I Refused To Be Reincarnated-Chapter 920: A Single Obsessive Thought

Adam meandered through the corridor, brows arched, right hand tracing the wall. Beneath the sky-blue glow, endless grime blackened his fingers. The small beast on his shoulder growled something about finding Quintella faster. Who were they? He didn't care. Ignoring it, he sank his mana into old stones between the first and second repositories. The spatial anomaly... not here. Further, then.

It was only when he reached the wall between the fourth and fifth repositories that his mana caught on a hollow. His eyes narrowed on his hand. A room?

His thought instantly faded, erased by the room's defensive mechanism. He stood there, focusing on the only thing on his mind: finding the spatial distortion.

His mana sank into the wall once more, and he felt the hollow again. There it was. A room?

He forgot. His mana found the hollow. A room?

Again.

Again.

Again.

But with each memory erasure, with each failure, he clung to his goal harder, feeding it until it bloated his mind, until the memory targeted by the room defenses was crushed before it could form, until the unique was thick enough to reject erasure.

An obsessive thought tore through the hum of his mana. Space here. Strange. Enter.

He reached for the irregular bricks. Wherever his palm passed, the air twisted and dust particles dissolved in muted vibrations. The wall would follow. He would enter.

CLICK

However, the stone didn't shatter beneath the vibrations. Instead, a brick dipped beneath his palm, then scraped the surrounding ones as it crawled to its place. The growl from his shoulder didn't register as he pressed other sections of the wall.

CLICK CLICK CLICK

Eight more bricks clicked softly. Then, silence. He punched the wall, but only got a dull thud in response. Sequence? It was about the sequence. Find it. Press them. Enter.

His obsession with finding the spatial distortion narrowed until the thought about finding the correct sequence to enter it replaced it.

Once it did, mana faded from his palms. He stabbed them at the nine bricks in turn. The first barely scraped into place before he struck it again, then the next ones. No logic, only brutal efficiency, a reduction of the complex to something mechanical that he could overwhelm with the single thought bloating his mind.

Bao pawed his cheeks relentlessly. She tried to growl, but even she couldn't hear the sound of her voice beneath Adam's onslaught on the bricks. Did he forget about Quintella? The room?

No, no, no. He couldn't waste time fighting stone!

She slid her paw between his lips, then pulled his cheek toward the entrance of the corridor. But Adam never paused. He kept hammering the bricks as if they were magus-ranked ores waiting to be shaped on his anvil.

The click of bricks sang their refusal to yield. But he would only accept their surrender. And eventually, the bricks couldn't scrape back into place anymore. Instead, they pivoted on themselves with a soft rattle, bringing the entire wall with them.

Adam didn't know how many sequences he had tried or how long it took him, but he hurled himself into the jagged opening without wasting a breath. Stumbling in his charge, he rolled on soft ground as his unique thought began to shrink. He had found and entered the spatial distortion.

With his single goal achieved, everything else fell back into place. He felt the navy-blue carpet beneath his palms, saw the bed under which it stretched a couple of steps away, and the pale blue lights pulsing from stones encased in clean walls. Bao's weight on his shoulder, the stretch of her paws against his cheek. And with them, all the rest of it returned: the rage, the worry.

As the wall rumbled shut behind him, he hoisted himself up, his eyes darting to the desk dominating the edge of the room. But his eyes locked on the dark indigo standard hung proudly beside it. It bore a single lidless eye at its center. The ring of runes forming its iris made him shiver. It seemed to peer into him, into his mind. Beneath it, the faint outlines of skeletal hands emerged from shadowy mist.

Another trial room, far more insidious-looking than Leoric's.

CLAP CLAP CLAP 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Slow, almost mocking claps sliced through his thoughts. He jerked his head to the desk, behind which Quintella sat.

"Mhh. Not bad. Pretty good, even." She twirled her finger against her temple, lips twisted into a smirk. "You understood the defense mechanism quite fast. You can suspect a room exists, but the moment you're certain it does or discover its location, everything vanishes. So, you looked for the physical space it occupies, right? I wouldn't have thought about that. It's so inventive... unlike your boorish method of breaking the password. Still decent enough. I welcome you to Serevan Dreadmarche's study. But I like to call it the forgotten room better."

Not Quintella. The imposter wearing her face. Fury burned in Adam's eyes. "Where is—"

She slapped the armrest of her throne, interrupting him with a chuckle both high and low-pitched. "The same question, always and again. Aren't you bored?" She licked her lips, then flung her blond hair back and walked to the bed. "Fine. The least we both want is a battle that could damage the room or wound your sister. There she is."

With a tug, she lifted the blanket, revealing Quintella's peaceful face.

Bao let out a relieved howl when she saw her favorite human safe. But Adam kept her in place as she tried to leap to the bed. He raised his right fist, mana crackling into a miniature sun. His left hand crumpled his shirt around his abdomen, mana ready to unseal his dantian and soul sea.

"Want me to believe you'll let us go?" His voice rumbled low from his pursed lips. "Back off, or I'll blast you with the room."

The imposter rolled her eyes as he usually did when Desmond came up with another foolish idea. "Mana, qi, your arsenal and threats... are meaningless. Memorised."

Adam glared at his fading sun. Once more, the imposter had snatched and snuffed it. No, he felt it better this time. It wasn't his control of the spell that had failed. The mana itself had forgotten the shape he had given it.

While his mind raced to understand how, the imposter backed five steps, gesturing toward the bed. "No need to fight, really. Go on. She's waiting for her dear big brother."