Alira had been counting up.

  She was only at about five hundred or so when the artifact flashed a blinding white light. That was less than ten minutes since Raine took the deep dive. What kind of danger could he have encountered to actually call for backup? It had to be considered how prideful Raine was as the protagonist of a power fantasy—he’d never asked for help from anyone who didn’t owe his favor or hold his respect.

  And this artifact that let others know when Raine needed saving had never once appeared in the novel as far as Alira had read.

  “Do we follow?” Lillian asked. Alira doubted the depth of her love for Raine due to the ill-concealed hesitation in her voice. It definitely wasn’t as deep as the sewage canal before them.

  Your darling might just be in mortal danger, yet you still don’t want to swim in shit for him.

  The protagonist probably wouldn’t die just a few chapters in before the main plot began. But his plot armor definitely wasn’t injury-proof from what Alira knew from Dual POV. Right? The ring pulsed with an urgent glow. If Raine got seriously hurt, his alchemic study would have to be postponed, and in turn, her trip back home.

  Fuck it.

  Alira shoved the ring into her pocket. “No choice,” she said, mostly to herself.

  Lillian gave a reluctant nod in response. Calix straightened up as if he’d been booted back up to complete a task. Alira was glad to know he wasn’t completely against helping Raine out. It seemed their relationship hadn’t distorted yet.

  { Don’t. }

  Alira took a step away from Lillian, disguising her movement as a stretch to get herself ready for a dive. “Don’t what?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

  { Don’t break the other half of my artifact, sweetie. }

  First of all, his artifact? This half is mine, thank you! Aside from that, what did he mean by breaking the artifact? Artifacts only broke when their bonded owner died. Was he saying jumping in the water would directly kill her? But Raine was still fine after he jumped in—

  A snigger interrupted her thoughts timely. Almost in correspondence with her question.

  { Her mana affinity is high enough to survive the condensed Fellsworn Mana. Sweetie, I hate to break it to you, but yours isn’t. }

  Xia seemed to have a way to leave Alira wordless each time he spoke. ‘Her’, he said. About Raine. The novel, despite its name being Dual POV, was only from Raine’s limited points of view. As far as it went, Raine was sure he had fooled everyone about his actual gender. But now, Xia actually knew even without having a direct connection as he did in the novel.

  Was this the power of the potential love interest? The power of love that allowed one to see through all the lies and recognize one's truest self? Too bad, Xia ended up dead before romance could bloom, let alone bud.

  Wait, no, focus!

  Alira slapped her hands lightly on her cheeks to stop herself from spiraling into less important thoughts. Raine might end up being the one exiting the story first—way too early.

  Her low mana affinity did make her more susceptible to Fellsworn Mana and Corruption from it.

  “This Pure Soul of Staywes asks for Judgement,” Alira uttered.

  ※

  Name [Alira Ravon]

  Soul Corruption [20%]

  ※

  Well, fuck.

  “What’s your mana affinity?” Alira turned to the two beside her.

  “Middle Prismatic,” Calix replied matter-of-factly. Like it wasn’t something impressive, if not revered. Clearly, being casually overpowered was the norm for everyone in the Ravon’s household. Even Maria, their maidservant, had Spatial Element.

  Lillian cast a doubtful look at Alira. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I would rather not drag a dead body around. Check your Corruption,” Alira explained in simple words. Then, she couldn’t resist the urge to add, “But you’re right. I have no reason to ask you. I’m sure you’re way above a mere Lower Bronze like me.” She nodded in defeated understanding.

  “...” Lillian made a choked noise. “...It’s Middle Silver.”

  Middle Silver. She said, her voice quiet, as if it was below average or something to be ashamed of.

  “Return to the inn,” Calix told Lillian before Alira could. “You go down first. I’ll follow behind,” he said to Alira.

  “Huh? No? I can’t! I just said I’m Lower Bronze.”

  “Oh.” Calix relaxed his shoulder. “So, we aren’t going.”

  WTF.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  So, he was preparing to go only because he thought she was? Alira realized she was being too delusional. Glaring hard at Calix’s face, she found out he really couldn’t care less about Raine, and she couldn’t think of a way to make him care enough to go save him.

  The glow from the ring seeped through her clothes, shining quietly yet in an insistent pattern.

  “Calix—”

  “Brother Calix.”

  Ugh, seriously?

  They both knew the two of them were particularly strangers, so why was he keeping this act up, especially down here in some sewer with no one around save for Lillian? Why wouldn’t he care more about his real sister instead? Couldn’t he feel their blood connection?

  Alira didn’t let her frustration show on the surface; at least she hoped she could control her face well enough to hide. “Brother Calix,” she gritted. “Could you take care of the Fellsworn mana down there so I could go?”

  { You could use me, you know. You have an Imperial Mage at your command, sweetie. }

  And barbecue everyone here? No thanks.

  Calix did the thing he usually did whenever he was thinking or processing something, tilting his head slightly to the left. This time, he even brought his hand up to his face, hovering a finger over his chin.

  He was strong. If Alira remembered it correctly, there had been a throwaway line that he was an Elite Mage. Surely, he could do something to dispel the Fellsworn Mana.

  Alira thought hard about anything she could use against him in her favor, but nothing really came up. Calix had too little onscreen time and dialogue about him.

  Just then, Calix waved his hand upward in one gentle flick. What was brought about by the move wasn’t so gentle. Alira felt the vibrations from the platform beneath her sole as a muffled sound emerged from beneath the water.

