Thief of Time

It is I indeed, Count Vacuos, ruler of my namesake territory.”

Claud felt his eyebrow twitch once. For some reason, this fellow was speaking in a rather grandiose manner, not quite unlike Farah when he first met her. He looked at the count, who was wearing an opulent set of armour, and then at his proud eyes, who were looking down on the two of them. Golden hair, which had been combed upwards in a manner reminiscent of a chicken’s comb, glinted coldly.

“Count Vacuos.” Lily took a step forward. “We are here to enter.”

“You, little girl?”

Lily’s eyes flickered, and she glanced at Claud, who nodded back. In that instant, the mana inside her pulsed once, and everyone on the scene staggered back. The non-folders fell onto their back and shivered, and Count Vacuos retreated a few steps back.

“Any objections?” Lily asked, withdrawing her mana.

“None, Your Excellency…”

“We’re just wandering knights,” Lily replied. “Stand up.”

Claud wanted to cheer, but this was Lily’s performance, so he had to hold in his jubilation for a while. Forcing a relaxed expression on his face, he glanced at the count, who now looked like a chicken caught in the rain as he stood back up.

It was a satisfying expression, so he didn’t add anything extra to Lily’s performance.

“I’m glad you’re so cooperative. Much better than a few dukes out there,” Lily muttered.

Claud, who was dead certain that the two of them had never interacted with a single duke in person before, had to hide another smile. Unfortunately, Count Vacuos had heard her quiet words and took it at face value, so the chicken that had been drenched in the rain started to shiver from the proverbial cold. It was quite amusing, if he had to be honest, but time wasn’t really on their side.

“Alright, stop shivering,” Lily snapped. “Have you done any investigations into this thing yet?”

“N-no, Your Excellency.”

“None at all?” Lily asked.

“None at all,” Count Vacuos replied, his words shifting to that of a confident simper. Whether or not these two words should be placed together was none of Claud’s concern, but he really didn’t know how to describe Vacuos’ obsequious words otherwise.

“…Very well. Send word to the Emperor and his peers that two hexa-folders are going to explore the region inside. We’re here on a rescue mission; we’ll see if we can toss people out of this place,” Lily replied. “They might be in a bad condition, so be ready to save them immediately.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

“Good. Now go.” Lily sent him off with a dismissive wave of her hand, before glancing at Claud once. The two of them proceeded towards the purple sphere immediately, and the soldiers at the side skittered away at their approach.

The two of them stopped an arm’s length away, and Lily let out a sigh. “Well, this might be quite dangerous.”

“Very dangerous, I think.” Claud lowered the backpack that was strapped to him, and then plucked out a bunch of items. The first thing he took out was a weird, crossbow-like weapon. An arrow was loaded on it, but the arrow had a fine metal wire at the very end.

“Alright, first test,” Claud aimed the crossbow at an upwards angle. His hands were shaking, however, and it took him three seconds to steady his trembling arms. Letting out a small breath, he pulled the trigger.

With a whizz, the arrow plunged into the purple dome and vanished from sight. The spool attached to the crossbow bolt spun at the same time, feeding more metal thread into the purple sphere without any issue whatsoever.

“Hmm. It doesn’t sever anything?” Claud muttered. “Then what’s stopping me from sending someone to look inside and then pulling them out?”

The spool ran out of thread a moment later, creating a weird metallic clink. Immediately afterwards, the thread that had been connected to the bolt inside drooped, severed by some weird force.

“Movement, I think,” Claud muttered. “We can pass through this as long as we are in constant movement. But I don’t think we can do that to return…which puts us at a massive information disadvantage. We can’t gather information about the inside world until a brave person enters.”

“Would communication artefacts work?” Lily wondered.

“That’s a good question.” Claud turned to the closest soldier. “Get us communication artefacts. We’re going in.”

“Now, Your Excellencies?”

Lily nodded. “No time to lose. Hurry! Just take. Count Vacuos isn’t going to scold you anyway, so hurry up and run along?”

Claud clicked his teeth. “I also took Lesser Half’s card with us, just in case. Should we tell him that we’re going to explore this purple place? Maybe he can bail us out if something really happens.”

“We’re really going all out, huh.”

“Yeah. Gotta save that little kid and everyone else,” Claud replied, before pulling out the card. Scribbling a hasty message and stating that he would attempt to use this as another method of communication, Claud tucked the card back into one of his many pockets.

“What other tools did you bring?” Lily asked.

“Poison checkers, temperature checkers, mana checkers, and dummies that would draw the eye of anyone who sees them,” Claud replied. “Hmm. I wonder if I can do this…”

He picked up the poison checker, which was just a long rod that would change colour if it came across poison. The brighter the colour, the more deadly the poison was. How it worked was anyone’s guess, but poison was generally rare. Back then, he usually used it to check really old vaults, just in case someone died in there or the various treasures stored inside started to fall apart.

Claud had never expected to use this stick outside of a heist.

“What are you doing?” Lily asked, curious.

“Just an experiment.” Claud took the stick and swung out once. The tip vanished into the purple dome, but Claud didn’t meet much resistance until his swing had cleared most of the barrier.

His mana surged once, and the purple dome shuddered as he tore the stick out. Metal shrieked once as his strength threatened to break the whole thing in two, and Claud was forced to stop before something went flying.

“Looks like we can’t cheat this thing,” Lily muttered.

A soldier came running back at that moment. “Your Excellencies, I have retrieved some communication artefacts.”

“Good.” Lily looked at the small crystal boxes that were sitting in a larger box, and then picked out two of them. Handing on to Claud, she turned back to the soldier and said, “We’ll be going in with these two. Help us set them up so that we can communicate with each other, as well as the other artefacts outside.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The soldier soon returned the two artefacts to Claud and Lily, and then retreated back by a few footsteps.

“Alright.” Claud took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing, really.”

The two of them held hands, and then walked into the purple sphere. Stopping in the middle was a bad idea, for very obvious reasons, so Claud took a few more steps until he and Lily cleared the boundary completely.

Signalling for Lily to hold her breath, Claud breathed in cautiously, ready to activate Will of Purity at any moment. It was a useful skill, capable of removing all foreign and negative effects, while invalidating their application for thirty hours.

He breathed in a few more times, and then tore up a Cleanse skillstrip. A faint light shrouded his body, but he couldn’t sense the departure of any foreign power or impurity.

“Should be safe.”

“Okay.”

The two of them surveyed their surroundings. The interior of the purple sphere was actually that of a building, for some reason. The two of them were currently in a large hall that had hundreds and thousands of beds spread out uniformly, and people were lying in them.

People and shadow babies, in fact.

“What is this place?” Lily asked. “I thought it would be all dark and gloomy and purple, but…”

“Yeah, me too.” Claud walked up to one of the beds. The person lying in them had red dots all over her face and on her skin in general, while her breathing was faint and weak.

“I’ll try to establish communications with the soldiers outside,” said Lily.

Claud nodded. “I’ll try to figure out what’s going on here. The people here all look sick…even the little shadow babies have red dots on their faces. It’s some kind of pox, the kinds that are very common in the slums, and most of them don’t look like they’ll make it past next week.”

Lily tapped on the crystal box, presumably relaying his words outside.

“Maybe we’re supposed to cure these people or something,” Claud muttered. Before he could do anything else, however, the sounds of a door opening entered his ears, and the two of them turned around to see a familiar-looking young woman in white. From the medicines she was bearing, she was clearly a doctor, but…

A doctor, here?

“Who are you two?” the young woman asked. “How did you get in here?”

“That’s our line!”