Vermillion

"Oh, it's a deep, scary (and probably) throat that springs from the confines of a frozen rock.

Avoid the sunshine falling from far altitudes and the winds blowing in competition.

It's like everything, you're afraid of being drawn in - '

From the Northern Chronicle, author Hercules-Elkin.

†††

Misty black forest under cloudy sunny weather.

It's unusual.

One step closer, the more creepy it gets.

Rare trees at the forest entrance. Green wooden with mild signs. The trunk shakes to the wind and plays a cool leaf rubbing sound. The leaking sun is also dazzling, and the leafy soil, mixed with fallen leaves, is sarcastically and lightly adapted to the footsteps - more entertaining for visitors to walk, as if to lure them to the back.

But if you take ten steps, it's a different world.

A bunch of conifers blocking in front of you. messy, disorderly, and then straight. Standing side by side in solitude is like a broken tomb.

I don't feel the breath of life.

It's all quiet as death.

Isolated area. Its boundaries are clear.

Fog.

Wow, that's the color of the ashes that blend into the sky. Covering the woods, the eyes of the eagle cannot be seen, and they soar as cold as stone walls. Neither the gentle late summer breeze nor the warm afternoon sunlight brings the outside world to an end.

Silence held him in a foggy veil.

A moist, silent world brings to life heartbeat and exhale.

Moist air, seeping out of the woods, appears to stain your skin with shine.

But it seems to reject everything, and it attracts wonder and gaze.

Overwhelmed by creeps, but getting used to them gradually, you can't help but be stimulated.

"What happens if I touch this?".

Such an innocent curiosity.

"- Kay!"

To Eileen's voice, Kay returned to me.

In front of me, the fog wall is approaching where it is likely to reach.

No, you're not.

Kay himself, at some point, was deeply divided into wooden trees.

"Hey, Kay! Hang on!!

Alexei drags from behind, grabbing Kay's cloak's root. Kay made sure to roll and lag back as he was about to flutter his butt.

"Kay, are you okay! What's wrong!?

"Ah, oh...... I'm sorry, I'm fine."

Blink your pussy and eyes as you shake your head (wear it). Irene, rushing over, glanced into Kay's cheek with her hand worried.

"... How could I?

"What's the matter with you? Nothing like this! If we're hesitant to get closer, Kay is the only one who's going to go on his own. Surprised........."

Irene, who confirmed that Kay's eyes had a light of reason and stroked her breasts down in a ho, seemed to sit back nagging as she was.

"No, I freaked out, I thought I'd go straight into the woods like that. I'm not ready to go in there."

Alexei wipes her forehead sweat as she alternates between the thick fog and Kay.

"You seemed fascinated."

Sergei, who made me roar, seems sorry for scratching my head with me.

"I'm sorry. It didn't take long to stop."

"We were really surprised."

Well, Irene sighed and looked at Kay like a dumped puppy. And pinch the hem of the cape with a few fingers so that Kay fears he'll walk away alone again fluttering.

"No, I'm sorry, but I think it's okay..."

Though I said that, I don't remember it very well - Kay, who was not at all aware of it, is half-hearted while I am.

For once now, calm down and watch the woods.

Due to the huge conifers that shed shadows, the area is dim despite the fact that it is daytime. A dark mist drifting between the trees, a sense of compression as if a gray wall was blocked in front of you. The fog didn't stick out an inch outside the woods, and it was such a different sight that I thought it was actually separated by glass - etc.

As I stared, I couldn't help but bother behind my chest.

However, I was certain that I still felt something attracted to the forest.

"…… it's a lovely place."

I tried to jokingly say it to soothe the place, but they didn't seem to feel funny, and they all had a uniformly hard face and no reaction.

"…… I wonder if you have a clue here"

After a while, Eileen, still grabbing Kay's cloak, muttered like she was talking to herself.

Kay can't answer that. Because Kay himself was thinking exactly the same thing. If you come to the land of the north, to the forest of demons, you will solve the mystery of the transition, and - although it is good to believe that you have come this far, if you put a variety of objects in front of you, you do not know what to do.

"…… similar to the mist we saw just before we came here."

In the game, Kay looked at Eileen, remembering the fog that was gushing on the road to the fortress village of Wolvern.

"Right, right. That means..."

He agrees with it, and Eileen clasps her mouth in the face of tension.

- When you get inside that, you're going back to the original world?

I thought I heard Eileen whining in her heart.

"……… Uhm."

With a difficult face, Kay roars. If you put it in the fog, you can go back to the original world - that assumption is rather inconvenient for Kay. Kay himself is not going back to Earth. If you can maintain this flesh (avatar), let's go home joyfully and bravely. In fact, it will be the mountain of Sekiyama that will either return to the game or wake up in the life-support tank.

I'm sorry about that.

