A Regressor's Bucket List

Chapter 190 : Emily (2)

“A basement?”

I asked back at Eliya’s sudden cry, and she nodded.

“It’s a place inside the Guild House that we haven’t checked yet. We’ve looked through all the rooms from that floor downwards, but we haven’t been to the basement yet.”

“There was a basement here?”

It was a surprising revelation for me.

Thinking back to when I first entered the Guild House, there was definitely no mention of a ‘basement.’

I even remembered that the Guild House’s internal blueprint in the office had no record of a basement.

Therefore, the very existence of a basement was unfamiliar to me.

But Eliya, as if she already knew, moved her feet and added,

“It wasn’t marked on the blueprints, but there was a small basement. I found it while cleaning, so I couldn’t tell you earlier, but there was a stairwell and a small basement beneath the first-floor Utility Room.”

“……”

“First, I think we should go and check it ourselves.”

Eliya, hurrying with quick steps, took the lead, and I pushed Emily’s back, who was still holding a straw in her mouth, following behind Eliya.

Creak— Thud—

She opened the door to the Utility Room, which still felt distinctly empty, and fumbled along the right wall beneath a shelf, searching for something.

“So… I’m sure it was around here…”

“……”

After fumbling a few more times, she suddenly grabbed onto something, her eyes widening.

“I found it!”

At her words, my gaze shifted to her hand, where her index finger was inserted into a small recessed groove in the wall’s crevice.

Soon after, as she pulled her finger, the perfectly concealed door frame separated from the wall.

Creeeeak—

With a particularly loud squeal, the musty, heavy smell unique to basements wafted out.

“Ugh.”

“……”

Perhaps it suddenly brought on a feeling of stuffiness, as Emily, who had been sniffing, wrinkled her nose and covered it.

Next, beyond the wide-open door, a brick-lined basement staircase was revealed.

A dark and eerie atmosphere.

The crudely laid Dark Blue Bricks staircase stretched for about 15 meters, leading to a corner wall, and as Eliya snapped her fingers and muttered something softly, torches on the wall flickered to life one by one, as if pre-installed.

Eliya glanced back at us, then took the lead and descended into the basement, and I, shrugging at Emily’s upward gaze as if asking if she really had to go, followed behind her down the stairs.

Rustle— Rustle—

Careful footsteps echoed along the basement walls, and after descending about thirty of those eerie stairs, as soon as we turned the corner, a small rectangular space was revealed.

“…It’s small.”

The revealed space was a kind of storage room, even smaller than the Utility Room.

It was an empty space so small that ten adult men couldn’t properly lie down in a row, with a ceiling height that seemed less than 2 meters, so cramped that the stone stairs seemed wasted on it.

“That’s also why I completely forgot about it.”

“……”

“It’s such a small space that I can’t understand why it was even made… I didn’t know its purpose, so I thought I’d look into it later and completely forgot about it.”

“……”

As Eliya continued to explain the basement, her gaze was already fixed on the floor.

The reason was simple.

“…I think this is the right place, at least.”

Because there was a distinct shoe print left in one corner at the base of the wall.

Since Jerry was the only one who wore shoes inside the Guild House, it was obvious whose trace it was.

“…What on earth happened?”

Although we found a clue, it was difficult to be certain of anything with just this.

While the shoe print confirmed his visit, we didn’t know when or why he had come.

To get a lead, we needed additional clues that could extend our deductions from this trace.

Rustle—

I lowered my upper body further and examined the area of the floor Eliya was looking at.

Upon closer inspection, there were several more footprints.

‘……’

After checking them several times and committing them to memory, I went back up the stairs and closed my eyes.

And I vaguely traced the path Jerry had taken when he entered this basement.

Thud— Thud—

Matching my steps precisely to the remaining footprints.

‘…First, this way.’

Arranging the sequence wasn’t as difficult as I thought.

Perhaps due to the narrowness of the space, his stride quickly shortened as soon as he descended the stairs, and by piecing together the footsteps in order of their width, I could roughly discern the direction.

Since the space was narrow to begin with, there weren’t many traces of footsteps, so the number of possibilities wasn’t large.

Of course, there were some marks that weren’t immediately understandable.

There were a few footsteps within the radius that weren’t related to linear movement.

However, after retracing the possibilities a few times, it roughly led to the conclusion that Jerry had walked around the room once.

Thud-thud-thud—

As I checked each step and followed the traces he left,

Clack—!

I took Jerry’s final step in the basement and opened my eyes.

