Adeline had somehow caught up and now stood about ten meters away.
She wore the same gentle smile she always did.
“You’re leaving without so much as a word. I must say, that’s a little hurtful.”
The moment I saw Adeline’s face—which did not look hurt in the slightest—I finally realized what that feeling was that had been tormenting me all this time.
Whenever I faced Adeline, I had always been seized by an inexplicable sense of discomfort. It was like a melody circling in my mouth while the title of the song refused to come to mind.
I had assumed it was simply a feeling brought on by the unfamiliar existence of a split personality.
“Right. Humans don’t make faces like that.”
I forced out the words through a throat that felt scorched. At my whisper, Varen nodded in agreement.
I had only thought Adeline was a woman with an excellent poker face. As the leader of a large organization like the Rebels, I had assumed she simply did not show her emotions.
Adeline always wore the same face. That distinctive gentle, peaceful smile.
I thought I finally understood the nature of the discomfort I had felt from her all this time.
The technical term was the uncanny valley. The instinctive revulsion and discomfort one feels when something nonhuman resembles a human too closely.
“Ugh...”
The sensation of insects crawling beneath my feet grew clearer and clearer. It was getting so bad that I could almost believe the ground itself was heaving.
I gripped Varen’s hand tightly at my side. As long as a dragon was with me, we would not be easily overpowered, but the problem was that the thing wearing Adeline’s face wanted Varen.
A crushing anxiety overtook me at the thought that even a single scratch might be left on Varen’s body. If possible, we had to get away safely without fighting at all.
By then, people from the Rebels had gathered behind Adeline. They ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ looked back and forth between us, suddenly trying to leave, and Adeline, wearing puzzled expressions.
The sight of dozens of people gathering around eased my mind a little. It must have had plenty of chances to target Varen already, so there had to be a reason it had never revealed its true form until now.
Only after I became certain it would not attack in front of all these people did I force a stiff, awkward smile.
“Haha, Adeline. Are you seeing us off? I’m sorry, but we have somewhere urgent to be.”
“Hm, and where might that be?”
“That would be difficult to tell you. Morpha will be back tomorrow, so you can speak with them then.”
“I have something I need to discuss with Dravergh right now.”
“No. Dravergh is coming with me.”
I put force into each syllable, making my intent clear.
At that, Adeline kept her gentle face, but a pale gleam flashed between the curves of her narrowed eyes.
I gave her one last slight bow, then turned without hesitation. Clutching Varen’s hand tightly, I broke into a frantic run.
Keeping up with my fastest pace without any trouble, Varen glanced back.
“Ceryl, that woman isn’t chasing us. The distance is already getting pretty wide, so you don’t have to keep running.”
“Ugh, distance isn’t the problem. It feels like I’m stepping on insects. It’s driving me insane!”
“Stepping on insects? What are you talking about?”
“Aaagh, just run for now!”
The sensation under my feet that I had dismissed as imagination only grew sharper. We were definitely getting farther from Adeline, and yet the writhing feeling in the ground continued to chase us.
It felt like this wouldn’t work. I grabbed onto Varen’s arm with both hands and shouted.
“Varen, Varen! This won’t do—we have to fly!”
“All right. Come here, Ceryl.”
“Ugh...!”
Varen wrapped an arm securely around my shoulders. His feet, running at full speed, lifted from the ground first, and just as my feet were about to leave the earth after his—
A noise moving even faster than that came rushing toward us.
Crunch, crack. At the sound of the earth splitting and stone breaking from deep below, I hurriedly looked down.
The ground where Varen’s foot had been just moments earlier was splitting open. The thin crack quickly became a hole as large as a fist. And from the pitch-black darkness below, whose depth I could not measure, something shot upward.
At that instant, the task Morpha had left me came back to mind.
“Keep your senses sharp. Watch for anything approaching under cover of darkness, or anything crawling up through the ground.”
Bastard. So you knew.
With that flash of realization, I ground my teeth and shoved Varen away with my whole body.
Normally, my strength would never have been enough to move him, but Varen was half-floating in the air and lost his balance, flying backward at once.
A span of less than three seconds seemed to pass before my eyes frame by frame. The last thing I saw was Varen’s face, frowning as if asking what I thought I was doing.
After slamming my whole body into him with all my strength, my foot came down over the black hole.
“Aaaagh!!!”
