Chapter 195

Chapter 195: Disappearance

With a sharp clang, the silver fork in Dante Wayne’s hand fell onto his plate.

In the slightly empty dining room, the sound of the fork hitting the plate felt unusually loud. The maid standing by the side was startled. She hurried forward to ask: “Mr. Dante?”

Dante did not answer the maid. The governor of the city-state still sat there in a daze, as if his soul had left his body for a moment. Only after a long while did he suddenly blink. His awareness rose back to the surface like someone breaking free from drowning. Sounds from the Mortal Realm exploded in his ears.

He took a sharp breath and heard the maid’s voice again: “Mr. Dante, are you all right?”

Dante Wayne stared blankly at the fork lying in his plate. He slowly reached out and picked it up, and saw that his hand was shaking badly. Countless tangled and chaotic memories were racing through his mind and piling on top of each other. A burning pain spread around his eye socket. His Ruby Prosthetic Eye felt as if it were on fire.

He suddenly turned his head. Before the maid could speak a third time, he broke the silence in a low voice: “Has Vanna sent any message through anyone?”

The maid froze for a moment. She looked at the respected governor in confusion. “…Who is Vanna?”

In the next second, the maid shrank back in fright from the sudden iron-blue color of his face and the heavy pressure that filled the air around him.

Dante Wayne’s face changed at once, and the air around him seemed to grow heavier. He kept his dark expression for a few seconds, then still forced himself to stay calm. He waved his hand at the maid and spoke as evenly as he could: “You can go for now. Don’t come back in for the moment.”

The maid left, confused and a little nervous. The dining room fell completely silent. Dante Wayne sat quietly at the end of the long table, the only person beside the huge table.

It was as if for the past eleven years he had always been like this, eating alone at the table, living alone in this large and empty house.

Layer upon layer of mixed and disordered memories crossed and stacked in his mind. Different Mortal Realms from different levels seemed to be trying to overwrite his memories. But Dante just sat there quietly, letting his memories be overwritten again and again. He muttered like someone talking in his sleep, over and over: “Vanna is still alive… Vanna is still alive…”

He suddenly raised his head.

At the other end of the dining table, a figure had appeared without him noticing.

It was himself, at least, it looked like another version of himself.

It was a gray-white figure, wearing the same clothes as Dante Wayne, with the same face and hair. Even the wrinkles on the backs of its hands were no different. But its features were a little blurry, and its eyes were nothing but two hollow pits filled with endless emptiness and strangeness.

Dante quietly fixed his gaze on the gray-white “himself” at the other end of the table. The other also slowly raised its head and looked at him in silence. After a long time, the gray-white figure suddenly grinned. It showed a soundless smile, and in its deep eye sockets, chaotic light and shadow swirled.

The thing spoke. The skin on its face wriggled with the movement of its lips, constantly cracking open and healing again: “Ah, your heart finally sprang a leak, ‘myself’, mister.”

Dante Wayne stopped his muttering. He stared hard at the figure sitting across from him, this reflection that belonged to him. “What did you do?”

“To be honest, I don’t know,” the thing on the far side of the table said, shaking its head. “It just happened. The surprise came too fast. A loophole chose to destroy itself.

“But don’t you want to see all this? You don’t have to carry the pressure of the truth anymore. You don’t have to worry about duty or the future. Everything is going back on track. Eternal release and peace are waiting for everyone, just like the promise you got many years ago. Everyone’s wish will be fulfilled…”

As it spoke, the gray-white thing slowly stood up from the table. A twisted, broken smile spread across its face. “I know your heart very well. I know it like I know myself…”

Dante Wayne also slowly stood up. There were no weapons in the dining room, but he always carried a short dagger with him. Now he gripped this only blade tightly and stared at the gray-white figure. “You’re nothing but a hollow thing, an empty shadow. And you think you deserve to know the human heart?”

“I am the soul you reflect in Subspace…” The gray-white figure spread its arms, as if it did not care about Dante’s hostility and challenge at all. “Subspace knows everything, including that shallow, laughable human heart… Come on, kill me, and then see me again. It feels like we haven’t played this ga—”

The gray-white shadow’s words cut off.

