There was a stage of injury where your consciousness threatened to fade away, and your body grew used to the sheer pain, it started to dull in sensation.
This ti, a pain, so distinct from her arm’s bloody ss, coated each and every Ciel’s vein.
It burnt.
But at the sa ti, it was also warm.
The two contrasting feelings crept up Ciel’s heart. Her gaping jaw clenched, her limpy arms thrashed, her eyes widened with bloodshot weaves.
Only a breath escaped her. Holding back the urge to scream, she turned with a wide-eyed stare.
A fla coated her entire right half. Fires knawed out every bit and edge, ti itself rewinding as Ciel’s arm began appearing back into existence.
It was a much, much more peaceful sight, yet, strangely, the pain it bore jolted her senses.
She felt as if ti was forcefully twisting her body alive, just so her heart could keep beating.
Ciel, however, just pursed her lips.
Tears began escaping from her eyes. Monts after, flas left and gifted her only a phantom, surreal sensation.
Her right half was stuffy and complete, yet her breath went shallow as if nothing could co out.
"Idiot."
A grumpy, almost annoyed voice touched her ears. It sounded delicious to Ciel, if it made any sense.
She forced a few chuckles, then turned to Shire with a quiet smile.
Her body was healed, with not a speck of injury. Skins from her right arm flourished with vigour, as the spellbind and tree sigil remained to remind Ciel she was not alone.
So, she must feel gratitude for the Shire now, whose expression is strained with worry.
"You should have scread. That elf would-"
The red-haired noble couldn’t speak a word, but she was correct.
Screaming was not an act of cowardice. It was survival.
A cry tore breath from the lungs, forcing one to breathe and keeping the heart racing. Adrenaline shot through with every sound, dragging the body back into consciousness.
Muffling a scream, however, ant you were ever so close to the edge of fading. Breaths and adrenaline failed to process with the body’s silence, thus drawing Ciel closer to death.
Ciel, who didn’t quite understand this chanism, only frowned. "I shouldn’t...scream at soone saving ..."
Shire only scoffed. It sounded oddly childish, but Ciel’s heart only fluttered.
In the process-
"Ci-eeeeel!"
An elf pounced and hugged her tight. Tears poured as Quia rubbed her cheeks against Ciel’s small shoulder.
"Don’t scare this big sis... I was afraid it would kill you..."
"Uh... Quia?"
"No no no, let have my tantrum, dummy..."
Ciel’s smile was a thin, almost forced one.
Should she feel gratitude for this as well? Ciel would leave that answer for her future self.
Right now, she only hugged back. Her strokes on Quia were like a mother soothing her child, carried by a flat wish that each would end the crying.
It didn’t. And Ciel had to enjoy Quia’s crying for a while.
—-------
"Uh-uh... ignore just now..."
"Elf. What the hell did you drink for that much tear pooling on the floor?"
"Please. I-I thought you were burning Ciel’s body out of rcy! Of course, I got sad!"
"It’s not like she’d die. Calm the hell down..."
Ciel sighed at the duo. Drinking a mana potion Quia offered, she observed the hallway they were in.
It was a one-way stone corridor with two doors on each side, with another plastered on the wall, where the hell they just escaped from lay.
She cupped her chin. To her left was the mansion’s way, which left the right as the appropriate answer.
Tossing away the blue potion, Ciel turned left, however.
"We’d grab Selvara and Orion down here, kill that thing, then we’d explore that room."
"Okay!"
"Roger."
Her teammates agreed. Better cautious than eting another chasing eyeball.
"Ah." Shire humd from behind, before stating. "What happened before was a secret. Got it?"
"Mm." Ciel naturally nodded her head.
In her 1000 years of life, Ciel had seen exactly one type of fla that healed.
A phoenix’s fla, and it seed Shire carried that fla inside her blood.
The weird part ca: the phoenix’s fla was an extraordinarily easy, destructive and simultaneously powerful fla to utilise in war.
Ciel, though, never had a chance to witness it. And her experience roaming the battlefield told her it was no coincidence.
She recalled the flas that ’healed’ her.
The pain was very distant yet close to her, almost sowhere deep inside, she couldn’t reach, as if she were being burnt alive.
