Mount Aisa.
Deep within the Monster Forest, faint, ghostlike roars echoed through the night air.
From above, the town looked like an ancient ruin abandoned long ago — wild grass growing everywhere, as if a dead giant lay quietly in the heart of the forest.
“Rakaide, work with ! Draw that tin can’s aggro!” nesis’s voice rang out in the night sky.
“What the hell are you planning now? This isn’t the ti to ss around — this thing’s tough as hell! Even my Weak Point Strike only leaves a dent less than three milliters deep in its joints!” Rakaide stepped forward, fighting it in close quarters like a seasoned martial artist. Each ti he avoided a fatal slash, he countered and struck precisely at the armor’s weakest joints.
“I’d like to think this tin can’s an undead-type creature — even if it’s being controlled by the First Hero’s lingering soul. But no Hero in history has ever been resurrected through undead ans after dying!” said nesis. “There must be so reason it’s alive again — sothing humans have never recorded! Just like in myth, every chaos starts from so damned source. So before we run out of stamina, we have to find its weakness.”
“Listening to you talk, this thing sounds like it ca straight out of a myth!” Rakaide shouted. “Damn it, I wonder if we’ll even get hazard pay for this job!”
“Money, that thing you can’t take with you when you’re born or when you die — why be so obsessed?!”
nesis ran lightly, her small fra darting easily into cover. “Money’s a demon. It seduces you with a beautiful body, then drains you dry before you know it!”
“Haha! You might be a loner, but I have a family!”
Rakaide slamd his fist forward. The Hero Armor staggered back several steps. His fist was trembling and bleeding, but he laughed heartily. “I’ve got a family, I’ve got responsibilities! What a tragedy — before a life-and-death fight, my partner turns out to be soone who can’t even understand that!”
“Sorry for interrupting your colorful life exchange.”
Vieya stood off to the side, watching her forr armor not even glance her way — not a shred of attention left for her.
How could it ignore her like this...
Feeling offended, Vieya fud. “Are you sure you don’t need my help?”
“Huh? Vieya, you’re still standing there? I thought the big tin can scared you off already!” nesis exclaid.
“That joke wasn’t funny,” said Vieya flatly.
“Not funny? Then cast one of those invigorating and stamina-boosting enhancent spells your Church is so proud of!” nesis shot back.
“I... don’t know that one,” Vieya said, shaking her head.
“Miss Cleric, don’t joke around with nesis. We’ve actually been waiting for your enhancent magic...” Rakaide added. “For quite a while.”
“Uh... well...” Vieya said awkwardly, “...I wasn’t joking.”
Rakaide: “......”
“......”
“Enhancent magic isn’t standard issue for your Church? I thought the first thing every cleric learns is that prayer for recovery and strengthening!” nesis had never been this flustered before; her small face turned bright red.
She had led armies in monster purges and cooperated countless tis with clerics.
Even the weakest ones knew the Church’s unique blessings. The stronger clerics were full-fledged support kings — healing, damage buffs, and debuff removal all at once.
That’s why every cleric was treated like a treasure by front-line soldiers who danced on the knife’s edge.
“From your tone, it sounds like you’re about to bite ...” Vieya said, her guilt growing.
“Bite you?” nesis gritted her teeth. “If it were the old , I’d have strung you up in front of the entire battalion and flogged you!”
Boom!
Rakaide ducked under the Hero Armor’s downward slash, but the force alone sent him rolling across the ground.
nesis stopped arguing with Vieya, leaping from cover and pulling the Armor’s aggro toward herself, giving Rakaide a mont to breathe and recover.
“Then, Miss Cleric, please go back to the altar hall and check if the mural or the Demon King’s statue has changed!” nesis shouted.
See that?
Not even calling her by na anymore — just “Miss Cleric.”
The sli girl sighed pitifully, gave them one last look, and turned to follow nesis’s orders.
“You really don’t plan to help them? They paid you, after all... hehe...” Flaviel’s soft voice ca from behind her.
“The armor’s moving — don’t tell that has nothing {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} to do with you?”
Vieya turned around, looking at the golden phantom that appeared behind her. “I feel like you’ve beco soone I barely recognize.”
“Mmm... You’re always so perceptive at tis like this,” Flaviel said with a gentle smile, her voice sweet and calm. “You should know — even though my personality shifts slightly from era to era, they’re all still .”
“Just like how a single tree, through different years, sees, experiences, and understands different things — but it’s still the sa tree.”
“Then that ti in the well... which ‘you’ was that?” Vieya asked curiously, but imdiately realized sothing was off — Flaviel had said that state was caused by the lingering power here.
And lingering power... was that not the ‘resentnt’ left before death?
For the two of them, that ti had been anything but beautiful — suffocating despair, nothing more.
Vieya fell silent.
“Did you like that version of ?” Flaviel asked softly.
Vieya shook her head. “No... that version bites hard, and it hurts.”
For no reason, she suddenly felt like a schoolgirl tattling to a teacher after being bullied by a classmate.
“I see...”
Flaviel’s voice dropped low.
Silence followed. Neither of them spoke first, waiting for the other to break it. But in the end, neither did.
Vieya found it strange — as if overnight, they had gone from inseparable lovers who could talk about anything, to an awkward couple in a long cold war.
Could it be that they’d never go back to that fiery, passionate bond again?
On the other side—
nesis wiped the sweat from her forehead, her flat chest heaving as dust clung to her face.
“It’s been too long since I moved like this... my stamina’s gone downhill...”
With a shallow sigh, she raised her head and shouted toward Rakaide, who had taken the Armor’s fire. “You keep the cat-and-mouse ga going here! I’m still worried about that unreliable Vieya — I’ll go check on her.”
“Got it!”
Rakaide’s arms were badly swollen and flushed from repeated blocks, but he grinned toward her.
“If I die, make sure the captain gives my wife and daughter ten tis the death compensation!”
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