Aurora was hesitant about following Quince back to the tower’s base. She did not want to risk running into Clove while she was here.
But the nearer Aurora got to the tower’s base, the more she was certain that Clove was not in there. She could not feel the energy Clove gave off.
“I sent everyone off on an errand when I decided to bring you here. Don’t worry, we are alone in our base right now.”
“You send away Clove as well? What if something happens to her?”
It was not right of Aurora to butt in into the tower business like this but old habits died hard. Aurors had spent a lifetime worrying about Clove. It was not that easy for her to stop all of a sudden.
“You should not worry about my companion that much. Clove is more than capable of taking care of herself. Although I cannot figure out why you care about her so much when you are both strangers to each other.”
The word ‘stranger’ burned in Aurora’s mind but she had no words to refute that claim either because Clove had been a stranger to Aurora.
Aurora had no words to convey to Quince what her bond with Clove was without raising too many red flags in the tower’s mind.
“Come on. Aurora’s connection with your companion doesn’t have to be deep for her to care. Our Aurora is a caring person and lovely person. You should be thankful that she helped you out before.”
Rita lightly slapped Aurora on the back to show her support while she addressed Quince at the same time.
Her tone and her words made even Quince take a step back. His expression shifted from amusement to irritation.
Rita’s simple words might have caused his brain to short circuit but they also made Aurora one thing.
“Although you and Clove are strangers to me there is something familiar about you that makes me want to help you out. If you find this disturbing then I won’t approach you again.”
Aurora was making things too complicated with her thinking. She was thinking about the possibility of the impossible.
Even if Quince did figure out about Aurora and his past, would he be able to accept it? Time-reversing was an impossible phenomenon.
‘Quince won’t accept such an absurd possibility. There is no reason for me to feel this nervous.’
Aurora gave Rita a thankful smile to show that she was grateful for the support. It had been Rita and her quick action that brought Aurora out of her bind.
“Remind you of someone, huh? I can’t say that I understand but I won’t ask you to stay away from us either. Clove likes you so I guess I can learn to tolerate you as well.”
Even though Quince said that Aurora could feel his aura getting comfortable with her.
Now that Quince did not fight 24/7 with her for Clove’s attention, the open hostility he showed Aurora was gone from his being.
Now Quince behaved with her like behaved with any other acquaintance.
“I’ll get the coordination ready for you but are you sure you want to head to the 8th floor? With this circle, you can go all the way over to the 10th floor and avoid running into other monsters.”
“I know. But the 8th floor is where we need to go.”
“Alright. If that’s what you want me to do then I’ll send you out there.”
Quince nodded along, knowing that he would not be able to sway the party in any way. He could see their unwavering determination in their expression.
The teleportation circle sprang to life when Quince dropped his blood on it. His magic flowed into the circle and created a pool of light.
“This will take you to a random place on the 8th floor. I could not set the pool to the usual coordinates since they correspond to the tower base and I’m sure you want to avoid that encounter.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you for your help regarding this issue.”
Aurora thanked the young teen before following her two companions. They had already disappeared into the pool of light but Aurora had not wanted to leave without saying a word before leaving.
The pool’s light reached her burst before she heard another pair of footsteps and a familiar presence made itself known to the pair.
“Quince, what is going on? Are we going somewhere?…..W-Wait, I think I’m going to fall.”
Aurora quickly turned around, only to meet wide blue eyes that were falling along with Aurora into the pool.
“Clove, what are you doing?”
Clove seemed to have lost her balance. (how she got so close to the pool without notice was anyone’s guess). Her body fell toward Aurora and Aurora hurried up to catch the younger female.
At the same time, Quince had reached out to fish Clove out as well but the momentum his body preserved caused him to slip up and fall as well.
The trio fell into the light pool as it got cut off from the other side.
===========================
Natasha and Rita made it to the other side relatively safely before they felt that something was wrong.
Aurora had not arrived through the light but it seemed to be fading from around the pair.
“What the fuck? Did that tower brat trick us?” Rita cursed as she watched the pool’s connection get cut off.
She could not believe that she had decided to trust a tower official. In the end, they all had been tricked and now they were separated.
“I don’t think it was Quince’s doing. I think something forcefully changed the coordination of the pool. There was a slight flicker of power when I tried to sense the flow of power on the other side.”
Natasha’s explanation was clear and to the point. Rita chose to believe her since Natasha was much more sensitive about magical matters.
Still, it does not change the fact that their group had been separated by some kind of higher power.
p?(??)? ?o??? “Shit. What should we do now? We don’t even know where we are in the abyss.”
The more Rita thought about her situation, the more annoyed she felt. It did not help that her powers were as good as gone in her current condition.
She had only Natasha to rely on and even Natasha could only do so much. The pair had not realized just how much they had been dependent on Aurora to keep them safe.
“Rita, I cannot help but feel like your language is getting cruder and cruder each day and so is your brain. Anyway, we can use the system to lead us back to Aurora. Whatever is affecting this place seems to not affect our system at all. I can still see Aurora’s position on it.”
“Really? Let me see. Whoa, you are right.”
Natasha wanted to shake her head at Rita’s obvious lack of foresight. Sometimes, Rita behaved more like a teenager than an adult she was.
“Sometimes I wonder who is the adult between you and me. You act so childishly most of the time that I forget you are over 21 years old.”
“Technically I am 17 years old but the abyss aged me quite a bit in its trial and my body is nearly 24 years old. Does it still make me a teenager? I’m not quite sure but I do feel horny like a teenager.”
“You! Let’s just forget this conversation ever happen.”
This was, by no doubt, the weirdest conversation Natasha ever had the pleasure of being a part of.
For all the information they had shared, Natasha had never bothered to ask Rita about her past. There were some things Natasha knew about Rita but they were mostly small pieces of information Rita ended up revealing.
It was the first time Rita had felt comfortable sharing such a big secret of hers. Natasha did not want to carelessly comment on it and hurt the elder.
“Do you think we should risk moving from this place? We are not the best fighters right now and we also lack resources.”
Most of the resource management was done by Aurora since she knew what their party would and would not need on this journey.
But Natasha and Rita could not sit back and wait for Aurora to come and find them either. That would put too much pressure on Aurora.
“Let’s take it one step at a time. The first thing we should do is to find the night market on this floor. Since the sun is still up, we likely have a few hours to start heading toward it.”
“But where should we even be headed? It’s not like we know where the night market will be held.”
“We don’t but the other humans might know. I can see some humanoid life signals when I opened the map. I’m sure I will be able to force out some information out of them if I played my cards right.”
“Sure. Do what you want to but don’t get hurt in the process. I won’t explain to Aurora what happened here.”
The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr𝒆e(w)𝒆bnovel