Chapter 21: Click, Click, Click

As they spoke, the two reached the doorway of the study. Confirming that there were no other extraordinary beings nearby, Xiang Xun pushed open the door.

This was the largest room in the entire estate, saturated with a dense dark attribute of hidden energy, yet devoid of the dampness and decay that lingered outside.

Inside, the furnishings were well-preserved, and the swirling black mist seemed to freeze time itself, allowing the past to unfold before them.

Mu Huiyue stepped into the study, her gaze drawn to the room’s only source of light—a transparent hourglass resting on the desk. The lower half was shattered, while the upper half floated gracefully, cradling a blooming, deep blue rose that emitted a soft, phosphorescent glow.

Ellen, the little skeleton, picked up the broken hourglass with its tiny hands and scampered back to the beastmaster, presenting the ethereal blue rose with a proud gesture.

Mu Huiyue was certain that this was the source of the petals that had awakened her.

Gazing at the flower presented by the little skeleton, she felt an inexplicable sense of disorientation wash over her. A word slipped from her lips, influenced by this haze, “Eternal… flower?”

As the term escaped her, a torrent of unknown emotions surged within her—a sense of waiting, a feeling of longing, like a déjà vu from a distant dream, hinting at a promise left in the echoes of ancient time.

“What’s wrong?” Xiang Xun approached her.

Memories receded like the ebbing tide, and Mu Huiyue snapped back to reality, the momentary daze dissipating completely.

“Ellen found this.” She showed him the luminous source in the skeleton’s hands.

“‘Eternal Blue Flower’… It’s rare to find such resources in a D-grade secret realm,” Xiang Xun said, surprised. “This must be the core of the secret realm you mentioned earlier, right?”

The black mist swirling throughout the room—an embodiment of the condensed dark energy—twisted around the hourglass as it moved, unmistakably the core that infused the entire secret realm with dark attributes.

Mu Huiyue took the hourglass from Ellen and gazed at the flower inside.

The deep blue rose appeared frozen in time, as vibrant as if it had just been picked, its petals identical to the two Ellen had previously brought back.

Yet she was certain she didn’t know what the “Eternal Blue Flower” was; why had that name come to her so readily?

The black mist in the room swirled slightly with her movements. Even through the transparent hourglass, both could feel the energy contained within the petals—a clear indication of a core that directly influenced the rules and circumstances of the secret realm.

Typically, such cores were guarded or possessed by the realm’s lord, making it unusual for one to be so readily available on a table.

Suddenly, the swirling black mist churned violently, and the figure of the Nianhua Mantis materialized in the room, disdainfully shaking off the blood from its scythe. It retracted its limbs and returned to Xiang Xun’s side.

“Si cha, si cha.” The mantis sounded almost aggrieved.

“I’ll help you clean your blade properly when we’re outside,” Xiang Xun promised, patting its head. The mantis immediately brightened, tilting its head and nuzzling his palm happily.

Once he had calmed his pet, Xiang Xun turned to Mu Huiyue and said, “Hua Na just took down a mature vengeful spirit wandering outside. Other than that, there’s no one in this estate that poses a threat to her.”

Mu Huiyue froze slightly, “So… there really isn’t a realm lord?”

“I find it hard to believe too, but it seems that’s the case,” Xiang Xun scratched his head, equally puzzled.

Though he hadn’t been an investigator for long, he had encountered several different levels of secret realms and had never come across such an absurd situation.

“With no realm lord, it certainly makes things easier for us. Let’s start by investigating the study,” Mu Huiyue suggested, nodding as she activated the recording function in her wrist device and moved further into the room.

Ellen floated in the shadows of the ceiling, surrounded by the thick black mist that filled the study. Most of the furnishings were shrouded in obscurity, and Mu Huiyue attempted to use the light from the hourglass to dispel the mist, but it merely shifted without dissipating.

“Click!” Ellen glided down along the wall, coming to a stop at the center of the room.

Ancient oil paintings adorned the walls, most depicting realistic portraits that resembled photographs from that era.

Mu Huiyue spotted various portraits of Count Allen Mitdela, the Star Dragon, from different periods in his life.

There were stern images of the middle-aged count from textbooks, a handsome young man with golden hair who had recently appeared in the news, and even one of him as a child, just starting to learn swordsmanship. Yet all the faces in the portraits were obscured, shrouded in black mist, making it impossible to see them clearly.

Aside from the individual portraits of Count Mitdela, there were also several images featuring him alongside others and extraordinary creatures.

Strangely, Mu Huiyue noticed the absence of the count’s most legendary pet, the “Night Star Dragon,” from any of the paintings.

Only in one particularly blurred group photo did a large, elongated shadow appear beside the golden-haired youth. With a closer look, one could discern that it was likely a dragon-type beast based on the shape of its head and horns.

“Mu Huiyue, come check this out,” Xiang Xun called from the far end of the room.

Mu Huiyue moved toward him, Ellen the little skeleton following closely. Xiang Xun stood in front of a tall bookcase, his expression unusually grave.

One entire wall of the study was lined with bookshelves, crammed with thick tomes. Judging by the texture of the covers and the inscriptions on the spines, these books spanned not just the Helra region where the count resided but encompassed nearly all literate civilizations on the planet at that time.

