I felt my feet slightly sink.
As my consciousness became clearer, I opened my eyes carefully.
It was the scene of a desert at night.
This spectacle, with little change, continued endlessly.
I could somehow feel the lack of reality.
Apparently, I had safely entered the spiritual world.
Looking at the flow of my magic power, I couldn’t detect any problems.
The forbidden spell seemed to have performed as intended.
“Hm?”
As I continued to observe my surroundings, I noticed that there was something buried in the sand nearby.I walked toward it and pulled it up.
What emerged from there was a broken wand.
There was a red jewel on its tip.
Small scratches were conspicuous on it when viewed as a whole, and traces could be seen indicating that it had been used often.
“This is…”
I was quite surprised.
This wand was something I had used during my time as a human.
It was during the time before I was known as a sage, when I was first learning about magic.
I had used it for several years, but it had broken during my training and I had quickly gone to replace it with a new one.
Such a wand was buried here.
Why?
I crossed my arms as I thought about the reason.
Considering that this place was my spiritual world, this wand must be a product of my memory.
The memories of the past could take form in this place.
As I began to search for more objects buried in the sand, I found things I was familiar with.
All of those items were articles that had left impressions on me.
Do memories here exist as fragments like this?
I was convinced about one rule of this place.
It seemed that the spiritual world was closely related to memory.
Although I couldn’t understand the detailed mechanisms without an analysis, it seemed this world worked that way.
Even so, why had it taken the form of a desert?
Perhaps it was something that reflected my mind, but since I couldn’t compare it with anyone else's, it wasn’t clear either way.
As a result, the mystery of the spiritual world only deepened.
The deeper I considered it to be, the more its strange nature was revealed.
However, I didn't care about the details right now.
A far more significant change had happened to my body.
Although I had already noticed it when I first arrived, it was something I didn’t dare to touch.
I timidly looked at my arms.
The scene that unfolded before my eyes wasn’t filled with black bones, but rather arms with skin.
I gently touched them with my fingers.
I felt the sensation of flesh touching each other and of blood that was firmly circulating.
“…”
My mouth was breathing unconsciously.
As I closed my mouth, I could feel the sensation of my lips touching each other.
As I stopped breathing, it gradually became painful.
Then I put my hand on my chest.
I could feel a slightly faster heartbeat.
When I put my hand on my head, I could feel hair slipping between my fingers.
I also confirmed the presence of ears and eyes at the same time.
Only the robe I was wearing remained the same.
I found a hand mirror buried in the sand.
If memory was serving me right, it was a luxury item I had gotten when I had saved a certain city.
I grabbed the hand mirror and checked my appearance.
The appearance that was reflected in the mirror was the face of the sage who had once defeated the Demon Lord.
That face had a stunned expression.
The black bone undead was nowhere in sight.
I returned to being a human after all.
I touched my face.
The texture I felt was real, not an illusion.
Apparently, due to some sort of law that was applied in this world, I was still considered a human.
However, the magic power and miasma I could feel were the same as my Demon Lord self.
It seemed the change was limited to appearance only.
I never thought I would get to see this appearance once again…
I was well aware that this was a phenomenon that was limited to just inside the spiritual world.
I didn’t like that I was happy about it, but I didn't hate it either.
I was at a loss at how to put my feelings into words.
Although I was surprised, I couldn’t keep worrying about it.
I hadn’t come here to see my own human appearance.
It was to eliminate the cause of my disorder.
According to the Great Spirit, the cause should exist inside my spiritual world.
Although I didn’t know what kind of form it would take, it still had a great effect on me.
I was sure it wasn’t something that could be confused with the environment.
It should be something I would recognize at a glance.
This was a place where my memories were scattered about.
I could just trust my senses and expose something that supposedly didn’t exist in my memory.
I felt it wasn’t something difficult to do.
I began to explore my spiritual world.
I looked around the desert which was hard to walk through.
I would sometimes find nostalgic items that would make me look back to my past.
There were also blueprints for guns and tanks among them.
It seemed recent memories were also buried here.
I kept walking as I experienced trivial discoveries.
The desert continued endlessly.
I couldn’t see where it ended.
Perhaps it indeed continued to spread forever.
Or maybe it was just connected from one end to another.
A crescent moon was sitting above me.
However, its location didn’t change at all.
It seemed it was always night in this space, as morning didn’t seem to break.
As the moonlight shone, I indifferently moved my feet.
I checked the memories that were buried in the sand then walked past them as I left them behind.
Although it was indeed boring, I always stayed alert.
Being forced to move one's feet in solitude was quite taxing to one’s mind.
I continued to walk even as I was feeling depressed.
After a few days-worth of such an experience, I saw a human figure in front of me.
It was my first time seeing other people in this world.
I could only see that figure’s back from where I stood.
That human figure uttered without looking at me.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to come all the way here. It sure surprises me.”
It was a mocking tone.
It was an unknown voice that didn’t match that of anyone I knew.
I immediately put my guard up.
I asked the figure while wielding the wand in my hand.
“Who are you?”
The figure didn’t respond but turned around toward me.
It was a silver-haired woman wearing a fashionable black robe with a smile on her face.