How to Get a Fallen Noble Daughter (34213412)
Splash...
"You've gotta be kidding me... where the hell am I?"
I had woken up in some incomprehensible place, and all I could manage was a bewildered expression. Last thing I remembered, I'd been reading the Necronomicon and my SAN value had been drained completely dry before I passed out.
Flail, flail.
"What the—"
Just as I tried to push myself up off the ground, a strange sensation of weightlessness washed over me, and I frowned in confusion. It felt like every one of my movements was met with resistance—like I was drowning somewhere, thrashing around underwater.
"Seriously, what is this?"
Glug, glug.
"Wait, this is actually WATER?!"
Once I came to my senses, I realized I really was swimming through water. But then how was I making sound? How was I breathing?
And this place...
"What even is this place."
It was a bizarre temple built from structures my brain couldn't parse. Surfaces that looked flat turned out to be jagged spikes on closer inspection; ground I thought I was stepping on was, in fact, empty air. I couldn't tell whether my eyes were broken or the space itself was, but either way, it was a place that soared far beyond anything my mind could process.
And there, stretching out ahead of me as if inviting me deeper, was a single long path.
"...Ha."
The way back was blocked. The only way forward was ahead. I had no idea what waited down there, but walking was the only option I had.
Step.
"Ugh..."
The water pressure was so crushing that even a single step took everything I had. If my physical stats hadn't been Class-A level, I'd have been torn apart and died on the spot like back in my F-rank days.
Then again, even a Class-A body doesn't come with gills. How the hell am I actually breathing right now?
Step, step.
With every stride, I came to understand exactly how those Dragon B*ll characters got stronger doing 100x gravity training. This was brutal enough that I'd grow stronger whether I wanted to or not. Damn it.
-Skrrtch.
I flinched.
Suddenly, something rustled beside me. With only faint, diffused light to see by, I couldn't make out what it was. But if it could make a sound that sharp and clear even underwater, one thing was certain—it was monstrously, absurdly huge.
...
A jolt of fear shot through me, and I picked up the pace, walking a little faster than before.
The temple's stone floor had a texture I'd never felt in my life. Honestly, I wasn't even sure it was stone.
And so I walked on through the darkness, endlessly.
Endlessly. Just endlessly, onward and onward.
Had I been walking for about ten hours?
Or maybe it was less than one.
Damn it, my sense of time had completely fallen apart. Just how long was this temple?
I even tried reinforcing my body with SAN value, but for some reason it wouldn't respond the way mana would. Which meant that right now, I could do nothing—nothing but keep walking until this endless corridor finally ended.
Just when would this hallway ever end?
"..."
Leaning against one of the temple's pillars, I blankly let myself rest. It felt like I'd been walking for well over a week.
My mind couldn't take any more. I needed to rest, even a little, and let my SAN value recover.
Where even was this? Was I in some kind of white room? I didn't even know why I was here.
Worse, the only light was the faint glow barely seeping through—enough to tell direction, nothing more. I couldn't properly see any of my surroundings. Which meant my brain was receiving zero stimulation, and there was a very real chance I would simply, gradually, lose my mind.
Just rest for now.
I pushed the grim thoughts aside. Resting seemed like the better call. My SAN value had probably dropped so low that the negativity kept creeping in.
A good nap would fix it. Probably.
Smack! Smack!
"Goddamn it!"
Another stretch of time had passed, and I was now slapping myself across the face with everything I had. My hunch had been right—the longer time dragged on, the more my mind withered under the sensory deprivation. So I'd taken to bursting my own face open, forcing stimulation onto myself however I could.
"Hahh... hahh..."
I could still hold on. I could give myself stimulation directly, and rest whenever it got too much. The strange part was that a month in—or so I guessed—I still felt zero appetite.
"..."
Step, step.
And so I walked again, down a corridor without end. An eternal hallway with no finish line in sight.
"Hahh, hahh, hahh!!"
Thundering footsteps!!
I ran for ■■ hours, ignoring the screams of my legs begging me to stop.
Smack! Smack!
Even as I ran, I never stopped punishing my body with stimulation. I had no idea how much time had passed anymore. Early on I could at least keep a rough count, but eventually I gave up counting altogether.
I had exactly one wish left.
For the love of god, let it END!!!
Please. Just let this corridor have an end. That's all.
-Skrrtch.
There it was again.
That rustling sound at my side. I'd assumed before that it was some enormous thing—but I'd been wrong. It was vaster than anything my imagination could stretch to cover. I had run this far, this long, and the thing was still casually shifting beside me. Which meant it was longer than every distance I had covered so far, combined.
"Fine. Whatever. Screw it..."
Step.
Having resigned myself, I stopped in place, turned toward my side, and spoke to the thing whose end I couldn't even imagine.
It's a gamble.
In the same breath, I threw everything I had into breaking out of the corridor, sprinting toward the source of the sound. If my guess was right, that thing was connected to the far end of this corridor. Following it would tell me just how far the hallway actually ran.
Thundering footsteps!!
After roughly thirty seconds of sprinting, something finally began to come into view. And then my eyes met it.
