Ignis wandered aimlessly through the Tower. After the immense excitement, only a boundless sense of emptiness remained.
‘I need to find something to do, otherwise, this is going to be unbearable. There are many more days like this ahead,’ he thought, beginning to seriously inspect his old yet new home.
He turned into an open doorway on the second floor.
A row of ancient bookshelves occupied an entire wall, packed to the brim.
Thick, gold-leafed hardcover books sat tightly against paper notebooks. Exquisite volumes were lined up alongside crude manuscripts, a collection of books of all kinds gathered in one place.
Opposite the bookshelves was a massive oak desk. Time had left deep indentations on its surface, but the tabletop was wiped clean, shimmering with a warm glow under the sunlight.
‘Is this a study?’
Ignis leaned toward the bookshelf, carefully examining the strange letters on the spines, but he quickly gave up.
They bore no resemblance to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet he was familiar with. They looked entirely like ghostly talismans.
‘It looks like I’ll have to find a way to ask my young mother for some literacy materials to read.’
Ignis’s claws unconsciously brushed against the spines of the bottom row of books. Suddenly, a strange sensation climbed up his claws.
It felt like… the joy of seeking knowledge?
No, this emotion didn’t belong to him. Its source was someone else.
Ignis’s laziness vanished instantly, and his body tensed in alertness.
The bookshelf before him silently emitted a faint blue glow, as if shrouded in an invisible mist.
At the same time, fragmented and chaotic images forced their way into his mind.
A pair of tender, child-like hands struggled to hold a heavy book that was disproportionately large for the child’s arms. The cover was dark blue, inlaid with copper edges that had already grown dull.
Ignis was stunned for a moment before immediately reacting.
This wasn’t him; he was simply reading these fragments from a first-person perspective.
‘Are these Memory Fragments?’
More fragments continued to flash by.
In the second image, the owner of the vision looked down, squatting on the ground with a book full of strange plants balanced on their knees. Slender fingers gently tapped an illustration.
In the third image, a slightly larger hand gripped a quill pen so tightly that the knuckles turned white. It slowly and firmly copied a complex Rune onto a sheet of white paper, the wrist trembling slightly from the effort.
The fourth, the fifth…
A large number of Memory Fragments scrambled to squeeze in, only to vanish in a flash, much like his state during an advanced mathematics class in his past life.
The images continued to emerge. The appearance of the books, the age of the memory’s owner, and the tasks being performed were all changing rapidly.
After a dozen or so seconds, the final image disappeared from his mind.
Ignis recognized those hands. They were slender and fair, with a small black mole on the metacarpophalangeal joint of the right thumb.
They belonged to Villanelle.
The answer was now obvious. These flashing Memory Fragments were the imprints Villanelle had left behind during her years of activity in the study.
Ignis looked up, staring at the faint blue light emanating from the bookshelf, and couldn’t help but associate it with the scene from last night.
Back then, a similar light had surrounded Villanelle.
If the essence of both was the same thing, with the only difference being the color, then it was likely not just simple “Emotional Energy.”
It was more like… the infiltration of reality by emotions and memories.
‘Is this one of the physical laws of this world?’
He thought for a moment and decided to conduct an experiment. He opened his mouth just like he had last night and initiated a Storm of inhalation.
He would taste it first. If it was edible, it would prove his judgment correct.
As if an invisible vacuum cleaner had been turned on, the blue light on the surface of the bookshelf fluctuated violently. Strands peeled away, spiraling into Ignis’s mouth.
A familiar heat flowed toward his limbs and bones.
He smacked his lips.
It was a crisp, slight sweetness, much lighter than the taste from last night, but the sheer quantity made up for it. He felt full almost instantly.
“Truly a miraculous ability…” Ignis’s golden pupils flickered. “It seems I’m not quite like the normal Dragon Race.”
Lost in thought, he walked out of the door and back into the hallway.
However, he froze.
At some point, a layer of gray mist had quietly filled the air in the hallway.
This mist wasn’t water vapor; it didn’t feel damp. Instead, it had a cold, heavy texture, flowing silently through the air.
‘What is this…’
Ignis stood up and tentatively reached out a claw to touch a wisp of gray mist drifting past him.
A completely different “flavor” exploded in his consciousness.
The first was fatigue—a numb exhaustion from running up and down all day with no end in sight, like a Sisyphus pushing a stone. It seemed to belong to a servant.
The second was sorrow—the longing for days past and the grief of seeing familiar people pass away one after another. He didn’t know who it belonged to; perhaps the old Butler?
The third was the most prominent of all.
It was fear.
Fragmented and distorted images flashed by: a dim room, rapid breathing and heartbeats, and the muffled sound of boots striking stone steps in the distance…
The intense, thick fear almost made Ignis believe there was a real intruder coming upstairs, scaring him so much that the dragon scales on his back stood on end.
‘It can’t be her.’
These were older, more fragmented memories. They likely belonged to the recollections of someone who had once lived here.
Ignis jerked his claw back and stared intently at the mist drifting above him. Through this layer of fog, he seemed to see a group of ghosts—a group of silently wailing ghosts.
A glimmer of realization gradually emerged in his heart.
‘I see. I understand now…’
This Tower was not just a collection of stone and timber; it also contained the memories of countless past residents. These gray mists were the evidence that they had once existed.
All sorts of emotions—joy, fear, nostalgia—had been preserved in this strange way, present everywhere.
‘Is it the same everywhere else outside the Tower?’
Ignis gradually came back to his senses. Looking at the layer of gray mist, a bold idea occurred to him.
‘Can I eat this?’
‘I shouldn’t get diarrhea from eating this, right…’
After hesitating repeatedly, he didn’t open his mouth to suck it in directly. Instead, he reached out a claw to hook a small wisp and put it into his mouth.
The moment the gray gas entered his mouth, Ignis’s expression changed abruptly, and a dry heave escaped his throat.
‘Holy crap, this taste…’
A bitter and sour astringency exploded in his mouth, mixed with a fishy smell. It wasn’t the metallic smell of blood, but the decaying scent of stone in a dark, damp corner weathering over time.
“Pah! *Pah, pah, pah*!” Ignis instinctively wanted to spit the gray gas out, but the energy had already flowed into his body.
Strangely, contrary to the discomfort of his taste buds, his body was… cheering.
Although the gray mist tasted disgusting, the sense of power it brought him was far stronger than the blue light in the study or what he had gotten from Villanelle.
Since hatching, Ignis had actually been in a constant state of hunger. The small amount of golden energy he had absorbed last night was nowhere near enough to fill his stomach, and the blue glow in the study had only made him feel slightly full.
After coming into contact with this thick “high-energy fuel,” his stomach grew even hungrier.
His reason protested loudly, but his physical form was faintly craving more of the gray mist and more powerful strength.
Ignis stared at the mist drifting before him, feeling like a protagonist in an adult novel who, after trying the “forbidden fruit” once, no longer had any interest in their original partner.
There was no helping it; this stuff really had a kick to it.
“Damn it, what is this mess?”
After agonizing for a few seconds, the desire for growth eventually overrode the protest of his taste buds.
Ignis took a deep breath and curled up a large strand like it was pasta, his eyes filled with a do-or-die determination.
“If I have to eat, I’ll eat. I’m freaking eating everything…”