Ravel

Alice:

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After Hiro bound the Binding Clock to himself by blood, we moved on to the next floor. Although the boss at this level was at the ninth stage, the monsters were only at the middle of the eighth stage. We knew we wouldn’t be able to go further than two floors with our current strength and even one was going to be hard.

When we reached the twentieth floor, I sensed the monsters were at the mid and peak of the eighth stage. I guess the boss’ strength is going to be similar to the one we just killed, but as long as we can one-shot it with Space Breath, it’s going to be alright.

Things went as planned, but I was quite spent after using Space Breath so Hiro had to fight off the mobs alone.

“I’m sorry to leave it all to you, but I need time to recover to my peak condition,” I tugged his back and embraced him from behind when he finished one of the monsters.

“Hahaha, don’t worry about it, you still have the chance to help me now. And it’s not like I wouldn’t fight for you~” Turning around, he leaned down to kiss me and turned my world pink coloured again…

It took two hours to reach the end of the twentieth floor where we saw a devil-like monster with an axe in its hands. Since I was only accompanying him and he too rested after every mob he killed, both of us were in peak condition.

I’m a little annoyed by the fact you had to use one of your minds to help me restore my energy, but I know it couldn’t be helped. It’s not that I don’t like to depend on you, I just don’t want to seem weak, I thought.

[Stop thinking nonsense. I know that you’re strong and even if you were weaker, I wouldn’t care,] he replied.

I know, but it’s still bothering me. Just you wait until I reach the next level, I’ll have another heart and mind! I thought with enthusiasm.

[Aye, aye, are you ready?] he asked. Nodding my head, we charged at the boss of the floor. Hiro used Hydro Mind to stun it combined with the Binding Clock and then I used Space Breath to finish it off. A simple recipe that seemed to work every time.

This floor was about a quarter of the Earth in size and was full of tall mountains. Thanks to that, the monsters didn’t charge at us in large groups since they had no sight on us. If the whole floor was a flat landscape, not even a group of cultivators at the ninth stage would stay alive. It wasn’t in the dungeon’s interest to kill as many cultivators as it could. It was here for the reason to help to advance those that were talented because powerful cultivators were always needed against those Harbringers Ellery mentioned.

After the Flaming Devil died it transformed into a stream of energy and took the form of lines of text in the air once again.

Is this dungeon in the mood to play games with us?

[It seems to be the case,] Hiro shrugged his shoulders and read the text.

The more places I be, the less you can see. What am I?

“Well, it’s not true in our case, but normally you see less if darkness spreads, so I say the solution is darkness,” Hiro said.

That was fast.

“The answer is correct. You shall be rewarded accordingly,” the dungeon replied.

The words transformed into two glistening blood coloured pills and flew into our hands. It was called Surging Blood pill.

[I suppose we’d have got only one if we failed to solve this riddle,] Hiro thought.

Mhm.

Both of us gulped down the pills and felt a sense of hotness spread in our bodies. My blood surged as my heart started pounding with a crazy speed. Mortals would have surely died of heart attack…

As we crept closer to the threshold, we were able to process our knowledge about the domains much faster than before. Although Hiro had more minds, mine was quicker, so at least I didn’t get behind by a lot.

Hiro broke through a tiny bit before me and I followed him in the next second also reaching the next stage. We stepped into the seventh stage! Our lifespans had increased to nine hundred years while our strength increased to four hundred and twenty golems of strength. Although our strength would decrease by a lot against cultivators at the ninth stage, we could still cause them headache!

At the seventh stage, our strength increased by thirty-five percent in our monster forms. We were slowly getting closer to the twenty-five percent boundary but advancing two stages was going to be heavier at these higher stages.

We opened our eyes and looked at each other with smiles on our faces. Both of us were really happy since this meant we could fight anyone at the ninth stage! Normal cultivators at the early ninth stage had only four hundred and forty golems of strength so we would be able to kill them even without using Space Breath.

Should we go deeper? I thought.

[Nah, the dungeon wouldn’t give us anything good after presents like these, I’m sure. Unless you want to stay here longer?]

No way, I shook my head.

“Let’s go then~” Hiro coiled his arm around my back and we started moving towards the surface.On the fifteenth floor, we found Ellery and Max fighting with a monster. Ellery was at the middle of the fifth stage while Max reached the early fifth stage. It was interesting how even Ellery was advancing faster than us, though most of it was because of the pill I’ve concocted earlier...