The immobile limbs, the pain of the bones eroding and invading the muscles - inadvertently, Kay, struck by a sensation of phantom limb pain, can put much more effort into her fist to shake off her unpleasant memories.

Never again, I didn't want to think that. Kay has never lacked gratitude for the 'miracle' he has now. Assuming we lose this, we lose the energy to live before our lives are lost.

But that's also why I can't send Eileen out alone in this fog.

It was a distressing Kay, but that's where I remembered the story of "The Wise Man in the Woods".

"Hey, Alexei. 'There's a wise man living in the Fog Forest' is what this is all about, right?

"Hmm? Oh, right. There is also such a legend. There's a mansion somewhere in this forest, and there's a wise man in a strange red coat hiding in it - you're talking about it.

"Is that just a legend? Or is it somewhat credible?"

"……… I don't know."

Alexei, armed, looked at the woods with a troubled face.

"I've been told for a long time that 'there was a mansion in the woods where I met a wise man'... because it was a long time ago. It's the newest legend, about a hundred years ago? Even if there were a mansion, the sage himself would be dead by now."

"…… Indeed."

You're right if you ask me. Unless the 'wise man' in the matter is the presence of immortality - or else he would be boned and rolling by now. Even against the knowledge of [DEMONDAL], as far as Kay knows, there is no NPC in the game that is considered 'immortal'.

Only the spirits, which are some sort of 'worldly thing', are the only exceptions to that.

(Spirit………)

After a while, the superior spirits may just be imitating the sage in the play. Kay came to think of the possibility. If you were a living person in the first place, you shouldn't live in such a creepy forest.

Why would you do that? Why in the woods? Equally, there is no point in raising the question, but if the wise man is not a 'creature', it is not strange that he still lives here.

It's not weird.

(Though, the key is the nature of this mist)

Inside the game, there was no mist to fill the map wide area in this way, so the unexpected was the neck. It also hurts me to have vague and unclear memories of what happened in the fog when transferring to the 'here' world.

"... hey Eileen. Can't you use magic to explore the woods?

What is happening on the other side of this thick fog? If we can explore the inside with Kerstin's "Shadow," we might find out something. When Kay shook her talk, Eileen scratched her head with an "uh-huh" look.

"I was thinking about that, too."

"What, is the lady a wizard?

Sergei blocks Eileen's words and rounds her eyes. Alexei pinches her mouth.

"Dad, I told you before. Irene is a magician, even when she looks like this. I don't see a village curser's wife."

"Wow! It's a big deal you're young... you let the big fish get away with it again!

"No more of that talk!

Pong, Sergei slapping me on the shoulder to encourage me, Alexei waves that hand away depressingly.

"- I thought about that, too."

Eileen resumed the conversation as if nothing had happened.

"If you ask Kerstin, you have to wait till sundown."

"…… that's a problem."

Eileen's covenant spirit, "Dusk Maiden" Kerstin, can only serve practically after the sun sets. But spending time in front of this creepy forest until dark takes a lot of courage. Due to their importance, it might be worth carrying out even if they were prepared for some creeps and beast raids, but Alexei and Sergei seemed to look pale just hearing that they would "stay here after dusk". As a companion, I can't even count on you.

"Besides, if what I checked in Wolvern's library is true, magic should be inhibited in the woods. At least Kerstin, the Lower Spirit, can't help it... I can't tell you anything I won't try."

"Hmm, speaking of which, that's what it said."

Certainly, a study by Wolvern's Sorcery Division that he was sent to this forest decades ago. I remember seeing a report to the effect that lower spirits to the extent of "fairies" could not interfere with forest fog.

"……… What do we do? Eileen."

"Personally, I'd like to try it. But it's honest to be here until evening."

To Eileen's words, Sergei Alexei's parents and children snort.

Stuck - I guess. In the end, if you don't try to get into the fog, you don't even know what will happen.

He was a roaring Kay, but then he looked around with a strange face.

"? What's wrong, Kay?

"Did you hear anything now?

From somewhere, I thought I heard voices.

At first, I thought it was my fault, but it wasn't. Or a hallucination. That's fine, expensive, sounds like a woman's voice in one way or another. For a moment, I thought Eileen had whined to herself, but unlike her husky voice, it was lighter, like ringing a bell -

- Kei,

Also, I heard you.

Now clearly, in the ear.

A slight wind strokes my cheeks.

"…… Sheave, huh?

Kay's whining, somewhere suspicious.

"Maiden of the Wind" Sieve. It was rare for her to go ahead and take action herself, without Kay's calling.

The wind rushing by Kay rocks the wooden branches and blows them to the fog wall.

…………

Make sure Sieve's laughter invites you.

With a firm foothold, Kay walks into the woods one by one.

"Hey, Kay!

"It's okay, Tochi, I'm not crazy"

Forgive Irene in panic, and approach the fog wall.

