We Go Home

Chapter Forty-Two: We Go Home

A mirage represented a state without meaning, an outcome without meaning.

That was what the villagers were.

They were experimental consumables raised in captivity. Their identities, backgrounds, behavioral patterns, even the instincts that living beings were meant to follow, had been maliciously altered and remade into carefully designed, rigid programs, becoming greenhouses for cultivating the emotions they produced.

Bella was the same.

Except compared to the villagers, she was not even human. She was merely a product fashioned from emotions torn from hundreds and thousands of individuals.

For ordinary people, the meaning of survival was simple: to live because they were alive. For more exceptional people, it was to contribute to society's development. But the meaning of their existence here was merely an experiment by some magician, perhaps born of a passing whim.

—And it was a failed experiment.

Iris was shocked by the cruelty of the experiment, her voice hoarse. "So all of this... was meaningless?"

"Am I... that kind of thing?"

Bella almost lost her color in the literal sense.

Her gaze was unfocused, her body transparent. Anyone could tell that she did not have much time left.

"So I... am not even human."

"Who said that?!"

After a moment of silence, Linton softly refuted the girl's words.

"Existence precedes essence. In the human world, everyone starts out with nothing. Only later, as their thoughts gradually become fuller, do they form ideas and wish to become the person they want to be."

"A person's essence is not something they possess from birth. It is a process of continuously improving and shaping oneself through life."

"Bella, the only difference between you and everyone else is the initial attributes you were given. But you are still a living human being. There is no doubt about that."

"The notebook says that you can also resonate with other people's emotions. That proves that although you were born vastly different from everyone else, you were not imprisoned by the single attribute bestowed upon you. Like all humans, you can still discover the limitless possibilities within yourself as you grow."

He gently stroked the girl's hair and said, "That is the meaning of our existence!"

"Wah—"

Violent emotional fluctuations rippled across Bella. Her knees bent slightly, nearly touching the ground, but at the very moment she was about to fall into a vast vortex of fear, the person beside her became her only lifeline.

A faint trace of color flowed through the girl's eyes, only to vanish again in an instant.

Choking back sobs, she said, "But... I'm a bad child."

"Are you?" Linton softly asked.

"I am."

"Really?"

The repeated questions finally made Bella unable to hold on any longer.

She threw herself into the man's arms. Huge, mercury-like tears rolled down the contours of her childish face, dispersing the instant they left her skin.

"I'm not a bad child! I'm not!!"

"Bella doesn't want to lie... Bella just wants to be with Daddy and Mommy. Bella doesn't want to hurt anyone..."

The sound of her wailing carried far, far away.

"Daddy... Mommy... Big Brother..."

"I'm here."

Linton's voice was as soft as a feather that would melt at a touch, his gaze gentle as a pool rippling under sunlight.

"Bella, I still remember the promise we made when we first met."

The girl opened her tear-blurred eyes and saw the man's face, indistinct in the dim light, as he spoke in a voice filled with boundless tenderness:

"Don't cry."

"—We're going home."

Iris bit her lower lip as she watched the final strand of the girl's hair turn into specks of starlight. She watched the necromancer put away the weariness in his eyes and slowly rise to his feet.

"Are we... going back now?"

"No."

Linton unexpectedly shook his head.

"This isn't over yet."

He had not heard the notification that the second mission had been completed.

"How could that be..." Iris said blankly. "Didn't we already investigate what happened in this village? Could there be some other hidden truth?"

"Not that. Without any other special clues, the situation in this village is basically settled." Linton picked up the notebook and said flatly, "Iris, why do you think this notebook, which records the entire experimental process, was left here instead of in the magician's study? Even if the experiment failed, it should have been kept on file, shouldn't it?"

Iris wanted to say that perhaps the person had simply forgotten to take it away, but then she remembered the strange feeling she had had upon entering.

"It is strange. It's as if... it was deliberately left here, waiting for someone to read it."

"I feel the same way."

Linton frowned tightly.

But as he recalled everything they had encountered so far, he could no longer find any other oversight.

"Where exactly did things go wrong?"

He opened the notebook again.

The notebook was still the same as before, densely recording the process of this experiment.

Linton read every page, every line, every paragraph without missing a word, yet he still could not find where any information might be hidden.

But when he turned to the final page, a sudden change occurred.

The last page of the notebook was filled with vast blank space, with only two words written upon it.

"—Hello, sir."

"Hey! What's wrong with you?!"

The girl's startled and anxious cry rang in his ears. Linton wanted to say, as usual, "I'm fine," but his thoughts seemed to be shredded by a vortex, leaving him unable to think. His vision began to twist for no reason, the image before his eyes abruptly fractured, and large black blotches rapidly spread until they swallowed every color in his sight.

The next second, dim light lit up the world once more.

Linton narrowed his eyes and examined the scene before him.

At that moment, he seemed to be in a strange study.

He did not know how large the room was, because all four walls, from floor to ceiling, were packed with books of every kind. The titles of some of them were written in languages Linton had never even seen before.

After a moment, he turned his gaze toward the only source of light in the room.

There, something like an ever-burning lamp flickered atop a mahogany desk. Its light was so faint that it could not even sketch the outline of the person sitting behind the desk.

That person held a book in his hands and seemed to be waiting for Linton to finish looking around. Once Linton's gaze settled on him, the man slowly spoke.

"Hello, sir."

It was a voice with an inexplicable, eerie accent. Neither rough nor shrill, it seemed to belong to an unremarkable man.

"Who are you?"

Linton asked a very straightforward question, though his tone was clearly not very friendly.

Anyone dragged into such a strange place for no apparent reason would not be in a good mood.

The man did not grow angry at his rudeness. He simply set down the book, folded his hands together, and rested his chin on them.

"If you mean my name... Volg. You probably haven't heard of it."

But Linton's answer caught Arez by surprise.

"Of course I've heard of it."

His gaze was sharp, his voice cold.

"Volg, one of the Twelve Stars of the Truth Society."

"Am I right?"