Tom couldn't understand the current situation.
【Ti to get up, don't you think?】
The familiar voice he heard just before losing consciousness, his neck wrapped by a tentacle.
Sreureuk-
The mont the voice reached him, the tentacle that had been tightening around his neck as if to kill him, loosened.
It wasn't the effect of a skill or magic.
It contained no Mana; it was just a single phrase uttered in a flat tone.
However.
From Tom's perspective, it was so incomprehensible that the effect of a skill or magic would have been more believable.
‘…This is.’
The voice that had just reached his ears…
…was undoubtedly U-jin's, who should have already been in a near-death state.
Ssk-
Tom looked back with disbelief in his eyes.
But the sight of U-jin he confird upon turning around was unchanged.
His right arm was completely severed, his shoulder a mangled ss of flesh and blood, and beneath his listlessly open eyelids were pupils that had completely lost focus.
He could be certain.
Although the voice ca from the U-jin lying behind him, U-jin was in no condition to speak.
…Much less in such an impassive tone, not even a pained scream.
‘…What in the world.’
A completely incomprehensible situation.
Ssk-
Turning his head forward again, Tom saw the Mutant that had driven him to the brink of death just monts ago.
The Mutant's tentacles were bubbling and boiling, writhing bizarrely as it spun in place.
As if it had never intended to kill him monts ago, it pulled up the corners of the hole that might have been its mouth, as if enjoying the situation.
- Ihiiyrak!
It was letting out a series of strange cries.
That wasn't all.
At the ends of its outstretched tentacles, his family mbers were now captured, swaying back and forth.
『…Thomas. You must protect your mother and your younger brother.』
『…Tommy. *Cough-* At least Simon, you must…….』
『Brother…… I don't want to die…… I don't want to die like this…….』
Just as Tom rembered them from that horrifying past.
Calling out to him with desperate screams.
Grit-
“……”
Although Tom felt another intense wave of agitation at the sight, he didn't charge in this ti.
The reason was simple.
‘…Sothing.’
Unlike before when he had lost his mind and charged, he knew now.
He had realized that sothing, sothing was definitely wrong.
The events unfolding before his eyes went beyond rely strange and had reached the realm of the bizarre.
An incomprehensible context.
A disjointed narrative.
A paradox in itself.
Buried in the intense emotions of the mont, he hadn't noticed, but looking back, it had been strange from the very beginning.
How had that blunt, rounded tentacle severed U-jin's arm, and since when had he started using a sword?
Furthermore, the sight of his long-dead family wrapped in the Mutant's tentacles, while certainly provocative, was not realistic.
Like puzzle pieces jumbled and forced together, he hadn't noticed while fitting them one by one, but the completed picture was a complete ss.
What should I call it.
‘…….’
Yes.
This felt less like reality and more like a dream.
A mosaic made by haphazardly connecting fragnts of emotion floating in his subconscious.
It was utterly crude.
And the mont Tom faced that fact.
Saaaaat-
He felt his consciousness rapidly ascending sowhere.
***
Paat-
Tom's eyes snapped open.
“…Heok, heok.”
The Mutant that had been before him was gone without a trace.
In its place were claw marks that could only have been made by him.
Dozens of grooves were carved crisscrossing the red-glowing Quark, a testant to how furiously he must have been clawing at it.
Dugeun dugeun-
His wildly pounding heart was proof of the lingering tension and the vividness of what had just happened.
How long had it been?
Tom couldn't even rember the last ti he had gasped for breath like this.
‘…….’
Barely steadying his dazed, blurring vision, Tom turned his head to check behind him.
“Long ti no see.”
“……”
U-jin greeted him nonchalantly.
He was perfectly fine.
Far from having a severed arm, he didn't even have a scratch.
Of course, he was a ss with blood splattered here and there, but he had been like that since before they entered the mine.
U-jin looked utterly serene.
Around then.
Tom roughly grasped the situation.
“…Since when?”
A Hallucination.
He had been exposed to this red energy and fallen into a hallucination.
No other possibility ca to mind that could explain his recent experience.
Shrug-
“Well.”
“……”
“I don't know when it started either. I figured it out when you started screaming ‘Ihiiyrak!’ at the wall by yourself.”
Tom let out a low groan at U-jin's shrugging reply.
‘…Was it from the very beginning?’
The appearance of the Mutant itself was a lie.
The very mont he had boasted about his 'ntal strength' in front of U-jin, he had already been bewitched by this red energy, seeing hallucinations.
In a way, it was a situation that could have hurt his pride, but the question that consud Tom's mind first was 'how'.
‘…I didn't feel any sign of it.’
It was an undeniable fact that the Lycan Clan, including himself, had a weakness in utilizing Mana.
Especially Tom Hardist himself.
But that was limited to the 'utilization' of Mana.