Mu Huiyue spotted a book written in the Great Flame script and reached out to pull it from the shelf, only to find it wouldn’t budge.

All the books seemed to be glued together, immovable as bricks on the shelf, no matter how hard she tried.

Moreover, the inscriptions that appeared to be in the Great Flame script were nothing more than chaotic patterns that bore a superficial resemblance to the writing. Upon closer inspection, they were completely indecipherable.

Wrapped in the black mist, the books’ bizarre nature was not immediately apparent.

“All the books are like this, and it’s not just the books,” Xiang Xun explained. “You can touch larger furniture like the desks and shelves, but all the finer details—the drawers, the books, even the pens and ink—are just mere decorations, akin to…”

“Like the models in a game map?” Mu Huiyue interjected. “The surface looks convincing enough at first glance, but the details are entirely disregarded.”

“Exactly.” Xiang Xun shared her confusion. Despite being classified as a D-grade secret realm, the Mitdela estate was filled with perplexing phenomena.

“This secret realm isn’t your typical historical ruin. I think it shouldn’t even be called a ‘ruin’—it resembles a ‘silhouette’ of history, rather than something that has existed continuously from the past to the present.”

Mu Huiyue fell into deep thought. The game-like scenes, the indistinct faces in the portraits, and the mysterious shadows—what connection could they all hold?

Most importantly, she was the “coordinate” of this secret realm’s manifestation, and Mu Huiyue was certain that she had no emotional or causal resonance with the Star Dragon Count’s estate.

In her past memories, Mu Huiyue had never seen Count Mitdela outside of textbooks, and now—she didn’t even belong to this world, let alone forge any deeper connections.

…

After exploring the study, Mu Huiyue and Xiang Xun split up to scour the remaining areas of the Star Dragon Count’s estate.

The Nianhua Mantis had already cleared out all mature wild extraordinary beings, leaving mostly gargoyles and other low-threat entities like pawns, which Mu Huiyue and the little skeleton could handle easily.

The entire secret realm encompassed only the estate’s interior space, consisting of three main floors with dozens of rooms, plus an empty basement.

None of the rooms had windows, nor could they find any main doors. No matter which direction they went, they were confined to the estate’s interior, unable to reach or even glimpse the “outside.”

By mansion standards, the Count’s estate was already quite grand and spacious, but as a secret realm, such a specific and narrow space was exceedingly rare.

Whether from Mu Huiyue’s studies or Xiang Xun’s firsthand experiences as an investigator, secret realms were typically vast, with territories and resources that could spark national conflicts.

Even as a D-grade secret realm, the Star Dragon Count’s estate felt too small.

However, taking a step back, the fact that such a small space could exhibit D-grade energy levels suggested that the energy contained within the Count’s estate might be far greater than what the measurements indicated.

As Mu Huiyue mulled over these thoughts, she carefully traversed all the rooms on this floor.

In contrast to the intricately designed study, the remaining rooms in the estate appeared real.

The curtains were made of soft velvet, the furniture on the floor displayed raw wood, and the silver candelabras were coated in layers of black oxidation. Every detail closely mirrored reality.

Mu Huiyue recalled that she had once sampled “food” from this secret realm, which, despite its odd flavor, was at least somewhat edible.

These scenes and objects differed markedly from the study’s situation, with the swirling black mist much diminished. Only unknown blue phosphorescent flames danced around the room.

Everywhere in the Count’s estate were signs of decay and the passage of time, except for the study, whose furnishings remained an anomaly—perhaps due to the peculiar modeling texture.

As Mu Huiyue explored, she arrived at the last room on the first floor.

This was where she had fallen through the ceiling, and the ruins still stood as they had before, surrounded by various supplies that the little skeleton had painstakingly retrieved, such as bloodstained thick blankets and unknown dried fruits that had completely lost their moisture.

Now, Mu Huiyue understood that the blanket Ellen had found was actually the soft curtain from the adjacent room.

“Lucky I ran into Ellen back then.”

She glanced at the little skeleton beside her, realizing that her connection to this world had begun with Ellen.

“Click!” (I’m also very happy to have met you, Huiyue!)

The little skeleton chirped joyfully, gliding down from the shadow of the ceiling and merging into the beastmaster’s silhouette.

Even back in the secret realm where he was born, he still preferred to linger in Mu Huiyue’s shadow.

This was the most comforting place in the world for the little skeleton.

Mu Huiyue smiled, taking in the room’s furnishings, her heart filled with nostalgia.

What once seemed like an insurmountable dead end now felt just like this.

This was merely a D-grade secret realm, and the terrifying creature with its rotting eyes, which seemed capable of crushing her with ease, was just a high-ranking, mature undead extraordinary being.

Together with Ellen, she had crossed this treacherous threshold, and they would continue to do so in the future, pursuing even more seemingly distant dreams.

At this thought, Mu Huiyue paused for a moment.

She couldn’t say there was absolutely no connection between her and the Star Dragon Count’s estate…

Disregarding the intricacies of time and causality, this was the starting point of her arrival in this world, the very place where she met Ellen.

No matter what the future held, if she were to summarize the life of the beastmaster known as “Mu Huiyue,” the “secret realm of the Star Dragon Count” would be where it all began.