Episode 4-a. Tangled and Diverging Timelines. (2)
The carriage rattled along with a jolt.
“Ain oppa’s an idiot.”
“Ain hyung’s a dummy.”
Inside sat two kids, lips pursed and mumbling nonstop.
“..., no, why only pick on me? It’s a tie—2 to 2—with the old man and Aberly right here.”
In the deadlocked vote, I’d spent ages just watching before slyly sliding over to Horn’s side. Apparently, that had wounded them deeply.
“Those two never trusted you from the start. Right, Tori?”
“Hmph, yeah. I thought Ain oppa was always on our side, but this is betrayal!”
“..., sorry.”
““We don’t know!””
No matter how many times I apologized, they just stared at me fixedly, lips still jutting out.
In short, we’d set the Versio Ruins as our next goal. It was the closest spot among the places we’d planned to hit, and rushing straight to the workshop wasn’t all that urgent anyway. That mana analyzer relic had nothing to do with us mana-less folks, so I figured there was no need to fix it in a hurry.
I’d sided with Aberly’s hope for research progress over the kids’ pure, cheerful desire for fun—which, yeah, earned me their grumbling and a stream of apologies.
“Ah, there it is.”
““Where, where?!””
Well, you know.
“Up ahead—the ruins where the sky starts twisting all weird.”
““Where... whoaaa! What is that?!””
The truth was, the kids tucked away their pouts the moment anything even slightly amazing caught their eye, letting out gasps of awe.
Anyway, just as I’d said, the ruins came into view far off in the distance. Staring at the sight, I had to tamp down a surge of unwarranted excitement and overconfidence.
Not without reason, though.
Since starting our journey, we’d scored letters back in Litera, uncovered the truth behind Tebris’s ancient mystery, and even taken down that man-eating flower in the small village to claim its fruit. Sure, danger had left us badly hurt along the way, but if you just looked at the results, everything had been a success.
So.
Maybe, just maybe, we could snag what we wanted again. That baseless confidence and anticipation kept bubbling up, way above my station.
And so we pressed toward the ruins.
The closer we got to that warped landscape, the more excited voices rose from behind the driver’s seat.
“Hmm, intriguing, alright.”
“Haha... now that I see it up close, it’s, uh, a little scary...”
“What’re you on about? That flower that ate people was way scarier.”
“Mm... yeah, guess you’re right.”
Horn and Aberly’s casual chat continued.
“Tori, think we’ll see Mom and Dad if we go in there?”
“Mm, but you said we need luck to get what we want, so probably not.”
“Then let’s borrow Ain hyung’s luck!”
“Oh, good idea, Yaki. Smart talk for once!”
The twins’ bittersweet, cheeky whispers followed.
So I spoke up.
“One more reminder of the precautions. Inside, time and space are all distorted—so we can’t know what era or nation we’ll step into when we enter.”
The ruins born from ancient grand mages’ battle, where everything had tangled and twisted together.
“They say it’s not usually all that dangerous, but if it were totally safe, we wouldn’t hear tales of space-time pilgrims or repeating phantoms.”
A place where good luck got you what you desired—and bad luck trapped you in space-time as a wandering ghost.
“So never separate. Stick together, no exceptions. And don’t plunge deeper just because you didn’t find what you wanted.”
I stared intently at the ruins now right before us, then turned back to eye my companions. The four of them finally nodded, faces mixed with anticipation and unease.
“Alright, heading in. Oh—and it might make you dizzy, so close your eyes, everyone.”
With that, I cracked the reins with a sharp flick and eased us slowly into the ruins.
A momentary lurch.
A chaotic bustle.
Voices upon voices in countless languages.
A gentle breeze, neither cold like the chill outside nor sweltering—just temperate.
Feeling how much had changed after just a few turns of the wheels, I slowly opened my eyes.
“Imperial Year 310 scholar Adler—where are you?! The Krisha Academy of the Adonia Kingdom convenes soon! Enter now, or you might miss it forever!”
The first things to hit my eyes: clothing and buildings utterly unlike our current era.
“Knights and priests of the Brahm Holy Kingdom—assemble here, no matter the age! Join the holy war begun beyond to reshape the future!”
People from every era swarmed, dashing toward whatever they sought.
“You’re a scholar from this ‘Sillon Republic,’ eh? What even is a republic? No such thing in my time—can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Well, a republic means no king, and...”
“How’s that possible?! No sovereign? What nation runs without one?!”
“No... the point is, sovereignty belongs to the people, sir.”
“That makes no sense!”
A modern researcher debated with an ancient scholar.
“σροχξωζ”
“ɕɞɝʘʂɣʤ.”
I couldn’t even guess at the ancient tongue they spoke.
We’d entered the ruins like that and now stared at each other in a daze.
“Hmm, what a madhouse. And the Adonia Kingdom fell over three hundred years ago—yet they’re holding an academy there.”
Horn glanced around, sighed deeply as if already exhausted, and shook his head.
“Th-that... Adonia rejected magic to advance this thing called ‘science’... b-but crossed a line and got b-buried—nation and all—by ancient mages, or so I heard.”
Aberly swallowed hard, eyes gleaming with fascination as he scanned everywhere.
“Yeah, I remember reading in the papers back then—meteors filled their skies, wiped clean in an instant.”
“Haha... classic dwarf.”
“You little shit—dwarven discrimination, huh?”
“N-no, when did I...”
“The axe knows the truth. Time to teach you, you discriminator.”
Fucking racist dwarf at it again. I cut in before the hardcore imperialist dwarf elder could harass the poor guy.
“This is like a communal lobby—a shared space-time where people from every era who enter the ruins can gather.”
A bit different from what I’d imagined, but the twisted time and space was unmistakable. The milling crowd kept slipping through doors into the long street of buildings, vanishing inside.
“Looks like each door leads to a different era and place. The way they’re rushing, it must shift constantly—linger too long, and it changes to something else.”
Everyone bolted desperately inside; those too late slumped in defeated heaps.
I’d known some of this from research, but seeing it for real was something else.
I explained the ruins to calm Horn down while looking around more—then Tori started tugging hard on my clothes.
“Oppa, oppa. So we just open a door like them and go in?”
“Probably, but no clue if our era and place will even show up.”
Tori’s eyes sparkled as she stretched up from the seat to yank my clothes.
Cute as it was...
“Th-then let’s hurry and look around! First place we want, we go in!”
“Yeah, let’s. Gotta get off the carriage first... let go of my clothes... no. My clothes.”
“Hurry, hurry!”
Couldn’t drive through the packed streets, so we had to dismount—but with her tugging like she’d rip it off, I couldn’t budge from the seat.
“No, let go of the clothes. Then we can hurry up and—ugh.”
“There, there! Lots of people going in over there!”
So.
Let go of the clothes already.