Distance you can touch if you reach out in front of your eyes.

- Vi povas tui 'in.

Sieve whispers in his ear.

In the meantime, I raised my right hand - softly touched the fog.

Ooh, and the wind winding the vortex.

The fog was scattered. I'm just saying that's natural.

There's a wind hole in the gray wall - the road appears in front of Kay.

…………

Eileen, Sergei and Alexei, and Kay herself, were taken aback and unable to move.

- Por trovi la veron.

Couscous, and left a playful laugh, and Sieve's signs disappeared. Kurakuri, I feel something dazzling. It seems Sieve has taken the magic out of him on his own. As Kay was able to pull his hand in, the holes in the fog wall slowly closed - the motion, as if the scar were going to be repaired, threw some biological impression at Kay.

"No... you're stuck"

Pan, and Sergei, who slapped his forehead, turned an amusing glance at Kay, like he wanted to.

"You've added a new page to your legend. If the foggy Gentiles put their hands on it, they'll make way for the woods."

"Yari Kay was also a magician. I was wondering if that was the case at a time when the Spiritual Language seemed to be perky..."

Alexei had a difficult face wearing her arms.

"What happened to that now? Kay."

Irene, who suddenly restarted from her own loss, asks at a glance.

"……… I don't know. Seeve said," Go. "

That's not what they said directly. While holding and opening her right hand in wonder, Kay is not here.

Sieve is a rotten but medium spirit. Its interference in this world is incomparable with Kerstin's. Now let the fog of the Devil's Forest open the wind hole.

I only receive emeralds as a catalyst for witchcraft, and when I serve, I have squeezed my magic to the point of dying, and from Kay's point of view, it is a sieve of the impression that my spirits are exhausted by a business-strength - but some verses act with compassion for the contractor as she is. Even now, although he exercised his power on his own and left his magic as a price even though he had not asked for it, he would not push anything inconvenient by the time it was deadly.

If that Sheave wants to move on into the fog.

Perhaps Kay's answer is there.

(... Stepping into the fog doesn't cause an immediate metastasis?

Now I sing freedom as the spirit of the wind (?) Seeve I do, but it's just an AI that was originally implemented in [DEMONDAL]. Assuming Kay were to return to Earth, she would also return to just AI. For the current Sieve, who gained free will, that probably shouldn't be where he wants to be.

Given the setting of the game, the Spirit is a being rooted in this world. Or maybe she already knows what awaits her in these woods.

"After all, do we have to go"

Seeing the fog wall, Kay shrugged.

"Yes, now? Is that now? Kay."

"No, not now on the boulder. It's time for the sun to start tilting, and after tomorrow."

Kay smiles bitterly at Eileen, who is somehow overpowered on her shoulders.

"Kay's Spirit says we should go into the woods."

"Probably. Well, I'd like to get ready for some rope piles and try again tomorrow."

"Is that so?"

Sergei nodded with an exciting look without merit.

"Then you talk fast. Let's go back to the village and get ready."

There is nothing more to be done here today. The Kays decided to return to the village.

Before leaving the tree, Kay now looks back and sees.

The grey fog quietly covered the forest as if nothing had happened.

†††

The Kays, who returned to Sharito, began preparations for the next day as soon as possible. Even so, I basically just borrow various supplies from Sergei.

We will borrow and check the equipment of "For Demon Forest Assault" devised by Alexei's grandfather, including ropes, piles, and chains to connect and stop each other that will guide us both on the way home. They say the azimuthal magnetic needle is useless inside the forest and makes the sense of direction crazy. Even though you can expect to be guided by Seave, let's just say these gear are a must in order to figure out your way home.

According to Alexei's story, his grandfather, who recklessly stormed the Devil's Forest alone, bracketed one end of the rope on his hips and the other end on a tree at the forest entrance as his lifeline. but even though he had tightly tied the rope, when his grandfather came out of the woods, it was solved by 'someone', he said.

As a measure of this, Sergei and Alexei were also to accompany them to the edge of the forest tomorrow to monitor Kay's lifeline. "What if I don't see a new heirloom?" said Sergei.

After the preparation was crude, we talked to the public in the living room. How did Alexei, who departed Wolvern from his caravan, then return to the land of the north? Alexei told comedy chicks funny and strange stories about being attacked by a bunch of wolves while traveling alone in the wild, and about not being able to oversleep in time to accompany a caravan.

The opposing Kays also talk about what follows. That he tried to go to the library in Wolvern and ate a gate advance before entering the primary city district. That he won the martial arts tournament's shooting division and became an honorary citizen of Wolvern. I became acquainted with a noble man in a silver mushroom-haired cutlet in the library and was taught this about the land of the north.