Dante Wayne stared in shock at the other end of the dining table. He saw an emerald flame that had somehow spread here from somewhere unknown. Like a predator that had smelled prey, it suddenly leaped at that phantom. The phantom tried to dodge, but the fire seemed to ignore the rules of space and burst into a fierce blaze on its body.

A shrill scream and a strange howling sound came at the same time. The sharp sound waves shattered all the glass in the dining room in an instant. But the sound itself was locked inside this space and could not spread outward. So the layers of echoed sound waves kept bouncing around the room, growing stranger and more chilling.

Dante Wayne watched in a daze as his Subspace projection twisted in the fire into a strange, writhing pool of grease. The grease still gave off roars and shrieks. He could only barely pick out a few words. Besides poisonous curses, there was only one word with any clear meaning: “the Vanished!”

That word was almost screamed out by that pool of grease.

Then the grease burned away as well. Only pale ash remained in the flames. Dante Wayne stared blankly at it all. In the next second, burning pain suddenly filled his whole body.

The burning of the Subspace projection was now reflecting back on his true body.

The dagger fell to the floor, and the governor’s fairly strong body dropped after it. Dante Wayne curled up in agony, feeling as if his own body were being burned by the flames. This delayed burning was tearing and destroying his soul and mind. But in the rising illusion of fire, he saw that the spreading green flames were only circling around him slowly, not really hunting him.

Those spirit form flames finally drifted in a circle and flickered twice in front of the governor, then quickly spread away toward somewhere else.

Dante even felt that the flame spat once, as if it were showing its disgust for food that did not suit its taste.

He thought the pain of burning had already driven him insane.

In the next moment, all the pain left as suddenly as it had come. Dante felt his mind jolt like a spring pulled to its limit and then suddenly released. That sudden relaxation became the last blow to his awareness. A strong wave of dizziness swept over him. His vision went black, and his sense of the world rushed away from him.

Just before he completely lost consciousness, he heard the front door open, the maid’s cry of alarm, and the messy footsteps of others rushing in.

…

Vanna calmly looked around the empty archives, trying to find any trace of the middle-aged Father.

For the first two minutes, she did not move from where she stood. She did not try to leave, and she did not touch anything in her field of vision.

This was to avoid touching the source of some corruption while trapped in an illusion, letting her mind be invaded.

Only after she confirmed that everything she could see was solid and normal, and after she placed mental protections on herself again, did she go behind the administrators’ curved desk and firmly press a button under the surface.

That button rang the alarm bell.

The bell began to ring, echoing again and again in the empty archives.

Vanna looked down again at the consecrated lantern in her hand.

The middle-aged Father had vanished, but the lantern he had lent her was still in her grasp. It gave off a gentle, warm light. Though the archives were not dark, the holy fire burning the oil still seemed to drive something away. It formed a hazy circle of light several meters around her.

Vanna walked another circuit around the administrators’ rest area. She still could not find any sign of the Father.

The alarm bell kept ringing, sharp and piercing, making her heart pound.

Vanna returned to the curved desk. Her eyes fell on the scattered parts and the mark written in blood.

The bell echoed hollowly. No one came in.

The young Inquisitor suddenly understood.

It was not the middle-aged Father who had disappeared.

It was her.

The moment this thought rose from her heart, Vanna felt the atmosphere around her change. It was as if a layer of the Veil had been torn away. Another dimension, laid over the Mortal Realm, revealed its true face to her. Her eyes flew wide. She saw endless flames flaring up all across the archives.

And in that sea of roaring fire, a tall, thin figure holding a Black Umbrella had appeared at some point and now stood not far in front of her.

The figure was very tall and very slim, and a strange aura rose from his whole body. Standing in the flames, he raised one arm toward Vanna. A low, hoarse voice came from deep within him: “You…”

Vanna heard only one syllable. In the next second, she had already swung the huge greatsword off her back, a weapon that ordinary people would need both hands just to lift. One hand held the consecrated lantern, the other raised the greatsword. From three meters away, she leaped into the air and brought the blade down in a heavy chop.

“Heretic!”