With everything cleared up, I stopped paying attention to the little owl clicking away on my shoulder and observed Hina. She was still on the floor, exactly the same place where she stumbled. She was just looking at the little wolves’ corpses blankly. I suppressed a sigh and walked over to her.

“Hina, it’s over. You should use your spacial ring to absorb their corpses now.” I said gently, a comforting smile on my face.

She seemed to snap out of it when she heard my voice and adopted her usual grimace that I so often saw when she was in my presence. Ungrateful woman, I just saved her life, the least she could do was have some manners and thank me.

She walked over to the corpses and despite looking pale, quickly collected their corpses. Despite not being directly involved in the battle, she should have gotten stronger. It was one of those strange things about heroes; if someone in their designated ‘party’ kills a magical beast, they get stronger to a certain extent, although not as much as when they’re killing it themselves. Being able to get stronger so easily is truly an envious ability.

“Well let’s continue on.” I said pleasantly.

“Okay” replied Hina in a quieter than usual voice. It looked as though the atmosphere of the dungeon was getting to her.

We continued walking down the seemingly endless corridors, occasionally encountering another pack of wolves, which I would quickly dispatch. Even Hina managed to kill one, at the cost of nearly putting a hole through me. I know that there’s limited space, but being so incompetent is just unacceptable. If I was hit by that arrow, I would’ve been injured quite badly. Luckily for me, my reflexes are still up to scratch.

We also encountered other species: spiders for example, ghastly looking things that jumped around, spitting webs and acid at us. Hina nearly fainted when she saw them. Of course, the fight wasn’t difficult, but they aren’t pleasant to look at in the least. We also eventually came across large centipede magical beasts, once again causing Hina to shriek in fright. I wouldn’t even be able to say how many times that scream reached my ears so far. Once again no big deal, except I wasn’t completely sure where to cut in order to kill them. It ended with trial and error until all of them were just hacked to pieces and stopped moving. Quite tedious work. So far the wolves have been low C rank, the spiders were middle C rank and the centipedes were high C rank. So if we follow the path Serenity was directing me towards, we should encounter some B ranks relatively soon.

After a while longer walking, we exited the tunnel system and entered an open and cavernous area. There were numerous rocky outcroppings littered all over the place with stalactites and stalagmites also dotted here and there. It was a large empty space, and in the darkness the clear sounds of scuttling and scratching could be heard. At least Hina will have space to use her weapon now. I looked over to her to discover she was frozen stiff when confronted by the sea of darkness in front of us.

“Let’s go” I whispered in low voice, causing her to jump out of fright.

She turned and glared at me before giving a somewhat reluctant nod, following me as I led the way through the cavern. Hina looked scared stiff, I had to struggle to prevent a chuckle escaping my lips. Maybe I should ‘accidentally’ separate from her for a while, hehehe… That would be kind of interesting to wat-

I was rudely interrupted in my fun plans for Hina by a peck to the side of the head. Why? Leaving her alone in the darkness with a bunch of rank B monsters would put her in harm’s way… Well I’ll be watching from a distance, so I’ll rescue her if anything bad happens, ok? I just want to see her suffer just a little bit, hehehe…

Serenity the owl just continued to gaze at me intensely. I’ll take that as a go for it then! Strangely enough she seemed to drop her head in almost weary looking state. Guess travelling around down here for so long has taken its toll on her, poor thing.

“Hina, just wait here for a moment.” I said.

She turned to look at me with disbelief clearly present in her face, before displaying a panicked expression.

“No! Don’t just abandon me here, look I’m sorry for before, just don’t leave me alone down here.” She started talking in a hurried and flustered tone, tears forming in her eyes. It looked like being alone down here was a terrifying prospect to her. In fact, ever since we came down here she’d been on edge, don’t tell me she has a phobia of the dark, hehehe…

“I won’t abandon you, remember there are dire consequences if I do, so be at ease. I’m just going a little way off to relieve myself.” I said.

She still looked worried, but despite her fear couldn’t bring herself to ask if she could accompany me on my journey to go and water some non-existent plants. A full-proof plan.

I quickly walked away, leaving the little light by her side. As I entered the darkness, far away enough for her not to see me, I used the shadows to wrap myself, erasing my presence, and then moved in a bit closer to watch the show.

