Chapter 131: Mark of the Afterimage
Elsa crouched down next to him with a worried face. Then she patted his back.
How long did that go on?
"Hah, haah!"
After about five minutes, the pain slowly faded.
He took a few short, ragged breaths, and the color quickly returned to his face. Elsa, who had been watching him closely, seemed to confirm it and spoke up.
"Does it still hurt?"
"...No. Thanks."
Walfred nodded.
He’d forced himself to act calm so Elsa wouldn’t worry, but inside, he was fuming.
’Seriously, if it was going to hurt this much, the least it could do was warn me in the precautions or something.’
Of course, it was all over now.
Still, if he’d known it would be painful, he could have at least braced himself. Anger flared up for a moment, but he soon shook it off with a sigh.
’More importantly, what’s actually changed?’
Walfred blinked his left eye.
There was no foreign sensation. His vision didn’t feel any worse or any better, and nothing looked the least bit blurry.
Did this thing even apply properly?
"Status."
-----
[Name]: Walfred
[Level]: 124
[Attribute]: Frost
[Mana]: 17,400
[Rank]: B
[Experience]: 10.58%
-----
He checked his status window out of doubt,
and confirmed that the demonic eye’s added ability, the maximum mana increase, had been applied properly.
Then the demonic eye itself must have taken effect too.
Was there anything different about it from the outside? With that thought, Walfred spoke to Elsa.
"Elsa, could you take a look at my eye?"
"Hm? Where?"
"My left eye. Anything different from before?"
At that, Elsa stared hard at Walfred’s left eye. After studying it quite carefully, she answered with a rather serious face.
"Your eye looks moist."
"Anything besides that?"
"Nope!"
I see.
So there was no outward change.
At the clear-cut answer, Walfred nodded.
’I’ll find out someday, whenever I run into another monster that uses hallucinations.’
It was a shame he couldn’t test it right away,
but he decided to let it go for now. Then Walfred turned his gaze to the last spoil.
A spoil shaped like a white stamp.
A mark he was familiar with by now.
-----
[Name]: Mark of the Afterimage
[Rank]: Legend
[When the body part bearing the mark comes into contact with a fragment of afterimage remaining in a particular place, you can read the memories of the past dwelling there.]
▶How to use: Place it on the desired body part and say ’Mark’ to use it automatically.
-----
After reading the detailed effects,
Walfred’s eyes grew wide.
’I can read memories of the past?’
That sounds incredibly useful.
If he could view past memories, it meant a chance to get his hands on truths that were flat-out impossible to verify in the present.
It was an ability with nothing to do with combat, but the mark’s effect was exactly to Walfred’s liking.
’And above all, with this...’
It would come in handy when searching for Jenna.
If he used this ability at, say, a place where the survivors of Brooklyn Girls’ Academy had stayed, he might be able to figure out where Jenna had gone.
Having thought it through that far,
Walfred set the mark on his left palm.
"Mark."
[The mark has been used successfully.]
[Mark of the Afterimage: Activated]
[Marks held: 3/12]
Zap!
A brief flash of heat grazed his palm.
A moment later, when he checked his left palm, a small emblem had been engraved there.
And right then.
"...!"
Walfred’s eyes grew wider and wider.
On the ice where there had been nothing at all, things like glass shards glowing with a translucent light had appeared.
’Don’t tell me those are all fragments of afterimage?’
Fragments of every size, large and small.
After gazing at them quietly, Walfred reached out toward one of them. And the instant he gently closed his left palm around it.
Flash!
Along with a streak of light,
the scenery around him changed completely.
People bustling back and forth.
Forklifts moving busily about.
Workers in work clothes rather than cold-weather gear, hauling cargo big and small.
It was a scene unimaginable nowadays.
’What a nostalgic sight.’
What he was looking at was a memory from before the Antarctica gate was unleashed. Walfred calmly took in the scenes of busy, ordinary life.
And a little while later,
the surroundings returned to their original scenery.
’Okay, I understand how it works.’
There were a few more things he wanted to test, so he took a careful look at the other fragments of afterimage scattered around.
And as a result of his testing,
he came to an interesting realization.
’The time period differs with the size of the fragment.’
The larger the fragment, the more recent the memory it projected; the smaller the fragment, the older the memory.
’In that case...’
Walfred’s gaze came to a stop on one spot.
The entrance to the R&D facility.
There, a fragment of afterimage bigger than a watermelon sat all by itself.
