5. Altar Of Lamentation (2)

When the door swung shut, not a single ray of light entered the Altar of Lamentation.

Only the damp, musty smell of old dust reached me. With every sound stripped away, the darkness threw all my remaining senses into overdrive.

"…"

Someone was definitely in here—but I had no way of knowing where they were hiding.

Moving recklessly wasn't an option either. The Altar's signature structure—a circular staircase with no railing—meant one misplaced step could send me plummeting and leave me badly broken.

In the end, I chose to pour every ounce of focus into my hearing, straining to catch any sign of movement.

If they came at me with a blade like Erin had, I'd resist with everything I had.

My nerves were wound so tight that I could almost hear the cold sweat beading on my skin—blind in every literal sense of the word.

"Dean… was it?"

A voice drifted up from somewhere below and reached my ear, making my shoulder jerk.

At least the distance told me I wasn't about to be attacked right this second. I let out a quiet breath and focused on the voice.

"I thought you'd come back here right away. You must have had quite a time finding your way."

"…What?"

The distance made it hard to pin down, but the pitch was high—a woman's voice.

And she'd known I was coming here?

No one but the player could enter the Altar of Lamentation uninvited. And since I'd never brought any companions in my first playthrough, I should have been the only person who knew this place existed.

I couldn't just sit with the questions. I ran through the five NPCs who had inherited their memories.

《 Inheriting memories and stats from the 1st playthrough.

Targets — Erin, Carmen, Maeve, Altair, Sigrún 》

Erin was out of the question.

I could never mistake her voice—that languid, almost seductive drawl.

I thought through the rest.

Maeve, Altair, Sigrún—I'd never even learned their names. I'd killed every NPC I encountered without bothering to remember who they were.

Which left only one possibility. The single NPC I actually remembered: Carmen.

Carmen of the Clairvoyance.

The NPC I'd been forced to seek out for a mandatory quest. She'd been locked in a cell the entire time, unable to die until the quest was cleared—which was exactly why I remembered her so clearly.

She was the one who used her ability, Clairvoyance, to watch the player's every move from inside a lightless prison.

"…Carmen."

"You know my name."

I said it quietly, and the answer came back like a confirmation.

The one mercy here was that she had no combat ability whatsoever. When I'd met her in that cell during the first playthrough, both her arms and legs had already been severed at the tendons.

…Wait.

If all her tendons were cut, how was Carmen here at all?

Could someone in that condition actually crawl all the way to this place?

I couldn't just sit with the confusion. I turned it over in my head.

Thud. Thud. Thud—

Footsteps climbing the stairs. The soft sound of bare feet meeting a dust-covered floor, growing closer with each step. My fists tightened.

Focus.

I was only level 10—but she couldn't be much different.

And unlike before, when the checkpoint had been crammed inside a dormitory room, this time the entire Altar was my checkpoint. My lives were infinite. Carmen's was one.

In a war of attrition, I would win. That much was certain.