Raine raised his defined brow into an arch.
Alira ignored his gaze on her as she continued, “The naughty boy was a shepherd, and whenever he got bored doing whatever shepherds do, the boy who didn’t know better would start screaming about wolves just to see people running for him.” She sighed with a heavy heart. “The kindhearted villagers would rush to rescue every time—all for nothing. And so when he cried wolves when they did come, no one believed him anymore. His lies were paid for in his sheep’s blood.”
Two chuckles rang at the same time, each with different accents, tones, and rhythms. Xia’s was sharp, unapologetic, and open, while Raine’s was choked out like he was holding it back. The two protagonists on opposite sides of the world united unknowingly, much to Alira’s annoyance. She decided that once she made it back home and if she was ever able to find the source of the novel she’d read before, she would slap two 0.5 stars on it along with a two-page review, one for each of its protagonists.
Heartless bastards.
No one else had ever pissed her off the way they both knew how to. Especially Raine on this fine day. She almost snapped her ticket home in half thanks to his little stunt. She didn’t do it, all thanks to her excellent self-restraint. She did, however, give him a good kick in the shin, which seemed to have hurt her feet more than it hurt him.
Raine still had a faint smile on his face when she was done grousing. “I’ve never heard of that story before... Did you make that up just now?”
Alira tutted, the noise echoing a few steps down the empty, shadowed hall. “So anything you haven’t heard of is made up? Who are you? Story expert who had read all stories on Staywes?”
“My mother’s close to one. I guess it’s possible there were still so many she didn’t get to tell me,” Raine said, and it was the most tender she had heard or seen of him.
And that was a bucket of cold water on her temper. What a move to bring up your dead mother out of nowhere... Now she couldn’t stay angry at him even if she still wanted to.
Oh well.
At least she didn’t have to swim in poop water like him. Raine didn’t look any less dashing as usual for some reasons that might just be plot armor, but he was, in fact, stinking. The fact that he could smell bad–that perfection wasn’t granted at all times, even for the protagonist–made her strangely happy.
“It’s quiet,” Calix spoke when Alira least expected him to. She had assumed that he’d gone back to acting like the party’s wordless decorative doll now that he no longer had to speak.
But he was right. Apart from their chatter and footsteps, the underground hall was as dead as a grave. Then again, it was never a guarantee to see any cultist down here. Sure, they had their meetings at their base, but that didn’t mean they would be here all the time. Too many activities might attract unwanted attention after all.
Alira wasn’t too unhappy. She promised to show Raine about the cultists, and this was enough insight, even if they ended up taking a tour around the inactive base. They could still come across something insightful. His journey to revenge was a long one, and Raine knew he wouldn’t get the answer to his loss so easily, considering the people in power involved.
She simply wanted his view to expand in a way that urged him to progress.
Alira was mid-step when specks, or cobweb-like shapes, emerged from thin air to swim across her field of vision. At first, she rubbed her eyes, thinking they were eye floaters that tend to appear when she’d exhausted herself.
The squirming lines didn’t go away, and Alira finally realized it was them when the lines morphed to form words. She hadn’t seen them since the day she received her prophet ability.
[ LoveFurries: Sewer cat-girl??. I’m glad there’s an option to turn the smell off. I’d rather not imagine my little cat-girl smelling like anything other than soap and flowers. ]
[ Reader1236: ?
[ fiend: ? < Reader1236> Fair enough. ]
[ AllHailMother: Mother! Mother! Mother! I sense her presence! All hail Mother the Mercy! ]
[ AllHailMother: @salty-as-sea-salt Come! I summon thee! Mother won’t disappoint us! The blood you thirst for is here! ]
[ fiend: By the way, is it just me or do I keep getting the feeling of being watc— ]
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
The words flickered out of sight at once as if a recording screen had turned black after being abruptly cut off.
Alira remembered what Lady Goddess had told her. She’d said she would let her see them when she could, but when exactly was that? The edgy, distorted line on that one aspect also read, ‘You shouldn’t be seeing this’ or something. Clearly, it was a violation that Alira could see them. Lady Goddess was doing something, and Alira sure didn’t enjoy being the centerpiece of her play.
When she first came to Staywes, the Instances were frequent. They were just casual banters, idle conversations as they read to her that brought her no value. As time went on, they began to appear less and less, and with this time ending with fiend’s remark, it was safe to assume that it was due to them starting to catch on.
Alira shifted her attention to another part of this session with them that could very well be the last one in a long while. The more urgent piece of information. One of them mentioned ‘sensing’ Mother, and it sounded like there would soon be bloodshed.
The hall no longer felt as empty as it looked. Were they about to get sneak-attacked?
