “here,” which is why “I” am like this.

“I’m risking my life to reconstruct that book. You will read it whether you like it or not.”

There was nothing “here”—or so “I” thought, but in this nothingness, “I” found a book. It lay quietly in a corner at the bottom of the hole.
The book had an overwhelming presence. In a world of nothingness, “I” was drawn to this anomaly and picked it up.
Then, “I” traced the cover with “my” finger, opened the page, and looked at the table of contents.

There, in four characters, was “Ruling King.”
The title of the first chapter was “The Awakening of the Ruling King.”

“R-Ruling King? ‘Ruling King’?”

No.
No, no, no.

“My” name is—my name is—!!

“Ah, no. And that’s not the bottom of a cliff. What you think is a sheer drop is just a flat path—!”

“I,” “I” was, “I” was “I”!!
“I” am not named “Ruling King”!
That’s not right!!

“My” name is…—

—And so, the page was turned, and the first chapter, “The Awakening of the Ruling King,” began.
It was the epic of the “Ruling King” and the history of the North.

The King’s story.