“……”

Where I opened my eyes, the right wall of the basement stood.

And I, looking at that wall, uttered a single word of certainty.

“…This is it.”

As if she didn’t understand my quiet murmur, Eliya asked.

“…What? What is it?”

“Jerry’s last step in the room was here.”

“That’s just a wall. What do you mean by ‘the last thing he saw was the wall’…”

Eliya, about to add more, stopped speaking and widened her eyes as if she had realized something herself.

“Then…”

“Yes, there’s no trace of him leaving this place.”

That was it.

While Jerry’s entry into this place could be clearly confirmed through his footsteps, paradoxically, there was no trace of him having left.

It was a situation that defied common sense.

If Jerry had been lying sprawled here, it would have been understandable without much thought, but Jerry was clearly not present.

Of course, there was a possibility that he had deliberately erased his tracks to escape pursuit after leaving the Guild House.

While completely erasing traces is difficult, for Jerry, who had ample experience fleeing, it would have been child’s play.

But the possibility was slim.

If that had truly been his objective, there would have been no reason to leave traces of his entry here.

For the same reason, the assumption that he was kidnapped by someone was also dismissed at this point.

“Whether he vanished into thin air or burrowed into the ground, I don’t know. But the last place he stepped was here.”

Well, a foolish person might have left traces due to moving in a hurry, but if that were the case, Eliya wouldn’t have failed to notice, and Jerry wasn’t the kind of person to be easily dragged away by such a fool.

That meant.

“If anything happened, it happened here.”

And it happened by Jerry’s own will…

“...I will remain here.”

“...”

“...I have something to look into separately.”

The words he had said before leaving for Aberdeen flashed through my mind.

‘…If those words are related to the current situation.’

Suddenly, I had such a premonition.

That something important was connected to this basement of unknown purpose.

‘…A needlessly small basement.’

It wasn’t a baseless guess, hitting randomly without any clues, simply because Jerry had disappeared from here.

Besides that, there were other aspects that led to my suspicions.

With the tension slowly rising, I examined the wall directly in front of where Jerry had taken his last step.

And I asked Eliya.

“…Did you say you cleaned here?”

“No. I thought I should clean it, but as I said, I completely forgot, so I haven’t touched it at all.”

“……”

“From what I can tell, JJ didn’t really clean either. It’s exactly as it was when I found it…”

Hearing that answer, I found one more clue about Jerry on the wall.

‘Dust.’

Perhaps because it was an enclosed space, or because Jerry had visited, there wasn’t as much dust accumulated as one might expect.

Even so, if you looked closely, dust clearly covered every part of the basement.

But on one side of the wall directly in front, there was a section where the dust had been wiped away.

And it was exactly in the shape of a handprint.

Confirming that distinct trace, I,

Gulp—

swallowed once and placed my hand directly over it.

And then.

Click—

A strange sound was heard.

It was, of course, the brick on the wall where I had placed my palm that made the sound.

Even though I had only lightly rested my hand and hadn’t applied any particular force, the brick sank into the wall as if it had been pressed down hard.

Then.

Click— Clunk—

Centered around that sunken brick, the surrounding bricks began to move one by one.

Retreating one by one in both left and right directions, as if opening a curtain, they revealed a hidden section behind the wall.

“…Hero, this is.”

And what was revealed was in stark contrast to the crude, eerie Dark Blue Bricks typical of the basement.

A single metal door, distinctly modern in feel, was located there.

Thud—

At that moment, a sound of something dropping was heard from behind.

Turning my head to check, I saw Emily, who had dropped her glass of iced tea, standing with her mouth agape.

She then approached the metal door and ran her hand over its surface once.

After twitching her brow a few times as if unable to comprehend, she murmured softly.

“…Magic Shielding System?”

I didn’t know exactly, but I could easily tell that it was related to Magic Engineering Technology.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have reacted so intensely.

She then familiarly fumbled along the lower surface of the metal door, and just like Eliya had found the door in the Utility Room, she placed her finger on a small groove.

Swipe. Swish—

She drew several unknown patterns.

Along with that.

Beep—

[“Emergency release pattern detected.”]

[“Opening door with administrator privileges.”]

A mechanical female voice emanated from the metal door, and unlike when the bricks first split, the door slid open to both sides with a mechanical whirring and whooshing sound.

And on the inner wall of the opened door,

“…You’ve come, Partner.”

Jerry, with even darker dark circles than usual, was leaning against it, greeting us.