HH Chapter 33

Lena’s face, as always, was impeccably beautiful. I couldn’t believe he and that ghost outside were the same kind of being.

I now realized how fortunate I was to have first encountered a humanoid ghost with all its facial features–eyes, nose, and mouth–in the right places.

Lena frowned as I stumbled down the stairs, tearfully recounting about what had happened in the hallway.

“What are you talking about? Explain it clearly. You met ‘my friend’?”

“The ghost, I mean, the ghost!”

As soon as I left the room, a white figure rushed at me, and I ran into the library to escape, and it couldn’t follow me inside.

Lena seemed to think for a moment after hearing my explanation, then said,

“This mansion… or rather, this villa, was built by the first owner when he proposed to his fiancée. The ownership has changed countless times in the past 500 years.”

He suddenly started talking about the previous owners of the house. And this was the first time I’d heard about it.

‘Haylan fled and hid in this house about a year ago in the game’s timeline….’

Wasn’t the story of the previous owners unrelated to Haylan or the game’s story?

I couldn’t understand why Lena suddenly brought up the past and tried to discern his intentions.

“Do you know what’s bad about a house having multiple owners?”

“What?”

“There are so many overlapping spells that it’s hard to even figure out what magic is cast where.”

“I guess so.”

It made sense. Every mage has a slightly different way of implementing the same spell, and it wouldn’t be easy to dispel a spell without knowing the exact casting point.

And I was starting to think that whoever designed the magic in this house either loved escape rooms or had a suicide hobby. Otherwise, there was no reason to create so many trapped rooms.

“So, which of the previous homeowners is the ghost in the hallway?”

Since Lena was also one of the previous owners, I assumed the monster I encountered in the hallway was also a previous owner.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

But Lena scoffed at me with his usual condescending look, and continued,

“If what you saw really was a ghost, there must have been a way to confine it. One of those methods must have been undone.”

“…Why was it undone?”

“It probably came under the influence of a higher-level magic.”

Only then did Haylan’s words from earlier flashed through my mind.

‘Defensive magic, especially barriers, cancels out lower-level magic within the area.’

…Wait. I was the one who activated the barrier magic.

‘Does that mean I’m the one who unleashed something dangerous that was quietly sealed in this house?’

Lena, seeing my pale face, drove the point home,

“Have you ever seen an open door in the hallway?”

The ghost’s active hours were from midnight until dawn. I could only leave when the sun rose.

Lena urged me to leave the library, but I stubbornly refused, not having developed a suicidal tendency yet.

I spent the entire night in the library and returned to my room only when dawn approached.

And the next morning…

“You’re saying the door across the hall opened?”

“Yes, I think it was affected by the magic I used yesterday.”

As soon as I saw Haylan in the morning, I confessed my mistake. Haylan listened to me with a strange expression and muttered softly,

“I thought you’d hide it.”

Is that so? Hiding it would only make things worse, so if something was wrong, it had to be corrected early on.

‘And even if I die, I’ll come back to life, but that’s not the case for the others in this house…’

Who knows? Someone else might have a reason to wander around the house at midnight besides me.

If someone else died because of that ghost, it would be the same as me killing them.

When we went to check with the others, the door was indeed open. Fortunately, it was the only open door.

No one knew how nervous I was as people rattled the doorknobs of the other locked doors.

The head butler, peering into the room from the outside, said,

“We’re lucky. It seems to be an ordinary room.”

No, that’s not it.

“It’s nothing. I’ll lock the door again.”

The head butler, completely unaware of what had happened, closed the door again and looked back at me.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

“No…”

I had to force myself to swallow the words I wanted to say.

I saw the gauge that had been increasing next to the head butler’s face stop, and a window popped up, saying the magic detection was successful. I quickly read the text.

[There seems to be a trace of dispelled magic….]

[Dispelled magic can only be detected for three days after it’s dispelled.]