"FUCK!"
I drove my fist straight into that eye and smashed it.
The instant I shattered it, brilliant light came flooding out from beyond. Seeing bright light for the first time in who knew how long, I drifted toward it like I was hypnotized, and stepped inside.
And there—
"I wonder when Hyunseongie's getting on today..."
Someone was sitting in front of a computer, playing that familiar RPG. Seaweed-like hair swaying gently, an outfit that practically screamed shut-in.
"You barely play with me these days... did you get tired of me?"
...Hyunseong?
Hyunseong... that was my name, wasn't it? And that voice—I'd heard it plenty of times over voice chat, too. A lovely voice, sure, but so meek it drained all the strength out of whoever listened to it.
...Cthulhu?
This was Cthulhu, without a doubt. But what was Cthulhu doing here?
"Hm?"
Just then, she must have noticed me, because she spun her chair around and stared right at me.
"So THAT'S why R'lyeh keeps feeling bigger lately..."
She rose from her chair and came toward me slowly.
"How did a human consciousness get in here? Did you read the Necronomicon or something?"
Cthulhu rested her chin on her hand, pondering.
"No wait, Nyarlathotep should have the Necronomicon... then how did you..."
After a moment's thought, she just shrugged and placed a hand on top of my head.
"Doesn't really matter. I'll just crush you nice and quick and everything will be f—huh?"
Hand still resting on my head, she looked down at my face—and nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Wha—?! H-Hyunseongie?! Why are you..."
Then she covered her face with her hands and shrieked.
"I-I look like an absolute mess right now... w-wait, just give me a second..."
As she turned away, her clothes dissolved and reformed into something like a dress—an outfit straight out of a deep-sea princess illustration.
"S-so... um... h-how did you even get h-here?"
Swish.
With one gentle pat of her hand on my head, my SAN value—which had been worn down to the brink of madness—instantly refilled to the brim. That was an authority Nyarlathotep had once demonstrated. So Cthulhu could do it too.
"Cthulhu... where is this?"
"...Wait. Don't tell me... you came here... w-without even knowing where 'here' is...?"
"I didn't exactly want to come."
Now that my head was clear enough to talk, I could finally hold a conversation with her.
"Don't tell me... y-you've met Nyarlathotep?"
"We're living together right now, actually."
"That scheming fox of a woman..."
Cthulhu bit her nail with an irritated expression, then asked,
"Th-then it was her... sh-she's the one who told you to... to read the Necronomicon...?"
"You mean the Necronomicon..."
The book Nyarlathotep had given me long ago, before I came to this place. I'd read it, and then I'd come here... Oh.
"No way."
"D-did you read the passage... the one that says, 'Dead Cthulhu waits, dreaming, in His house at R'lyeh'...?"
Come to think of it, I was pretty sure that was the last line I'd read.
"Damn it... Nyarlathotep, that woman. If you're going to explain something, EXPLAIN it properly..."
Cthulhu spread her fingers as she spoke.
"O-okay, listen carefully. If you read that p-part of the Necronomicon... your consciousness gets... gets transferred to this place..."
So my consciousness had been transferred here?
Was that why I couldn't feel hunger? Why I could breathe underwater?
"Th-there's only one way out... I-I have to send you back myself..."
Cthulhu said, her face on the verge of tears.
"I-I don't want to send you off the m-moment we finally meet... but you've been through so much, so... I'll send you back..."
At last, she gently closed my eyes for me, and whispered:
"Take care..."
Her voice, for some reason, sounded achingly wistful.
"Hahh!"
"Ah, you're awake."
Nyarlathotep spoke, sitting perched on my knees. Her expression carried a subtle thread of worry—and, at the same time, unmistakable relief.
But why was she holding a stopwatch?
"You woke after precisely five days and seven hours. I expected you'd work out the escape method easily enough... well, five days is, shall we say, a narrow pass."
Five days?
"I was trapped in there for... what felt like five years."
"...What?"
Nyarlathotep's face went slack with an uncharacteristic bewilderment. And I discovered that her shocked expression made her look surprisingly, gloriously stupid.
"That lunatic Cthulhu, I swear..."
Muttering that, she swallowed hard, then suddenly pulled me into a fierce embrace.
"What's this about?"
"I apologize. I had no idea time flowed so slowly in that place... I haven't been there myself in a thousand years, so it seems I simply didn't know."
"..."
Honestly? I didn't much care. For some reason, the time I'd spent in that place had felt like a dream. Whether a year passed in a dream or ten, it all just felt like somebody else's story. Was that what it meant to have only your consciousness transferred? To me, it had been nothing more than a slightly long dream.
If it had felt real—if it had felt like living it—I'd be breathing fire right now.
More importantly, though...
"How many days did you say?"
"Five."
Five whole days. Which meant I'd left Iris alone for FIVE days?!
"Oh, hell!"
Seeing that it was still lunchtime, I scrambled desperately out of bed.
Ding-dong.
And at that very moment, the doorbell rang.
"U-um... is this... Kim Hyunseong's residence...?"
It was Iris's voice.