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Kyaaaaaaah!
Kkiyaaah!
There were two ghosts drifting around inside the room. Under the brighter light, they screeched even more irritably, spitting out ghostly wails.
‘They don’t look that strong.’
You could tell just from how they freaked out over a bit more light with no holy effect. Hyeonseong checked the two ghosts’ information.
Just as expected, they weren’t high level. With a consecration-type buff, Hyeonseong herself could’ve handled something like that.
“Hah!”
Ivan swung his sword, wrapped in white frost aura. The blade cut straight through one ghost.
KyaaaaaaaAAAAAH!
The scream became even more chilling. At the same time, the ghost vanished in an instant. It seemed like a death scream it let out right before being exorcised by holy power.
“Next!”
Ivan swung again. The remaining ghost, too, let out a ripping shriek as it was cleaved by the white frost aura, then disappeared.
“They weren’t difficult.”
Ivan withdrew the white frost aura and sheathed his sword.
‘It’s honestly surprising that bastard’s attribute is holy power… though maybe it’s not surprising at all.’
Hyeonseong recalled the crusader/paladin-type Awakeners she’d run into before. Their attitudes usually fell into one of three categories.
First: a devout, upright true cleric. Second: a screw-loose fanatic. Third: an unbearable asshole.
‘So he’s the asshole type from that line.’
“Lord ××…!”
Having seen the Constellation message, Ivan lifted his eyes skyward with a moved expression. Once again, he reacted only to one of the Constellations.
“Um, Milena.”
Hyeonseong spoke up. It felt better to ask the leader about this.
“Since earlier, it looks like you’re only replying to one of them…”
“What? One of them?”
Milena asked, eyes widening. Her expression was exaggerated.
‘…She’s pretending not to know.’
Hyeonseong understood instantly. The Usurper’s message had been sent to them too. And they were deliberately acting as if they couldn’t see it.
‘Feels like they want me to pretend not to know as well….’
There had to be a long story behind it. But even if she wanted to go along, she still needed to know why.
“A Constellation message came from two of them just now—‘White Soul Walking the Floodplain’ and ‘Sacred’—”
“That can’t be. What came to us was only Lord ××… whose divine name is ‘White Soul Walking the Floodplain.’ That’s the only message we received.”
Milena seemed to think Hyeonseong hadn’t caught on. But because of that, her suspicion turned into a confirmed fact.
Hyeonseong put on an openly confused expression.
“Ms. Ye Hyeonseong.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know the essential condition for a god to exist as a god?”
Milena asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Caught off guard, Hyeonseong looked at her with bewildered eyes.
“Faith. More precisely, people who believe without doubt that the god exists.”
Milena gave the answer immediately. Her expression carried a firm conviction.
“Maybe it’s something you already know too.”
“Me too…? Hmm.”
Hyeonseong thought for a moment. Just as Milena said, something did come to mind.
‘The rank of Constellations.’
A Constellation’s rank tended to be proportional to its recognition in its origin world. And even a low-ranked Constellation could raise its rank if more people recognized it and its followers increased.
‘Like that developer Constellation last time.’
She suspected ‘The One Who Created the Mystery of the Omnibrain’ rose in rank because the spirit of the omnibrain she’d created returned as a follower.
‘Otherwise there’s no way his divinity would’ve jumped that suddenly.’
And even beyond that, Milena’s point wasn’t exactly new.
Belief becoming godhood was a common idea.
‘But at the Constellation level, it can become literally true… ah, so that’s why?’
Hyeonseong finally understood why Milena’s group only responded to ‘White Soul Walking the Floodplain.’
‘There’s a reason they can’t let the others gain proper divinity.’
If belief was the condition for a god to exist, then denying that existence could also push a god’s divinity down.
At least, that’s what Milena and the Baengnyeong Forest people seemed to believe.
‘So they’re deliberately ignoring it completely.’
“We’re done searching…”
While Hyeonseong was deep in thought, she heard other voices.
She looked back into the room. The search already seemed to be over.
“There wasn’t any key, but we found this.”
Someone held out a small notebook.
“It wasn’t a diary. It looked like a timetable.”
Milena checked it first. Since there wasn’t much, the notebook soon ended up in Hyeonseong’s hands.
‘This… is an inspection schedule for the underground prison.’
She could tell from the time markings and brief memos inside.
“Looks like a few servants took turns handling meals and condition checks.”
“Then this floor is…”
“A servants’ floor, right.”
They reached a conclusion quickly.
“Is there anything else besides this?”
Hyeonseong asked the people who searched the room.
“Just this.”
One of them lifted a pouch. It wasn’t large, but it looked heavy.
“It had gold coins inside.”
They checked the contents quickly. The coins had a design they’d never seen—probably the currency used in this dungeon world.
“The lord of this castle doesn’t look like the type who’d pay servants properly.”
“Well, it’s probably hush money or a bribe.”
“Sure. If they kept dragging locals in to squeeze blood from them, the lord’s family alone wouldn’t have had enough hands.”
“Looks like they at least understood you can’t make people do that kind of work for just a coin or two.”
It was basically the same conclusion they’d reached on the second floor.
“Then those ghosts earlier…”
“Probably servants, right? The owner of the room and someone close to them. Or just someone who came here for business.”
“Maybe…”
They speculated a bit about the ghosts’ identities, but it didn’t last. There weren’t enough clues.
“Well, we’ll have to hope diaries and notebooks keep showing up. Shall we check the next room?”
Soon everyone moved into the corridor. As a final touch, Hyeonseong stuffed the empty room’s items into Infinite Corridor.
‘No other noteworthy items.’
Then they opened and checked the remaining rooms one by one.
Overall, the third-floor search went smoothly. A few rooms had ghost monsters burst out the moment the door opened, but aside from that, it wasn’t much different from the second floor.
