Oh. So there really wasn’t a trap. It was just that this bunch’s perception was so bad that, even with him walking this close, they still hadn’t noticed him.

Vinny suddenly got the feeling he’d pictured the enemy on the second floor, when in reality they were on negative three.

These bandits—wrapped in fur, their faces painted with strange red patterns—glared at Vinny with feral expressions. Their eyes were webbed with bloodshot veins, like they were already planning how to chop him into spare ribs.

“What’s with you?” Vinny frowned. “You’re acting like I killed your driftwood.”

“More livestock, the better.” The tall bandit at the front bared his teeth, swung the axe in his hand, and let out a roar as he charged straight at Vinny.

“Livestock??” Hearing that, Vinny’s brow knit tighter and tighter.

So these weren’t ordinary bandits anymore.

Three bandits rushed him at once. They swung their weapons like madmen, their eyes brimming with poison and savagery. Cruel, icy smiles hung at their mouths—killing clearly wasn’t new to them. They didn’t fear murdering their own kind; they were exhilarated by the thought of personally butchering the weak, so excited their bodies trembled.

From every angle, their minds looked... wrong.

They howled as they came, swift as a pack of gray wolves. Bloodlust flashed in their eyes, like monsters wearing human skin—long since stripped of every shred of humanity. The sheer menace alone was enough to make someone’s legs go soft.

Vinny stood there without a single movement or expression. And the bandits only assumed he was like all the lambs—frightened stiff, too scared to run, nothing left but to wait on the chopping block.

The tall bandit reached Vinny and raised his axe with practiced ease, chopping down at the artery in Vinny’s neck.

His favorite thing was splitting blood vessels open—he loved that wet, gory sensation.

“Lost lamb—go home!” The bald bandit was so excited his tongue even lolled out, his eyes bulging like they were about to pop from their sockets.

“SHHK! SHHK! SHHK!”

Just like he expected—blood, everywhere.

The bald bandit’s eyes burned red.

One cut wasn’t enough. Two. Three. Slice after slice until he was shaved into meat paste—

But the bald bandit realized he couldn’t swing a second time.

He felt his connection to the hand holding the axe... vanish.

His eyes went wide. Only when his body toppled backward, limp, did he finally see it—his hand was no longer on his arm. His throat was clogged with his own blood. And the searing agony pouring out of his shattered chest left him no room to even decide what pain to deal with first.

Only as he fell, choking and gasping in misery, did he realize the companions who had charged with him were dropping too—cut down together by a single sweeping spear strike from that blue-haired kid.

The other man had only flicked the spear once. Their bodies were severed cleanly along that line of steel, split in half, and even the mist of blood that burst outward didn’t manage to splash onto him.

Vinny didn’t even look at the bandits who had been cut down into the blood-soaked ground with one spear sweep. He walked, unhurried, toward the remaining few.

Back when these bandits hadn’t even noticed him approaching, he’d already seen the signs—this bunch was shockingly pathetic. But after that strike, Vinny realized he’d still overestimated them.

They were like street brawlers—shouting to inflate their “presence,” which did absolutely nothing and only exposed their intent. Attacks with not a single redeeming trait besides being ruthless. Charges and movements so slow they might as well have been crawling.

Vinny felt like he could’ve stood there, sipped a cup of tea, and then leisurely stabbed once to kill them.

This level of skill—and yet they could lord it over this place, cutting down so many travelers?

Before coming, Vinny had expected these bandits to be unbelievably weak.

He just hadn’t expected this.

If I’d fought any of my previous battles here, the aftershock alone would’ve killed them.

“So weak... and yet so vicious.” Vinny flicked a few clean spear flourishes, stared at the remaining bandits, and said each word slowly. “Did you ever think that one day, you’d be butchered by someone else?”

“AAAHHH!” After watching their companions die, the rest didn’t show fear—if anything, they went crazier, charging Vinny like a pack of lunatics.

At least they had a little brain left. They knew bunching up would just get them instantly killed together, so they split apart and attacked from different angles.

