After a while of extremely awkward silence, Eshwar explained everything to Isha; he told her all the things he heard from Seo Hana. Though Isha found it suspicious at first, she didn't address it, and after everything he had to say was done,
"I promise to return to you, no matter how long it takes." He promised to Isha, and she abruptly teared up.
'He is going away from me, again. He isn't bringing me with him, again.' She thought and felt her heart clench at such thoughts. And then, everything she had "seen," everything that made him suffer—all the loneliness, all the self-torture, all the self-isolation, all the physical and mental pain he felt when he was alone back in the past before they had even met—everything she had seen under his curse's effect resurfaced in her mind, making her sob louder than before. And though Eshwar didn't really know why she was crying, he just simply hugged her, kissed her head, and rubbed her back as if she were a kid. (AN: Isha image in paragraph comments)
"Aaaa...." She hugged him tightly as those thoughts began to resurface more clearly, gradually.
*
After at least an hour of crying, Isha stopped only because she seemed to be out of tears, shocking Eshwar at how long she can cry in the process.
"Please....hic..." Isha said, clenching his palms tightly.
"Please come back to me." She said. She too knew that he wasn't going to change his mind on it since it involved Louie, so even if she wanted to stop him, she just couldn't bring herself to do so because, just from the determined look on his face, she understood that he would go into that trap by himself, doing whatever it took, and she also knew the weight of his promise, so she would just believe him and wait for him.
'No matter how long it takes....' She muttered in her mind and lost consciousness due to exhaustion.
"I will." Eshwar answered and walked out of the room.
*
In the middle of the night.
The thing I found fortunate was the fact that the Rank-SSS gate dive was going to be attempted at night, behind the eyes of all humanity. Of course, there were quite a few reasons for it. One would be that they don't want people to know about the disappearance of their only hope, me, and if I disappear so suddenly, then they would think that their only hope had abandoned them in the time of difficulties, and if I'm right, these people in front of me would start spreading rumours about me and branding me a traitor of humanity.
The next reason would be that they wanted to hide that fact about sacrificing people for the "greater good," as that would be something that would make the people spit on the association's way of doing things. And let's not divulge ourselves too much into the association's way of thinking.
'Whatever they do, nothing is going to go the way they want.' I scoffed inwardly. I had brought Core and Henry, who stood far away, recording everything that's happening in front of me, where a minimum of 50 people stood with their hostility openly directed towards me. Among the people were:
Stan Walton, the son of a bit*h.
Dwayne Knight, another son of a bit*h.
Lenna Romero, the dummy dum dumb mum.
Alex Turner, the cool son of a bit*h, no offence.
Elise Ryan, the lesb*a friend, again no offence.
And Seo Hana, the naive, righteous bit*h, no, woman.
Together with a lot of other people who I haven't seen all my life, I stood next to the association people, who were glaring at me.
"What?" I glared at them for a split second, and they all shuddered in fear before averting their gazes, because no matter what, none of them would ever dare go against a Rank-SSS player. And from what Seo Hana had informed me, it was Dwayne Knight who agreed to trap me. I guess he was petty for losing his son without getting anything in return.
'Nothing can ever be done to people like this.' I muttered in my mind and shook my head, disappointed.
*
After an hour of bullsh*t, they stopped instructing the instructions that nobody was listening and ordered people to get ready to dive into the Rank-SSS gate and spoke some more sh*t about honour, saving humanity, and being the proud warriors that are going to be attempting the first Rank-SSS dungeon raid, marking our name in history, and whatnot.
'Time limit is 2 years.' I muttered in my mind.
"You can enter." Said a cheerful voice, that was none other than Stan Walton's.
THUMP
"Move it." Somebody pushed me from behind; of course, I was feeling everything before they even did anything by the "sounds" produced by their muscle movements, but I wasn't going to do anything until I was in the dungeon, why? Just cause. They are just asking us to go die, but maybe they used my rank to assure these people; if they believe that I and them are enough to deal with a Rank-SSS dungeon, then I alone would be more than enough, and the less baggage there is, the more freely I can move.
WHOOOSH
I took a step and entered the gate, my vision blurred, and I let it, the gate, do whatever it wanted now because if I tried to interfere with the flow then the gate was definitely going to crack, whose consequences weren't known. Ah, yes. I "can" interfere with "natural" things if I want to, now. Of course, I was able to do that even before, but now, hmmm...how should I explain? Ah! I can interfere legally now. Like I have that privilege now.
Anyway,
The dungeon was completely dark, with thick blackish smoke covering the sight in front of me; I wasn't able to look even 10 feet away from the spot I stood, and,
SNIFF
"Ashy scent...." I sniffed the air once and mumbled under my breath.
'This... I don't like this.' I grumbled inwardly, and with a small poof, a weak, greyish ripple of aether shot out from my feet, but it stopped.
"?" I frowned in confusion when I felt the aether's flow stop, as if something were restricting it. And now, even with the help of aether, I wasn't able to feel anything beyond the 20-foot distance from myself.
"This... is too strange..." I mumbled, and
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!
'There goes the exit; it is not like I didn't know about what they had planned, but the predicament I am in right now changes too many things.' I thought. Because I felt weak, like a bottom feeder, the longer I stood in this dungeon, and that was a feeling I hadn't felt in a long time, and there was something eerie, a bit too eerie, about this dungeon, and it was making me tremble, not in excitement but in fear.
"Hahaha.... F**k."
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