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Chapter 335 Volume V - Chapter 53: With a Hope Still Not Lost

"Yes."

There were indeed two people talking, whose voices I could hear more and more clearly as time passed.

"He wasn\'t even hurt, he just... used his mana too much and too fast, that\'s all. He is an elf, even if only half, so I think he\'ll be fine... hopefully."

Lucia... it was Lucia talking. Then it must have been Sue who she was talking to.

So... I made it. I survived the night.

Opening my eyes as well as my ears, I tried to sit up, but... realizing the fatigue and pain in my body, I inevitably paused.

I felt fatigue and pain every time I used my ascension skill, which... at least for me, was quite normal. After all, even though it belonged to me, it provided a power that my body couldn\'t handle. Mana Ascension was a skill that took something from me every time I used it.

That\'s why I only used it when it was most necessary. In fact, because I had been sealed for years, I had hardly ever used it and was afraid to do so.

Now, even though I had decided not to care too much about such things anymore, I would only use and deactivate it for a few seconds to minimize the damage to my body.

But this time, I used it for more than a minute. Which is probably why the side effects are more severe than they should be... probably.

"Look, he\'s awake."

Ah, right... I got lost in my thoughts.

I opened and closed my eyes a few times, and when I could see my surroundings more clearly, I looked at the two girls in front of me.

We were in the pit where I had left them. They must have carried me in after I collapsed.

Sue looked a little worried. Her dark blue eyes were looking at me skeptically. As if... as if I might collapse again at any moment. But unlike her, Lucia was calm, as always.

Really, now that I think about it... I\'ve never once seen her completely frightened. Lucia is someone who always keeps her cool. I realize it now, but... it\'s interesting. Even in that dark street, she was the one who brought me to my senses.

"How do you feel? I think... something happened outside."

I sighed deeply at Lucia\'s words, pushed my thoughts aside again, and answered her question.

"Well, I\'m fine, but... I think I need some rest. I pushed myself too hard. And yes, something indeed happened..."

When I remembered what had happened last night... I couldn\'t help swallowing. Now, when I thought about it rationally, it was absurd that there were thousands of wolves surrounding me. It was probably because of their howling and my dizziness that I saw them several times more numerous than they actually were. But even if that was the case... they were scary.

Dozens, maybe over a hundred, of at least C grade creatures that never show themselves... All of them moving in unison, never one of them acting on its own. Despite their numbers, they try to completely neutralize their prey before attacking it, and by showing only their eyes, they literally try to instill fear in them...

I\'ve never seen anything like it, not even in all my time on the Neutral. The creatures here... they\'re on a whole other level.

"How long has it been since I passed out?"

"About three hours, not long. You woke up pretty fast."

Three hours, huh... Then we should still have time. I\'d better be quick.

Without waiting for them to ask, I started to tell them what had happened, how I had walked away from the cave, the strange bluish color of the river, how I had circled around and found nothing.

Only with all this, of course, they didn\'t understand what had happened. After all, how could I \'push myself too hard\' when there was no danger around? So they continued to listen to me without asking anything.

Their eyes squinted as I described how the green sky surrendered itself to the darkness, how the river rose into it like an aurora. And when I described the howls, the red-eyed wolves, and what happened next... they were completely silent.

When I finished telling them what had happened... the first thing I did was to look at Sue. I had expected the little hope I could see in her to fade away completely, and it had... but only imperceptibly.

Sue hadn\'t lost hope yet. Yes, her hope that we could survive had certainly dropped... but she hadn\'t given up. She still wanted to believe in us, in me. She wanted to survive.

Even though I was surprised, I didn\'t want to make it worse by saying anything, so I took my eyes off her and turned them to Lucia.

Lucia... was thinking with her eyes fixed on the floor. Shortly after I looked at her, she decided to speak again.

Oh... she had also changed her clothes. So I didn\'t find it hard to look at her this time, at least... not as hard as before.

Where did she find new clothes, though...? Ah, right... we were shopping before we were dragged here.

"In short, the day-night cycle is all the danger in the dungeon. It should be safe to walk around outside as long as it\'s daytime... at least for this plain. When it\'s night, though, sleeping and hiding creatures come out into the open. So... they get hurt when they go out during the day? That must be why they didn\'t jump you even when you were a completely open target."

She paused for a moment, thinking again.