“How are things going for you?” I asked as I grabbed the back of a monster and pushed it to the ground, my foot on its back. The poor thing was struggling to stand up and kill with no chance.

“...We are alright. Max has become quite proficient in using the gold energy so I’m proud of him. He learns really quickly,” Ellery said and then turned towards Max with a sorry face, “Pardon me for saying this, but in a way, it’s good that Melleri was taken from you at that time.”

Scratching the back of his head, he said, “Well, I don’t ever again want to get in a situation like that, but I have to admit it really helped me step over my past and change my mind about how I was living. Maybe now I’ll be able to have a name by the time she reaches this place and so she will have it easier, just like you and your family.”

“We can only wish you good luck with that. Do you want to come up with us to the surface or would you rather stay here and keep training?” I asked.

[I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed since he has nothing to do outside and the re-spawning boss keeps giving him elemental pills making his cultivation easier,] Hiro whispered in my mind.

[Yeah. But probably it depends on Ellery as he is her ‘bodyguard’.]

He looked at Ellery with inquiring eyes which told us it indeed depended on her. She shrugged her shoulders as she answered, “I don’t have anything to do outside either so we can simply stay here. I too can train at this place somewhat quicker than outside and if Max reaches the middle of the fifth stage then we could descend to the next floor. At that time it would be much more advantageous for me too.”

“Okay. Then spend your time well. We are going up,” I said already turning around. The monster under my foot was already tired out so I killed it with a Dragon’s Swipe.

Turning around for a moment, I added, “By the way, you can be loud in the nights in the resting rooms~”

At first, Ellery made a confused face until it hit her. Her face turned red as she shouted, “Fuck you!”

I laughed as we left them alone. I believe they’d form a bond if they stayed together and fought together for long. I don’t know if they’d turn into friends or lovers, though I don’t really believe in friendship between male and female.

Based on Hiro’s memories, at some point, at least one of them started having feelings for the other. At those times there were only three ways. Pretending to feel nothing, breaking their friendship or coming together. We could be wrong, of course, but if they aren’t soulmates like Hiro and me, I’d prefer if they stayed friends. Which would mean we were wrong… but it’s better than broken friendships!

We reached the surface soon and flew out of the volcano. Using our spaceship we went back to Nelh Ennore. For now, we were going to stay here and spend our time training and living a lazy, enjoyable life. Sometimes we’ve got to take it easy and relax!

We had spent a whole month like that and we also reached the peak of the seventh stage.

This meant that our strength increased to four hundred and forty golems of strength in our human forms, five hundred and ninety-four in our monster forms, and four hundred and eighty-four in our battle forms! All these numbers just meant we had it easy against normal cultivators at the ninth stage.

But trouble soon knocked on our doors as a group of humans have arrived, and interestingly enough, all of them were at the peak of ninth stage. What was even worse they specifically came looking for us…

I wonder who are they.

--------------------------- Chic Wilhelm’s Pov: ---------------------------

I’ve been working on the reconstruction of their auras ever since the day I’ve found the remnants of their space energies. I don’t know what they look like since Tracy didn’t see them only their black capes. I’ve notified my men to capture every group consisting of two black caped ‘people’, if I can call them people. But since they brought back too many random people, I decided to stop them.

After three weeks of hard work, I was finally done reconstructing their auras.

Using Memory Crystals I’ve shared the shape, feeling and everything there was about their auras. I also shared my knowledge with everyone at the peak of the ninth stage and gave a spaceship for each of them to visit every planet and use their mind powers to search for their auras. It took five days of waiting when I finally heard news about them.

A team of cultivators at the peak of ninth stage sent me a message saying they had found them on Lark, which was elves’ planet. They said that they were going to capture them but unfortunately, they hadn’t answered ever since and that was making me worried.

Could it be they had grown enough already to kill cultivators at the ninth stage? I’ll have to go there personally, but I have to be careful with this whole thing, I pondered.

If I leave openly, Pat Cooley might raid this planet and if my most powerful aides aren’t here with me, then humanity will have to face heavy casualties. Not to mention elves weren’t weak either. Although the others and quite a lot of people of my clan were able to abduct some elves, they always had to run away and escape or else they would have been killed. There were even cases when the whole raiding team went missing.

The most powerful elves were still hiding on Lark and there might be elves that were almost as strong as Pat Cooley! Beastmen had five more while elves had ten more golems of strength on average than humans. They had a somewhat lower birth rate, but the difference wasn’t enough to overwhelm them.

