Free Web NovelAs her voice faded, Amanda smoothly pulled Pandora up from the freezing black stone chair. Then, she casually thrust the razor-sharp key into the empty air before them. There was no keyhole. Yet, a crisp click rang out from thin air.
Immediately after, that ancient wooden door—framed by shadowy branches and black roses—materialized out of thin air once more! The door was shut tight. Amanda gripped the key and gave her wrist a gentle twist. Click. The door swung open.
Pandora felt a sudden, jarring heaviness in her body! It was as if she had violently dropped back into reality from a state of weightlessness and nothingness. A faint buzzing, like shattering glass quickly reassembling, seemed to ring in her ears. The lighting before her eyes shifted in a flash—from that frozen, dark-gold twilight back to the warm, soft golden glow of the underground garden. They were back.
“You can let go now,” Amanda said, her voice yanking Pandora out of that bizarre sense of weightlessness. Pandora uncurled her fingers, releasing the hand she’d been holding, and looked up at Amanda.
“The way we entered the library just now... it wasn’t physical, was it?” she asked, her tone seeking confirmation.
“You can ask your companion about that.” Amanda shifted slightly, gesturing for Pandora to look at Elsa, who had been standing quietly off to the side the whole time.
Pandora turned. A look of overt confusion was plastered across Elsa’s face. “My Lady...” She tilted her head slightly, seemingly trying to recall and verify something, before speaking with an uncertain tone, “Did you... leave just now?”
“I only saw Ms. Adam take out that key, and then you and her just stood completely still. About twenty-odd seconds later, Ms. Adam twisted the key again, your body seemed to sway slightly, and then you were back to normal.”
Just as she thought! Pandora instantly realized that their departure just now hadn’t been physical movement. They had entered that library—frozen in the instant before its annihilation—using their souls, or perhaps an entity closer to a “mental body” or “consciousness.”
If that was the case... “Elsa, how much time has passed?” Pandora asked immediately.
Elsa frowned slightly, carefully reminiscing before cautiously answering, “From when Ms. Adam used the key to open the door and you both froze, to when she twisted the key again to close it... it should have been about twenty-five or twenty-six seconds?”
“To be precise, twenty-four seconds,” Amanda suddenly interjected, providing an exact number. She gently dropped the black meteoric iron key into Pandora’s hand. It was heavier than it looked, and freezing to the touch.
Pandora noticed that the originally razor-sharp edges of the key had dulled. A layer of dark red rust, resembling oxidation, had formed on its surface, making it feel significantly blunter than before. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
Amanda waved toward the distance—where a brand-new “attendant” was silently stepping out from the shadows of the foliage, her gait elegant—and said to Pandora, “That’s one of the peculiarities of this key. No matter how long we stay inside the library—whether it’s a few minutes, a few hours, or even longer—the time that elapses in the real world outside is always a fixed twenty-four seconds. Not a fraction more, not a fraction less.”
“This rule can be exploited to a certain extent. For instance, you can use it to think, plan, or read materials that require intense focus.”
“However,” Amanda’s tone grew a bit more serious, “don’t even think about holing up in the library indefinitely, treating it as a time-pocket to escape reality.”
“You can stay in that place for a maximum of one day.” She paused before adding, “To be specific, the exact duration is uncertain. It varies from person to person, and situation to situation. But once you hit a certain critical point, the place will naturally start ‘kicking you out.’ You’ll feel an irresistible sense of rejection, and the space itself will start to blur and destabilize.”
“Don’t try to overstay your welcome, unless...” Amanda locked eyes with Pandora, articulating every word clearly, “you want to stay in that frozen, shattered space-time forever, becoming just another corpse among the countless remains there.”
Pandora nodded in silence, indicating she understood.
“Next, bringing someone else inside with you,” Amanda continued, her tone reverting to its usual languid drawl. “That’s viable. Using this method, you can even access the knowledge known by the person you bring along—provided you can get them to cooperatively ‘think’ about it.”
“But—” Her voice turned solemn once more.
“Make absolutely sure you keep a tight grip on their hand. From the moment you enter, until you are absolutely certain you have fully returned to reality—until you feel that... well, that sensation you just experienced, the abrupt drop from an abnormal space-time back into the grounding, fluid reality of the familiar world.”
“Under no circumstances should you let go during the process.”
“Never,” Amanda repeated for emphasis. “Don’t assume that letting go for just a second won’t hurt. It will. For anyone who isn’t the keyholder, getting lost in there is a certainty. Once you let go, forget about bringing them back with you. You would never know if the ‘thing’ you dragged back is still the same person you went in with.”
“They might still be the companion you know.”
“Or perhaps...” Amanda lowered her voice a fraction, “the exact second you let go, they were... replaced by some remnant entity within that frozen space-time. Becoming an extension of a finite limb of Laplace’s Demon—a being that refuses to be entirely destroyed.” ƒгeewёbnovel.com
“Take right now, for instance,” Amanda suddenly turned her head, staring dead-on at Elsa standing behind Pandora. Her gaze, filtering through the lenses of her gold-rimmed glasses, was genuinely unnerving. “Perhaps the Pandora Douglas I brought back with me is no longer the companion you once knew.”
However, to Amanda’s evident disappointment, Elsa had only shown a flicker of confusion at the very beginning. When faced with this horrifying possibility, she was overwhelmingly calm.
She simply stared back at Amanda, and in her gentle yet resolute maid’s voice, peacefully replied, “I can confirm it. The My Lady before me is the true My Lady. True and undoubted.”
Zero hesitation. Zero doubt.
“Is that so?” Amanda pressed, trying to apply a little psychological pressure. But the effect was negligible.
Elsa’s gaze didn’t waver in the slightest; it didn’t even ripple. Amanda’s psychological attack had bounced right off her.
A look of profound disappointment flashed across Amanda’s face. She pouted, looking for all the world like a kid whose elaborately planned prank had completely flopped.