  Two walls of clear, bright crystal, one facing the opposite wall while the other further away in the direction of the canal, shot up to cut the flow of water into a narrower stream. The third wall made its grand appearance soon after, forming a neat square space void of water, facing the platform they stood on. It definitely wasn’t a good idea to keep them up for so long. The last thing Alira wanted was for her secret night out to end with flooding Astrail with sewage water.

  The first wall near Alira was thicker in width than her and stood almost as tall as herself, approximately five feet above the water level. Alira bent forward to look down at where the water had been emptied.

  The canal went deeper than she expected, almost twice her height, though only in this one particular spot. The ground was much higher around the base of the first and third walls. The bottom of the deeper region had effectively collected heavier waste with the water gone, forming a thick brown floor.

  At the center was a mostly circular hole with metal spikes extending from its side, going down deeper than she could see. The hole, the spikes, and the path downward looked surprisingly clean and dry.

  Alira squatted, sitting on the tips of her boots, to get a closer look and, unfortunately, a closer smell as well. She extended her hand up toward Calix and was pleasantly surprised when a heavy, light-emitting crystal was dropped onto her palm before she could ask.

  Shining the light on the spikes, Alira confirmed that they were the same kind as the blood rod the cultists had used. As part of Fellsworn’s body, each spike made of solidified blood likely emitted Fellsworn Mana, which became increasingly dense from the sheer quantities of them.

  “The spikes,” Alira looked up to meet Calix’s calm blue eyes. He nodded at her.

  He flicked his index finger. A crystal the shape of a spearhead materialized above the entrance as the air solidified, mana condensing. The sharp crystal speared down to break a few spikes at the top before the crystal shattered into pieces, the same way the spikes did.

  The bloody spikes reappeared out of the wall almost immediately, replacing the ones broken off. Just longer, sharper, and darker. Alira could vaguely sense a black smog oozing from them. Likely Fellsworn mana, now much thicker, even she could feel it.

  “Pardon me,” Calix said.

  Lillian couldn’t even ask what he was asking her to be pardoned when she was picked up by her waist with a swoosh and placed back down at the back.

  “Leave,” he repeated to the dazed girl, grabbing the crystal in Alira’s hands to hand it to her. “I can’t take both of you at once. Return to the inn.”

  He turned to Alira. “We’ll go down together,” Calix said. “I’ll break the spikes before we reach them.”

  Alira nodded. She agreed with him. Lillian needed to leave. This wasn’t what she’d expected. If Raine was troubled, then things were starting to look far more dangerous. The base was supposed to be empty. It was a hideout the cultists seldom visited, but it looked like they were just too lucky that the cultists had to be here when they visited.

  She was fine with Lillian tagging along on their tour in an empty base, but not anymore. She couldn’t ignore the fact that Lillian still had Death’s scythe near her neck.

  She really didn’t want the girl to go alone, and in a perfect world where Calix wasn’t being difficult, she would have gone back to the inn with Lillain and have him rescue his own sister. But this wasn’t such a world, and Calix was a scum who didn’t care about Raine at all.

  “Don’t linger around. Go straight to our place.” Alira sighed. “Be careful on the way. There should be guards patrolling outside the town. Hurry back there and wait for us,” Alira instructed in one breath.

  Lillian hesitated for only a moment and nodded. “All right.”

  “Alright,” Alira echoed.

  She was doing just fine from here, so it should be fine as long as the closer spikes were destroyed. Though it meant they were completely bashing the entrance to the cultist base. Calix either genuinely didn’t care about this base in particular, or he was acting like he didn’t care about it to avoid suspicion.

  Alira was considering how she should make the jump without spraining her ankles when she was lifted off her feet. Her field of view elevated almost six feet as Calix held her by her thighs in one hand to place her on his shoulder.

  “Wait, what?” She had to place a hand on his other shoulder to balance.

  “We go down together,” Calix parroted as if that was a good explanation. Alira couldn’t complain because the next moment, her view dropped as he made the jump. The two of them dropped with Alira making an undignified squeak to earn herself a mouthful of shit-soaked air.

  Calix pointed his hand at the hole, commanding a tube of crystal around its walls, effectively shattering all the spikes as if they were fragile. The one that had gone into her shoulder back then felt like metal, so his crystal certainly wasn’t just pretty and shiny. Constant breaking of spikes announced their presence ahead of them.

  The hole wasn’t as vertical as it looked from above. The two of them slid down smoothly on Calix’s crystal. For a moment, Alira almost felt like they were in some brightly lit water park slide or fancy amusement ride.

  The drop was a long one. It lasted for what felt like an awkward forever, though most likely around five minutes, before she saw light that didn’t come from Calix at the end of the tunnel. The two emerged out of the tunnel from near the top of a brick wall, with Calix bending his knees to take the fall.

  Alira hurriedly looked around for any hint of Raine once she got back down on her feet. She almost jumped when she saw Raine at her side, lazily leaning against the wall beside the hole they came out of.

  He scoffed in disbelief as if he was the one with the right to do so, and not Alira. “You actually took your time despite thinking I’m in danger. I would have been long dead by now.”

  Alira’s jaw slacked down, and all she could manage was a ‘Huh?’

  “Whatever,” Raine straightened up. He waved his hand around before walking down the only path ahead. “Since you’re already here, let’s get moving. Shall we?”