‘And all the ghosts were around E to D grade.’
Exactly ten ghost monsters appeared—matching the number of rooms—and every single one was weak. Meanwhile, the Baengnyeong Forest raid party was composed of people from C to A grade.
Meaning: one or two properly matched attacks would erase them cleanly.
“That was simple.”
After finishing the last room, Ivan said.
“Then before we go back down, let’s review the clues one last time.”
Milena spoke to the group, then turned her gaze to Hyeonseong. Hyeonseong opened Infinite Corridor and took out all the clues they’d collected on the third floor.
“Alright. This was the bell tower caretaker’s notebook, this was the notebook of the person who managed the wyvern hatchlings, and…”
Hyeonseong laid the notebooks out across the corridor floor. They were all notebooks where stewards and servants had written down their work schedules.
“This one’s the head steward’s notebook, and the rest are the notebooks from the people managing the underground prison.”
When Hyeonseong spread them out, people split up and began rechecking the contents. Inside the rooms, they’d only confirmed the gist. Now they needed to compare details and see if something new emerged.
‘I should look at one too.’
Hyeonseong turned her attention to the bell tower caretaker’s notebook. Plenty of people were already attached to the others.
‘But of course, that guy picked this one.’
Someone had already taken the bell tower notebook—only one person—and it was Kwon Seo-jin.
“Find anything?”
Hyeonseong walked up beside Kwon Seo-jin and asked.
“I haven’t gotten far either.”
Kwon Seo-jin answered, turning to her.
“But of all things, you picked that one.”
Hyeonseong asked in an uncertain voice. At a glance, the other schedules looked more promising.
‘Multiple prison managers means you can cross-match things. A head steward’s notebook might have hidden info. Wyvern management is interesting on its own.’
“Because other people took the rest first.”
Kwon Seo-jin replied with a smile.
‘That’s not wrong, but….’
It was true the Baengnyeong Forest people had reached for the other notebooks first. But there were far more people than notebooks—if he’d been interested, he could’ve just stood with them and read along.
‘But instead, he grabbed this right away.’
“Was there something else you wanted to say?”
Kwon Seo-jin asked.
“No. I can read that with you, right?”
“Sure. Want to start from the beginning again?”
Once Hyeonseong steered the conversation away, Kwon Seo-jin handed the notebook over. Hyeonseong began checking it from the front.
‘Nothing special, huh?’
It listed times to ring the bell, times to clean the bell tower, and dates to inspect the bell’s condition.
‘It looks normal at first….’
From the middle onward, she skimmed it together with Kwon Seo-jin. The rest was the same. There didn’t seem to be any hidden code.
‘Is it really meaningless?’
Not everything in a dungeon was a clue tied directly to clearing it. Some things were just clues about the dungeon’s world, and some were truly worthless clutter.
‘So it’s not impossible this is a dud, but….’
Still, Hyeonseong felt an itch she couldn’t ignore. There was a reason.
‘All the record-type clues we found so far have been drawing one consistent picture. And….’
Her gaze slid to Kwon Seo-jin, who was still studying the bell tower caretaker’s notebook.
If even he was scrutinizing it, the odds were high there really was something in it.
‘I still don’t know what his ability is, but he is good at finding things.’
Hyeonseong decided to look at the bell tower schedule again more carefully.
“Can we go from the start again?”
Hyeonseong asked. Kwon Seo-jin readily agreed and handed it over.
She checked the schedule from the beginning. Again, it looked like an ordinary timetable.
‘Huh…?’
But on a second pass, something odd started to stand out.
‘Wait. This bell maintenance section—why is the frequency so high?’
Once she recognized what bothered her, Hyeonseong skimmed from the first page again. Sure enough, the bell maintenance schedule was far more frequent than expected.
‘You’re telling me they disassemble that huge mechanism and clean and repair it this often?’
Hyeonseong had never managed a bell tower, of course. But common sense said it didn’t make sense to dismantle and service a massive facility at least once every week.
‘…I can just ask if my intuition is right.’
And luckily, there were plenty of people here who would know bell towers well. Hyeonseong turned to the Baengnyeong Forest people.
“Excuse me. I’ve got a question.”
“What is it?”
A few people turned to her.
“There was a bell tower outside this building, right? How often do you normally disassemble it to maintain it—like, every how many days?”
“Every how many days…?”
The Baengnyeong Forest people looked at her like they didn’t understand the question.
“Normally you don’t maintain it like that. Not unless a part is completely ruined.”
“If the lord was insanely meticulous, he might set a day to disassemble and clean it… but even then, it’d usually be monthly. It takes a long time to take it apart and clean it—what do you do about ringing the bell in the meantime?”
“Right?”
Hyeonseong’s common sense wasn’t off after all.
“Then why do you ask?”
“Oh, it’s because…”
Hyeonseong explained what she’d seen in the notebook.
“That is definitely weird.”
“I’ve never heard of maintenance like that.”
As they spoke, the Baengnyeong Forest people took the bell tower caretaker’s notebook. While they did, Hyeonseong skimmed the other notebooks.
‘The head steward’s is less than I expected. There’s some servant stuff, but it’s too fragmentary. Wyvern management….’
“The interval really is strange.”
“Even a hypersensitive bastard wouldn’t go this far.”
People who checked the bell tower caretaker’s notebook began commenting.
“Either way, we have to check all the towers at least once. Let’s start with the bell tower.”
The last person to check the notebook spoke.
“That’s best. The wyvern tower and the underground prison have a higher chance of combat breaking out.”
“There’s nothing else we need to confirm standing here, right? Let’s move.”
The decision came quickly. After gathering up all the notebooks, the party headed down to the first floor.
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