It helped.

And it didn’t.

Vinny thrust once and impaled a bandit through the torso. He turned and kicked the one trying_toggle in from the side-rear, sending him flying. A sweeping strike dropped two more in front. And in the middle of all that, he casually caught an arrow shot at him.

After finishing off the bandits on the ground, Vinny threw Frostfang, pinning the archer—who had decided to run the moment he saw everyone dead—through the body.

The fight was over in under a minute. Vinny hadn’t even used magic to wipe out this entire squad.

He pulled the spear out of a bandit’s back, scanned the surroundings a few times, and only after confirming there were no stragglers did he start checking the overturned carriage.

Where the bandits had been messing around earlier, Vinny found a cloth sack reeking of blood. Dark red had soaked through it until the original white was completely dyed into a blackish crimson.

He already knew what was inside. Disgust flickered through his gaze as he split the sack open with one cut.

Sure enough—bloody organs.

And not animal organs.

Human.

Vinny glanced at the other sacks inside the carriage. Besides food, they held things like leather goods. It looked like a merchant caravan that had hired a few guards, trying to gamble on this dangerous shortcut to save costs—only to run into a day of heavy fog and get ambushed by bandits.

No survivors.

There wasn’t much else he could do.

So he buried the dead right where they were.

When he finished, Vinny looked at the sky. It had gotten a little dark.

Good.

Now was the perfect time to head to Gaflei Fort—before those rats that never let anyone rest slipped away again.

The only problem was the fog. It was so thick Vinny was starting to lose the road.

With no better choice, he could only keep moving like a headless fly, retracing from the spot where the carriage had overturned and following the path.

His luck was rotten. This kind of weather—fog everywhere, visibility so low you couldn’t even see the road clearly.

Vinny could only chew on his dry rations as he pressed on.

“Hm??”

As he passed that stretch of road again, he didn’t know if it was his imagination, but it felt like he’d tripped over a threshold stepping across a doorway—like he’d walked out of a warm room with a lit fireplace and into a blizzard outside.

The sensation was bizarre.

Like the frequency of the world around him had abruptly skipped.

Vinny’s expression turned strange as he looked around, but the fog was dense and there were no landmarks. He could only look down—still the same stone road. Nothing looked different.

Even the air temperature seemed a little colder than before, but Vinny was ice-aspected [Excellent]. He didn’t feel cold.

Was that reaction just a hallucination?

No.

Absolutely not.

After only a moment of hesitation, Vinny firmed up his judgment.

On this entire trip, his experience with sudden incidents was nothing like the old, reckless Vinny’s. He’d learned that sometimes you trust reason—and sometimes you have to trust instinct.

Even if the road under his feet looked the same, his intuition told him something had happened in that instant.

He kept going.

Faintly, he saw what looked like a human silhouette at the roadside. His guard snapped up. But when he got closer, he saw it was a hunched, rag-clothed old man—sallow and skinny, looking weak to the point of collapse. He sat on the roadside with a cane, coughing nonstop in the wind.

Something was wrong.

Why would there be a lone old man in a place like this??

With bandits rampant here, everyone should know about it. Aside from traveling merchants taking this shortcut to cut costs, how could anyone else be walking this road??

Vinny kept a wary eye on the old man with the cane.

By experience, in the worst case...

The old man might not be human.

Vinny wasn’t insulting him.

It was the literal truth, without exaggeration.

Only—

Vinny felt like the old man’s tattered clothes were... familiar.

“Sir, who are you?” Vinny approached, but didn’t get close—he stopped five steps away.

“...Cough, cough. Oh?” The old man seemed to only notice a young man beside him when Vinny spoke.

“Young man... do you have food? This old one... I don’t know how long I’ve been hungry. My eyes are going blurry.”

His voice was obviously weak, as if he could barely breathe. Like he’d been starving into half-consciousness, and that was why he hadn’t even noticed Vinny approaching.

“You’re not afraid I’m armed?” Vinny asked.