To be honest, however I looked at it, the humans were at the bottom of the food-chain in this world. Although looking at it from an outsider’s perspective, others would think that humans were the leading race here, but it was exactly the other way around even with me here.

Actually, I didn’t like this abducting thing and I didn’t like that part of Wick either, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Humans weren’t like beastmen who revered stronger people enough to listen to them without questions.

We too respected the strong, but if the said person’s strength came in our way, we’d do anything to move them out of our way. That’s how we humans were. Maybe humans weren’t the best but I was still one of them and I couldn’t let so many people die. I was somewhat sad that those two had to die only because of their origin, but everyone had to make sacrifices and the higher you go the more usual things like these were.

You couldn’t reach great heights with love, goodwill and true friendship. I had seen relationships like those only end in tragedies. This life and universe weren’t so easy and happy. Knowing all this, I sneakily moved to Lark, hoping the powerful elves won’t sense us and kill us…

That would be the worst-case scenario. Well, or it could be even worse. Those two would be in fact True Divine Beasts. But my luck can’t be that bad… I hope. If anything, I’ll try to ascend and leave behind this place. At most, it’d become a dark stain in my past, but as long as I live, it doesn’t matter!

I can always become famous but I can’t get back my life once I died. I’m only a hundred and ninety-three years old, so I could easily get in a good school and live a good life!

-------------------------------- Alice’s POV --------------------------------

We were out of Nelh Ennore on a fifteen thousand meters tall, snow-covered mountain peak. We sat back to back and were meditating quietly. The mix of the chilling cold which would have killed a mortal long ago and the warm sunrays that seeped into our bodies felt great. It was at this wonderful and relaxing time when some bothersome people who didn’t know their places came flying towards us.

They surrounded us and one of them started speaking, “Hello, you two. Are you the ones called Alice and Hiro? If yes, then we’ve got some business.”

Looking at the short and brown-haired man, I raised my brows, “We are, but what do you want from us?”

He made a pondering face before saying, “We came to kill you because you’re threatening humanity.”

“We do? How? By meditating on a mountain?” I started nitpicking.

“Don’t lie to us monsters! We had been told that you are divine beasts. We can’t let you join Pat Cooley because that would make the balance scale into the beastmen’s favour! But enough of talking. I was kind enough to tell you why you are going to die,” he raised his voice.

“Thanks not,” I said with a cold voice.

He jumped at us followed by his monkeys. We quickly transformed into our monster forms and took his attack head-on. We were only six golems weaker than him even if he was at the peak of ninth stage. For normal humans, even five golems of strength was of a big difference, but because of our powerful and tough bodies, not even thirty golems of difference was no big deal. I used my paw which was larger than him to slap him into the ground.

The guy crashed into the ground and spat out a mouthful of blood, but I didn’t have time to care since his seven comrades were ready to kill me. I used my tail to smash their captain on the ground into a bloody pulp. The ground cracked and splinters of rocks whistled in the air as they flew past my ears. Leaning towards the ground, I licked up the remnants of his body and chewed on it loudly.

Seeing one of their own die so quickly startled the other humans enough to stop for a moment since they too were at the peak of ninth stage. Only geniuses and weirdos could give us a hard time right now so sadly for them… this was a dead end for everyone but us.

Hiro used Hydra’s Wings and formed a wing-shaped blade of energy. He shot it towards our opponents. Two of them lined up next to each other to defend against his attack while another two tried to flank his sides, while the remaining three decided to take me on. Hiro used one-one of his heads to block the two at his sides and used the remaining three to attack those who were defending against his skill.

I charged forward towards the one that was in front of me and ignored the incoming attacks. I used a huge amount of energy to cover my whole body with a protective layer of Dragon Energy. Their attacks were barely able to penetrate my energy shield and the remnants of their attacks simply bounced off my scales. As I reached my target, she was terrified to see my razor sharp teeth so close to her nice face. But it was wrong of her if she thought they could come here and simply leave after attacking us.

She tried to use her staff to protect herself by putting it in my mouth so I couldn’t bite down on her. Sadly for her, it was a fatal mistake since my jaws were the strongest parts of my body. Her thin little staff snapped into two halves as soon as I bit down on it and I didn’t stop until I felt my teeth sink deep into her body. Considering my size, I was sure she was torn into two halves if not more. Raising my head, I saw her upper body fly off in the air, terror still visible in her dead eyes.

[Fufu~ You are slow Hiro. I’ve killed two while you killed none,] I teased him.

