“It’s too dark here. Ahem... can’t the two of us go together?” Milian said awkwardly. Every so often, her body would tremble a little, and even the silly tuft of hair on her head quivered along with her.

How could Vinny not see that this dumb blond idiot was scared of the dark and didn’t dare stay here alone?

“I mean, if there’s some danger up ahead, it’s safer for you to stay in the back.”

“Then wouldn’t it be better if the two of us stayed together?” Milian said, intertwining her hands. “That way we can look out for each other more. Otherwise, if something hiding in the dark attacks us, we won’t be able to take each other into account at all.”

“All right, you do have a point.” At this point, Vinny couldn’t be bothered exposing what Milian was really thinking. Besides, what she said did make some sense.

It was just that, in an environment this dark, this blond little menace’s fighting ability was probably weakened by at least fifty percent. If the two of them were attacked together, Vinny really wasn’t sure whether she could protect herself, or whether he would be able to spare attention for her.

The instant she heard that, Milian hurried over in tiny quick steps to Vinny’s side, as if afraid she would be left behind and abandoned if she lagged.

“Let’s go.” Seeing Milian catch up, Vinny continued forward.

CLINK.

As he walked, Vinny felt as though he had stepped on something, and a crisp sound rang out. He lowered his head and, by the dim glow given off by the Ghostlight Mushrooms, discovered that he had stepped on glass. Judging by its shape, it seemed to be a broken crystal lamp.

“As expected, this place was excavated by the Ancient Empire. Back then, the lighting equipment here should have been functioning normally. It’s just that now the magic core has dried up, so there’s no energy supply anymore.” Vinny lowered his head and examined the crystal lamp as he thought. “Judging by the style, this should be the structural design of an Ancient Empire crystal lamp.”

Vinny suddenly recalled the spatial rift he had encountered down the mountain earlier, as well as what that trapped Carillian Academy upperclassman had said.

Could it be that Gaflei Fort was far more than it appeared? That it was not merely an impregnable fortress, and that one of the reasons the Tyrelis Ancient Empire had built this place back then was not simply defense, but to conduct some extremely secret experiments here? That so many mechanisms and layers of safeguards had been laid down precisely so that, even if something went wrong, no one would be capable of breaking in?

If that really was the case, then the Ancient Empire craftsmen who designed this place had truly been impressive. They had designed sixty oil-painting keys that looked like mere decorations, impossible to imitate, and indispensable in their entirety.

Once Gaflei Fort fell and the Ancient Empire lost actual control over it, any invaders who broke in would certainly treat those paintings as ordinary works of art and decorative objects, and most likely burn them all in one fire. There was no way they would imagine such a complete set could remain intact, because no one would believe that someone would place the keys to an underground palace so casually in the main hall. The most dangerous place was the safest place.

If that happened, then this secret would be buried beneath Nym-Gud Vine forever, never to be known again.

And yet, by sheer coincidence, although those paintings had suffered many scorch marks during the demon-race invasion and had even been looted, not a single one had been destroyed. For some reason, the organization behind that black-robed man had learned of this secret, and after spending hundreds of years, they had truly managed to gather all the lost paintings again and solve every puzzle.

One could easily imagine how much thought the Ancient Empire had put into constructing this place. You could tell just from the countless Ghostlight Mushrooms placed here to prevent the place from being plunged into darkness if the energy ever ran dry. The Ancient Empire craftsmen had accounted for every possible contingency.

The place where they stood seemed to be an open archway. Once they passed through a narrow stretch of corridor, their field of vision abruptly widened.

“This is—??” Milian stared at the scene before her in utter shock.

Ahead of them stretched a vast expanse with no end in sight. Countless Ghostlight Mushrooms illuminated portions of the “beast” lurking in the deep dark. Upon exquisitely cut bricks and tiles were engraved dazzling magic characters, so numerous and dense that it made one dizzy to look at them. It was impossible to imagine how many years and how much labor it had taken to build this place, or how much of the Ancient Empire craftsmen’s lifeblood had been poured into it.

“It was this huge??” Milian was aghast.

Even Vinny was stunned by the scale of the underground palace, enough that he began wondering whether this was not some subterranean research facility at all, but the tomb of some Tyrelis Ancient Empire emperor.

