The world inside the painting felt like a rehearsal for an apocalypse that had forgotten its lines.
Shin Jonghak stood in the middle of the Rue des Blouses Blanches, his grip tightening on the Conqueror Spear. Beside him, Rachel's hand trembled slightly as she watched a baker.
The man was methodically placing the same loaf of bread into an oven that wasn't hot, his face a smooth, waxy mask of indifference.
When a child ran past and tripped, she didn't cry—she simply reset to a standing position and began the run again.
"Don't go to the end of the street," Jung Heewon warned, her voice tight. She pointed toward the intersection where the Avenue du Marché should have begun.
A group of panicked tourists, not yet fully "assimilated," tried to sprint past the corner.
As soon as their feet touched the invisible boundary, the air rippled like disturbed water.
With a sickening pop, they vanished, only to reappear thirty meters back, staggering in confusion before their expressions went vacant, mimicking the mechanical loops of the NPCs.
"It's a frame reset," Jonghak muttered. "We're trapped in a localized narrative loop."
High above, the "Pixies"—Sequence 4 and 5 entities of the Sublunary Eye pathway—hovered on translucent dragonfly wings.
They didn't look like fairy-tale creatures.
They were blurry, flickering figures that held glowing "blueprints" made of starlight.
One Pixie descended toward a flower girl whose dress was a shade of red that didn't match the artist's design.
The Pixie compared the girl to the paper, shook its head with a cold, empty detachment, and touched her forehead.
The girl didn't scream.
She dissolved.
Her flesh and bone turned into streaks of wet, viscous oil paint that smeared across the cobblestones before being absorbed into the "Canvas."
[The Main Scenario has been updated!]
===
< Hidden Scenario – The Hostel >
Category: Hidden
Difficulty: ???
Summary: You are inside a 'World Within a Painting' created to bypass the seals of the sunken world.
The Goal: Reach the "Darkness"—the conceptual space where the Salle de Bal Brise exists. This is the node to Fourth Epoch Trier.
===
Warning: You are currently occupying "Rooms." If your Room is cleared by the "Artist," your Story will be erased.
Room 1 Anchor: Shin Jonghak.
"The Darkness is that way," Jung Heewon said, pointing her sword toward the center of the district. Where the vibrant colors of the painting should have been strongest, there was instead a growing, ink-black void that swallowed the light of the painted sun.
"We have to move," Rachel said, her blue eyes turning cold. "The Pixies are looking for us."
As they carved a path through the mechanical crowd, the ground suddenly pulsed.
A building to their left—an elegant townhouse designated as Room 7—erupted in a blast of dark mana.
A man stepped out of the wreckage.
Rachel froze.
Her elementals hissed in a chorus of pure, elemental hatred.
He wore the tattered remnants of the British Royal Guard uniform, but his eyes were bloodshot and wide with a manic, obsessive rage.
Around his neck hung a pendant pulsing with the "Desire" of the Mother Tree.
Alex Edmund Lancaster.
"Rachel," he hissed, his voice a jagged rasp. "Did you think you could escape me after hiding in the Demon Realm?"
"Lancaster," Rachel whispered, her rapier drawing a line of frost in the air. "You've fallen so low. You're working with the Outer Deities now?"
"I work for the end of your bloodline!" Lancaster roared.
He lunged, his movements flickering with the "Spatial Lag" of the painting, his blade coated in a corrosive, brownish-green sap that could rot a soul on contact.
"I'll handle him," Rachel said, her voice a Queen's command. "Jonghak-ssi, Heewon-ssi—get to the Darkness!"
"As if I'd leave a fight," Jonghak scoffed, but before he could move, the Pixies above shrieked.
A swarm of glowing erasers descended from the sky, targeting Jonghak.
"Room 1... must be... corrected..." they droned.
Heewon stepped forward, her fire erupting in a pillar of white-hot righteousness.
"Correct this, you bastards!"
