Chapter 361 Volume V - Chapter 79: The Thing Behind the Blur
The first thing I could feel was... cold. A strange cold that enveloped my whole body.
And the darkness behind my closed eyes, a familiar one.
It didn't take me long to realize I was awake, I reflexively moved my finger. I was on a wet floor, a little... sticky. And cold.
I paused for a moment. Slowly, everything came into my mind. What happened, why I was here... I remembered touching that extremely beautiful woman, being surrounded by water and vines. And then... nothing.
I tried to remember, I pushed my mind, but... nothing happened. I had no memory of anything after that moment.
I moved my finger again, and then my eyes narrowed slightly. Immediately afterward... I realized how strange it was.
There was no pain, nowhere in my body hurt, and I could move my fingers as I wanted. I felt like my normal self.
No... I was even better than before, as light as a feather.
The woman had kept her promise...
I finally opened my eyes, which I hadn't done more than a little bit of stirring, and there was none of the blurriness that every person experienced when waking up from sleep. Everything was clear, too clear, even... It was amazing to be able to see so well.
But... there was something strange. I... was not alone. I could see two pairs of feet standing in front of me.
I slowly raised my eyes upward, looking at the owner of the foremost pair of feet, and what I saw... was a pair of emerald-green eyes. He was a handsome guy with silver hair. Behind him stood a girl with blood-red eyes and blonde hair.
Their clothes were covered in dirt, blood, and dust. They were torn in places, even threadbare. Their skin was the same way. They looked like... as if they had come out of hell.
They both had the same expression on their faces. In a word... shock. They looked like they were in shock.
I didn't do anything for a while. I didn't move, I didn't move a finger. I didn't even blink. I just... kept looking at those emerald-green eyes. And they kept looking at me the same way.
But, then... suddenly... other memories popped into my mind as I was left standing there.
Aren't these... Adrian and Lucia?
"S- Sue...?"
Lucia spoke first, she took one step toward me but didn't continue. It was like... she was scared. But, then, Adrian slowly moved in front of her.
The shock was still on his face, it hadn't diminished in the slightest. But... that same shock had now been overlaid with a new expression. His brow was furrowed, his eyes hesitant. But at the same time careful.
Why...?
"Sue... is that... you?"
I didn't know how to react to his question.
What do you mean, is that me? Can't you see I'm in front of you?
And... why are you looking at me like I'm your enemy...?
"I- is it really you?"
I remained silent, but with his question came my answer.
No, he wasn't looking at me like I was his enemy. He... he was afraid that I might be an enemy. That's why he was on guard.
I tried to open my mouth to answer, but... I paused with a strange numbness in my throat.
It didn't take me long to push the talking aside, the numbness in my throat was slowly going away anyway. But I didn't want to stay still.
I slowly tried to get up from where I was lying. The moment I did, both Adrian and Lucia took a step back, their expressions much more serious now. They were both ready to attack or defend themselves at the slightest movement.
But I didn't care about them. I wanted to be able to sit up properly first. Lying like that in front of them... it was uncomfortable.
So, I got up slowly, trying to get into a sitting position so as not to frighten them even more. But then... I felt something sliding right over my shoulder, my eyes shifted from the two of them to myself. And what I saw... was a piece of vine just above my skin.
My eyes locked on my skin for a moment. It was clean, shiny even... I didn't look like someone who had been crawling in this dungeon for weeks. In fact... it wasn't just clean and shiny. It was smooth, flat... beautiful.
When the vine fell away, I paused, realizing another problem, the strangeness of my skin suddenly became unimportant.
Am I... naked?
My face suddenly became ugly. I quickly grabbed some of the pieces of vine around me, trying to cover myself a little. Then, I looked back at Adrian and Lucia.
They looked even more surprised than they had just been.
When I realized that the numbness in my throat had passed a little more, I opened my mouth, trying to say something... but then I paused again. My eyes widened, I felt something rising up my throat.
I turned onto my side and... I started to vomit.
There wasn't any food in the things I threw up. It was just... a mixture of water and a liquid that looked like water.
I was vomiting so much that my body felt lighter and lighter. But... it hurt just as much.
When I finally finished vomiting... this time, I started coughing. I coughed until my lungs felt like they were on fire, then I vomited once more.
It was only after all this that I could finally relax, I could breathe again. I was gasping for air, and I had a really disgusting taste in my mouth...
After a short moment, I paused, raised my eyes from the floor again, and looked at the two who were just watching everything from where they were.
This time, they looked scared... like they would attack if I came even a centimeter closer to them.
"Ah..."
When my throat finally cleared and the numbness was gone, that was the only thing that came out of my mouth, but I didn't follow up. I was surprised. My own voice... it felt strange. Like it was different than it normally was. More... delicate?
"Sue...?"
At the sound of Adrian's voice, I turned toward him, then smiled slightly. His eyes widened, and Lucia's face became even more shocked than it already was.
And I was finally able to speak normally.
"Yes...?"
*******
The words echoed in my ears and all I could do was... stare.
But I asked again.
"I- is that really you?"
Her eyebrows furrowed slightly as she looked at me with a blank expression.
"Do I look like someone else...?"
I wanted to say yes. Because... she really did look like someone else. But I still didn't care.
"B- but... you fell... you fell in front of my eyes..."
Her eyes stopped focusing on me for a moment, her eyelids narrowed. Sighing slightly, she shifted to a more proper sitting position, not letting go of the vine she held over her chest.
"Yes, I fell. But I'm alive."
Her eyes were on the trail of blood that led to the spot where she had been, her expression a little ugly. It was as if... she didn't want to remember.
"H- how...?"
She looked a little surprised when her eyes turned back to me.
Immediately afterward, her eyes widened a little and she looked at us with a blank expression.
"Wait... you..."
She slowly turned around, looking up. She gazed up toward the top of the huge blur we were standing next to. Then, she turned back to us, pointing with her finger to the spot she had just been looking at.
"Can't you see her...?"
But instead of answering, this time, I asked a question in surprise.
"Can you... can you see what that thing is?"
She looked at me as if I was strange, as if... I couldn't recognize something that was right in front of my eyes.
But that was really the case.
We couldn't see what that thing was.
So... how could she see it?
I opened my mouth, tempted to ask a question again, but then... this huge place, which until now had only been covered in darkness, suddenly lit up.
The ground began to tremble slightly, and the balls of light from the sky slowed down as they stopped where they were, as if time had frozen. But... instead of doing just that, they began to glow even more violently.
Everything happened in an instant. It was so sudden that I didn't even have time to react properly. I had used my arms to shield myself from the blinding light, I had closed my eyes, when... I realized that everything had ended as it had begun.
I slowly withdrew my arms and opened my eyes just as slowly.
No, it hadn't ended as it had started...
This huge, dark place was now faintly illuminated. Each ball of light floating in the air acted like a lamp, making our surroundings easier to perceive.
And we were no longer where we were. It was as if... we had been thrown back about twenty meters.
No, it wasn't like being thrown.
We were teleported.
But, despite all this, I didn't have time to be surprised or pay attention to it.
Because... that was not the most glaring, the biggest change.
That huge blur... now, I could see what it was.
And... it was beautiful.
Too beautiful.
I had always thought that Lucia was and would be the most 'beautiful' being I had ever seen. But... this... woman was even more beautiful than her.
She was a beauty that should not have been possible to exist.
Involuntarily, I took a step toward it, and before I realized what was happening, another...
But, then... she opened her eyes. She fixed her irises on me, which looked like a rainbow. And... I just froze in place.
Ah... I didn't care if I died anymore.
After seeing something like that... did life and death really matter?
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