Even Ghostlight Mushrooms as dense as stars could not illuminate one-thousandth of its total area.

It looked as though the narrow doorway from before had only been the entrance to the underground palace. This place was the real thing.

“The soil layer here shows traces of magical excavation.” Vinny pondered. “Looks like this entire area was carved out by the Ancient Empire people back then.”

“No way??” Milian looked completely unable to believe it. “An area this huge, and underground too? They would have had to consider the risk of collapse. How long would it even take to excavate something like this??”

“That, I have no idea.” Vinny glanced at the outline of the enormous underground palace in the shadows. It was like some gigantic creature sleeping there. If possible, no one would ever want to wake it.

“Do you think we’ll find an exit here?” Milian sounded uneasy.

“Milian, don’t ask me that. I can’t say for sure either.” Vinny spread his hands.

“Th-then what are we supposed to do??” Milian suddenly collapsed to the ground in emotional breakdown.

“What do you mean, what are we supposed to do?”

“What if... what if we end up trapped here for the rest of our lives??” Milian sounded almost despairing. “Spending an entire lifetime in a place this dark where you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face—I don’t want that!”

“Milian, can you stop assuming the worst possible outcome for everything?” Vinny rolled his eyes.

“And you still look so relaxed! We don’t even know whether we fell all the way down to the center of the earth or not. We don’t even know whether we can get back. What are we supposed to do??” Milian clutched her head.

“So what? Milian, you need to trust that heaven always leaves a way out. We’ll find some way back eventually, so relax. All right, hurry up and get up. Let’s go explore the underground palace ahead.” Vinny, having experienced far too much already, was very calm now. The reason was simple. This was not the first time something like this had happened to him. Ever since entering Carillian Academy, he had hardly had a few peaceful days. It had been one disaster after another the whole time.

The benefit of that was that Vinny’s mental toughness and crisis-response ability were no longer anything like what they had once been.

Though, well, it was a bit hell on his life expectancy.

“All right, enough already. Milian, you’re not a child anymore. Get up. It’s not that big a deal.” Vinny spoke as he walked over.

Yet Milian did not respond to Vinny at all. She just stayed crouched there, hugging her head, unmoving, curled into a lump like a golden rice cake, trembling all over.

“Milian, what’s with you? That posture—what is this, are you being held hostage or something??” Vinny said with some amusement.

Milian still said nothing, showing no reaction at all to Vinny’s teasing. She remained in that crouched, head-covered defensive posture, not saying a word.

In truth, she had already been feeling awful earlier, from the moment they entered the underground chamber. It was like some all-pervasive toxin seeping into every pore. She had only been forcing herself to hold on out of stubbornness and pride.

She really was afraid of the dark.

Afraid of places like this—sinister, terrifying, underground.

Places like this were where the dead were buried.

Sound and sensation were growing distant from her. She felt herself drifting farther and farther away from the Mother of Earth. A black tide swallowed her whole. Her mind grew heavy, her vision darkened, and a buzzing rang in her ears.

Sister.

Milian pressed her lips together and reached a hand out in front of her, trying to grab hold of something, but in the end, she caught nothing at all.

Her whole body was cold. Her palms were soaked with cold sweat. Uncontrollable terror spilled continuously from the Pandora’s box that had been opened, spreading cracks through her mind like a spiderweb.

“Good grief.” Vinny pressed a hand to his forehead. From the fact that Milian could not even manage to snap back at him anymore, he could tell that this blond little menace was basically done for.

At first, he had thought Milian resembled a big child.

Now, he thought Milian simply was a child.

From childhood to now, she had clearly been soaked in honey and milk by her sister and her clansmen, never exposed to society, never beaten down by reality, and never made to see how nasty the world could be.

Thinking about it, it was only natural. Her sister, Selivlin, would have cut off absolutely everything that might possibly hurt Milian and kept her from ever coming into contact with it. The price of that excessive protection was that Milian could not withstand the slightest storm.

It had even protected her to the point that she knew nothing about some of the most basic common sense.

Looking at the way Milian seemed to want to curl herself into a shell, Vinny found himself unable to say anything demanding or harsh anymore.

