Epilogue: Escape from Sanctuary (2)
Right after Cassian returned to his original world.
Mary and Lucy experienced something strange.
They heard voices coming from the sky.
Chief Planner: Eugene Paltrow
Assistant Chief: Riana Ishinkiore
Level & Quest Design: Eaton Charleston
—
Thank you for playing Dead Wizard's City.
Dedicated to my mentor at the Central Magic Library, Arkisiya Piel Athena.
Names they'd never heard before began flooding into their minds—names that made no sense at all to them, mere NPCs in the game. These were the ending credits that should have rolled only after seeing the game's finale.
They were baffled for a moment by the thanks that came after all the names scrolled by.
"S-Sis?!"
"What the...?! What's going on all of a sudden!?"
Cracks spiderwebbed across the city and backgrounds surrounding Mary and Lucy.
A phenomenon they'd never seen before.
As the world seemed to collapse around them, Mary jumped to her feet in panic.
Crack. Craaaack.
Far in the distance, the sewer floor began crumbling at a terrifying speed.
Mary didn't stand around asking questions or staring dumbly any longer.
She grabbed Lucy's hand tight and bolted madly toward the exit.
But the collapse was faster than they were.
"Nooooo!!!!"
The ground beneath their feet finally gave way.
Mary clutched Lucy to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut.
But there was no sensation of falling.
No floating lightness below, no nerves jangling through her body.
Sensing something off, Mary cautiously opened her eyes.
They were atop a vast darkness.
A world shattering into fragments, plummeting into an endless abyss.
Mary and Lucy had been lifted above that wretched catastrophe.
Receive the baptism.
On the promised day, you shall heed the call.
An opaque window appeared before their eyes, then vanished.
When they came to, they were in the world two years later.
Shocking enough on its own—but worse was that no one acknowledged their existence.
They waved hands in people's faces, even tried pickpocketing, but no one noticed them.
Was it a curse from Vedas?
Or had they become unallowed existences in this world now that their homunculus creator was gone?
Whatever the case, Mary immediately went searching for the children she'd evacuated from Sanctuary together.
Thank the heavens—they were all alive and well.
They'd somehow met up with other survivors and made it to the temporary shelter.
Even Millio, the boy who'd bickered most with Lucy, was now taking requests from people in the shopping district.
Relieved that everyone was safe, she let out a deep breath.
"Let's look around some more."
They decided they needed far more information to break through this situation.
Over the next month, Mary and Lucy wandered every corner of the village.
They gathered three key pieces of intel.
First: Strange, dangerous monsters like balrogs had nested everywhere. People were building a massive Ark to escape the city they'd so desperately wanted to flee.
Escape had once been Mary's ultimate dream too.
With even the last safe zone turned to rubble, even the dissenters must have agreed on airship construction.
Second: People presumed to be from the same world as Uncle Cassian Valerius were wandering outside the temporary camp. They all looked similar and sometimes cooperated or clashed as they escaped regions.
The issue was they couldn't be seen inside the village.
You'd spot them heading to the camp, but catch up and they'd vanish like they'd teleported—over and over.
Third: Time repeated everywhere outside the village. The sun and moon cycled, weather and hours changed noticeably. But everything else felt utterly alien.
For instance, someone might kill Revnon, the old scavenger lieutenant who'd nested in the Krabil Hotel in the commercial district—yet when they returned to the village and came back, he'd be alive as ever.
Or you'd see the vault stripped bare, but return to find it locked tight like nothing happened.
At first, both Mary and Lucy wondered if they'd died and ended up in the afterlife.
Everything was too unreal.
Especially the strange pattern now etched on their hands—a green tree branching from wrist to fingertip joints.
It might be connected to that "baptism" phenomenon.
"Let's keep investigating for now. I'm starving too—gotta find some food spots."
And so Mary and Lucy continued exploring Sanctuary.
Finally, today, in the commercial district by pure chance, they found traces of someone dear.
Cassian Valerius.
"Uncle's here, I think."
"Yeah. Definitely feels like it."
Had Uncle received the "baptism" too? Or come searching for them for some reason?
...It didn't matter.
Mary and Lucy realized he existed in this world right now.
If it was Uncle Cassian, he'd surely resolve this crisis.
Just like last time...
Of course, not even the developer Eugene Paltrow knew of Mary and Lucy's existence.
The logs, which could at least roughly track situations after Cassian Valerius's playthrough, had completely broken down.
Eugene hadn't intentionally granted them sentience in the first place.
But strictly speaking, the one overseeing the game—no, the entire system—wasn't Eugene Paltrow.
It was his master, the grand mage Arkisiya Piel Athena.
She'd gone into seclusion right after server development not just because it was grueling work.
She'd also spotted anomalies in the server and needed to investigate.
If impurities mixed into the spirit corridor, it wouldn't just ruin a grand mage's dream of "heaven's mandate"—it could unleash a colossal disaster.
She had every reason to be hypersensitive.
In seclusion, she semi-spiritized her body and entered the spirit corridor.
The spirit corridor—Sephirot's tree. A feat possible only for the rare mage who could directly connect with it, unbound by attributes: a "spatial" mage.
Mages and spirits were similar yet different existences.
Like water and oil that couldn't mix.
Unlike humans, God's creations, spirits were once worshipped as gods themselves.
The druids of the Tauren Archipelago were shamans who still revered such spirits as deities.
The highest spirits weren't called "gods" lightly—they wielded that level of power.
How could humans and gods stand on equal footing?
Not even elves, who lived near-immortal spans, were mere creations.
Absurd.
But Arkisiya, beloved by those gods, made it possible—and pierced the truth of the changes in the spirit corridor with ease.
'This is...?!'
During the process of creating the "server" linking players' consciousnesses and souls, two consciousnesses that shouldn't have existed had slipped in.
Even Arkisiya, who rarely showed agitation, couldn't hide her excitement at this phenomenon.
It was creation!
'Beings who shouldn't exist on their own have been granted life and meaning.'
What makes a human human?
What separates forest monkeys, goblins, and humans?
If the God of Light created humans, what did the spirits—once ancient gods—create?
Are there hierarchies among gods? Gods who can create and those who can't?
If humans are creations born with the authority of lesser creation, are spirits who can't create inferior to humans?
Arkisiya, whose life's mandate was piercing the origins and essence of gods, had longed for this very phenomenon.
She still didn't know which spirit, for what reason, through what process, had granted them self-awareness.
But that was enough.
Arkisiya left the spirit corridor at once, burst from seclusion, and sought her disciple.
"Yujin...!! You've done it!"
Arkisiya pulled Eugene into a near-running hug.
"M-Master!? You said not to come looking until you told me...!!"
"Is that important right now? No time for this. I'm telling you the Gate right now. Get ready and come up."
"G-Gate? Wait... Isn't that something only you can do? I'm only 3-circle now—no, forget that! Master! Look ahead of you!"
"?"
As Eugene pushed her chest away with effort.
Only then did Arkisiya notice the person standing at the library entrance.
"...Master?"
"Ah."
Sky-blue hair cascading past the shoulders.
A mage wearing a hat Arkisiya had made herself.
Her prized disciple, Selaha Rosalyn, had returned.
It had been half a year since she'd gone on an extra tour, including attending the council at Selaha's request.