She took a quick look at Raine and Calix. Neither of them seemed to notice anything unusual. Slowing her steps down, Alira let the two half-siblings uncaringly leave her behind. She had every right to wonder if they would even notice if she got snatched away.
“Hey, fire boy,” Alira called. “I sense something around. Sniff it out for me, won’t you?”
{ Hm... Whatever you’re talking about, sweetie. You’re the one with a better nose at sniffing, not me. }
Alira spoke fluent Xia-ese. At least she was fluent enough to understand this was his way of asking for a reason why he should help her.
“I—” Alira had just started when she cut herself short.
Her ears twitched as Calix came to a halt. “We’re not moving.”
Alira hummed. The hallway they had been walking down hadn’t shifted in appearance at all. The same dark brick walls without a single chipped brick, despite how aged they look, and the far end of it that had yet to come, regardless of how close it looked. She actually had her doubts for a second, but didn’t think much of it since the two were quiet.
They had been stuck in an endless corridor from the moment they came down.
“We’re looping in this hall?” Alira said.
Calix shook his head at that. “No. We’re not moving at all.” He turned to face Alira and added, “None of us are.”
And how exactly was that possible? For the next few moments, she waited for an explanation that never came.
“What do you mean?” Alira had to ask, at the expense of sounding like a noob.
She stood about four steps away from Calix while Raine, also having stopped in his tracks, was even further away from the two of them. She strode, inching toward Calix before walking past him to reach Raine.
The fact that they were stuck, unmoving, in some impossible spatial loop didn’t surprise her, and it shouldn’t, considering the existence of spatial mages in this world. The part that baffled her was that it didn’t seem like they had been stationary at all.
Clearly, she’d just moved from where she was to join the two. Neither Raine nor Calix looked like they planned to answer her question, going back to glancing around and doing what looked like nothing to Alira.
She tried again with a different question, hoping to draw some enlightenment from them. “How do you know that?”
“Mana, whichever stage, is anchored in place until someone who could command it, a mage, consciously moves it,” Raine explained, likely starting to feel pity for her. He probably was also feeling more generous than usual after that little trick he pulled on her. “Each stream and each speck in the stream are unique with their own distinct imprints. They bear memories and images. It took me a while, but I’m certain it’s the same cloud of mana around me, meaning we haven’t moved at all.”
Too bad that really didn’t help Alira with her mana-blind nose, as Xia called it. At least she now knew the two had an actual logic for their illogical conclusion that wasn’t just pure intuition. If there was one person Alira was confident to bet on in the world, it’d be none other than the protagonist.
Alira tilted her head, ears flicking atop. “So? What do we do?”
{ You wait. }
Xia’s lazy voice rang in her skull. That was one more person overflowing with generosity today.
{ Simple Corruption, messes with your perception. No harm other than time wasted. Don’t worry. The Corruption won’t do much damage even for someone as weak as you. }
Alira indistinctly took a step back at the mere mention of Corruption. Corruption from the Outers was the only thing that could actually kill her, with no trip home after death. That was a no-no. Even if Xia said it was mostly harmless, Alira would break through the ceiling and crawl her way out, away from it if she could.
“This spell... It won’t last forever,” Raine continued, affirming Xia’s claim. “I can feel it wearing off by itself.”
{ Tsk. What an insult to call this curse of an Outer intrusion a spell. }
Xia hissed, his voice turning as sharp as it was whenever he spoke in his native language. Right. If Raine was an artifact nerd, Xia was a magic fanatic. It made sense for him to be one. In fact, as the Imperial Mage, he was the one person who was allowed to have all the opinions about magic.
“Well, that sucks ass.”
“Sucks a...” Raine repeated subconsciously, his voice stunted. “The thing you say sometimes...” he mumbled away.
Alira didn’t care enough to keep her language appropriate for the time and place. It wasn’t exactly proper-lady behavior to be deep underground in a sewer, anyway. More importantly, Mother. Did they feel her presence from this Corruption spell?
What even was its purpose anyway? Why would the cultists set up something like this against any intruder? Why stall for time at all? Alira’s first guess was that they planned to keep the intruders in place while they cleaned out the base.
With Raine and, more importantly, Calix–whom she temporarily assumed was on their side–around, a group of cultists was nothing to worry about. Worst-case scenarios, she would be forced to bring out her trump card called Xia.
Alira had mostly reasoned her worries away when she was hit by a realization. Bloodshed. Was that even possible with the combo of the protagonist and his almost equally overpowered brother?
Then it clicked. They were here.
Tingling heat crept up her neck. Alira felt her hands going cold and sweaty inside her glove. There was only one thought on her mind. One girl.
Lillian.