Chapter 329 – Side Story Two. The Girl in the Orb (Five)

Past. Memory. Restoration.

Words that would have held little value on their own gathered within a single sentence and emitted the light of immense meaning.

Thump.

Her heart beat strongly.

Her mind grew distant.

What happened next was inevitable.

Curiosa, who had rushed to the desk, began frantically rummaging through the research materials placed upon it.

Flap! Flap! Whisk! Shuffle!

She unfolded, flipped through, and leafed through them.

She read every sentence of every document, not missing a single character, at a rapid pace without omission.

‘Every document has the same handwriting.’

The materials, all presumed to be written by the laboratory’s owner, dealt with the content of an unheard-of magic called Restoration Magic.

Through magic, forgotten past memories could be restored.

That was the gist of the materials.

‘That’s impossible.’

In this world, there exist things that cannot be undone no matter what methods are used.

Words already spoken.

Memories already forgotten.

Hair already fallen out.

But to say restoring memories is possible…?

It was utterly unbelievable.

However, the logic and systematic nature contained within the materials were hinting.

This is magic that can be realized.

Flap.

Finally, when the last page of the materials was closed, Curiosa’s back was soaked with sweat from thrill and excitement.

And the moment she turned her immersed mind to her surroundings.

“That’s a fascinating theory.”

“Ah, shit, you startled me.”

Discovering Ray standing right beside her, she almost fell over.

“…Kid, how many times have I told you not to suddenly appear?”

“It wasn’t sudden. I’ve been standing here for quite a while.”

Curiosa checked her watch.

Unbeknownst to her, over an hour had passed.

Veronica and the younger siblings had also come downstairs, and they seemed to have already finished exploring the laboratory.

Grin.

Ray turned his body to look at the laboratory and continued speaking.

“The owner of this laboratory seems to have suffered from a disease of losing memories.”

“A disease of losing memories…?”

“Yeah. Judging from the contents written in the journal.”

Ray shook a thick, worn leather journal that filled his hand.

The laboratory’s owner was a figure from decades ago, a young 4th Circle Wizard.

「I’ve wandered the world and accumulated enough experience. Now, I will devote the rest of my life to research and invent magic that will astonish the world.」

Returning to his hometown, Sector 49, he prepared to build a laboratory with ambitious aspirations.

Inventing his own magic that did not exist in the world.

That was one of the ultimate goals any Wizard dreamed of.

Of course, its difficulty was near extreme, but he possessed the passion, time, and talent necessary to reach that dream.

But tragedy struck.

One early morning, upon waking from sleep, he realized something.

「My… what is my name…?」

No matter how much he thought, his name would not come to mind.

In an instant, indescribable fear and terror overwhelmed him.

─Crash!

Terrified, he rummaged through every item in the house.

Only then, through a signature on a document, could he retrieve his name.

And the next day.

「This place… where is it…?」

He blankly looked around the surrounding space for a long time before realizing it was the house he lived in.

And he could sense it.

That yesterday’s incident was not simply a mishap caused by fatigue.

「Why is this item here…?」

「I don’t know…! I don’t remember…!」

「I don’t know who you are, what relationship you had with me…!」

The loss of memory, which initially had mild symptoms like forgetting the names of objects or places, worsened over time.

He realized he was crumbling apart like a sandcastle.

It was a disease.

Of unknown name and cause.

Every morning, one memory disappeared.

Whenever symptoms occurred, he desperately tried to retrieve his memories, but it was only a temporary measure.

It wasn’t merely a problem of daily life becoming impossible.

「Who am I, who am I? Who… am I?」

A Wizard, whose ego inevitably develops much more than an ordinary person’s.

For such a Wizard to lose oneself was an unimaginably terrible disaster.

There was only one thing left to do.

That was to invent magic that restores memories.

Essentially, he ended up using the passion, effort, and time he had prepared for his original dream for his own survival.

Fortunately, the research was successful.

Because he could complete the magic before completely forgetting himself.

Thud.

Ray closed the journal and spoke.

“However, it probably wasn’t easy. To fight against his crumbling self, he must have had to use Restoration Magic every single day without fail.”

He used objects bearing strong traces of himself as mediums for the memory restoration magic.

Items he frequently used.

Places he frequently visited.

The reason he deliberately built the laboratory in a shallow underground area close to the Sector was also for that reason.

Because his hometown, Sector 49, was itself a gathering place of memories for him.

Waking up, the first thing he did was check the note by his bedside that he had written the previous night, which became his routine.

「You are …da. Go to the designated locations below in order and use Restoration Magic. Then, you can suppress the memory confusion you are currently experiencing.」

Following the note’s contents, he could know who he was.

He could spend the remaining day as his complete self, and at the day’s end, for the next day’s self, he wrote a note with the same content he had read.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t exactly the same content.

The total amount of memory loss gradually increased.

Therefore, the places he needed to visit also increased daily.

“And someday, he must have failed to remember himself.”

“……”

“Either he made a mistake while using Restoration Magic, or the speed of retrieving memories couldn’t keep up with the speed of losing them. So he couldn’t return to the laboratory.”

Prolonging his identity on a daily basis was like walking a tightrope.

Especially if the tightrope he had to cross grew longer every day.

“……”

Curiosa somehow felt solemn.