I felt the true body of the insect crawling underground coil around my ankle. Wet and slick, it was like an earthworm as thick as an adult’s forearm.
“Ceryl!!”
And before Varen could even react, the thing that had burst from the ground grabbed my ankle and dragged me back down into the place it had come from.
The insect underground wrapped around my ankle so tightly it felt as though it would crush the bone.
But I had no time to feel the pain.
As it dragged me through the narrow tunnel faster than a galloping horse, dirt poured into every opening—my eyes, nose, mouth—and stones large and small scraped across my entire body.
When the ordeal—like being tortured with earth itself—finally ended, I coughed violently as I inhaled clear air again for the first time in what felt like forever, though it had only been a few dozen seconds.
“Cough, hack, guh...!”
My eyelids were so caked with dirt I could barely open them.
I instinctively tried to raise a hand and wipe my face, but by then even my wrists had been bound by the insect from the ground.
Left with no other choice, I shook my head to fling off the dirt, and once I did, the sharp screams around me pierced through the ringing in my ears.
“Aaaaah! Th-that, what is that?!”
“L-Lady Adeline... on her back... a monster...”
When I raised my blurred gaze, that gentle smile greeted me head-on.
All four of my limbs were bound by insects and suspended in the air, yet the moment I faced something so ridiculous, a hollow laugh escaped me.
I spat out the dirt filling my mouth and gave the thing wearing Adeline’s face a crooked grin.
“Isn’t your skin way too thick?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Humans... don’t make expressions like that. Cough... if you’re going to imitate one, do it properly.”
At that, the thing resembling Adeline kept smiling and lifted a hand.
Then it lightly stroked its cheek and hooked a finger into one corner of its mouth, tugging it upward.
“Like this?”
That gentle smile, with only one corner of the mouth grotesquely pulled up, proved that she was not human.
The sight was so horrifying that fear swept through me hard enough to make my whole body tremble.
But I stubbornly kept my eyes wide open and stared back at Adeline.
“I don’t know what you are, but I can tell you’ve got nerve.”
“Oh dear, what should I do? I don’t have any liver.”
My eyes darted quickly over the insects binding my hands and feet. There were dozens of them, writhing as they hovered in the air.
All of them were crawling out from Adeline’s back and moving as if they were alive.
Neither my limited knowledge of the original story nor any shred of ordinary common sense could tell me what this thing was.
“Ceryl!!!”
At that moment, a roar like the earth itself shaking thundered from behind me. A few frail humans even clutched their ears and collapsed where they stood.
I could feel Varen flying toward me in a blazing rage without even needing to see him.
I looked down at Adeline with a confident smile.
“You think you can deal with a dragon using a few pathetic insects like these?”
The thing wearing Adeline’s form slowly curled up the other corner of its mouth as well.
Now that I looked closely, the skin of its face had no elasticity at all—its lips stretched far past the limits of a human face, all the way toward the cheekbones.
The mismatch between the warm smile in its eyes and the grotesque shape of its mouth made my stomach turn.
Now no longer bothering to hide the gleam in its eyes, Adeline answered.
“There’s no way I could fight a dragon.”
“...What?”
I heard Varen gathering power just a short distance away.
The instant I recognized the sound of flames flaring to life, the things binding my limbs writhed.
As if trying to crush fragile human bones, the insects tightened viciously, pressing into my arms and legs.
“Aaaagh!!!”
Adeline toyed with my screaming body as though it were a doll, shaking me in the air.
As I dangled there like bait, my eyelids caked with dirt and tears fluttered weakly open.
“Ugh... Ceryl...”
Varen’s face, thrown into utter panic, filled my vision.
Adeline thrust my body out toward him as though using me for a shield.
And because of that, even with a massive fireball gathered in his hand, Varen could not attack recklessly.
Far from attacking, he had almost hurled the flames straight into my face before stopping himself in midair with sheer reflex.
“Hah... hah, Varen...”
Pain throbbed through my wrists and ankles, and a thin groan leaked from my mouth.
Varen’s face twisted as if he were in even greater pain than I was.
As long as I was being held hostage, Varen would not be able to attack this damned insect bastard.
The moment I realized that, the left side of my chest ached more sharply than the limbs being crushed in its grip.
With a wet, whipping sound, the insects binding my body moved swiftly.
As I was dragged helplessly toward Adeline like a wooden puppet, Varen glared at me with his teeth clenched hard enough to grind.
