At that moment, neither the screams of the people in the dark, the biting sand that pierced my skin, the howling gale of the sandstorm, nor even the explosion that came from the direction of the volcano managed to shake me as much as the piercing and accusing gaze of the blonde girl in front of me.
The way she looked at me while keeping her eyes half-open because of the sand, the way the strands of her dark blue-grey iris 'burned' and regenerated— as if they had a life of their own—conveyed but one thing to me.
A chill. The same chill I felt naturally from my Instinct, only different, more primal, like the first time.
The same chill as when I saw the eyes of a child stab another for a piece of bread more than a decade ago. The same chill I felt when I saw the eyes of my buddy as the petty officer scolded us for skipping guard duty. The same chill I had when the mule of the Tronados said Emilie's last name.
It was the chill produced by looking directly at a serial killer.
[The Goddess Who Dislikes Gods wants to erase you]
"Drop them. Now."
Despite the racket generated by the full intensity of the sandstorm, her voice pierced through the noise of the wind as if I had heard it directly in my head.
[Warning: Your Innate Ability [Sense of Danger] is being neutralized by the Spell: [Sigil]]
[Your Adversity is resonating]
[Auto Taunt is currently active]
My heart jumped into my throat. I hesitated for a second.
I knew what she said. Milaine had been especially clear. No matter what, once inside, we would do as Livia said. That was the plan, and I was okay with it.
However, that small startle, however short it was, confused me for a second and I didn't drop the books.
And while another second passed, my mind convinced itself.
'I won't do it. I refuse to drop them.'
As if it were a kind of written script, something confirming that thought appeared before me—before Milaine's face.
Three new system tabs, of a familiar deep purple color, manifested in front of me.
[An unknown entity... has forcibly entered the system and sent you a private message...]
[WARNING: The Moderator will be notified if you read this unknown message...]
[The title of the message is: 'Don't'—Do you wish to read it? Y/N]
'Shit.'
It was her, Violet. It couldn't be a coincidence, it was a direct warning. I convinced myself even more not to drop my books so much so that I even let go of the girls' grip and hugged my books tightly.
"L-Leo?" This time it was Livia who spoke.
I lowered my head, squinting my eyes to shield myself from the sand, and as I did so, I could see Livia's face. She had her eyes closed while she trembled, clinging to Milaine and me. Blood was falling from her nose, tears from her eyes, her skin was starting to get cut by the pieces of rock and sand that the storm hurled.
[The Goddess Who Doesn't Believe in Friendships urges you to keep your word]
[The Goddess Who Enjoys Battles urges you to be brave and fight]
[The God Who Would Do Anything for Money suggests to the group to move]
My heart beat uncontrollably, my head burned, and thinking hurt. I didn't know what to do, I didn't want to drop the books—I couldn't—but seeing Livia suffer generated a pain in my heart so big that it even eclipsed the pain I felt from the sand cuts, the cramps, or the burning in my throat and eyes.
[Your Adversity rejoices]
Five seconds. I only hesitated five seconds, and that was all it took for things to go to shit.
Milaine growled. She grabbed me by the arms with a grip of steel that practically made me wrench my hands in pain. At the same time, the gale-force wind overcame Livia, and she fell to the ground, the thread of the white flame that we wore as a belt became a rope that dragged us down with her. Upon trying to hold her, both Milaine and I lost our balance and fell too.
The storm began to drag us. Livia's golden dome flickered violently with us. Milaine clicked her tongue and started to shine again. The sand burned again. The storm receded. The pain lessened. Breathing became easy again—but Livia screamed.
"N- NO, NO, NO MILLY, DON'T BURN—" Livia howled desperately but her scream was cut by a tremor that shook the ground and from the darkness of sand a pile of it shot upwards.
[Auto Taunt is evolving]
I knew the vibration. I had seen the same process too many times on the way here. It was a Sandworm.
But it wasn't only that. New, small mounds of sand appeared. We managed to see them thanks to the white flame, but they were too close, a few meters from the golden dome.
I hurried to lift Livia with me. Milaine slapped my hand away. Before I could even say something, she was already standing. In the next instant she grabbed the thread that was wrapped around her waist and broke it.
"Wait what are you—"
Without giving me extra time, she grabbed both Livia and me roughly by our clothes.
[Your Adversity is evolving]
From the way she moved her arms and accommodated her posture, I assumed the worst. I tried to grab the books from the floor as fast as possible, but I only managed to snatch Agatha's green book before an incredible force stopped me.
She sent us flying.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Livia let out a banshee scream that traveled through my eardrums to the core of my brain, while we were shot out into the darkness.
The last thing I saw of Milaine was, in slow motion, the ring of giant teeth descending directly upon her, devouring her together with Violet's book just meters away from her, before disappearing underground again.
