11. Wonderland (43)
11. Wonderland (43)
I bolted through the theater, my mind reeling.
A sense of danger I'd never felt in Wonderstein's body flooded every nerve. Screams and howls echoed up from the plaza below. I fought to keep the image of that place—the last thing I'd seen before turning away—out of my head.
A Reaper breaching the theater was no small matter. These demons might not be able to wield their full strength here, but slaughtering a handful of humans was nothing to them.
My heart dropped the instant I reached the hall.
It had already been hit. The seating was a wreck of collapsed stone and splintered wood. I spotted Ella slumped on the half-ruined stage.
"Miss Elphi!"
She didn't stir at my call.
She couldn't be dead.
I scrambled toward the stage. A beat later—thank god—she lifted her head and looked at me.
"Ah, uh, mister...?"
"What happened here?"
Once I'd confirmed Ella was unharmed, I scanned the hall. The others scattered across the floor were staggering to their feet.
"Ugh, what the hell was that..."
"Terrible memories..."
Threads of white frost clung to every surface of the stage like spider silk. Every breath misted in the air.
A Reaper had been here—no question. Its gaze carried a curse that froze whatever it fixed on. And the only thing sharp and powerful enough to cleave this massive stage in two was a Reaper's Scythe.
I scrutinized everyone's condition. No one looked like they'd taken a direct hit from a Reaper's Scythe.
"What happened to the Reaper?"
Ella flinched at my question and shook her head.
"I, um... I don't know? It just ran off."
"Without doing anything else?"
"Y-yeah."
Instinct told me she was hiding something, but I had no time to press her. The others came pouring in right behind me.
"What the—why is this place wrecked too?"
"My baby girl! Are you okay?"
"Hey! What were you thinking, running off alone!"
Minova and Hobbs dragged in Lord Fantastic, limp and unconscious, propped between them. Rumi and Hawk followed the same path I'd taken. And finally, Oberon staggered up from below, a deep gash torn across his chest.
We traded swift reports—who was hurt, what each of us had run into. The picture came together fast.
Several Reapers had infiltrated the Judicial Theater.
One had climbed up here, wrecked the stage and instruments, and vanished. Another had tangled with Oberon on his way down and was caught in his hypnosis and illusions, flailing helplessly. And a third was locked in a one-on-one fight with Apostle Diamond Queen.
I told them what was happening outside. The color drained from their faces when they heard tens of thousands of demons were swarming the city.
"Then we have to run—now!"
"Right, right. Open that door thing, hurry up!"
"But we haven't finished the piece—is that going to be a problem?"
"Does the piece matter right now? And the instruments are all smashed to hell anyway..."
Amid the chaos, someone pushed himself up from the wreckage of the collapsed seats.
"Tch. That was a nasty blow."
"Apostle Strauss! Are you all right?"
Hawk rushed over and helped him clear the debris and get upright. Strauss looked around at us with a bitter expression.
"Unless every Eye of Kirkeus closes, the Demon Gods will not open a path for us."
"The situation's desperate—surely there's some flexibility? Aren't these Demon Gods on our side?"
A sardonic smirk flickered across Strauss's lips.
"Do you think the Demon Gods give a damn about the circumstances of insignificant mortals? They aid us not because we're endearing to them, but because we lent them our strength to put Chaos to sleep. Per the contract, if the Eyes of Chaos do not all close, the barrier will remain sealed."
Minova erupted.
"Tch, the barrier's already breached—that's how those demon bastards got in! What the hell went wrong?"
"Blame the Demon Gods who want Chaos to open its eyes. They lent their power to the other side. Without that, do you think anyone could raise this much hell in the very heart of our territory?"
I stopped Minova before he could explode again. Venting wasn't going to produce any solutions.
"So how many Eyes are left?"
"One moment."
Strauss closed his eyes and concentrated. A moment later, he clicked his tongue and opened them.
"Half an Eye. No—half of a half. Frustrating. A few more bars would have done it."
"Is there no other way...?"
"There is one, but... it requires Sandman's power. His Sleep Sand..."
"Right here!"
Oberon called out from the corner, where Rumi was tending his wounds. Strauss looked over as though he'd only just noticed him. His face lit up at the sight of the sack in Oberon's hand.
"Oberon! You're here? Excellent! You have the Sleep Sand! That solves it! Take it and—"
The excitement in Strauss's voice collapsed. He studied Oberon's condition and exhaled grimly.
"Descending into the cavern in that state... will be difficult..."
"I can do it."
Oberon shook off Rumi's restraining hands and rose to his feet.
But anyone could see at a glance that he was pushing past his limits.
Holding one Reaper captive had exacted a steep price. His body was a wreck—leg fractured, arm broken, blood still seeping from the wound in his chest.
To scatter the Sleep Sand, you had to get right up next to an Eye of Kirkeus. And in all of Wonderland, only one person could manage that: Oberon, the sole master of both illusion and hypnosis. According to Strauss's explanation yesterday, even the Apostles themselves couldn't endure Kirkeus's psychic assault at such close range.
But the man who could was barely standing.
"I'll find a way."
"In that body? You couldn't last five minutes even at full strength."
"Yeah. Let me do it instead—"
"Heh. Y-you wouldn't last, sis! It has to be me!"
Oberon kept insisting he would go.
I looked around. No other options presented themselves. Time to decide.