Rumors of horse thieves heard in the buffer city of Dylan Nillen. Crisis of thirst water on Egol Street. Rendezvous with the Gabrilov Chamber of Commerce in Dylannylen back again. A journey on the streets of Brachiya accompanied the caravan. And from the onslaught of horse thieves to the present day...

It was a little banquet that night. Tatiana Elena Along with her handmade dishes, she also behaves like wine and precious distilleries, and Irene and the people of the Snowfield are delighted. Kay stopped to lick the distilled liquor because it would be bad if it sounded tomorrow, but Eileen was empty for the sake of the cup.

Finally, tomorrow.

Thinking about it, maybe she was in the mood to let herself get drunk.

Afterwards, after the banquet was missed, he was given a small room in the corner of the mansion and decided to go to bed early in preparation for tomorrow. It's actually the first decent bedroom in over a dozen days. It was a primitive type of thing with layers of cloth and fur on a straw-packed box, but it was no problem at all with Kay and Irene sleeping together because it was so much more comfortable and bigger than the bedside of a lousy inn.

- I didn't, though.

At night, in a dark room, Kay stared at the ceiling without a scratch.

I can't sleep.

There was also anxiety about tomorrow's exploratory row - the primary cause of this is sound.

To be more precise, it was the voice.

In the mansion, from the room a little further away from the room, the noise of the young girl is echoing. Until a while ago, it was suppressed like pushing to kill, but now it feels a lot more intense, along with the sound of floorboards.

The Lord of Voices will probably be Elena. Kay thought with surprise that the grown-up girl would be like this at night, too. Alexei seems to be very uptight.

If you look right next door, Eileen, who fell asleep at the distance she touched her shoulders, is apparently unable to sleep either. Kay's eyes see Irene's ears subtly red, even in the dark.

"... in a glorious way"

"Totally."

When Booshiri and Kay muttered, Eileen also answered instantly, as if waiting to be spoken to.

"I'm not too shy...... your national pattern? I wonder."

"I don't know."

In a blurry tone somewhere, Eileen replied. The Russians and the people of the snowfields are not the same in the first place, so they won't be able to say it at all. Besides, this is a different world than Earth. Even when I was living in an inn in Satina or Wolvern, it was a daily tea meal to hear the men's and women's sales voices coming from the next room (rather the Kays were one of its audio sources), but even though we just met today, what a complicated mood to hear that kind of voice from someone I know (Elina).

Kay, who hits a rough turnaround and elbows to Eileen's side, cuts out roughly.

"Do we try to fight it, too?

"Become"

Eileen slipped up the duvet so as to hide her face.

"Kamben me, Kay…………."

Irene was turning bright red from cheek to neck, not just her ears. I've layered my body many times now, and now we're not ashamed of each other, but it still doesn't seem to be shameful enough to reach that in someone else's house. Eileen has something weird to be serious about.

…………

but Kay, who sprouted something of a prank, gently hands Irene's cheek as it was.

"Eileen......"

"What, hey,"

"Irene, I love you"

"Ah... already! Kay, hey! Mmmm."

Speaking to Eileen, it remained accepted, Kay's chest plate pounded by a fist of protest.

but not at all powerful. Kay is convinced that this is Irene, the handsome one.

…… No more. Kay's fool. "

Irene pulls her lips together with a stubborn face. But at the same time, it's defenseless everywhere. As she inserted her hand into her white skin outfit and stroked her flank tickling, Irene grinned and twisted herself, holding Kay's head forcefully in return.

"- Kay. I love you."

Remaining emotional, the two devoured each other.

Irene, who was so desperate to keep her voice down, was so adorable that Kay accidentally forgot to be ashamed and burned. Eileen seems to have thrived on something as well, and at the end of the day she seems to have forgotten to weigh herself a lot.

Afterwards, Eileen was desperately ashamed that she didn't have a face that would suit everyone tomorrow, but the tiredness of the journey and all of it go hand in hand and Kay's arm starts to sleep with Suyasuya on the pillow.

…………

Kay looked at Eileen's sleeping face as she felt a carefree drowsiness.

I thought this might be the last time, etc. The spontaneous actions of the rare Sieve in the unusual forest of demons. Tomorrow, if we step into the woods, Kay expects something to happen.

- To be honest, I still didn't want to.

I don't want Irene to go home. I still don't love Eileen enough.

I want to live with you all the time. I want to build a peaceful family somewhere and have a casual routine together -

In my heart, love and such desire overflow.

But at the same time, you don't know. If you wish Irene happiness and peace, I was wondering if Earth would be better than this world. The thought always turns around.

"I don't know what to do..."

Trying to whisper, Kay muttered in Japanese so Eileen wouldn't understand.

'Stay with me. Don't go anywhere... don't leave me alone...'

Kay, who crooked her face, softly mouthed Irene's sleeping forehead.

"…… I love you, Eileen."

Has everyone fallen asleep? No noise around.

Kay closed her eyelids.