"We need to find out how many hours are divided into day and night. Then, maybe, even if it\'s a long shot, we can ignore all the creatures in the dungeon and head straight for the boss. But if the boss room is somewhere the green radiance in the sky can\'t reach... like a cave, a castle, or the inside of a mountain... then we\'ll have a hard time here."

I let her think even more without saying anything, and Sue did the same. It was already clear that Lucia was the smartest of us all.

"You don\'t see anything else out there, do you?"

I tensed for a moment when Lucia suddenly turned to me, but then I shook my head from side to side.

"No. I told you everything I saw."

I may have left out a little bit about how I managed to survive the creatures... but other than that, I really told her everything.

"Hmm..."

Lucia thought a little longer and finally sighed. Her blood-red eyes were fixed on mine again.

"How much rest do you need? Will you be fully fit to fight tomorrow or in two days?"

"I\'m not sure about a day, but in two days, yes."

"Then we will rest for two days without fighting. If the creatures are even a little scared of you, they will keep watching before they get close to here. But they\'ll be on us before long. I don\'t think they have much patience, and I don\'t think we want to take any risks."

Both Sue and I found ourselves nodding involuntarily. Lucia... had a strange air about her when she spoke. I don\'t know if it was her charm, but she was... logical and pleasant to listen to.

"So, let\'s leave here before night falls again, and find a new place to hide. We will never spend a day in the same place. At the end of each night, we will move out and look for the dungeon boss. And when we find it..."

This time, her eyes looked at me with great hope. As if... as if she was leaving everything to me. Yet she didn\'t speak individually, she continued for all of us.

"I hope we will be strong enough to kill it."

She didn\'t follow up, she didn\'t say anything else. But she didn\'t need to. Everything that needed to be said had been said, at least for today.

So... the first thing we did after this conversation was to eat. Sue had brought two sandwiches just in case. She thought she was going to be alone with Lucia, so that was all she had for a snack. So we split the sandwiches.

If there was one thing I learned from eating these sandwiches... it was that Sue is a really good cook. I don\'t know why, but even a simple sandwich tasted pretty good. Maybe it was because we were in a dungeon where there wasn\'t much distance between us and death. Maybe the sandwiches were really delicious in a meaningless way... I don\'t know, but I wasn\'t going to complain.

After we had eaten our fill, we got ready to go outside to find a new hiding place, as we had decided. It didn\'t take long. After making sure we had left nothing behind, I went out first, followed by Lucia and Sue.

Lucia often grimaced because of the asymmetry of her hair as she climbed up through the pit, constantly straightening her hair. But there was nothing she could do.

Eventually, we came out of the cave too. The lush green sky greeted us. It was as if nothing had happened here yesterday... the dungeon was quite calm. The greenery, the trees, all the plants... everything was in its place. This huge plain had become a paradise once again.

"Haaa..."

When Lucia let out a deep sigh, I raised my eyebrows and turned around. Then I noticed the blue glow shimmering just in front of her and was even more surprised.

Lucia lifted the sword from her dimensional inventory and brought it to the back of her head. Then, without giving it much thought, she cut her hair in a single stroke.

I was genuinely surprised as I looked at her hair as it slowly fell to the ground. Lucia... always made me feel like someone who cared about her hair in general. Or I might have assumed that she took care of her hair because she was always too beautiful... but I was really surprised to see her cut her hair without hesitation.

Lucia glanced at her hair, which had fallen to the floor, and sighed again. But... I couldn\'t even focus on what she was doing. Her hair was still a bit asymmetrical because she hadn\'t cut it properly, yes, but it only fell down to her shoulders in its new state, and... it felt very strange.

The hairstyle suited her, of course... It didn\'t look abnormal at all. Lucia was still stunningly beautiful. But that didn\'t change the fact that I had seen her with long hair for months.

"Come on, let\'s go."

I shook my head from side to side, angry with myself, tearing my eyes away from the tufts of hair on the ground.

She was right. We had to be fast. The last thing we wanted was to be left in the middle of the plain when night fell.

"Yeah, let\'s go."

And so... for the first time in the dungeon, the three of us made our way side by side.

One of us with a tiny bit of hope clinging desperately, one of us with a will to survive that was hard to miss in her eyes despite the composure she maintained no matter what, and me... with both the desire to get out of here and my first goal, to find a way to heal Aiden.