Archer grabbed the collar of Caster’s shirt as if she were fed up with him—and pushed him against a wall.

“I’m tired. Very tired. So shut up, you clown.”

But Caster didn’t shut up.

“There is no way you of all people would be tired from a mere scouting mission! And you aren’t tired, but frightened, are you not? Just like a child who’s unable to escape into sleep after hearing a scary story!”

“Shut up!”

Archer’s gaze oozed with killing intent. Her eyes declared that she would kill him if he joked around any further. Nevertheless—Caster questioned her, his smile never breaking.

“—What did you see? What did you perceive? How foolish. No matter what you saw, it is already merely a remnant of the past. We are ghosts of the past, and if ghosts regret the past, they become merely vengeful spirits.”

The words of the clown, who shouldn’t have known anything, gouged the deepest depths of Archer’s heart.

“You bastard…!!”

Suddenly, all life and energy disappeared from Caster’s body. In the blink of an eye, the man she grasped by the collar was reduced to a mere wooden puppet.

A spell used by the author Caster… or rather, a kind of sleight of hand that combined his immense fame and enigmatic history.

“—We must live in the future. To devote our bodies to the yet-unseen world. Archer, you also want to see it, don’t you? A world where all children are loved!”

At some unknown point, Caster had crept up behind her back. Hearing him voice her wish, Archer stopped as she was about to grab him by the cuff again. The one in front of her didn’t seem like a puppet this time.

- Vol 4 Chapter 1