My eyes, once again opened. It was because the door to my room had opened, but also because of the light that ca into the room after that.
Soone had entered my room again.
I quickly sat up, wiped my dazzled eyes, and looked at my visitor. As I expected, it was Dorhud.
"It's been two hours, but... how're ye feelin'?"
"Fine, I can walk."
I raised my hand and looked at my palm, opening and closing my fingers. Then swung my legs front and back. There didn't seem to be anything wrong.
"I've recovered enough, more than enough."
With that, I tried to stand up and succeeded.
As soon as my foot made contact with the floor, my whole leg tingled. It was the downside of sleeping on a hard floor for too long, but it wasn't much.
I stretched like this, realizing that my body was indeed not in too bad shape. In fact, I was relatively fine.
I turned to Dorhud and nodded to him, and then I noticed sothing else... Sothing that I hadn't noticed much until now, lying in bed. There really is quite a height difference between and him...
I've grown a bit taller lately with all the things I've been doing, when I first found myself in this body I was one hundred and sixty-five centiters. Now... I should be around one hundred and seventy-one centiters, I think.
Aside from my height, Dorhud... he barely reaches up to my chest, if at all.
"Them other two in the bunker got themselves healed up well enough. That's why I've co to wake ye, and seein' as ye're awake, we can start discussin' what we're gonna do next."
I tapped the tip of my foot lightly on the floor twice, the tingling had finally gone. I was feeling more better.
"Got it, we can go."
Dorhud nodded, then walked out of the room. With a deep sigh, I followed him, and for the first ti I stepped out of my 'sick room'. What I saw was, frankly, exactly what I expected.
Old, rotten walls and the warmth signaled that we were several ters below the ground.
This place is literally ancient, at least it feels like that. It's probably a bunker that people used during the awakening eighty years ago and nobody has ever touched it again.
Also, I don't rember a place like this in the ga, so it's new to .
"We ain't gonna be walkin' too far, right around the corner."
When Dorhud saw that he was right behind , he started moving through the old corridors. The further we went, the more I noticed the structure of the bunker, which looked like it was about to collapse.
Can a place look like this just because it hasn't been touched for eighty years? It's... a bit strange. It feels like sothing in particular has worn it down.
The corridor widened as we went along. Eventually, it led to a large door. It was half open and beyond it was the 'eting room' Dorhud had spoken of.
Dorhud walked through the door without hesitation and the first thing that caught my eye was that this was not a 'eting room' at all.
It was a warehouse, that much was clear. That's exactly why this side of the bunker was so large and sheltered.
In the center of the warehouse, or the eting room, there was sothing they used as a table. It was a shabby thing, but it looked sturdy compared to the rest of the bunker.
There were two people sitting around this table, facing each other. One of them was the dwarf I had seen when I first woke up, and the other was soone I never expected to see here.
No, I didn't recognize the woman in her twenties, I don't know her. It was just... she was a hannya.
With a single horn curving up from the right side of her forehead, jet-black hair like mine and brown eyes tinged with red, she looked like a demonic being, even if she wasn't.
Add to that the fact that she can read emotions and feed on them, and the situation only gets more complicated. No wonder people call the whole race the demons...
"Dorhud, ye finally arrived!"
The second dwarf sitting at the table put a big smile on his face.
"Heh, I woke up the lad."
With that, both the dwarf and the hannya suddenly focused on . I didn't show any sign of backing away, though, and I sat down in the last available seat while Dorhud took his own.
It was the first ti the four of us in this bunker would speak together, and Dorhud was the first to speak.
"First off, let's get to know each other again. I'm Dorhud, Dorhud Gen'dai."
The second dwarf spoke imdiately after him.
"Hardil Dhur'a."
Hannya looked briefly at the three of us, then sighed.
"Ezareth Mansaar."
So I was the only one who had not introduced myself.
"Aiden Tenebra."
That way everyone had introduced themselves. Dorhud spoke again without waiting for anyone, as if to show that he was the leader of the group. He turned to face Ezareth.
"How much food do we got left?"
Ezareth's expression fell a little and she spoke fluently in the dwarves' language.
"About two days. I have that much food in my ring."
Oh? Ring?
Dorhud folded his hands across his chest and grimaced.
