Dalkak, the sound of a teacup hitting a saucer echoed. Nari looked around at the sweet scent of dessert and the aroma of tea.

Leaving the bamboo forest, what appeared immediately was a feast spread out on the meadow.

A man entirely dressed in layers of black hats, a woman lying down entirely in white, and young Nari.

Snap, the black man, Rood, crunched on a cookie. Looking at him, Nari said,

“Are you… the Master of Chaos? Or is it ‘me’?”

“Well, can you distinguish between the Master of Chaos and the ‘Rood’ you portrayed?”

It was impossible to distinguish. To create a truly ‘living’ avatar, an original was needed.

However, duplicating a person as they were would eventually lead to exposure, so, using the appearance of the incarnation of the Master of Chaos, Rood was created.

The cheerful demeanor was also modeled after the appearance of the Master of Chaos, so Nari couldn’t distinguish between her own self as Rood and the Master of Chaos.

“Here, have a drink.”

Dalkak, Rood, who put down the teacup, chuckled. After taking a deep breath, Nari sat in front of him.

It was the moment when the main character and the sub-character, Nari and Rood, met face to face. Rood looked at Nari and chuckled.

“Hello, ‘me.'”

“…Yeah, hello.”
Nari sat and stared intently at the teacup. It was just plain water. She looked at Rood as if in disbelief, but he just raised an eyebrow.

“What?! Plain water?!”

“Well, what color do you expect? Your actions are all mine. You’re just like water, an essential existence for me to move forward, right?”

Irritated, Nari clenched her fist. She was expressing the vague anger she had about her own situation.

Rood burst into laughter. The little Nari next to him spoke sarcastically.

“You chose to socially die. Why are you feeling bad?”

“Because I wanted to?!”

As Nari yelled, the white-haired girl sleeping next to her stirred, muttering in her sleep. When Nari lowered her head to check her face, Rood’s voice reached her ears.

“She won’t wake up.”

“Who is she?”

“….”

Rood looked straight at Nari. Young Nari also stared at her. Somehow feeling breathless, Nari fidgeted with the cup. The words of the young Nari came through.

“I am the past, Rood is the present. The sleeping child is the future ‘you.'”

“…Me?”

“We are all you. Everyone you’ve encountered on this journey, including the one speaking to you right now, is you.”

Rood chuckled, resting his chin on the desk. It wasn’t the mocking laughter seen before but an affectionate smile for the Nari in front of him.
“Sure, we are your mental strength.”

Mental strength, the power primarily used by sorcerers, derived from an individual’s ‘mind.’ It is a challenging force to handle, and if not controlled even a little, black smoke, representing mental strength, can leak out. The stronger the mental strength of a sorcerer, the more effort is required to control it.

“I wanted to meet you, nice to meet you, Nari. It was challenging to get to talk to you.”

‘Being able to have a conversation like this…’

Surprised, Nari blinked her eyes, which had widened. Rood in front of her, with a smile, took Nari’s cup and put in a tea bag. A delightful fragrance quickly spread.

“They all said we must control our mental strength. I mentioned that I fell into the depth of the world because I couldn’t control my mental strength.”

“But it seems different, doesn’t it?”

A cup of Darjeeling rosemary tea was placed in front of Nari. The plain water was slowly turning red. Nari nodded her head a few times while looking at Rood.

“The mind, you see. It’s not something you can control just by saying you control it.”

“Even though the Chaos Master tried hard to control it for you.”

“That’s just a blockage. Even that is in an area I can’t fully comprehend, which is this depth world. So, maybe the Chaos Master is so concerned about your dreams.”

“Concerned?”

“Well, you have such thoughts deep down, don’t you? Perhaps the reason the Chaos Master keeps coming to the depth world is…”
At Rood’s words, Nari lowered her eyes. Honestly, it was a thought she had tried a few times. The reason the Chaos Master came to the depth world every night might not be to protect, but rather to thoroughly examine every action and thought.

‘To unravel everything from motives to thoughts.’

And.

“Then why did you want to meet me?”

“We? That’s your desire. It’s not that ‘we’ wanted to meet you, but ‘you’ wanted to meet us.”

Me? Nari blinked her eyes with a confused expression. Rood snapped his fingers. Somehow, there was a sky-blue letter in his hand.

Oops, Nari thought and checked her pocket, but there was nothing inside. Rood waved the sky-blue letter while saying.

“Still puzzled?”

The sky-blue divine letter. Nari shook her head. Still puzzled.

The experience of being attacked by others was terrible, but the experience of attacking others and completely forgetting was terrifying in a different sense.

Even if she dealt with this gate, she still had no idea how to treat Jungsuhho properly. Rood looked at Nari and casually touched the sky-blue letter.