At the time, it had seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. Fortunately, Fu Qian wasn't prone to that kind of habitual thinking.
He'd noticed the oddity in the mission summary's location even before he'd read the summary itself.
And now, he could be almost certain that everything was normal.
The shelves, the long table, the objects... even the feel of the seat beneath him.
Everything was just as it usually was when he returned from a mission.
Even the Emissary Mask he'd taken off was sitting on the table in front of him.
So what was going on?
Had the Warehouse recovered so much of its vigor that it could now extend its reach into the Witch's world?
The fact that he hadn't needed to deliver a message at the start of the previous mission, and that there'd been no option to abandon it, seemed to support that conclusion to some extent.
And if that really was the case, it seemed like good news at first glance.
He'd gained a way to return to the Warehouse, which would make certain operations much more flexible.
The problem was that those same signs also supported another conclusion: the Warehouse had dragged him straight back.
What if putting on the Emissary Mask again sent him straight to the Bookstore World?
That might not be entirely bad, either. For instance, it would let him bypass the Nightmare Corridor on this return trip. But he hadn't finished taking care of things over there.
He'd gone to considerable trouble to secure this chance to conduct research, and it wouldn't be easy to get another one anytime soon.
Besides, he didn't mind finding an opportunity to chat with everyone in the Corridor.
But now, putting on the Emissary Mask again might take him somewhere unpredictable...
That