"If I only hadn't lost my own in the war... We could've lasted at least a week."
As the two engaged in a short dialog, I focused more on the word 'ring'.
Do these two have... dinsional inventory items? Dorhud is one thing, but I didn't expect this from hannya... I guess I'm dealing with soone rich.
"So we need to be movin' within two days..."
Ezareth, like Dorhud, was not happy with the situation.
"Yes."
Dorhud sighed deeply at the answer he got. He looked a little frustrated. No, all three of the three people in front of were. They were a bit depressive, even.
Who wouldn't be? They had seen with their own eyes the destruction that Caleuche had caused, they had fled from it, they had been forced to enter this bunker, who knows how many ters underground, and now they were going to be short of food.
Who could maintain perfect composure in such a situation?
Well... except , thanks to the Absolute Mind.
"Is Caleuche still on the ground?"
In response to my question, the focus of the trio suddenly shifted to . Dorhud replied, maintaining an ugly expression on his face.
"Aye, I ain't expectin' it'll be takin' off anyti soon."
"Do we have any maps?"
At my question, all three looked at each other, nobody did anything for a while, and then Dorhud stepped on the bracelet on his wrist. A huge holographic map suddenly appeared on the table.
We were not far from the city, a kiloter or less.
"Where is Caleuche?"
Dorhud looked at the map briefly, then pointed to a spot on the map.
A faint smile suddenly appeared on my face, while Ezareth and Haldir, who had been ignorant of this information until now, stared at the map with glazed eyes.
"Damn it."
Haldir cursed his luck and Ezareth uttered a few curses in Demanil, the language of the hannyas. Dorhud sighed expressionlessly because he knew this would happen. That's why he had kept it hidden until the last mont.
As for , I felt as if I had fallen into despair for the second ti since I woke up here.
There were only six hundred ters between us and Caleuche.
The mont we stepped outside, we would be picked up on his radar, and when that happened, escape was next to impossible.
*******
"Clara..."
I kept looking where I was focused as I gently twirled the pencil with the top between my lips, there was a question in front of . Yet I wasn't reading the question, I was thinking about sothing.
"Clara, are you there?"
"Huh? Ah, yes. I got distracted for a mont. Sorry..."
Paul raised his eyebrows and squinted slightly, fixing his yellowish-brown eyes on .
"Are you sure? Did sothing happen, you never used to be this absent-minded."
"I just didn't sleep much last night, that's all. Nothing extre."
I don't feel like telling him what I saw... The fla that burned my heart, the brilliant glow that triggered the fla, the gray sphere covered with cracks in that nothingness...
Everything is like a dream... like I'm imagining it, but I know. Those things weren't a dream, they were real. That's why they confuse , especially my real brother.
He's probably responsible for my mory loss, for the death of our family, and for everything in my past.
We weren't a normal family, I've accepted that. Even though it was hard... I did.
But I'm still preoccupied with it all the ti. I don't understand, because I can't rember a single scene from those tis... I get confused, it feels like they're not real.
I stopped twirling the pen over my lip and leaned back with a deep sigh. Paul folded his hands across his chest and sighed.
"I told you to go to bed early."
"Shut up."
"You know I'm telling the truth. You always tell to shut up when I say sothing true."
I clicked my tongue.
"That's enough for tonight... We've already finished the project howork. I want to go ho and sleep."
Paul didn't look satisfied, his yellowish eyes full of doubt. After a short while, though, he managed a slight smile.
"Sure, whatever you want."
I stood up, picked up my bag, and threw it on my back. Paul was similarly ready. We were going in different directions as he was staying in a dorm room. So, he smiled one last ti and then spoke.
"Shall we et again tomorrow?"
"For what?"
"I'm bored, to be honest. I don't really have any friends other than you. You are sohow popular again, so there are a lot of people who approach you, but..."
"Except for so, almost all of them are just smiling, I don't even consider them friends. Popularity is not as beautiful as you think."
Paul paused for a mont.
"I wasn't talking about that, but... okay. Basically, I'd like to make use of tomorrow as it's the weekend."
"Got it."
I thought about it briefly, it was actually a good idea.
"Sure, we can et. Now... I really want to go ho and sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."
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