Chapter 330 Volume V - Chapter 48: A Safe Pit
I felt shaken, but it was not a violent shaking. It was gentle, slow.
Soon, I realized the cause, or a possible one. There was a strange pain in my body, especially in my chest, that I couldn't make sense of. Whenever the shaking of my body intensified, even slightly, this pain was also amplified.
I focused on this sensation, trying to grasp what it was, and when I tried to do so, I realized that... someone was carrying me.
I tried to open my eyes but I couldn't. My body was so exhausted that my muscles weren't even listening to me. So, I stopped trying to open my eyes. I didn't want to try harder when it hurt me to even try to move in the first place.
Instead, I leaned heavily against the person who was carrying me, trying to ignore the pain. As the pain in my muscles became less and less, I felt myself relaxing.
All my sensations disappeared again, just like before I fainted. But as it happened, without any dream, I woke up once again. I was being carried by the same person again. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, but it wasn't too hard to understand.
This time, I pricked up my ears, tried to listen.
The first thing I heard was the rustling of the grass. There was the person carrying me and... someone else. They were heading somewhere. And when I realized that, only one thought crossed my mind.
Are they Adrian and Sue? Then... Adrian must have been the one carrying me.
What had happened? I vaguely remember Adrian pulling out what looked like a disk. Then... we were sucked into a dungeon. We were teleported directly into a dungeon without any gate.
After that... it's very fuzzy. Did I get a wound? Did I get it inside the dungeon or before...?
"-ian, look here!"
I paused for a moment at the faint, echoing voice I heard. I focused on my ears again.
"-ave?"
A... cave?
"-t's go!"
Ah, they are looking for a place to hide...
I couldn't focus anymore. Reality slipped through my fingers again, all my senses went dark again.
And this time... I had a dream, or rather just a tiny, small memory.
I was ten years old. My birthday was only a few weeks ago. I was strangely excited and sad to finally reach the double-digit age.
I was sad because I realized that I was growing up. Growing up... was something I didn't really want to experience when I saw how busy my parents were.
The reason for my excitement was the strange feeling of growing up in the opposite way. I had turned ten, after all. Ten years old... slowly, but surely, I was allowed to do more and more things.
But... for the first time, I realized a problem about myself at this age.
People always told me I was beautiful. Most of the time, I took it as simple praise. There was nothing else I could think of with my young mind.
It was only when I was ten years old and a girl told me that she hated me because I was so beautiful that I realized for the first time that it was actually something important.
It was the first time at this age that I saw my peers looking at me with jealousy rather than to play with me.
It was also at this age that I learned for the first time that most kids don't really want to play with me, but they force themselves because their parents tell them to. Maybe that's why I was no longer simply looking at the people around me, but analyzing them.
And because of that... everything got worse.
Because... there was not a single person. Not a single person, apart from my family, who approached me for who I was, who wanted to play games or talk to me regardless of who I was, who simply... loved me regardless of my last name or my beauty.
I did what I could, I really tried. I tried to improve my social relationships, I looked for people who could really look at me as a 'friend'.
But... there was no one.
As if it wasn't enough that I realized this at the age of ten... a bigger problem slowly began to manifest itself. My beauty... which they always praised... suddenly became more and more noticeable for no apparent reason.
So, three years after my tenth birthday... it was the first time I had ever seen someone look at me lustfully.
It was a servant in our mansion. He was perfectly normal until that moment. He had been told to bring me my dinner and he had done so.
But he didn't leave my room. Instead... for no reason at all, he just stared at me, frozen. If it hadn't been for another maid who was in charge of cleaning the corridors... perhaps that evening would have been the evening I would have hated the most.
My dream was this very evening. He put my dinner on my table, just like six years ago. When I thanked him with a smile, his eyes widened and he stiffened. It was as if he was not himself, as if something had prevented him from thinking rationally.
And when I asked him if something had happened... for no reason at all, he jumped at me.
But the dream didn't continue. Instead... everything went dark again. For a while, I couldn't even understand what was happening. But then the same darkness was covered by a faint light with great speed. A strange cold enveloped my body, I felt like shivering, but I held myself back.
An intense pain appeared right above my chest. But I tried to ignore it, because... I felt that I could finally open my eyes.
As my eyelids slowly opened, the first thing I saw was... a stone wall. And there was no one carrying me anymore. I was on cold and hard ground.
I tried to sit up, supporting myself with my arms. It hurt a little and my muscles still wouldn't listen to me, but I managed. Slowly, so it wouldn't hurt, I looked behind me.
The first thing I realized... was how dark and small this place really was. There was maybe a meter and a half between the stone wall I had seen when I woke up and the other wall of this... pit... that I was in. And the faint light that illuminated the darkness inside was something the size of a marble floating in the air.
But these were not the important things. Rather, it was a pair of dark blue eyes staring back at me.
"L- Lucia? You're awake!"
Sue, seeing that I was indeed woken up, tried to hug me for a moment. But then she stopped herself quickly. She looked angry with herself for a moment, but then she refocused on me.
"I'm sorry, how are you feeling now? How's the wound on your chest?"
The wound on my chest...?
I forced my mind to think again as I lowered my head slightly at what I heard. And the moment I did it... I remembered.
Just before I was pulled into the dungeon, I tried to protect Adrian, and that's when I got this wound. And then, as I was pulled into this dungeon, I did my best to stay alive.
I could only sigh deeply as I looked at the scar just above my heart.
It looks like it will heal in a short time... But I'd better not push myself.
"I'm fine, don't worry. If I rest for a day or so, I'll be back to normal. But..."
I glanced back at the little pit we were in and then focused on Sue's back. Adrian had his back against the wall and his eyes closed. I couldn't see him at first because he was right behind Sue.
"What's your situation?"
Sue looked in the direction I was looking, at Adrian. Then she let out a deep sigh.
"We... we just walked a long way to find a safe place, so we're a bit tired. Adrian and I are both fine."
I nodded my head slightly.
"I see..."
But I didn't stop and continued.
"So... what is this place? I saw a notification that I had entered a dungeon, but I didn't look at the description... What's the type? What's the grade? And... did Adrian say anything about how he got us in here?"
Sue thought briefly about my questions. She looked back at Adrian again and continued.
"All I know is that we were in a Recta. I was unconscious before we were pulled here, so I didn't see the notification, but we didn't encounter any creatures until we got here, and we must have walked at least two kilometers... so we must be in a low-
grade dungeon. For now, all we can do is wait for Adrian."
I took a deep breath and let myself fall back against the stone wall behind me, just like Adrian.
"Are you sure it's safe here...?"
Sue nodded, this time firmly and without hesitation.
"Yes. We are in a small pit inside a small cave we found. We've sealed off the entrance to both the cave and the pit. Adrian also did something to hide our scent. The chances of a creature finding us... are very low."
I didn't ask any more questions after my answer. Instead, I said that we should rest until Adrian woke up, and Sue agreed. After she laid herself down on the floor and closed her eyes, I looked up at the sealed ceiling of the pit.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the mana in the atmosphere, and the moment I did so... a bitter smile formed on my face.
This... this is not a low-level dungeon.
Haaa... did we jump into death while running away from it in the first place...?
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