"What is this...?"
Staring at the fallen ring, Ni Lue froze. On instinct, he flicked it up with the tip of his foot, caught it in his hand, and swept his peripheral vision over it, taking in its appearance.
A sense of familiarity rose within him.
The single eye on the ring was especially glaring. There seemed to be nothing unusual about it, not even a trace of the light he remembered, yet Ni Lue could not possibly mistake it!
"This is the Wolf-Eye Ring that wolf wore on its claw?"
Even with shouts and chaos behind him, even though this was no time to dwell on such things, Ni Lue could not help thinking about the meaning behind this ring.
When he had rushed out of the tribal gathering place earlier, he had been intercepted by a black shadow and fallen into that dim palace hall. He had thought he had dropped through the ground into some underground ruin, but now that he considered it, that was not the case at all. It was as though he had undergone an illusory journey in an instant—so much seemed to have happened, yet in the blink of an eye, he was back where he had started!
Moreover, though there had been changes—such as the Great Fall Prince now slung over his back—the position of the sun showed that time was still at the moment he had rushed out of the tribe. This feeling...
"It seems that my conversation with that wolf in the dim palace never happened, or perhaps it happened in a gap between moments. Was it an illusion? But if it was an illusion, then how do I explain the person on my back and the ring in my hand?" The Great Fall Prince's sudden disappearance was no small