Turning around, I couldn’t help but shut up upon seeing him. As the other two defended against his skill he bit down on their upper bodies and tore them into pieces. After doing so I was still able to see before I had to turn towards my opponents that he spun in a circle and used his body hit the guy on his left and his five heads to bite the startled and surprised guy on his right. The first guy was crushed by his huge body, while the latter had no chance to escape because of Hiro’s sudden movement and was torn into pieces.

[Now I’ve killed four while you killed only two, My.Little.Dragoness,] he said with full stops.

[Oops?] I asked looking at him. I ducked down to evade the attack of the two guys who were charging at me from behind. When they flew past me, missing their shots, I flew into the air and left them in the dust.

But I quickly turned around and flew towards the lucky winner on the left. I shot a Dragon’s Swipe and a Dragon’s Breath towards him. As these skills had great power and had at least seventy more strength behind them than my base power the guy was crushed by their strength and died on the spot. Even though he was able to defend against the first, the second killed him. My Dragon’s swipe destroyed his defense while my Dragon’s Breath blasted into his body, caving his chest and crushing his heart.

Since I still had enough time to do so, I changed my direction towards the remaining one. To be honest, I didn’t expect the other one to die so easily, but he was quite skinny and looked like a shady type of person. Maybe he was some kind of assassin and he wasn’t good when he had to fight frontally. That could also be a reason why he was trying to get behind me so badly… I didn’t have time to shot another energy attack towards this one because I was closing in on him way too quickly.

I tried to bite him but he dodged it. My wings which were like blades in my monster form grazed him slightly, but he was quite fast so he was able to fly to a lower altitude and escape his day of beheading. He quickly took a position and prepared to attack with his energy skill only to be bitten in half. If their coordination was a piece of shit then our coordination was higher than the heaven. But it was nothing out of the norm since we were connected~

He didn’t even notice that when I turned in the air, Hiro was behind him facing towards his back. The guy quickly died as I saved him from his suffering by eating him.

There was only one guy left who was grunting on the floor in pain. Wait, another one? I counted eight and the captain died… whatever, I shrugged, realizing I didn’t notice one of them.

[Yeah, he wanted to backstab you, but I stopped him~] Hiro replied. We slowly walked closer to him and he jumped up from the ground, seemingly ready to fight us. His body was trembling in fear since even he knew he had no chance. In the next moment, Hiro used his pointy tail to penetrate the man’s stomach from behind.

He had a bludgeon like tail but the tip of it was pointy like the tip of a spear. He was skewered on Hiro’s tail, completely paralyzed. There was poison not only in our saliva but even on our tails, so when his strong poison entered his body, he was completely paralyzed. I transformed back into my human form and Hiro turned his tail and moved him in front of me.

“Answer some of my questions and then you can die peacefully if not then you are going to suffer from his poison slowly killing. And maybe I too could play around with you and believe me, I can be really ugly~”

He was sweating buckets, his body was trembling, but he was still silent.

“You seem to be in pain, want me to increase it?”

He shook his head.

“Then talk… First question. Who sent you?” I asked.

“Ch-Chic Wilhelm,” he said between his gasps.

“Second. How did you find us and know who we are?”

“Ugh. He re-created your a-auras from the re- remnants of you space energies. We searched fo- for it.”

“Oh? Interesting. Then the third and last question is, why does he want to kill us?”

“Because you are *cough* threatening the s- safety of humanity!”

“Alright. Thanks for your cooperation.” I quickly stabbed my hands through his brain. I swung my arm to shake off the blood from it, then thought about what he said.

[So this means that now he probably knows that we are here. When they arrived they said they couldn’t let us join Pat Cooley… Are they thinking that we are normal divine beasts and fear that we might join her and attack the humans?] I pondered.

Hiro transformed into his human form and embraced me tightly.

[It might be so. Seems like the peaceful times are coming to an end once again. Let’s visit these elves for now. At least they can’t go to where the main leaders of this planet are. Also, maybe we don’t have to kill them, though it depends on his personality. If he is a lecherous, shitty guy then I’m going to kill him for sure,] Hiro thought.

[Mhm. Then let’s go towards where the main city is. Thanks to captain Isil now we know where to go. We should stir up this peaceful state between the planets a bit. Fufufu~]

[Alice, Alice… you dirty minded evildoer!]

I’m not! I denied his statement.

[Hahaha. Anyway, we aren’t going to notify Ellery and Max right? I mean they would get in trouble if they followed us around. In this case, they can’t help either, so it’s best if they stay in the Morburn dungeon to train,] Hiro said.

[Yes. Let’s go.]