He felt like this trip was basically the same as taking a child outside.

“All right, Milian. Just look at yourself right now. And you were still saying you’re not a child. Weren’t you just insisting before that you weren’t scared at all?” Vinny let out a soft sigh.

Milian still did not respond. She remained crouched there, shivering.

She was scared stupid.

She had already been pretty stupid to begin with. Now she was even worse.

Vinny felt a bit helpless. While soothing her, he lightly patted Milian on the back and took hold of her hand. “You’ll be fine. Have a little courage. Be brave, Milian.”

At those words, something in Milian’s heart stirred slightly.

This time, Vinny had not added “classmate” after her name.

Milian’s expression shifted. She cautiously lifted her gaze a little, like some timid mushroom poking its head out to look around.

For some reason, Vinny’s words reminded her of her mo—... no, her sister.

To be honest, Milian could not really distinguish between the concepts of older sister and mother, because her mother had died when she was very young. She had been raised single-handedly by her older sister.

An elder sister was like a mother. Milian understood that deeply.

In her mind, her sister had taken over the role of mother.

What Vinny had just said sounded just like the gentle words her sister usually used to encourage her. Even the tone had been almost the same.

The trembling in Milian’s heart settled slightly. At the same time, she looked at Vinny somewhat tentatively, not knowing what to say for a moment.

This hateful blue-haired human... could be gentle too?

[Virtue +100.]

[Current Virtue: 6149. (A hundred was missed earlier.)]

Milian said nothing.

For some reason, the softness in Vinny’s voice had lodged itself straight into her heart, warming the part of her that had fallen into a bottomless abyss.

After coming back to herself a little, Milian was still rather astonished. She could not believe that this vicious, sharp-tongued blue-haired guy could speak in such a gentle tone. It sounded so unlike him that it almost did not feel like his words at all.

It gave Milian an °• N o v e l i g h t •° extremely strange sense of déjà vu.

What Vinny had said earlier sounded more like something a gentle, virtuous older sister would say.

But Milian had no attention to spare for that now. At the moment, she was like a drenched kitten desperately yearning for a place of warmth and safety.

If every person had a sanity bar floating above their head, then Milian’s had probably already dropped to zero. The bratty attitude and tone she had worn before were completely gone now, and her whole body had gone limp and soft.

She really was afraid of the dark.

And she really was afraid of places like this.

This place was like an abyss.

“I-I didn’t want to be like this either.” Hugging her knees and burying her face in them, Milian spoke pitifully. “I really... wasn’t trying to drag you down on purpose. I actually wanted to help you... I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Perhaps Vinny’s tone had melted the part of Milian that had been forcing itself to stay strong, and along with it, the little mouth that usually spared no one had softened completely, finally voicing what she truly felt inside.

Under normal circumstances, even if she felt apologetic and guilty, Milian would still have forced out a couple of stubborn retorts. That alone showed how terrified she really was.

“I know you didn’t want to drag me down, Milian. This is your first time going through something like this. I understand. It’s dark here, and it scared you, right? If it were me, if this were my first time going through something like this, I’d probably be in even worse shape than you.” There was no blame in his voice. Somehow, seeing Milian looking like a helpless child who had gotten lost and could not find her parents, Vinny could not say a single word of reproach. Instead, he accepted the uncontrollable mess of emotions she could not sort out herself.

Milian pressed her lips together. She had never imagined that Vinny could have a side like this—so understanding, so considerate. It was something she had never expected at all.

So that was it.

No wonder Shicodale trusted him so much. She had gone through it before too. At her most desperate moment, he had been the one who accepted her, supported her, and helped her.

Milian felt as though she finally understood why Shicodale could never let go of Vinny.

“So stop belittling yourself in your own head. You’ve already done very well. What you’re lacking is only a little courage to face reality.” Vinny comforted her gently.

“Milian, a lot of the time, instead of instinctively choosing to snap back with your mouth, you should listen to what your heart is actually saying, and then honestly express what you really feel. More people would like you that way.”

“Aren’t there plenty of times when, afterward, you regret the things you said?”

“I... I...” Milian was rendered speechless by those words, looking unbearably awkward, like someone whose thoughts had just been exposed.

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