"I'll do it."
Every eye in the room fixed on me.
"What?"
"Are you insane?!"
"This isn't your place! You're a lower-level resident with no Inspira—what do you think you can possibly do?"
I met their incredulous stares with a confident smile.
"I can do it."
Yesterday, after climbing out of the underground cavern, everyone had complained of strange nausea and retching. The aftereffects of approaching within a few hundred meters of Kirkeus.
I'd felt nothing. Sure, the crushing presence of an immense being and the cosmic scale of the terror had made my head spin, but that was sheer shock—not some external force bearing down on me.
For whatever reason, Kirkeus's psychic attacks didn't work on me. I could fill Oberon's role.
But they fought to stop me outright. Rumi and Ella—the two who'd spent the longest at my side here—were the loudest.
"Hey! What are you even thinking! This idiot and all the rest of you men, why do you always have to posture like that when your life's on the line!"
"Yeah! Mister, you don't have to go this far! We can just wait until those demons pull back... and then repair the instruments and play again..."
I shook my head.
"That won't work. How do we know how things will play out? We almost all died just now, didn't we?"
Ella chewed at her lip, her mouth opening but no retort coming out.
"Those Reapers are backed by Demon Gods who want Kirkeus awake. This time they just smashed the instruments and left. But if you try to keep going, they'll target the performers directly. We need to get out of here. Fast."
"But... but..."
Ella's face was thick with worry for me. She clearly thought I was marching off to die.
I patted her shoulder to reassure her.
"Miss Elphi, I promised you, didn't I? Even if decades pass before you return, I'll be waiting. Do you really think I'd break my word?"
She bit down hard on her lip and stared at the floor. Then, after a long pause, she whispered in a voice of resignation.
"I'll wait."
She lifted her head and met my eyes. Tears brimmed in hers.
"I'll wait—even after the door opens—until you come. You said earlier you had something you wanted to ask me. I'm not leaving until I hear it. So you'd better come back. Got it?"
I removed my straw hat, held it to my chest, and gave her a solemn bow.
"Understood. I'll be there."
One by one, the others said their goodbyes and filed out of the hall.
The pity in their eyes really did make it feel like I was marching off to die.
Strange feeling.
Last was Rumi. She stood before me with her arms crossed, glowering.
"Miss Rumi, please guide them out."
She stared at me for a long moment, then let out a sigh.
"You... really are confident about this?"
"Of course. But..."
"But?"
"Call it insurance, I suppose. I have one request..."
"What is it?"
"When the door opens... don't wait for me. Push everyone through."
That directly contradicted the promise I'd just made to Ella. Rumi's eyebrows shot up as she fixed me with a glare.
"You little—! You said you were confident!"
"Nothing's ever a hundred percent. That's why I'm asking. Please—do that for me."
"Insane. Do you think the people around you will be happy if you sacrifice yourself like that? When those kids find out you're the Troupe Leader, do you realize how much guilt they'll drown in..."
"Haha, who said anything about sacrificing myself?"
"Smug bastard! You're always like this..."
I honestly wasn't planning to sacrifice myself. But I had no way to explain that to her, so this was the only thing I could say.
*Sub Quest — Mask Play
: In Wonderland, you are the Torch Dancer.
Completion Condition
: Do not let your companions (excluding Arno) discover your identity before all of them have exited Wonderland.
Success Reward
: You may take one Persona out of Wonderland.
Failure Penalty
: None.
The end condition for this sub-quest was every companion leaving Wonderland. Only then could I claim the reward.
The ability to take one Persona out of Wonderland might apply to my own Persona, too. If I managed to put Kirkeus to sleep but couldn't escape in time, I could use the quest reward as an exit strategy.
But that required the others to leave first. Having them wait out of misplaced concern for me—refusing to go—might be the very thing that got me killed.
I was reminded of a game about escaping a serial killer. The emergency exit only opened when one survivor remained. But some idiot would always try to wait for the last survivor so they could escape together—and then both would end up caught.
That was exactly what I was asking Rumi to prevent.
"If you really do die... I'll kill you."
"Thank you."
She was the last to leave.
Only Apostle Strauss and I remained in the hall.
He regarded me with a complicated expression, then bowed his head.
"I won't forget your sacrifice."
I'd given up trying to convince anyone I wasn't sacrificing myself. I waved him off.
"We don't have time to stand around. Let's move."
"Right. Down we go."
But just as we turned toward the stairway to the lower levels, something huge lumbered out of the opposite corridor.
"Huh? Who are you people? Have you seen a shaggy fairy? How dare that little wretch pull a prank like that on me and run off—"
This Reaper's voice was different from the one I'd met before—a plump, middle-aged woman's. Judging by what she was saying, she was almost certainly the Reaper Oberon had trapped with illusions and hypnosis. She looked around, then glared at us.
"What is this? This section was assigned to Cappi! Where did Cappi go? Don't tell me you bastards...?"
A hideous pressure rolled off her entire body. Apostle Strauss stepped in front of me, raising his baton.
"I'll hold her off! Now go!"
"Understood."
"Go where?! You're not leaving until you tell me what you did with Cappi!"
A massive shockwave slammed into my back. Apostle Strauss cried out, but it sounded like he'd managed to block it somehow.
I slung the sack of Sleep Sand over my shoulder and sprinted for the underground passage.