With my eyes closed now, I could feel the different copies of Windorf, but only one of them was the real one. Now with my eyes closed, I was quickly able to lock on to him, and with this new sense, I could keep my eyes closed.
I waited, and I assumed that Windorf was attacking me right away after my comment, but the windbag was made of more potent stuff, it seemed. Regardless I would just have to wait, this was probably one of his tactics to catch me off guard, but I was surprised when I felt him slow down until he stopped moving altogether. ??
"That is all," Windorf said, and I opened my eyes, but at the exact moment, all traces of him had disappeared.
I turned back and walked back over to the girls where we were all waiting, but then I remembered something and wanted to kick myself.
"Mary, can you please get down for a moment," I asked Marry, and she listened to me, and then I turned back to the clearing and yelled. "Hey! Come back, that wasn't fair, and I had forgotten about Mary."
"That was not why I said that we were done. I had no way to attack you without you being able to take me into some kind of grapple. I knew that you had come far enough for now and that you will need this lesson to sink in," Windorf said as he briefly appeared and then blew away when he was done speaking.
I shrugged my shoulders; that was a pretty good explanation, and that sun was getting dangerously low. I turned back to the girl and picked Mary back up.
"That was beyond the normal amount of strange, but it was also good to see that he is taking me more seriously. I think that tomorrow I might be able to get him to actually try to fight me, but also, thank you, Nushi. You probably saved my life there, and I owe you for that," I said with a smile, but Nushi was writing something in her book, and when she was done, she looked right at me.
"I know, I have it written in my book, and now that I have increased my level, I can learn more. I will keep track of all the lives you owe me, and then one day I will come to collect them," Nushi said as she closed her book, and that made my eyes go big.
"Hey! I'm a bit attached to my life, you know. I kind of need it to… keep living," I said with a strained look, and Nushi only laughed at me.
"Not your actual life, silly. I will just take my payment in the form of children since you also said that you would protect me from Nixi. So, I will let this one go if you come through with your promise, but not like I will be around to complain about it," Nushi said, looking away, and her horns were starting to drop down, so I interceded.
"No, you better worry about saving my life more than because this one is already paid off with my intent. If I can't protect you from Nixi, then I won't be here to say that I told you so after because I will fight until I got nothing left," I said in a confident voice, and that helped snap Nushi's horns back into place.
"Good, everyone is happy, now can we go? It is going to get dark very soon, and we don't want to be out here when it does!" Jilly said, and then she turned and started to run very fast with Nushi on her back.
Jilly was right, and I started to run after her with the Cerberus girls running beside me. I had forgotten the girl's clothes, but that was a minor thing considering that we needed to get home before dark.
The trip back was far faster than it was there, but that was to be expected, but there weren't any signs of monsters. I had assumed that there was going to be something that would try to attack us or something, but there was nothing.
"Is this normal?" I asked Jilly as we passed by Wataluga's pond.
"What? The fact that nothing is bothering us? That is because as the sun is just about to go down, until the end of twilight, the daytime monsters go into hiding, and the nighttime ones start waking up. This is probably one of the safest times to be traveling if you have somewhere to go," Jilly explained to me as I ran beside her, and we were almost back to Grogvel's area.
He wasn't there, and we kept up the pace, running hard to get back, but something felt a bit too easy about this run back. Once we broke from the forest, my suspicions were confirmed, and we all stopped in front of Mex, who was conveniently waiting for us.
Now, that didn't mean that he followed us around, but I felt like there should have been more monster attacks. I wouldn't have put it past Mex to get a couple of the monsters to attack us as a test to make sure that I could take care of the girls.
"You all made it back safe and sound! Wonderful, just wonderful, and it isn't even dark yet! I can say that I was a bit worried, but you handled yourself quite well, but you did have help with Candace," Mex said casually, but he was glaring at Nushi, but she was glaring back.
"I figured that you might be lurking somewhere; there was no way that It should have been that easy," I said as I watched the two demons stare each other down, and Mex was the first to look away.
"You know that she is going to be pissed at you forever now, right? And him as well!" Mex said as he rubbed his head as he looked at the ground.
"Candace? The Sphinx? So you know her?" I asked in confusion.
"Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have been so hard on her, but I thought she had left the maze on her own! How was I supposed to know what games you were playing?!" Nushi retorted, and now I was pretty confused.
The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr𝒆e(w)𝒆bnovel