The servants brushed it off as nothing, saying it was just because the house was old, and left, but I still couldn’t control my expression.

‘Was it some kind of sealing magic?’

Now that it was released, there was no way the already released  being would come back and be quietly trapped again just by locking the door. When night fell, that being would roam freely within this mansion, just like in the game.

‘I should have listened….’

Because of my foolish desire to win, I had single-handedly raised the night’s difficulty to hardcore!

“Guest, you look very tired. You don’t look well, are you getting enough sleep?”

[Time Limit: 16 hours 47 minutes…]

I couldn’t even remember how I answered the head butler’s concerned question.

This was bad. 

Less than a day remained of the quest period.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

“Wow, no wonder he was worried……”

I looked at my reflection in the hallway mirror. The area under my eyes was dark, and my eyes were bloodshot and blurry with exhaustion.

Get a grip.

I slapped my cheeks with both hands a couple of times, trying to shake off the sleepiness.

I hadn’t been sleeping much lately. During the day, I was busy socializing and dealing with Haylan, and after midnight, I had to go out and look for whatever the quest was pointing to.

I’d wondered how I could search this massive library in just a week, but it turned out to be possible if I didn’t sleep and spent all day searching.

Whenever I felt stuck or like things weren’t going well, I would look at the quest window again.

[Sub Quest: Book Search.
Shall we look for books in the library that might help cast defensive magic?]

‘What book is that?’

What did the system want me to find? I thought it was a defensive magic book and searched the entire library, but there was no sign of the quest being completed.

Even though it was a sub quest, I felt uneasy ignoring it completely. There was always a reason why the system asked me to do something.

Doing sub quests often led to meeting new people or learning something new, and following those leads always helped with the main quest.

“Aaack! Wh-wh-when did you get here?”

I almost had a heart attack when a face suddenly popped out from the other side as I pulled out a book.

Whenever I snuck into the library at midnight and searched the bookshelves, Lena would appear out of nowhere and join me. His face was impeccably beautiful today as well. He walked around the corner and came towards me, muttering,

“You’re startled again.”

Do I look like I wouldn’t be startled? Make some noise when you walk. It’s because you appear out of nowhere….

Perhaps because he was a ghost, he didn’t use doors and appeared and disappeared mysteriously.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Why can’t you sleep? You didn’t seem like you were sleeping during the day either.”

Can’t sleep? 

He asked about my sleeping habits with narrowed eyes.

Half-asleep, I rummaged through the bookcase and shook my head vaguely. 

Can’t sleep? I was confident I could lie down right here and sleep for twelve hours straight.

Whether I like it or not, the quest would end by today.

‘I have to try until the deadline.’

As the time limit approached, I forgot about Lena’s presence and focused all my attention on finding the book.

“Chahyun.”

“Yes?”

While I was climbing a ladder and rummaging through the bookshelf, I was startled by a voice calling my name and turned toward the sound.

Lena murmured casually,

“That’s your real name. I guess it’s not an alias.”

“…….”

Did he suddenly call my name to check my reaction? I looked down at Lena with a dumbfounded expression.

It was the first time he’d called me by my name directly. After that, he seemed to repeat my name a few times under his breath.

‘What’s with him?’

They say that if the Grim Reaper calls your name three times, you die. And it felt strange to have my name called repeatedly by a ghost. After muttering my name a few times, Lena concluded,

“That’s a strange name.”

“My late father gave it to me….”

“……The sound of it is good, though.”

He added, avoiding my eyes. I couldn’t help but chuckle at how he’d changed his tune as soon as I mentioned my father, even though he was the one who started it.

“What have you been reading all this time?”

Whenever I was distracted for a moment, Lena would either go somewhere to steal food or follow me around, reading a book. Sitting on the ladder, I checked the title of the book in his hand, and I wanted to take back the question I had just asked.

“Julian’s Voyeuristic Diary.”

“…….”

He said, holding up the book.