The battle turned the painted street into a gory mess of turpentine and blood.
Lancaster was a demon, his rage giving him strength that shouldn't belong to a human.
He pushed Rachel back, his sword clashing against her frost-shields with the weight of a falling mountain.
"You're weak, Rachel! I should've trained you more!"
Jonghak, surrounded by Pixies, felt a strange, cold sensation in his chest.
His role as Room 1 was reacting to the proximity of the Darkness.
Medici's voice rang in his mind like a war drum: "Kid! Stop trying to be a Hero and start being a King! Command the floor you stand on!"
Jonghak slammed his spear into the ground.
He didn't use mana.
He used the status that Medici had been refining within him.
"Rise," Jonghak commanded.[1]
From the ink-black Darkness of the Salle de Bal Brise node, the ground didn't just break—it decayed.
Yellowish, rust-stained skeletons began to crawl out of the void. These were the "Old Bones"—the ancient soldiers of the Fourth Epoch. They bore shattered iron armor and carried weapons that hummed with a deathly, ancient resonance.
Lancaster sneered, preparing to sweep them aside, but the skeletons ignored him.
They moved in an orderly, terrifying phalanx, and as one, they turned and bowed to Shin Jonghak.
"ROOM 1," the skeletons whispered in a voice that sounded like grinding stones. "THE CONQUEROR... HAS RETURNED."
The Old Bones turned their rusty spears toward Lancaster and the Pixies.
They weren't there to kill; they were there to protect their Emperor's anchor.
In the "Real" Paris, the world was screaming.
The Iron and Blood Cross Order had ignited a total riot.
The streets were a sea of barricades and fire.
Above the chaos, the Sacred Heart Cloister underwent its final transformation.
The Infant-Sun ritual reached its zenith.
A blinding, divine light erupted—the Eternal Blazing Sun's power being channeled into the city.
The Orthodox Gods—the Lord of Storms and the Evernight Goddess—finally turned their full attention to Paris, sensing the interference of the Outer Deities.
"The conditions are met," the High Priestess laughed in the underground cave.
[The Law of Similarity has reached 100% Synchronization!]
[Reality and Fabrication are swapping!]
In the painting world, the flat blue sky was suddenly pierced by the "Real" golden sunlight of the Blazing Sun.
The turpentine smell was replaced by the scent of ozone and burning holy fire.
The Darkness at the center of the district tore open.
It wasn't a hole; it was a door.
A massive, iron-black gate stained with dark-red rust and ancient blood.
"NO!" Lancaster screamed, trying to grab Rachel as the gravitational pull of the door intensified.
The suction was absolute.
Jung Heewon, Shin Jonghak, Rachel, Lancaster, and even the translucent spirit of Medici were all yanked forward.
The heretics, the Pixies, and the mechanical NPCs were all shredded by the transition logic.
They plunged through the door, falling into the depths of history.
The falling stopped.
Jonghak hit the ground—pale-black stone bricks that felt unnaturally cold.
He stood up, coughing, and looked around.
Beside him, Heewon and Rachel stood with weapons drawn, their faces pale.
Even Lancaster had landed nearby, his rage momentarily silenced by awe.
They were in Fourth Epoch Trier.
The city was a magnificent nightmare of pitch-black and blood-red.
Asymmetrical buildings teetered at impossible angles, their windows like empty eye sockets.
A thin gray fog drifted through the narrow streets where the houses were so close they seemed to be whispering to each other.
In the distance, the sky was filled with a shimmering heat that distorted the horizon.
And standing in the wilderness beyond the walls, a fifty-meter-tall giant loomed, wreathed in lightning and hail.
"We aren't in Paris anymore," Heewon whispered.
Shin Jonghak looked at his hands. The "Room 1" mark was glowing a violent, pulsating red.
"Welcome to," Medici's voice echoed, no longer a whisper, but a resonant roar. "Fourth Epoch Trier."
[1] I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist it.