Siara who stopped running her brain felt something. After falling for so long, it was the first time she felt anything. She felt she was falling, and falling with great speed, as if a gravity of ultimate force were asking for her. It was the first time she felt a fall in that space of nothing except darkness.
But it didn't end as soon as Siara thought. The whole moment when Siara was thinking, "Now I am going to fall, now I am going to fall, now I am going to fall," really nothing happened. The whole time, Siara's expression was like, "No... I just want to live a little longer."
Yet her expectations ended in no misery. She was trapped in another never-ending fall. Until that moment, Siara was tired of experiencing nothing, but this time she was experiencing gravity on her body.
Yet she barely could do anything except feel the fall. Endless hours passed, and after a while, Siara literally fell asleep. For her, five days had already passed by then. Although she didn't calculate it, the time she spent was five days, while on the outside, mere hours had passed. After leaving the mansion and becoming unconscious in a strange area, roughly two hours had passed.
There, in that strange area, a beautiful and elegant lady with eyes as dull and black as coal and skin as bright as jade, wearing a black-and-white maid outfit, was walking forward with her hands remaining down. While walking forward, her hands remained clasped in one position.
Before long, two more figures appeared behind her. One was a bright young man who looked as charming and gentle as a prince, and the other was an old, dwarf man who looked as wise and calm as a sage.
But we cannot judge a book by its cover. Neither was the dwarf as calm as a sage, nor was the young man as gentle as a learned prince—though the charming and wise qualities might be applied to them respectively.
Although all of them were looking for Siara, their intentions were unclear. Well, they remained unclear until the old dwarf started a discussion about the topic while they were walking through the strange forest of fireflies.
"Hey Leon! Why is that lady so eager to find that girl?"
Leon made an annoyed expression with his eyes and looked at the old dwarf, who had covered his head with the blue hood attached to his gray jacket before asking that risky question. Leon sighed and decided to reply. It was shocking even for the old dwarf that Leon would tell him the reason without throwing a taunt.
Leon said, "She could be a good wife."
The old dwarf was shocked. His expression was like, "He can think of marrying? God save that girl."
Well, obviously Leon was just teasing the old dwarf, but he intentionally made his voice clear and loud so that her maid could hear it. And so it happened: the maid stopped for a moment, but soon she recovered from the taunt and started walking deeper before Leon could say anything else.
Even the maid's elegance shook for a while after hearing Leon's speech, but she quickly regained her composure.
Then Leon became serious and replied, "She is eager to find that girl because she has [Fate Zenova].So she is a key figure to establish my authority."
The old dwarf was indeed shocked, but from his expression, it seemed he had already speculated the reason. A memory flashed in front of his eyes.
Now the reason for Leon's maid to disobey his order and follow Siara became clear too. According to Leon's discussions with the old dwarf, people with [Fate Zenova] are important individuals who possess the destiny to change the world. They possess the power to make significant changes to the world, and the world acknowledges the change instead of neglecting it.
Leon was planning to influence as many of these people as possible with his ideologies and gather them to rebel against his king. As for why he was rebelling against his king, what his motive was, and why his rebellion required people who held the power to change the world remained to himself. But Leon had already decided he would not force or recruit people against their will.
In his conversations, he even revealed that when he met a [Fate Zenova] personwho was trapped in prison for a false accusation, he decided not to help him. He wanted to recruit people—he even possessed the virtues to recruit them—but he could never risk himself for that. His maid, however, was different. She seemed to have pledged a kind of loyalty to him. It was certain that [Fate Zenova] was important to Leon, but he would never risk his own life for it.
So, to preserve these super-rare [Fate Zenova] people exclusively for Leon, her maid had stepped in. She didn't even care for her own life; perhaps for her, Leon's mission was much more important than anything in the world.
But soul-devouring creatures are no small deal. Only supernatural persons can fight soul-devouring creatures in this world. It takes not only physical strength and willpower to challenge a creature of that kind, but a fundamentally different kind of power that not everyone can possess. At least none in Leon's party possessed that kind of power.
Certainly, someone who can run while carrying two men at a cheetah-like speed without a trace of exhaustion on her face is not normal. But to deal with a soul eater, this was not even the bare minimum.
You can train your physical body.
You can train your will.
But how will you train your soul?
Perhaps in this magical world, it was possible to train the soul, because there are creatures that attack the soul, so there must be someone protecting it. Just like a deer getting eaten by a tiger: a tiger is a threat to a deer, but is there no one who can deal with a tiger? Certain factors like time, competition, and hunting exist, but for soul-devouring creatures, none of these work. A soul-devouring creature does not grow weaker with time; people do not hunt soul-devouring creatures, nor do those creatures fight among themselves.