The shadehounds were the sa as they were back then. As shadebeasts with high tolerance of pain, they rolled across the floor, trying to distinguish Shire’s attack.
’Shire’s fla was sothing...special.’
Ciel concluded inside, not sparing a glance behind.
Yet Shire’s observant eyes rendered her considerations helpless.
"I’m sure," the noble sighed as they reached the door. "You have a lot of questions. I’d not answer, and I don’t ever plan to answer."
She added afterwards with a colder, more edged voice. "Not even for my sister. This fla belongs to and alone."
Ciel could only nod, her features falling.
Resolve in oneself should be respected, not dismissed.
So instead, she rely shot Shire a confident smile. "I believe in you."
The noble’s shoulders twitched. It was the first ti she heard a sincere complint, untinged with flattery or fear.
A click, and the door opened to reveal another corridor stretching from left to right.
Ciel peeked at its right side. The corridor’s walls and corridors were wide and lavish with linen carpets, polished furniture, and golden chandeliers.
Moonlight slipped through the windows’ curtains, veiling the interior with a sombre look.
She squinted. The carpets, deep red with careful paint, were free of a speck of black crust.
Apparently, Orion and Selvara had not passed by this area.
As they stepped down, their foot t the floor. Only then did they realise the door they had passed through was no longer behind them, but a level above.
It was always concealed behind a vast painting, left open when they ca out.
"Suspicious..." The elf voiced out their sentint.
Her voice echoed. As if on cue, the shadow beneath the futures weaved into being.
The trio stuck close. Quia upfront, Ciel middle, while Shire took the back with the lantern, now again with the warning red.
The shadebeast revealed itself. This ti, without a physical form.
"Ha?"
Quia let out a gasp. Even her adventurous years never witnessed this kind.
Its form was gasesous, drifting weightlessly above the floor. Two white, misty eyes stared flatly back, carrying not a hint of malice.
No legs occupied its beneath, whilst two thin, shadow-like arms stretched out, gripping two black blades in each of its hands.
Wraiths. Ciel recognised them—a prominent fighter against the ignorant orcs, whose salvageness broke under the invulnerability of its gaseous form.
Yet Shire squinted. Her next observation broke Ciel’s thoughts.
Shire squinted. "It carried the sa mana. Back in that room."
The sa mana that distorted space and vision? Ciel found it curious; her head rushed to develop another theory.
The wraith didn’t wait, however.
Its growl was piercingly sharp, imbued with an inhuman quality one would hear if one ground two glass shards together.
Quia lunged. A paw spawned at its command to attack, but-
"...Ah."
She should have known. Was her last thought as the paw slipped by and passed through the wraith’s body.
The elf duck as a blade sliced above her. "Shire!"
Surprisingly, she called for the noble to help.
Shire hesitated.
Then, a kind smile edged out her lips as she admired Quia’s struggling.
"You bi-"
Only for a fla to zoom by and envelop the wraith’s figure, a howl afterwards, and the shadebeast faded out of existence, not leaving even a black crust behind.
Ciel frowned. This fla again, and it seed Quia took notice as well.
"Find a way to kill them without my help," Shire asked, before walking ahead of them.
The red-haired noble didn’t forget to taunt back, though. "Or, you can rest easily knowing I will really ignore you next ti."
The elf rely watched Shire’s back with a conflicted look. It grew more distant as Shire strode away, yet seed all the broader at the sa ti.
As Ciel approached, the elf smirked at her. "Well, wasn’t she quite a softie at heart?"
Ciel’s nods carried an eager, exaggerated rhythm.
She was about to catch up with Shire, who had presumably gone ahead to purge other wraiths.
When suddenly-
[ Warning: Target Selvara Stormveil and Orion Christania were in critical danger. ]
This panel flashed by. However, that was not all.
[ Warning: You have successfully passed through a Queen’s area, relatively unhard. ]
[ The Queen of Theatrics’s gaze shifted. She felt imnse interest for the first ti. ]
[ Difficulty of subjugation lowered. ]
Ciel raised a brow. The implication was hamred ho, and it needed her steps to pause for processing.
The darkness with the giant eyeball. That room, where vision was impaired, and space seed to be distorted erratically.
’A Queen’s mana was stored within it?’
Ciel’s surprise threatened to show on her poker face.
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