Deep within the underground ruins beneath King’s Campus, Royal Crown University.
Dorothy, controlling a corpse marionette carrying a gas lamp to light the way, continued walking through the dark, expansive corridor. While she had escaped the dangerous bat man, the path back was now blocked, forcing her to move forward and explore the deeper parts of the ruins.
Starting from the sixth level, the ruins consisted of a single, straight corridor leading deeper, with no branching paths. Dorothy had no choice but to continue down this path.
After walking through the dark, narrow corridor for what felt like an eternity, Dorothy finally reached its end. Passing through a stone door, she entered a large, empty room.
This room was similar to the ones she had seen on the upper levels—square, empty, and devoid of anything. Even the walls had been chiseled away, leaving them pockmarked and uneven.
“What the hell? Is this it? The end of the ruins? The deepest part of the ruins is just an empty room?”
Dorothy couldn’t help but complain inwardly. She scanned the room repeatedly, confirming that it was only connected to the corridor she had come from. There were no other exits, meaning Dorothy had nowhere else to go.
The room before her had clearly been looted multiple times. Even the murals and wall carvings had been chiseled away. Not only was there nothing to gain, but there was also no way forward.
“This isn’t good… Does this mean I have to go back? But the way back is blocked, and that bat man is probably still waiting outside. There’s no way to return…”
Faced with this dilemma, Dorothy grew anxious. Just as she was pondering what to do, she sensed something through another of her sensory connections.Near the collapsed rubble blocking the path, Dorothy had left a lookout corpse marionette to monitor whether the bat man might suddenly break through. As she explored, she kept an eye on the rubble through the marionette’s senses.
At that moment, Dorothy noticed through the marionette’s vision that a strange purple-red mist was seeping through the cracks in the rubble, spreading across the floor. Seeing this unusual gas, Dorothy’s heart tightened.
“What’s going on? Why is this stuff seeping through from the other side… Is this the bat man’s doing?”
Watching the purple-red gas seep through the cracks in increasing amounts, Dorothy grew wary and began to suspect the worst.
“This stuff… Could it be poison gas? Is that guy trying to poison me since he can’t get through himself?”
Dorothy’s suspicion grew stronger the more she thought about it. The gas was too strange, and it was coming from the side where the bat man was. The likelihood of it being poison was high.
“Damn… If that poison gas reaches me, I’m done for. I have nowhere to run.”
Seeing the situation unfold, Dorothy grew increasingly anxious. Ahead was a dead end, and behind her, poison gas was spreading. If she didn’t think of something quickly, she was finished.
“What should I do… Is there anything in this room that can block the poison gas? It’s completely empty…”
Dorothy muttered as she looked around. She controlled herself and the corpse marionettes to search the room thoroughly, hoping to find a way to resist the poison gas.
At that moment, Dorothy frowned, sensing something was off.
“Hmm… There’s something strange about this room… Something feels off, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…”
Feeling this sense of unease, Dorothy and her marionettes scanned the room again. At first glance, nothing seemed out of place, but the feeling of something being wrong persisted.
“Where is this sense of unease coming from? What’s the problem?”
Thinking this, Dorothy closed her eyes and used her Cognizer ability to recall all her memories of searching the room, carefully reviewing them to pinpoint the source of the unease. Meanwhile, the poison gas continued to spread down the corridor toward the final room.
“Found it!”
Suddenly, Dorothy opened her eyes. She seemed to have discovered something and quickly walked to a corner of the room, stopping in front of a section of the wall that hadn’t been chiseled and was relatively smooth.
Standing before this wall, Dorothy first turned her head to the side and used the vision of her corpse marionette to observe the wall. From the marionette’s perspective, the wall appeared normal.
Then, Dorothy had the marionette close its eyes and looked at the wall from her own perspective. While the overall appearance was the same, there were subtle differences.
From Dorothy’s own vision, the wall now had several dense, thin white marks. These marks looked ordinary, like simple scratches, and Dorothy wouldn’t have paid them any attention under normal circumstances. However, their peculiarity lay in the fact that only Dorothy herself could see them. From the marionette’s perspective, they were invisible.
The discrepancy between what Dorothy could see and what the marionette couldn’t was the source of her unease. These “scratches” on the wall were the origin of this sense of dissonance.
“So… Is this my problem? Or the marionette’s?”
To determine the source of the issue more accurately, Dorothy summoned a few more corpse marionettes and had them observe the wall. The result was that, from their perspectives, Dorothy couldn’t see the scratches at all.
“Interesting… Only I can see these marks. If the marionettes can’t see them, does that mean ordinary people can’t see them either?”
Dorothy muttered to herself. She was beginning to form an idea about this strange phenomenon.
“This might be… a secret left behind by the Star Numerology Scriptorium. A secret only a Revelation Beyonder can see…”
Continuing to mutter, Dorothy reached out and touched the scratches. Suddenly, something unexpected happened.
As Dorothy’s fingers brushed the scratches, they seemed to come alive, twisting and writhing like snakes on the wall. They shifted and changed, eventually forming an eye-like pattern etched into the wall, staring directly at Dorothy.
After a few seconds of staring, the scratches twisted again, this time forming words—words Dorothy could read. They were written in Pritt Common.
The words read:
“Verification complete. Welcome back, Cognizer.”
After this, the entire wall in front of Dorothy suddenly vanished, revealing a hidden passage.
“Just as I thought…”
Dorothy smiled slightly as she looked at the passage. She glanced back and saw the purple-red poison gas had already reached the entrance of the room. Without hesitation, she quickly stepped into the passage with her corpse marionettes in tow.
Shortly after Dorothy entered the passage, the wall that had vanished suddenly reappeared, sealing the room once more. The scratches on the wall returned to their original, disordered state.
Then, more of the purple-red poison gas flooded into the room, gradually filling the final chamber of the ruins. The wall, which could appear and disappear at will, now formed a completely sealed barrier, preventing any poison gas from leaking into other areas.