By Zephyria 
It was difficult to accept. Hallucinations, by nature, should not be able to inflict physical damage.
“How could that be….”
Gold Eyes rolled busily as he retraced the situation.
If he were the one who triggered the hallucinations, there was no reason for those with him to experience the same phenomena. Yet, everything that happened in the swamp had a profound impact on him and his comrades, enough to make it feel undeniably real.
Nero had obliterated the black shapes writhing beneath the water in a single stroke, and Taylor had summoned a flooding current to sweep away all the demon beasts hiding in the reed beds. In the end, while they were all fleeing from the core, hadn’t Finder fired a Cartridge and hit the thing right in the eye?
The monster’s scream that pierced his eardrums, the scorching wind that scraped his skin, and the sheer destructive power—everything was vivid.
Judging in a short time that his senses had not deceived him, Leonardo countered firmly.
“What are you talking about? That was definitely real. You saw it too, didn’t you? That monster lunging at me—. The moment the beam it fired slammed into the ground, the swamp boiled like lava. And if nothing else, fire is my domain. I can tell whether heat that pierces my lungs is real or not even with my eyes closed.”
Leonardo’s voice, as he listed his evidence without hesitation, sounded almost desperate. It was because he didn’t want to believe it.
“It wasn’t a hallucination.”
He spat the words out once more, as if nailing them down.
The child, staring intently at the Gold Eyes being engulfed by anxiety, replied calmly.
“That is simply the nature of the Swamp of Thoughts. The worries of those passing through the swamp gather, turning the emotion of fear into something that feels like reality. It cannot be distinguished by the five senses of a mere human. A hallucination becomes as subtle and powerful as the weight of the emotions accumulated within you. Thus, you have no choice but to believe it was real.”
As the child spoke, they waved a hand. Then, a purple light shimmered in the puddle where Leonardo was immersed.
Above the water’s surface, which sparkled faintly as if harboring amethysts, a mysterious form of smoke soon rose.
The smoke coiled around Leonardo’s upper body and neck, recreating the events he had experienced in the swamp before his eyes like a puppet show. Then, it transformed into a grotesque shape resembling a colony of sludge worms and lunged toward the nape of Leonardo’s neck, just like the black shapes seen in the swamp.
Slash—
Startled, Leonardo cut through the current and recoiled. Simultaneously, he swept his hand to erase the smoke in an instant.
His Gold Eyes, now glaring fiercely, stared at the child.
“What is this? Was this your doing?”
“If you are referring to the residual thoughts attached to you in the swamp, I did not do that. The things you were already carrying attracted other residual thoughts. I am simply looking into that truth now.”
“…….”
“The Swamp of Thoughts is a mirror reflecting the living world. The things reflected in the water are beings perched on the boundary between the living and the dead. They are those who are dead yet alive, and alive yet dead. They cannot affect a complete being of the living world, but if there is a gap in one’s mind or body, they can burrow in at any time and gnaw away at one’s mental strength.”
The child spoke in words that were difficult to grasp, as is often the case with Spiritually Keen Ones. A purple haze shimmered before the two of them, rising toward the ceiling of the cave. The smoke, trailing a long tail, looked like iron bars imprisoning Leonardo.
“Therefore, if there was a being you saw outside the water, it was not reality, but a hallucination created by you.”
The child repeated the same words with emphasis once more.
“Though it was a hallucination, it was distorted to be terrifying enough to take your life depending on your obsession, and it would have dragged you deeper and deeper into the swamp. Had I left you be, you would have struggled there forever until you died. I only pulled you out because I was afraid the residual thoughts and hallucinations clinging to you would turn my home into a wasteland.”
Hearing those words, Leonardo’s chest heaved rapidly. He recalled that the size of the thing he saw in the swamp was overwhelmingly larger than the form of Milly he remembered. At the time, he believed the creature had used its physical regeneration ability to devour other organisms and grow stronger. …No, in truth, he hadn’t had the luxury to consider such details. He had been too busy trying to escape.
However, if that was a hallucination he had created, a distorted result projecting the fear he felt toward the creature… then the fact that a dead thing had returned to life, its terrifying size, and the curses he occasionally heard from its mouth—which sounded like the whispers of vengeful spirits—were all explained to some extent.
But no matter how much he had been suffering from panic, he wasn’t so insane that he would confuse the scent and warmth of the comrades who had held onto him.
Leonardo bit his lip hard. Barely maintaining his expression from crumbling, he asked in a low voice.
“Then what about my kids?”
In truth, there was another reason he had wanted to keep denying it. His palm, submerged beneath the surface, clenched into a tight fist.
