The Imperial Hunter

Dreams of revisiting the past were always the same nightmares.

“Come out!”

The roaring of my master was not in the form of a human.

“Where are you hiding?”

The pitch-black tentacles snaked through the narrow alley, filling it tightly. As I ran frantically, my eyes were filled with panic, and my master’s outstretched hand looked like a rushing torrent of black tar. Concrete bricks with cement-coated walls collapsed on both sides, and fragments of slate roofs soared from the ruined buildings.

The small house where my childhood memories were embedded was destroyed like that.

“Come… out…!”

The thunderous anger of my master echoed. Although I knew it was a dream, I couldn’t stop running. In this dream, my consciousness was trapped inside my past self. Inside my skull, the sound of a heartbeat filled the space. Even as I ran desperately, I couldn’t feel the wind. The heavy air clung like damp mucous membranes. It felt like wandering through the belly of a monster.

The maze-like landscape, where similar intersections repeated, suddenly skipped several seasons. This place was my past mental world. It was an abstract space where various memories I had at that time were connected infinitely, randomly, and like patchwork.

The boundaries between different memories looked like curtains made of shattered mirror fragments that reflected different times. I could vaguely see beyond it, but my master, who wasn’t the owner of the memory, seemed unable to. That difference was the power that made this close escape possible.

When I turned around, my childhood home which I had barely escaped from was collapsing like an earthquake. It was crumbling behind the billowing dust clouds. The form of the furious Master was towering over it. It was a shadow much larger than reality. However, this place was originally an area where the distinction between substance and shadow was unclear.

I stumbled and screamed as I crossed the boundaries of new memories.

“There you are.”

My master spread darkness and turned it into wings. With several thunderous flaps, he crossed the clouds and descended like a predator overstepping boundaries. His lightning-fast claws tore through the entire surrounding landscape. Unconscious chaos seethed between the cracked rifts.

I fell into the sewers under the crumbling road. Gasping for breath, I swallowed sewage several times, got up on all fours, coughed, and started running again.

As I tumbled into the hole, the liquefied Master flowed in after me. He expanded and contracted until he took on the shape of a snake covered in black scales. Two yellow eyes rose like suns penetrating the pumpkin-like darkness. The snake became a horizontal waterfall and smashed through the iron bars, colliding with the wall. Gold appeared on the ceiling, and concrete dust rained down.

At that time, I was just an ignorant child, but I instinctively realized that getting caught would be the end.

That was a snake that devoured souls.

Fortunately, in my state of misery, I didn’t know that the randomness of the maze created in the mental world was actually influenced by my desperate mind.

There was only one thing in my mind. Survive, escaping from my master.

The sewage drain led to a side passage, which served as a drainage tunnel to remove rainwater. It was even more twisted and winding than reality, but somehow it didn’t feel unfamiliar to me. At the end of the tunnel, once again, the boundary’s shimmering curtain was in place. The shadow of the black snake flickered under the pale streetlight, and a gust of wind-like breath shook my hair. At the moment when the pursuer’s speed offset the complexity of the maze, I escaped the tunnel with a single fleeting step.

As soon as I crossed the boundary of memory, gravity reversed.

Once again, an uncontrollable scream from my present self. I fell from the sky above my feet to the sky overhead. Following me, the snake that had crossed the boundary turned its body in mid-air. Right after I saw that, rushing water struck my entire body. Abnormally strong currents swept me downstream. The open jaws of the snake head came through the surface with a roar, tearing into the space where I was.

In a futile protest, Master, infuriated, tried to transform himself to adapt to the new environment. He had no choice. In this world, most of the spells that affected physical reality didn’t work.

I swam frantically to the shore just before my master could complete his transformation. Then what I saw was the view of the orphanage compound where I had been picked up. At this time, surreal rain poured sporadically from the crimson-stained sky. My master was caught in the swollen current and descended towards an unfamiliar boundary. The curtain of shattered mirror pieces swallowed the rushing stream. The distorted snake shape faded into the distant memories.

The 14 buildings of the orphanage were arranged according to a certain pattern. Connecting the buildings created a heptagonal shape with seven lines. At the intersections and corners where the lines crossed, the accommodations were located. Compared to the number of buildings, the site was relatively small.

In the first building, there was one dead child.

In the second building, there were eight dead children.

In the third building, there were twelve dead children.

In the fourth building, there were nine dead children.

Thus, in the four small dormitories forming a heptagon, the total number of dead boys and girls was 30.

Furthermore, from the fourth building to the seventh building, along the way, the total number of corpses found was 30. From the seventh building, turning towards the tenth building, the total number of dead children was again 30. After that, the number of corpses found along a single line was always the same, 30.

This was, in essence, a magic square where the sum of each side was 30.

Unlike me back then, who was ignorant, I now understand the meaning of these numbers.

A heptagon with all sides totaling 30 was completed when a ritualist drew seven lines to add up to 31 at the center of a star. In numerology, 31 symbolizes the name of God, “El,” and also means navigation. In other words, it became a journey toward the divine.

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