Chapter 61: Just Woke Up

When Harvey felt his consciousness returning, there was no sound at all in his ears.

It wasn’t silence.

It was—the very concept of “sound” didn’t exist.

He realized he was now in a strange domain.

A cold, desolate world with no echo.

Harvey looked up at the distant sky.

The pitch-black heavens hung low like a massive curtain.

There were no twinkling stars above, only absolute deathly stillness.

Further ahead.

Beneath towering cliffs, the earth was torn into countless bottomless ravines.

Broken mountain ranges crisscrossed each other, stretching beyond the reach of sight.

And in between.

There were “people”—countless figures.

They stood in orderly lines, moving slowly along some kind of trajectory.

The line was incredibly long—long enough that it seemed to stretch from one end of the world to the other.

No one was talking. There wasn’t even any expression on their faces.

When Harvey woke, he, too, was one of them.

He tried to speak.

But his consciousness seemed to be submerged in some thick, viscous liquid, becoming extremely hazy.

He could only follow the crowd forward.

No purpose, no destination.

Only an endless “process” of moving forward.

Harvey didn’t know how long he had been walking. Time had lost all meaning here.

He felt no fatigue, only a vague, sinking sensation.

‘Where exactly am I?’

—Until this thought emerged from the depths of his heart.

Harvey became a little more lucid, and he also noticed something off.

The figures that had once been similar to him had become, at some point, extremely short.

Their outlines grew very blurry.

Some figures even silently lost parts of themselves as they walked.

Yet everyone still walked forward, completely indifferent to their own changes.

Like puppets set on a script, they could only follow predetermined actions.

In his shock, Harvey looked down at his left hand.

There was a warm, soft touch on it—one that made the strange feeling in his heart grow clearer and more complete.

It was even more “real” than everything around him.

Just then, the sky suddenly moved.

“A high-level existence” revealed itself.

He was abruptly lifted off the ground and flew toward the sky.

A soft, seductive voice suddenly fell from the heavens.

“Little one, why are you here?”

Harvey looked up and saw the being suspended in the sky.

Countless “eyes” slowly unfolded in the void.

Each pupil kept splitting apart.

And in the next instant, they reassembled, layer upon layer, overlapping each other.

Merely “seeing” it already surpassed the limits of human consciousness.

Harvey felt his whole body tremble, his consciousness teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then, in the blink of an eye, those eyes that filled the sky vanished completely.

In their place, a humanoid outline slowly condensed.

She “descended” from the void.

Her tall, slender figure stood still in the void, her skin a pale, deathly white.

She exposed her body without any concealment—and here, the concept of “nudity” didn’t exist.

From any angle, this body was perfect.

As if shaped to respond to an “observer’s perception.”

A form deliberately constructed to satisfy the embodiment of some emotion.

“What’s wrong?”

“The god you revere has merely shown their true form.”

“Can’t you recognize me now?”

Harvey stared at her blankly, his throat unconsciously moving.

“Are you… Lord Hades?”

The moment the words left his mouth, he was stunned himself.

That suffocating, closed-off feeling had disappeared sometime. He could speak now.

The woman looked down at her own body.

Then she looked at Harvey, a hint of amusement in her eyes.

“Yeah.”

“You recognized me now. It’s not too late.”

The great God of the Underworld—Hera Mnemosyne.

She stood before her own messenger in human form.

Her gaze fell on Harvey, a casual smile on her lips.

“Absorbing so many lives.”

Hera said lightly, “Why did it make you… stupider instead?”

The moment she finished speaking.

The next instant, everything was torn apart.

—

Harvey sucked in a sharp breath.

Fresh air rushed violently into his chest as his consciousness was forcibly shoved back into his body.

He blinked dazedly.

The ceiling patterns blurred for a moment before gradually sharpening.

The light was a little harsh, stabbing into his hazy awareness.

“Awake?”

A question came from beside him. Harvey turned his head in confusion.

The familiar head maid’s skirt entered his view first, followed by her perpetually cold face.

Evelyn was sitting by the bed, very close.

Close enough that he could see her eyelashes, and the emotions pressed deep in her eyes.

He was about to speak when a dull pain came from his left hand.

The head maid’s slender fingers were tightly gripping his palm.

His hand seemed to have been held like this for a long time.

That lingering warmth and softness finally had its source.

Harvey froze.

“…Head Maid?”

Evelyn’s gaze was ice-cold.

Cold enough that it didn’t feel like she was looking at someone who had just woken from a coma.

“You’ve been unconscious for over a week.”

“Harvey.”

She asked in a low voice, “Why do you always do this? Why do you always make people worry?”

‘This person… she’s speaking in such a harsh tone, but why can’t she let go of my hand?’

Harvey thought this question in his heart.

Evelyn stared at this troublesome guy, seeing that he hadn’t listened to her reproach at all.

In fact, she was also curious how Harvey had convinced the princess to take him away from the academy.

And why the two had been attacked.

Afterward, Evelyn, who was outside the door, heard a crisp sound.

Not long after, the princess had covered her face and silently retreated from the room.

Miss Lavia hadn’t even asked her to bring tea—the second meeting between the two ended so hastily.

To think he could make two of the most noble young ladies in the kingdom quarrel over him—Evelyn almost admired his ability.

But thinking of the endless troubles over the past month, she felt only irritation.

“From the start, you shouldn’t have gotten involved in these things.”

“First it was the royal princess.”

“Then those noble sons.”

With each thing she mentioned that distressed her, her grip tightened.

“Now, you even dare to appear with that princess on the streets of the royal capital.”

“And then you almost died there.”

Evelyn stared at him, a hint of gritting teeth in her tone.

“You’ve only been at the academy a little over a month.”

“How exactly did you manage to bring all the trouble onto yourself?”

Originally, taking care of Harvey wasn’t her duty.

But she couldn’t let Miss Lavia stay in Harvey’s room, either.

In the first few days, his breathing had been noticeably erratic several times.

She sensed something was wrong and informed the elder miss, who had been sitting by the bed, barely leaving.

From that day on, Lavia hardly left the room.

She always sat by the bed, holding Harvey’s hand, murmuring something softly.

As if she wished to wake him from his long slumber that way.

During the day, it was like this.

At night, too.

Fortunately, they were at the academy, and the previous incidents hadn’t been reported back to the duke’s mansion.

Otherwise, Evelyn wouldn’t know how to face the duke.

It wasn’t until today that the academy’s chairman summoned the elder miss, forcing her to leave the mansion.

Before leaving, she entrusted this matter to Evelyn.

She only said it would be a temporary replacement, not lasting long.

It shouldn’t have been Evelyn’s turn.

Thinking this, Evelyn’s fingers tightened again.

She had no interest in such meaningless physical contact, but she hated being restrained.

But now—

She didn’t let go.

Harvey looked at the head maid before him, feeling the chill in her palm.

The temperature was very low.

Even after holding it for so long, there was little change.

He cleared his throat.

“…I’m sorry.”