Casey opened his eyes with a headache.
'What happened?'
His last memory was in the garden of the Imperial Palace.
The screams of his fallen knights and guides.
'Did I get swallowed by the portal?'
He pressed his painful temples and stood up.
He didn't know why there was a portal explosion in the Imperial Palace, similar to what happened six years ago, but now he had to ascertain his current situation, as he found himf alone inside the portal.
'No matter how much you think about it, this is the worst.'
His body, without guidance from a guide, was like a bomb about to explode.
Of course, he had pushed the knights away at the last moment, so he was the only one who had been swallowed by the portal.
"the curse."
Even if he was a top-rank Awakener, breaking through a gate alone was not an easy matter.
Especially when he is unable to use his power properly.
“This is the worst.
But... where is this place?”
He couldn't hide his puzzled expression as he looked around.
The views of the portals are usually different from those in their world.
Strange terrain with tall buildings, dry and harsh air in a desertified area.
Or a sprawling nature with excessively dense greenery.
Sometimes they are volcanic areas about to erupt, or places covered in foul-smelling waste.
But this place is definitely…
'...Imperial Palace?'
Casey's eyes twitched in confusion.
Never before had the portal's landscape reflected their world.
So what's going on here?
This wasn't the only strange thing.
“My voice.”
At first, he didn't pay attention due to panic, but he noticed that his voice was strange.
As he walked quickly, he realized that the height of everything around him seemed unnatural.
“It's like I'm getting shorter.”
When he left the long corridor of the palace and reached the angel statue fountain in the green garden, he was unable to speak from shock.
'That fountain.'
Six years ago, in that terrible tragedy, that fountain was destroyed and no trace of it remained.
The memory of his mother, who had decorated the fountain with a statue of an angel resembling Louis to celebrate his birth, was still clear in his mind.
So why is she here now?
A scary feeling crept from his feet up.
Caesis realized that he did not feel the blast of power or the terrible pain that he was supposed to feel as an awakened person.
His current state reminded him of his body when he was a child and had not yet entered battles due to his young age.
'Could this place be…'
His face suddenly frowned.
Gates have many forms.
A type that requires killing successive monsters until the core appears.
A type that requires killing a powerful monster hidden in the terrain for the exit to appear.
A type that requires people entering to use wisdom to solve a symbol or question to reach the exit.
But the worst of all...
'Mental portal?'
A kind of portal that swallows whoever enters it and implants illusions close to reality, plunging them into an endless sleep, attacking their minds.
This was the species with the least probability of survival.
'Did you really fall into such a portal?'
The best way is to wake up the sleeping body from the outside.
Usually, mentors do not fall easily into this mental attack.
Even if they fell, they would get up faster than the awake ones, so it was common for guides to wake up the awake ones.
But the Guides have no combat abilities, so they rarely enter the portals.
For this reason, when faced with a mental attack portal, awakened people often die without being able to do anything.
“I did not expect to reach this situation.”
His heart beat anxiously.
No one knows.
The powerful Emperor of the Empire, the highest Awakened with the highest rank.
No matter how strong he was, he felt that his mind was unstable.
He gritted his teeth in fear of the scenes that would appear before him if he fell into a portal with a mental attack targeting his deepest fears.
'The scenes that will appear before me will definitely be from that period.'
He looked at his smooth and clear palm.
'Yes, it's just like my hand six years ago.'
When he was seventeen years old.
When he was still called the prince.
When he was still a boy, his bones had not fully developed due to his inability to unleash his power as a high-rank Awakener.
'Is my mind starting to get fuzzy already?'
This is what made the mental attack gates terrifying.
It weakens a person's sense of who they are, where they come from, and what they do.
It confuses reality with illusion, making it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
His soft nails pinched his palm, and he felt a slight pain as if it were real.
'I must remember.
I am the Emperor of the Empire, in charge of everything.
I have to get out of here...'
But the nightmare he feared became reality before his eyes.
“Why...”
A cold woman's voice filled with contempt.
“Why is this monster outside?”
A voice filled with intense hatred, one cannot imagine that it is the voice of a woman talking about her son.
“Speak, prince.”
He slowly raised his head, and found in front of him a person who looked like a huge mountain in the past.
“This monster.”
Two blue eyes that looked like his own stared back at him.
A living nightmare six years ago.
The person he loved and hated.
The person who instilled in him a deep hatred and aversion to witches.
His roots.
“I said speak!”
The woman who gave birth to him, his mother.
'This is just an illusion.'
His mind quickly became confused.
'This is an illusion...'
It was as if he had returned to that weak prince whose heart was collapsing with a single word from his mother.
'Haha.'
Everything quickly collapsed before his eyes.
Don't do that, mom.
Don't hit my brother.
Louis suddenly opened his eyes.
He realized that he was dreaming about past events.
He wiped his face sadly, the skinny little prince, the charming boy who could not speak.
He missed his mother, but at the same time he did not miss her.
His witch mother and his awakened father had a political marriage in hopes of improving relations between the two groups, but the result was not good.
His father loved his brother, His Majesty the Emperor, very much, while his mother took care of Louis, a wizard who looked like her.
Therefore, at that time, it was difficult for Louis to approach his brother and smile at him easily.
Sometimes, when Louis was clinging to his beloved brother and laughing, his mother would always treat His Majesty the Emperor…
“Kiang.”
His thoughts suddenly stopped.
Louis was surprised, and crawled onto the bed to touch something that was next to his head.
Knock, knock.
The boy who could not make a sound carefully tapped on something round that wrapped around him.
Suddenly, a living being opened its eyes.
It was the fat cat Lucy, his teacher's cat.
Why is she here?
Why does she look like she's in pain?
Should he take her to his teacher immediately?
His teacher.
“I'm fine, Meow.”
At that moment, the cat spoke.
As if to calm him down, she gently wrapped her thick tail around his wrist and then let go.
But Louis noticed that the cat was trembling slightly with its entire body.
Knock, he asked silently.
Are you in pain?
"I'm really fine, Miu.
I shouldn't faint, Miu.
Those nasty things, I have to stay conscious, otherwise that girl might not make it out…"
He didn't understand what you meant.
“Kiang.”
The cat's head suddenly fell.
'Lucy!'
Louis frowned.
He didn't know anything.
But he felt that the sick cat should not be left here without doing anything.
'I'll take you.'
Louis carefully lifted the heavy cat into his lap.
He made sure she wouldn't fall, and started running out the door.
Hah, huh.
His intermittent breaths came out.
'If she was his teacher!'
He believed that his teacher, who always solved everything calmly, would cure Lucy.