---

A light weight stemming from my small stature. My body floating away from the floor.

And an external force so strong it could smash a building to bits.

No matter how much I tried to soften the impact with telekinesis, there was nothing I could do about my body flying through the air like a ball.

Crash!

With a sensation that left me breathless, my consciousness momentarily blurred.

When I regained my senses, I found myself helplessly collapsed on the cold floor.

“Ugh, I really feel like I’m going to die…”

Even though I was leaning against the floor, it felt like the world was spinning around me.

I couldn’t tell which way was up or down.

Trying to rise from the extremely unpleasant sensation of nausea, I realized that my body was simply too painful to move at all.

Did I collide with something hard on my way down?

It seemed that in order to move, I had to wait for at least some of this pain to subside.

As I lay there, completely battered and gasping for breath, I struggled to keep my eyes open.

From not too far away, Drakel’s voice reached my ears.

“Kh, heh… That was quite terrifying just now, wasn’t it? I didn’t expect you to come at me first. I was completely off my guard. You really caught me by surprise.”

Step, step.

The sound of footsteps echoed quietly in the building. I struggled to turn my head in the direction of the noise.

There, in stark contrast to my battered state, stood a thoroughly fine-looking Drakel.

He gazed down at me on the floor with great amusement and said, “Were you going for my heart? Heh, what a pity. I don’t know what your plan was, but it seems like it didn’t go as you intended!”

Drakel approached, towering over me, and kicked me with his boot.

I barely managed to reduce the impact with the last remnants of my telekinesis, but having my chest kicked sent me rolling backward.

It hurt! Can’t you just take it easy?

Feeling utterly disgruntled, I looked up at Drakel’s face from my fallen position.

He had paused in his movements, seemingly astonished, and was stroking his chin.

“Oh? This is… unexpected. I didn’t think a ghost could have such a beautiful face. I might have regretted tearing you apart with magic.”

“…!”

W-What?!

I jumped at Drakel’s words and quickly raised my hands to my face.

What I felt was soft and squishy skin.

The mask that should have been there had completely vanished.

Could it be that it came off when I rolled on the floor earlier?

In a panic from the unexpected situation, I adjusted the rag draped across my body to cover my face.

His eyes, filled with greed and desire, seemed more perverted than that blonde pervert I met last time.

“Ha ha! I’ve changed my mind, ghost! Consider it an honor. I shall share my noble blood with you to make you like me! And you will serve me forever!”

No, that’s definitely perverted!

I looked at Drakel, who was suddenly making such an unpleasant proposal, with sheer disgust.

If I could talk, I would have given him an earful, telling him not to say such dog-like nonsense.

For the first time, I resented my mute trait, which hadn’t been a significant inconvenience until now.

But Drakel, despite my fierce glare, seemed to think the game was already over.

With claws extended, he slowly approached me on the floor.

Was he planning to inject special blood with those claws to turn me into a vampire?

That would mean I’d have to live with a relentless thirst for blood and become Drakel’s slave for eternity.

That was definitely something I wanted to refuse at all costs.

“Well… it’s true the game is over.”

I slowly relaxed my shoulders, which had been tense.

Could it be that seeing my cute and lovely face stopped him from attacking?

For me, who desperately needed to buy some time, that was exceedingly fortunate.

“Heheh… Urgh! Cough, cough…!”

Drakel, who was approaching with a foul expression, abruptly stopped moving.

And he started to cough violently.

This wasn’t just a simple cough; it seemed like he was trying to retch out something tormenting him from inside.

It appeared he couldn’t stop coughing painfully, bending over as he began to vomit something out.

What came out was nothing less than black, congealed blood.

“Guh! Cough…! W-What in the world…!”

Drakel’s appearance changed.

The face that had looked so vibrant a moment ago began to wrinkle slowly.

His deep crimson hair faded to an eerie white, as if the concept of youth within him was being sucked away.

It was a shocking sight, as if vitality itself was draining from his body.

Drakel looked at me with eyes that seemed to ask what I had done to him.

In my hand, I proudly revealed the object I had tightly clutched.

“Y-You! That’s…!”

What dangled from my finger was none other than a necklace.

At the end of the necklace hung a unique ornament shaped like a cube within a cube.

Interestingly, it changed shape depending on the angle it was viewed from.

The necklace was called a Tesseract.

In this world, it followed the laws of a completely different reality, one that couldn’t physically exist.

“Did they describe it as a four-dimensional object existing in three-dimensional space? Seeing it like this… it feels like my brain is being tormented! I’m losing my mind!”

Just looking at it felt like it should not exist at all, causing me to feel like my brain was malfunctioning.

It was as if I had lightly grasped the maddening nature of knowledge one shouldn’t know.

Of course, this necklace was not just a mysterious object with a peculiar appearance.

Its more precise purpose was… to draw out potential possibilities from different timelines.

For example, it could infinitely produce fake zombies made from substances unrecognizable to anything from Earth.

Or perhaps it could restore a vampire, whose body and mind had aged beyond repair, back to its prime state?

“Give it to me! Hand it over right now, you filthy little brat!”

Drakel’s body was rapidly deteriorating.

His fingers and toes swelled for a moment before crumbling away.

That once strong build began to wither, exposing bones beneath the flesh.

If he were his normal self, or at least hadn’t overused his magic…

He might have had some semblance of composure even after losing the necklace.

Using the Tesseract to maintain the peak of his strength and using that peak state’s power freely—

There was no need to calculate which was of greater cost.

In the end, the act of genuinely using magic to defeat me was what led him to an irreversible ruin.

“To win against Drakel, the second condition: seize the Tesseract with a single opportunity. That’s because a weakness hurts the most when the opponent is unaware and relaxed.”

I flashed a sly grin as I looked at the clearly unwell Drakel.

Probably, aside from Drakel himself and the shadowy figure who had given him this object, no one else would know of the Tesseract’s existence.

When he arrived in Nighthaven, he already possessed the Tesseract, and Drakel was a meticulous man who concealed himself so thoroughly that no one could detect him from the underworld.

He wouldn’t have bragged about something so vital, as it was akin to a life source.

The only misfortune he had was that I was a reincarnator who remembered the original story in detail.

You didn’t know that, did you?

“Speaking of which… I never thought I’d get to apply my pickpocketing skills honed through theft here.”

It seems there’s no such thing as a pointless skill in this world.

Whether becoming adept at thievery is a good thing, well, I’m not quite sure.

As I slowly rose from my starting pain, I moved mechanically toward the mask lying in the distance.

It would have been much easier to use telekinesis to fetch it as usual.

But I had drained my telekinesis to the bone, leaving me with a mere two uses at most.

At first, it looked like an easy task, but it turned out to be a close call.

I guess it’s difficult for a normal person like me to accomplish anything, even if they know the answer.

I should never let such a thing happen again.

As I pondered that and pulled the mask over my face,

“Wait! Ghost! Just hold on until I get this thing dealt with!”

“…”

Did she catch on to my intent to leave?

Alice, with her foot planted firmly on Drakel, desperately called out to me.

It seemed she didn’t want to miss this opportunity, having been searching for me for quite some time.

While she wanted to follow me, she couldn’t leave Drakel behind.

The only thing she could do was plead not to go.

But… why should I wait for her?

“Ah! Don’t go! Ghost! Please!”

“…”

“Nooo!”

I reached my hand out the window to wave goodbye, and without a moment’s hesitation, I turned my back and leapt out.

The ghost takes its leave now. Alice, be happy!

It was a farewell with not a shred of lingering regret.