Perhaps because, although to a lesser degree, she also carried a similar, determined worry regarding memories.

Even though he was a complete stranger she had never seen before, she felt pity for the arduous life he must have endured.

‘I thought I could use this person’s magic to retrieve my own memories.’

Is that really right?

To recklessly use a deceased person’s achievements for the greed of a human called ‘me’?

Somehow, that seems…

Whoosh!

“Then I’ll dispose of all these materials.”

“No, no, wait, kid, you should hear people’s thoughts to the end. Hey, shit, aren’t you going to put out that fire?”

Curiosa urgently stopped Ray, who was trying to set all the materials on fire to cremate them.

“So you’re thinking of testing the magic?”

“Hmm…”

Curiosa pondered for a moment.

But in truth, the answer was already decided.

Who am I?

It was a question like a barrier in life that would remain standing there forever unless broken through.

“…Kid, help me.”

“Alright.”

Restoration Magic was a new form of magic not existing in the current magic system.

The types of required elements were few, but the formula was so long and abstruse that it densely covered all the walls of the laboratory.

An extreme difficulty level where one wouldn’t dare even attempt it unless they were the inventor of the magic.

But that wasn’t a problem.

Hum!

Because a being who could unfold any magic at their fingertips was present here.

Mana of various colors blooming in the void began to intertwine like threads.

Veronica and the two younger siblings approached and sent tense glances.

Curiosa took out the Snow Globe.

“…If this really is my item, then I should be able to revive my memories.”

Her voice trembled slightly.

She couldn’t hide her tension.

The Snow Globe, enveloped in colorful mana, floated in the void between Ray and Curiosa.

“According to the materials, the basic principle of Restoration Magic is that the memory embedded in the medium revives in the subject’s mind.”

Huuuum—!

“However, variables exist. Depending on how strong a memory the medium holds, the manifestation method of the magic can differ. The subject’s current psychological state also greatly influences it. In other words.”

Huuuuuum——!

“It means we cannot know exactly what phenomenon will occur when Restoration Magic is cast. Is that still okay?”

Her decision was already made.

Curiosa nodded her head.

While they intertwined to realize the magic, mana continued to cry out.

Creak— Creak—

Due to that pressure, the Snow Globe’s winding mechanism began to coil on its own.

Whoooosh——!

The sand inside the glass sphere also swirled.

And the moment the girl on the pedestal also began to move.

Flash!

Light enveloped the space.

Twitch.*

Regaining consciousness, Curiosa slowly raised her body.

Discovering a substance flowing down along a black cloth, she muttered blankly.

“Sand…?”

She slowly looked around.

An endlessly stretched, arid land.

A too-familiar landscape, a wasteland.

Why am I here?

I was definitely in the underground laboratory below the bookstore just a moment ago?

It was bewildering.

No, absurd.

To understand this situation, Curiosa tried to formulate hypotheses within the bounds of her common sense.

First, the kid sent me here as a prank.

“Hmm, dismissed.”

It’s not that the kid never has a mischievous side, but this wasn’t his style of prank, which lacked any sense.

Second, the formulas on the walls weren’t Restoration Magic formulas but actually ordinary Teleportation Magic formulas.

“This isn’t it either.”

The formulas on the walls were definitely real.

What seized Curiosa’s mind, which was racking its brains, was nothing other than a stinging sensation.

“Huh?”

That is, the stinging sensation felt from the skin covered by the black cloth.

Snapping her head up, the blazing sun in the sky entered her view.

It wasn’t strange.

Because this was a wasteland at high noon.

However, the problem was that she usually maintained her body temperature with cooling magic and thus never felt the heat.

‘Did the magic unravel while moving through space?’

A phenomenon she didn’t normally experience.

Tilting her head, Curiosa used cooling magic again.

And then.

“Huh?”

She tasted great bewilderment.

“No, why isn’t this working?”

Sweating profusely, no matter how many times she tried, the magic wouldn’t activate.

Focusing her senses inside her body, Curiosa soon realized that no Ring was detected at all.

Furthermore, no mana was felt in the surrounding atmosphere either.

As if a world where mana never originally existed.

A complete vacuum state of mana.

This experience was her first in her life, and she had never seen such a phenomenon mentioned in any magic book.

“Am I dreaming now…”

Muttering to herself, Curiosa sharply turned her head to the right.

Because it was the timing for the white-haired kid to suddenly appear and startle her.

Fortunately, there was no one there.

The moment she returned her head to its original position, relieved.

“The reason there’s no mana around is probably because this place isn’t the real world.”

“You’re driving me crazy.”

Discovering Ray appearing on her left, Curiosa clutched her momentarily startled heart.

“What on earth are you doing? Huh? Why are you doing this to me?”

“I also thought at first that the magic failed or I misunderstood the formula, but upon closer inspection, that wasn’t it.”

A kid who only said his piece without answering her outcry.

Curiosa reached a state of resignation.

“…But what did you say? That this isn’t the real world?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

What did this kid eat that was wrong?

Even though mana disappeared, everywhere I look seems like the real world.

Then Ray raised his hand.

“If my thoughts are correct, this place is.”

He pointed with his finger towards the distant sky.

“The inside of the Snow Globe.”

Beyond the clouds, a giant glass membrane covered in scratch marks was glimmering.