Chapter 34
“Yes! I’ll do that. April knows how to be considerate of her friends.”
I obediently stepped away from Sian.
The perfume bottle in Sian’s hand was handed over by Yeniel.
“Here you go, Lady April. You needed this, didn’t you?”
“Right, I was going to put the perfume into the bottle!”
I answered as if I had just remembered.
Yeniel calmly opened the perfume bottle and removed the nozzle.
“I’ll separate the nozzle for you. I don’t know how to reassemble it. Once everything is in, please ask Sir Max to put it back together.”
“Okay.”
Drip, drip. Drops of colorful fragrance fell into the crystal bottle. White, clear, yellow, orange, black, and more.
“Sir Max, it’s all in. Please assemble it.”
“Such a waste….”
“A waste? Hmm. Are you talking about April’s perfume drops?”
“Exactly! You don’t even know the value of this perfume. What are you going to do with it?”
“It’s pretty. And besides, it’s April’s!”
I decided to revise my assessment of Max.
Actually, maybe Max wasn’t cowardly, but rather bold? To say such things to me when I was holding a bloodstained halberd—his guts were definitely swollen.
“April believes that anyone who steals a lady’s belongings is no gentleman. Father taught me that such people must be punished very thoroughly.”
Sensing foreboding, the crown prince immediately interjected:
“By chance, may I ask—how exactly are they punished?”
He was quicker on the uptake than Max.
“By dueling,” I said brightly.
“With weapons, until one wins or collapses from being beaten. Father said to thrash them properly.”
“Max… farewell, my friend.”
“Your Highness!”
It turned into quite the comedy routine.
‘But where do I even keep this perfume bottle? There’s no inventory function.’
The fragile crystal material worried me. Back on the second floor, I carried the mirror shard around without issue, but this seemed riskier.
[Inventory Activated… (100/100%)]
‘Huh?’
I had an inventory?
‘Status window.’
Tip: In Hard Mode, the status window display is restricted!
So inventory worked but not the status window? What kind of game protagonist can’t even see their own stats?
A new prompt appeared:
Would you like to store the Perfume Drops (Hidden Item)?
▶ [YES]
[NO]
The crystal bottle vanished with a faint glow.
Inventory
▶ Perfume Drops
(empty slot)
(empty slot)
The heroine’s party didn’t see the bottle disappear. At that moment, several headless servants had approached the flowerbeds where the man-eating flowers had vanished.
While the creatures swept away the remaining soil and dust, we quickly stepped across the flowerbed.
“Let’s hurry,” Yeniel whispered.
“Fortunately, it seems they aren’t searching the dirt. They don’t know about the perfume drops. I thought perhaps those servants grew the flowers to make perfume.”
We picked up the pace.
I dragged my halberd along the floor and flinched.
‘The axe is so heavy, it’s leaving marks.’
The headless servants we passed stopped. They bent down as if to repair the gouges in the floor, and guilt pricked my conscience just a little.
After the flowerbed, we began to encounter more people.
All of them were ragged and sharp-eyed, just like the first group of peasant survivors we had met.
“Don’t you think there are more and more people? I don’t know if they’re all from the fifth-floor banquet hall.”
Max looked smug when the others paid attention to his words. But really, it was only because Sian had fallen quiet.
“Yes, nobles and commoners alike. There were many,” the crown prince nodded.
“There must have been casualties,” Yeniel said softly. “I remember exactly how the banquet hall groups were formed. When we encountered them again, many members had vanished.”
Her words darkened the mood.
Here, people didn’t always die because of monsters. Everyone knew that now.
Just as the survivors had offered one of their own to the flowers. Just as this very party had abandoned me.
In this shadow world, people could die because of other people.
“We’re getting closer to the center now. Considering the document we saw earlier applied to the entire third floor, it’s likely the banquet hall is in the central or eastern section,” Yeniel informed the group.
Normally, Sian would add explanations about the magical reasons why the mansion had such a shape, but now he remained silent. The absence felt oddly like dead air.
<Duke Aquilium’s Visit Schedule>
Gifts … Perfume
Dinner Banquet … Kitchen
Mansion Cleaning … All Servants
The crown prince asked Yeniel:
“So the third floor doesn’t have dungeon-like areas?”
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but unlike Sir Sian, I know little of magic.”
“…There will be such places,” Sian finally spoke. He had steadied his emotions, wearing a forced calm expression.
“Because this is the shadow world, the mansion’s structure may be distorted. But even in the original grand mage’s mansion, that was the case.”
“The original structure?”
“There were spaces connected to others. For example, a room on the third floor might be linked to one on the fifth. Even a millennium ago, it made little sense.”
Ah—he was talking about shortcuts. That really was a strange system.
In most games, there’s something called a shortcut—a hidden pathway unlocked after progressing once. For example, the path from the first to the second floor might be arduous the first time, but afterward, a hidden staircase would be revealed, making travel easier.
That’s how it usually went.
But in The Grand Mage’s Mansion, the shortcuts were baffling.
“Why in the world was the fifth floor connected to the third? Or the fourth floor connected to the capital’s water system?”
“Players from both the romance side and gamer side hated it! Said it lacked logic. But it’s foreshadowing—the devs are good at this stuff. Even if no one could figure it out back then, Hard Mode will reveal the truth.”
“Will they really?”
“They’d better….”
My brother had memorized all the shortcuts.
My sub-30-minute second playthrough clear time came from combining my physical skills with my brother’s memory.
Anyway, I couldn’t recall all of them now.
As we continued, a thick fog filled the hallway ahead.
“One can’t see an inch ahead here. Why is there fog inside the mansion?” the crown prince asked in disbelief.
Sian looked startled by the mist.
“This fog is magical. Not innate—cruder. So it must be from an acquired mage.”
“Can’t you dispel it?”
“We must first determine its purpose. Fog is usually used to mark danger or block the way. Forcefully dispelling it may harm the other side.”
At that moment, a smooth, charming voice called from the other side:
“Who goes there?”