Yet there are some people—those who defend against these creatures. Soul-devouring creatures can neither be killed nor destroyed, but those "some people" capture them through methods known only to them. Leon's maid, however, was not one of those special people. She was simply a human with immense physical power.
After walking for another few steps, Leon's saint-like maid, who had been walking elegantly with her hands clasped, suddenly stopped. She unclasped her hands and signaled Leon to stop.
Leon saw the hand movement and stopped immediately. The saint-like maid put her hands down, clasped them again, and suddenly rushed forward with incredible speed. Leon and the old dwarf couldn't even see her go, and in the very next second, she came back holding Siara in her arms.
The saint-like maid's eyes were calm, but she looked at Leon in a way that made him feel a sense of danger.
"We should go now," Leon suggested.
The old dwarf, who was fully aware of the threat of a soul-devouring creature, didn't delay and started rushing back. This time, all of them were running, their aim being to get out of the strange area as fast as possible.
Leon's saint-like maid was also running now, matching the speed of Leon and the old dwarf. Since the old dwarf was elderly, he should have run slower than Leon, but the fact was that his legs were much better than his brain; he ran even faster than Leon, while Leon's maid ran side by side with Leon.
Siara remained unconscious, blood spilling from her head, yet she couldn't feel the pain.
Leon saw this and said, "If we don't seal this wound, she will certainly die from blood loss."
Leon then commanded his maid, "Go and do everything you can to heal her. Go back to the mansion!"
Without any further delay, the maid obeyed his order. She reclaimed her great speed and sprinted toward the mansion.
While running, the old dwarf asked, "Umm... why did you go back to save her along with your maid?"
Leon froze in his tracks as if he had remembered something. He was full of embarrassment, yet his legs didn't stop moving. He remembered that he had followed his maid so that once he found Siara, he could let the old dwarf accompany her to the mansion while he himself returned quickly using his maid's power. Gritting his teeth, Leon started running even faster, eventually leaving the old dwarf behind. The old dwarf, who had been expecting an answer from Leon, saw him pull ahead and increased his speed as well.
On the other hand, Siara—unbeknownst to everyone else—was falling through her own darkness. Whenever she thought it might end, her expectations fell apart. She was thinking about time.
'How much time has passed? I think life would be harder, but I could have done something in the kingdom.'
Obviously, Siara was thinking about her own kingdom—the kingdom that took the initiative to save her, the kingdom whose baron was her own father.
But Siara wasn't hoping that someone would come to save her. From the memories of her distant past, she knew that waiting for someone to come and save you is the worst thing to expect from any situation. It is better to hold the sword yourself. Therefore, she was disappointed yet not longing for anyone. She didn't want to die, but that didn't mean she would let groundless hopes rise within her.
She even stopped resisting. She remembered the ballet steps she had been taught in childhood and decided to do something unexpected in the situation. Although she couldn't save herself, nor did she have any control over her circumstances, she had control over her own body. She tried controlling her body amidst that unknown gravity. Obviously, she failed initially, as it was her first time experiencing a gravitational pull beyond her own world's.
It wasn't like falling from a high place; the pull was more like a suction force. Yet she repeatedly tried grasping the end of her dress until she finally managed to catch it. She held it and controlled her body in such a way that she fell graciously. She was still falling, but this time her fall was elegant. Maybe it's a woman's psychology to look beautiful in all situations, but the main thing was that she had diverted the stress of falling through her posture. No, it wasn't any specific ballet move, but thinking of those moves inspired her to leap and grasp the elegant posture she was now maintaining.
It wasn't a move to save herself, but simply a move for self-contempt and satisfaction.
She believed she wouldn't die. No... she didn't know the future; it was just her intuition. Something deep within her was telling her that after encountering so many wondrous events, she simply couldn't die that easily.
She believed there must be a reason for which she would be saved. Although she expected no miracle, her intuition offered a different kind of assurance that she would be saved.
Yet her intuition couldn't always be trusted. It wasn't as if her intuition had worked every time in the past. In fact, most of the time her intuition did nothing but give false hopes—like it did back when Siara was held hostage as collateral for negotiations. She had thought that although her family wouldn't do everything to save her, at least they would try something. She believed that no matter how much pain they had caused her, at least this time, when their daughter was a captive of the opposing kingdom, they would try to make things easier for her.
Still, that was the last thing Siara wanted to remember. The fact was that this wasn't even the most fueling memory of her life—the one that led her to neglect her world, her kingdom, and finally, her father.
Siara simply subdued the memory. She was thinking about only one thing... that her intuition would definitely be effective this time. Maybe just for this once!