“Wea...pons? Young man, you don’t need to bear malice toward a dying old man with one foot in the grave.” The old man sighed.

“I can give you food and water, but please understand. You appearing here, at this time, in this place—it's too inexplicable.” As he spoke, Vinny set some bread and water down in front of the old man, then stepped back.

The old man really did seem starving. After thanking Vinny, he ate the bread, and it looked like he recovered a little strength.

“Young man, you really are a good person. If this world had more people like you... would I have ended up like this?” The old man laughed softly after finishing.

“...Sir, what are you talking about?” Vinny frowned, then raised a finger. “Do you recognize how many fingers this is?”

But the old man didn’t answer. Instead, he propped himself up with his cane and stood, still hunched.

“With fog this thick, can you still find the road?”

“So you do know the way? Are you a local?” Vinny asked.

“Me? A local?” The old man threw his head back and laughed. “Sure. I suppose I’m local.”

“Probably... a few hundred years’ worth, at least.”

“A few hundred years??” Vinny stared at him. From his look, the man’s clothes were so torn you couldn’t even tell what they used to be. And the cane was just some broken stick he’d picked up from who-knew-where.

“Sir, are you joking?”

“Young man, with fog this thick, don’t rush to travel.” The old man chuckled. “Look—now, even if you want to leave, you can’t go back to the original place.”

“You...” Vinny looked at him and tightened his grip on Frostfang. “Who are you?”

“Don’t be nervous, young man. I have no malice.” The old man seemed to sense Vinny’s caution and didn’t walk any closer—he stopped. “But... it has been a long time since anyone came to visit me.”

“Why did you come here, young man?”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Vinny said, guarded.

“I’m guessing your destination is Gaflei Fort,” the old man said.

“That has nothing to do with you.”

“If you say that, then it is.” The old man turned away. “I never thought that after so many years... even with all history buried, there would still be so many people throwing themselves forward to search for the truth.”

“The truth? What are you talking about?” Vinny asked.

“Young man, don’t rush. You can’t walk out of here now. If you don’t believe me... try.”

Vinny went silent, staring at the fog. He remembered that earlier sensation—like he’d stepped into a space completely different from what came before.

“Where is this place, exactly??”

“If I meant to harm you, young man, you wouldn’t be standing here.” The old man spoke slowly—and as he did, he glanced at Vinny’s uniform and academy crest.

“By that measure... you’re my underclassman.”

“?? Underclassman??” Vinny froze. “What... do you mean?”

The old man was quiet for a moment before he spoke again.

“Carillian Academy... what is it like now?”

Only then did Vinny finally understand what felt familiar about the old man’s clothing.

Even though it was shattered beyond recognition, the cut and structure looked like the old-style Carillian Academy uniform Vinny had seen in the museum.

After that realization, Vinny fell silent.

If the old man wasn’t talking nonsense—combined with what he’d said about being here for hundreds of years—

That was an enormous amount of information.

“Who are you?” Vinny asked again.

“Who am I?” The old man shook his head. “Young man, you’ve asked me a very puzzling question.”

“Puzzling?” How was who are you a puzzling question?

“My memory is shattered. I only remember a few major events in my life.” The old man spoke softly. “As for who I am... even I can’t answer that.”

“But, underclassman—if your destination is Gaflei Fort, I advise you to turn back.”

Vinny didn’t speak, waiting for the old man to continue.

“Back then... I remember back then.” The old man’s voice turned hazy, like something was screening out part of his tone. “I came here just like you—knowing nothing. And in the end, I became like this. Not human, not ghost. Not living... not dying.”

“Of course, maybe the headmaster and upper ranks of Carillian Academy didn’t know what this place really was, either.” The old man continued. “After all, they only obeyed orders.”

“Obeyed orders?” Vinny caught the keyword.

There was nothing that could make Carillian Academy’s upper ranks—let alone the headmaster—obey orders. Carillian Academy stood above the rest. It made its own decisions.

But then Vinny thought of it.

Something that could command Carillian Academy didn’t exist now.

But it had existed before.

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