’That must mean it’s the most recent memory.’
Walfred walked straight over to it.
Then, with his left palm spread wide open, he grabbed hold of the fragment of afterimage. And in that instant.
Flash!
Along with another burst of light,
the surrounding scenery changed.
An industrial complex battered by a raging blizzard, not much different from the present. Then, within the remembered scene, he could see people talking.
Among them was a familiar face.
[Is, is that true?!]
A faintly trembling voice.
It was Colton.
He kept pressing the middle-aged woman in cold-weather gear standing across from him.
[Dawn is, she’s really here, you’re saying?]
[Yes. I saw her with my own eyes.]
The middle-aged woman nodded.
As he studied her rather warm, homely appearance, Colton went on.
[B-but...]
[But?]
[W-well, it’s not that I don’t trust you, ma’am, but isn’t this the place where that anomaly happened?]
The moment those words ended,
Walfred realized that this warm-looking middle-aged woman was none other than the pharmacist, Helen.
’She looks more ordinary than I expected.’
A plump, petite build.
Looking closely, she really did look like the kind of pharmacist you’d find in any old neighborhood.
Meanwhile,
Colton continued.
[Then why would she be in a place like...]
Just as he was about to say something,
a young voice suddenly rang out.
[Dad?]
[...!?]
In that instant, Colton’s head whipped around.
The young voice had come from the abandoned factory across from the R&D facility building. Standing there was a girl around Elsa’s age.
[D-Dawn!]
Colton scrambled over in a panic.
From the look of things, that child was his daughter. Having rushed to her in one breath, Colton hurriedly checked her over.
[Dawn, are you hurt anywhere...]
[I’m okay.]
[Haah, you’re safe. Thank goodness.]
He hugged his daughter, eyes brimming with tears.
At a glance it was quite a touching scene, but Walfred’s eyes had turned sharp and cold.
In brutal cold below minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit,
Colton’s daughter was wearing nothing but a single thin jacket. No cold-weather gear, no gloves, no scarf. Just that one jacket.
A young child in particular, who’d struggle to maintain body heat, standing outside dressed like that? She’d pass out cold within ten minutes.
’And yet...’
Colton’s daughter was perfectly fine.
She didn’t even look cold.
Then there was only one answer.
Walfred bit down hard on his lip.
’...A Skinwalker.’
That child is not Dawn.
It’s nothing but a monster that devoured Dawn somewhere long ago and has been playing the part of his daughter ever since.
Just as anger came slowly creeping in,
the remembered scene faded away bit by bit, and the original scenery greeted Walfred once more.
"Whew."
A suffocating weight pressed down on his chest.
After a short exhale, Walfred felt the question from earlier resurface in his mind.
’Where on earth is Colton?’
With the Soul Eater exterminated, he would have naturally broken free of the hallucination. And judging by his severe frostbite, he couldn’t have gone far.
After mulling it over, Walfred called out to Elsa.
"Elsa."
"Mmh?"
"I’m going to head over there for a bit."
"Mmkay. Cmm bck soon."
Elsa, who had been cramming snow of pure mana into her mouth until her cheeks bulged, nodded.
That probably meant "go ahead."
Judging so, Walfred immediately combed through the surrounding buildings. But Colton was nowhere to be found, and all that remained was the harbor on the east side of the industrial complex.
Just as he was making his way over.
He stopped short.
Something had suddenly appeared, seizing his gaze.
Walfred came to a halt.
"That’s..."
A fragment of afterimage.
Only, its very color was clearly different from any he’d seen so far. It gave off a somewhat mystical light, bluish yet pure white.
Its size was considerable too.
And above all.
’Why is it out on the sea?’
The fragment’s location was rather odd.
A fragment of afterimage sitting alone atop the frozen sea. Eyeing it, Walfred stepped straight out onto the sea and approached the fragment.
Then, the moment he reached out with his left palm.
Vwoom!
A sensation unlike anything before washed over him.
It felt like a massive flood of memories bursting into his head like a broken dam. And this sensation was quite familiar to Walfred.
’It’s like when I read Elsa’s memories.’
It had also felt like this recently, when he happened to read the memories of the Frost Spirit King.
Which meant.
’Does this memory belong to a frost-attribute Boss Monster too, like Elsa or the Spirit King?’
No sooner had that guess ended
than the remembered scene took shape.
And as if to declare his guess correct, a familiar phenomenon unfolded.
A colossal, pure-white wall encircling everything in all directions.
The White Dome.