I didn't even have time to curse completely. The storm swallowed us completely.
After a few seconds I felt how I slammed against the floor, my back burning from the friction of the floor tearing at my skin. Livia fell right on top of me at the same time that the golden dome that followed her fractured into a thousand pieces before disappearing completely in the storm.
"Ugh...fuck...me..." I complained.
It took me a couple of seconds to process what had happened, as a deep sadness and hopelessness invaded me, hitting me harder than a stab—no, a stab would have hurt less than what I felt in that moment.
Grief.
'I lost her. I lost the book. I fucked up.'
I bit my lip and closed my eyes, a few tears fell from them. My throat burned, my body ached all over, and an unbearable itch crawled under my skin. The wind whipped my hair into my face, lashing across my blood- and tear-stained face. Livia was sobbing, babbling things, trembling and holding onto my chest curled up like a baby.
[Your flaw Auto Taunt has evolved and merged with your Adversity]
[Your Flaw Minor Kink - Mommy Kink is resonating]
[Your Adversity has successfully evolved]
I banged my head against the floor and looked up.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed to the notifications, before breaking into crying for real.
Losing the purple book was the same as renouncing half the effort that my self from another life had realized. Half his life to the trash due to my carelessness. But in reality it wasn't that what hurt me.
'Again, I lost my mom'
[The Goddess Who Doesn't Believe in Friendships urges you to get up]
[The Goddess Who Enjoys Battles urges you to get up]
[The God Who Would Do Anything for Money urges you to get up]
I shook my head between sobs. I was tired.
'Get up.'
I heard a male voice in my head. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't recognize it completely. It was colder, harder, stronger.
I opened my eyes, following the voice. It was then that I saw something shine. It was the white belt formed by Milaine's flame. It was still there, joining Livia and me, and was also the reason we had fallen together.
'Get the fuck up.'
Again I heard the voice. It was my voice. It was me.
In that moment of clarity I also noticed something. I could see, and I could breathe, I moved my sight to my arm and noticed how it was all bloody from the fall. But the wounds were closing. It was healing.
The white flame kept burning.
I raised my hand and repeated the incantation of the [Sigil].
Grief. Shame. Despair. Anger. Fear. I burned it all, I only left the pain.
The purple flame of the Sigil covered my entire body rising from my feet to my head, illuminating the darkness. In a certain way I imitated Milaine.
To that followed a clinical calm and a mental clarity. A numbing anesthesia that allowed me to breathe evenly and calmly.
I looked down and saw Livia still trembling clinging to me with her face hidden under my breasts.
I forced myself to sit up, dragging Livia with me.
"Liv, get up," I grunted, clutching Agatha's book tightly as I stood.
"I-It's over..." Livia sobbed, her voice broken.
"Livia!" I snapped, hauling her to her feet.
"It's going to happen... we're going to be erased... Milly... she's going to reset..."
I slapped her face hard.
"Livia, I need you to react! Olivia! I need you here!"
She looked at me, her glassy eyes holding back tears. She closed her lips and nodded.
"O-okay..."
I pulled her closer in an embrace. I didn't need it, not anymore, but I knew she needed it. Not just to calm her but also to keep her grounded. The small white flame could burn the sand, but without its owner it was too weak for it to stop the gale-force storm
"Livia," I said with a hoarse voice "We're okay. We still have the white flame, the sand is being burned and we're healing. But I need you to do the golden thing. Now" I added.
Livia stopped trembling, and the golden dome formed again around us. If my words or the embrace was what reached her, I wasn't sure, but at least it had worked.
I moved away a little from her. Her eyes were golden again and she held me by the shirt while breathing more calmly every time.
"She's fine. We're fine. I got this" she said as she nodded softly.
[The Goddess Who Enjoys Battles nods in approval of your newfound stoicism]
[The Goddess Who Doesn't Believe in Friendships feels terrible about how things turned out.]
[The God Who Would Do Anything for Money tells the other goddesses to check the group chat]
"Where do we go?" I asked Livia.
As if it were a tasteless joke, as I raised my gaze above the girl's head I saw something. Something I couldn't see before, but now could thanks to the Sigil's flame covering me.
Straining my eyes, I managed to see a group of creatures. Round, with yellowish-orange and gray scales, that looked like plates, like armor. Similar to the body of a pangolin or maybe an armadillo but much bigger, maybe a meter or a meter and a half.
Pointy snout, small and black eyes, ears the size of my hand. It was chewing. Its mouth was too small for the size of the teeth it had, almost like a shark. And its tongue—its tongue was too long. Practically the size of its body, or maybe longer.
"It's straight—Leo?" Livia called me and turned to see what I saw. The girl froze.