The water droplets precariously clinging to his golden hair and eyelashes made him look even more fragile. He wiped his wet cheek with the back of his hand for no reason and asked again.
“Are my kids hallucinations too?”
The child gazed at Leonardo in silence. The silence began to tighten around him.
To be told that the being that had made every hair on his body stand on end and made him feel a threat to his life was a lie of his own making. He was terrified that everything else might be a lie as well.
Of course, he had entered the swamp together with his comrades, but if his senses were wrong, he couldn’t clearly judge from which point his experiences were truth and which were hallucinations.
If every being seen outside the water was fake, then what was the identity of those who were not reflected on the surface of the swamp? Were even the comrades who responded to the voice of the core—which others couldn’t hear—and inflicted physical damage on the hallucinations merely illusions he had created?
The thought of himself wandering the swamp, muttering to himself like a madman and fabricating the warmth of non-existent comrades through delusion made his skin crawl.
At the same time, his heart ached. He felt an empty, piercing void. It wasn’t because he pitied himself for walking that lonely path alone, but because the reality he currently faced was so miserable that his eyes grew red.
As the silence continued, a warm sensation soon clouded his Gold Eyes. That heat embraced the water droplets gathered around his eyes and fell. A thick drop fell plop onto the water’s surface without even brushing his cheek.
A quiet ripple spread. In that moment, the shimmering purple afterimages vanished in all directions.
Instead, a clear blue light, pure as a bright sky, radiated outward.
It was then that the child’s eyes, which had been as impassive as the flow of time, widened.
Swoosh—
A wind circulating inside the cave blew. Simultaneously, the smoke that had been enveloping Leonardo created a new afterimage and soon transformed into the shape of a man. The form was blurred, but the two eyes looking at Leonardo with affection were exceptionally clear. The man’s two arms crossed in front of Leonardo’s chest, as if embracing him from behind.
Soon, a cold gaze shifted toward the child. As if warning them not to make the precious thing in his arms cry.
Witnessing the strange phenomenon, the child let out a sigh.
“There was one more residual thought attached.”
It was also then that the presence of people flickered outside the cave. As the overlapping sounds of a conversation involving at least two or three people drifted in, Leonardo’s slumped head snapped around.
“That grandmother should have explained what the flower looks like in more detail! How are we supposed to know if she just says it has many leaves and is yellow? There are more than one or two types of flowers like that here.”
“Still, isn’t a sunflower the most likely?”
The voices of a grumbling Taylor and Nero were heard in turn. Then, Finder’s voice chimed in.
“Marigolds or dandelions too. Maybe there are more that we just haven’t found.”
“Agh! Anyway, if the Captain doesn’t wake up, grandmother or not, I’m not going to let this slide….”
Taylor, who had entered first, came to a dead stop. When her eyes met Leonardo’s, her frowning expression brightened instantly.
“Captain!”
Soon after, she ran toward him, her footsteps echoing. It was behavior a Dark Silver should absolutely never exhibit, but what did it matter now?
Yellow petals fluttered and scattered across the floor in the trajectory of her path. This was because a heap of wildflowers, plucked from who-knows-where, was piled inside the leather jacket she held in her arms.
Nero and Finder followed hurriedly. Gathering together on the moss-covered land, the comrades examined the awakened Leonardo, each offering a word.
“Captain, are you okay? Do you know how worried we were when you just passed out alone?”
“I guess this brat isn’t a quack after all.”
“Ugh, seriously, how unsightly! Why do you keep collapsing like this?”
The once quiet cave became noisy in an instant. Conversely, the water’s surface that had been tinged with blue light became still, as if nothing had happened. The figure of the man that had lingered was also gone.
Leonardo stared blankly, like a soul-less person, at the faces of his comrades floating before him. Finding his reaction strange, Taylor narrowed her already large eyes intently. After examining the Captain’s face here and there, she asked tentatively in a low voice.
“Captain, did you happen to cry?”
The reactions of the other two became ambiguous as well. The three of them stared intently at Leonardo’s reddened eyes, even while thinking it couldn’t be.
Convinced that the affectionate gazes directed at him were not hallucinations, Leonardo managed to speak, his lips curling into a smirk.
“Guys….”
Soon, the eyes of the four shifted to the child sitting next to the jar. All four of them were asking what had happened, but three pairs of eyes were laced with murderous intent. The child shrugged and answered only Leonardo.
“I didn’t say a word about these fellows. I told you I’d tell you after you drank that.”
Dazed Gold Eyes dropped to the wooden bowl placed at Taylor’s feet.
His red lips twitched as if he had much to say, and his veined hand clenched into a fist.
Before he had time to be moved by the reunion, embarrassment washed over him.