As his physical performance was top-tier among the Beastkin, his sensory perception for detecting anomalies was unparalleled in its sensitivity.
Just as his body was agile, his ability to sense the movent of Mana was also outstanding, sothing he could be confident in.
In the first place, no matter how much the Demon's Singularity was restricted by the Mana Turbulence Phenonon and the Quark's influence, physically hunting a Demonic Species like a Succubus was far beyond common sense.
If such a thing were easily possible, The Order's Exorcists wouldn't have had such a hard ti hunting Demonic Species.
What made that impossible feat possible was, of course, largely his outstanding physical speed, but just as important was his sensory perception that could detect the movent of Mana down to the micro-level.
‘…….’
That's why he couldn't understand it even more.
When the recent hallucination occurred.
Tom hadn't felt any movent of Mana whatsoever.
Not at the mont he entered the hallucination, nor during the monts he thought he was actually fighting the Mutant within it, did he sense any movent of Mana.
That's why he had mistaken it for reality without any suspicion, despite the appearance of nurous bizarre phenona and the arbitrary narrative.
If it hadn't been for U-jin's dissonant voice in the middle, he might have kept scratching the wall until his fingernails broke.
That fact ca as quite a shock to Tom.
For Tom, the Darkest Dungeon was a place he had lived in for decades.
If this had happened in the Unexplored Lands beyond the outermost regions he had yet to visit, he could have accepted it to so extent, but he had never imagined experiencing sothing like this within a territory he knew.
“…Do you know the reason?”
Faced with an experience that far exceeded his expectations, all Tom could do was helplessly ask U-jin.
The fact that he, a veteran of the dungeon, was asking a question to U-jin, who had just entered, was ridiculous in itself.
But strangely, he asked as if it were the most natural thing to do.
“You wouldn't understand even if I explained it.”
“…Is that so.”
Pfft-
“The Demonic Nature interference of Quark isn't sothing that can be explained conceptually in the first place. Just think of it as having a different chanism of action.”
“……”
“So… if Mana is roughly a 4th-dinsional concept, then you could say a concept from a higher dinsion intervened. Being familiar with Mana wasn't enough to overco what just happened.”
A concept from a higher dinsion than Mana.
As if proving that U-jin's words about him not understanding weren't just out of annoyance.
Tom shook his head even at U-jin's simple explanation.
“…I certainly don't get it.”
Shrug-
“That's only natural.”
“……”
U-jin's words, ‘It's natural that you don't know,’ could have seed arrogant at first glance.
But Tom simply wiped the cold sweat from his brow and nodded.
The reason was simple.
He had already guessed that there was sothing about U-jin that went beyond his own knowledge.
And upon waking from that hallucinatory experience, he had vaguely realized one more thing.
“…How in the world are you alright?”
If the hallucination that had just occurred was really caused by exposure to this 'Quark' as U-jin said.
Then U-jin had been exposed to the exact sa environnt as Tom.
In that case, he should have seen the sa hallucination.
However.
【Ti to get up, don't you think?】
The one who had woken him from the hallucination was clearly U-jin's voice.
As if he had anticipated this phenonon, and as if it had no effect on him whatsoever.
His voice was laced with composure.
“Is there so special way to overco this hallucinatory phenonon?”
Although it was a bit embarrassing to ask, coming from soone who had just been flailing in a hallucination.
Objectively speaking, U-jin's level was several steps below Tom's.
The only possibility that could explain U-jin being perfectly fine was that he knew a way to resist this bizarre hallucination called 'Quark's Demonic Nature interference'.
…However.
“There isn't one.”
“……!!”
U-jin's answer to Tom's question about a solution was a bit hard to understand.
‘…There isn't one?’
It was hard to accept.
Just a mont ago, the hallucination had vanished from his eyes.
If there was no special way to overco the hallucination, then U-jin's perfectly fine appearance couldn't be explained.
Just like the story in the hallucination he had just seen.
U-jin's words seed to contradict themselves at first glance.
…However.
“…What do you an by that? Then how are you alright?”
*Pfft-
“Do I look alright?”
At U-jin's question, a corner of his mouth lifting into a smirk, Tom could only fall silent.
“……!”
It was a short phrase, but it helped him understand the current situation more than all the previous explanations combined.
“You're not completely awake either.”
“……”
“You just ca to your senses for a mont, so it disappeared. As long as we don't leave the mine, you can't escape it completely. It'll probably get stronger the deeper we go.”
Looking at the now-silent Tom, U-jin let out another *pfft-* of a laugh and pulled a cigar from his pocket, placing it between his lips.
Chiiik-
“I see them too.”
Then, U-jin lit it, took a drag, and added in a bitter tone along with the hazy smoke.
“…I'm just.”
Huu-
“…enduring it.”
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