I guess it was normal. What I was seeing was horrible, but what they were eating was worse. Inside its mouth, chewing and with its tongue squeezing different pieces of meat.
The one closest to us was chewing a human torso still connected to the head by the spinal cord, which was completely visible. The head belonged to a young man with a short, neatly trimmed beard, bald—or so I hoped—his face frozen in an expression of terror.
For the way his eyes rolled upward a couple of seconds later I understood that the guy was still alive seconds before. The 'pangoshark', as I decided to call it, licked what remained of the torso, and dragged its tongue across the corpse's eyes before swallowing it completely.
After this it dug very fast and got into the sand. It was like a mound of sand.
The golden dome flickered. Livia brought her hands to her mouth, gagging. It was also in that moment that I realized that the sand mound was approaching in our direction.
[The Goddess Who Enjoys Battles encourages you to fight]
[Your Adversity has successfully drawn attention from all creatures across the entire world]
With the new mental clarity of the sigil I didn't think much of it. I gave Agatha's book to Livia and took her by the hand so we started running in the direction she marked.
We advanced as we could. And as was to be expected various sand mounds began to follow us.
"Why?! Why do they follow us if they can't see us?!" Olivia screamed terrified while seeing how the mounds approached more and more.
Instead of answering her I put her behind me.
'[Clawchaé]'
This time, instead of pointing and imitating the shape of a gun with my hands, I simply concentrated on snapping my fingers.
I cast the spell two times at three-star rank. Purple strands emerged from my veins, traveling from my forearms, reaching down to my hands and fingertips.
The condensed bullets of Essentia came out like firecrackers that hit the earth and lifted it. I didn't stop there and kept casting the spell snapping and moving the forearms.
Three. Four. Five. Six. Ten. Fifteen...Seventeen.
I conjured the spell seventeen times in each hand—thirty-four total in less than ten seconds.
I retreated a little. I had kicked up too much sand and I didn't know how much damage I had really caused. I knew I had at least impacted on something, since I had clearly heard the aberrant sound of something twisting in pain.
It was then that from the darkness a tongue of the diameter of a soccer ball shot out in my direction.
[Bare-knuckle Boxing has activated]
'[Shieldaé]'
The tongue hit against a translucent green wall that surged from my hand. I managed to deflect the strike by casting the spell in time, but as soon as it deviated, the tongue curved and lunged back towards me.
I managed to stop it over and over. I deflected it with the translucent green wall of the spell three times in one second. But then another tongue appeared—much more mangled than the first—lunging directly at me.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Without my Instinct, I was purely relying on my reflexes. I could block the first three tongues, but by the fourth and the fifth, I was running out of hands.
Before the fourth and fifth managed to catch me, I felt a pull at my waist that threw me a couple of meters backwards.
I didn't realize in that moment but the golden dome had disappeared at some point during the confrontation.
"Get Down!" A male voice screamed.
I didn't hesitate and stayed down. Livia was by my side.
A mound of dirt that looked like mud passed over us, crashing into two of the tongues lunging toward us. It solidified instantly and the tongue remained hard on the floor as if they had added a lot of weight and couldn't move.
Immediately I extended my arm and conjured the spell again
'[Clawchaé]'
I launched once more the transformed threads this time imitating the shape of a gun and shot with my shoulder.
The bullets pierced the tongues and they fell apart. As I was getting up to move forward, I felt a pull from behind, this time by my arm.
A man of fifty-something, with a huge physique, short, disheveled and greasy hair, black beard and mustache, almost as tall as me, with a bandanna that barely covered his mustache and beard, stepped forward. He put himself in front of us, moved his hands upward, forming a wall of mud that solidified. Then he moved his hands from back to front. More mud emerged from it, solidifying to form a tunnel around us.
"Simon, now" the mud man said.
At the same time, a young man approached running, this one was shorter, the size of Livia, gym physique, with a classic cut upwards and short on the sides, also had a bandanna that covered his mouth and nose. He put his hands on the solidified mud wall and instantly the mud changed color to a harder gray. Metallic-like.
The sounds of the tongues hitting against the walls, that I was sure were of metal, gave me the sensation as if I had entered a bunker in a second.
"Are you guys FUCKING RETARDED?!" a woman's voice—irritating—came from behind us.
I turned around. Upon doing so, I saw two men, one with long brown hair, leaning against the wall and trembling, and another, much thinner with short blonde hair, convulsing on the floor.
And beyond, a few meters, I found the origin of the annoying voice.
A woman. Extremely familiar.
Dark blue hair, a bob cut with some short bangs parted in the middle. Eyes sharp and fox-like; small though not as small as Livia's, a little taller but not as much as Milaine. Clad in dirty dress pants and a white blouse completely stained with dirt and blood.
"Lysandra," Livia whispered.