Hina had begun to pace back and forth, fear clearly shown in her every movement, from the glances into the darkness to the flinching at even the slightest noise in the background. She slowly appeared to be getting into a state, pacing faster and faster. Even from this distance, I could see that her breathing had become rapid and her eyes wouldn’t stay still, trying to be everywhere at once. A few minutes had passed and Hina looked to be at her rope. Tears had begun to form in her eyes as she desperately looked towards the direction in which I’d walked.

“Cyne!” she hissed in a quiet voice. Her tone was uneven and even an amateur at reading others could tell there was only one thing she was feeling at that moment. Panic.

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“Cyne, are you there?!” she continued in a slightly higher pitched voice. She was starting to lose her cool all together now. I couldn’t wait to see how things would progress.

“Cyne! Cyne! Please, come back quickly.” Her voice slowly turned softer and softer until she was just muttering to herself under her breath. From the distance, I couldn’t quite make out the words she was saying.

She continued pacing back and forth, with increasing speed. It should be known that she had started to fully hyperventilate by this point. She couldn’t stay still, tremors clearly running through her body as she looked into the darkness that surrounded her. Tears were now freely flowing down her face, something I hadn’t seen before. It was quite amusing, that expression of fear. This type of pain I was inflicting on her was a bit different from the usual kind, but I could still appreciate it. Time to turn up the intensity.

I slowly began to dim the light I’d left behind for her. It was at a speed that was barely noticeable, but once a few minutes had passed with Hina already in an extremely panicked state, she finally took notice that her surroundings had gotten darker, that very darkness slowly creeping towards her as the light began to dim. She just stood there, watching in horror as the darkness crept forwards inch by inch and then began to mutter again.

“I can’t do this, I can’t do this” she whimpered over and over.

She knelt down on the ground as close to the light source as possible, taking her head in her hands as she began to let out small whimpers and sobs. Tremors racking her body as the beasts in the distance made scuttling sounds or low pitched moans. Hehehe… looks like she’d finally lost it. At the same time, I noticed that a monster in the distance had slowly been making its way closer to the dimming light source.

It looked kind of like a hairless gorilla, fingers curved into talons, and a gaping maw that hung open, exposing jagged teeth like shards of broken glass. Hehehe, I can’t wait to see her reaction when it gets close enough. It slowly edged closer to Hina, who was still trapped in her state of terror.

Once the hulking ape was close enough to be visible, it made a grunting sound, drawing the gaze of Hina.  As she saw the monstrous creature in front of her, her face turned as white as paper. It was entirely possible at this point that she would die of fright. The ape gave a happy, rasping chuckle. Looks like the big fellow likes terrifying its prey. I can relate to that.

It slowly lumbered forwards, the movement causing Hina to start scrambling away. She summoned her bow, but was far too jittery to loose an arrow upon the beast. Her eyes were wide open, looking at what she most likely thought would be her demise.

“CYNE!” she shrieked.

Looks like my fun’s over. It was a very entertaining show though, hehehe… I darted forwards, using the shadows to smother my appearance and muffle the sounds of my footsteps. Before the beast could realise what was happening I had already arrived at its back, and with a neat thrust through its spinal cord, at the base of its skull, it fell forwards limply, only inches away from the terrified Hina who still looked at its face unwaveringly as though unable to believe the thing that was about to kill her was truly dead.

According to the stone that should have been a low B rank beast. As long as I can use the darkness in this area, I should be able to end most of these creatures before a fight begins. It would be convenient if things go that way. I walked over to Hina, adopting a concerned expression. I reached out my hand to help her up, which she took with her own trembling hand.

She finally appeared to realise she hadn’t died and relief flooded her face, but the tears began to fall more rapidly, as she looked at my face with an expression I’d never seen before. Her eyes glistened with gratefulness, her face currently scrunched up to try and stop the flow of tears. She threw herself towards me, embracing my body with a hug.

“I-I’m sorry for being mean to you, I’m sorry f-for all the things I said, I’m sorry! T-Thank you for saving me!” she started sobbing.

Dammit woman, man up and stop getting your fluids on my jacket.

You’re the one who put in her that state.

You didn’t stop me did you? The blame partially falls to you, Serenity. The little owl gave me an incredulous look, which I ignored, turning back to the crying Hina.

“Thank you, b-but what took you so long? I w-was alone in t-the dark f-for so long.” she asked, her voice still uneven from fright. Hmm… good excuse… Think, think, think. Got it.

“I got lost” I answered in the most sincere voice I could.

Hina looked up at me giving the same incredulous gaze that Serenity had just displayed. She looked a bit angry through the tears, but instead of doing as regular Hina would, she appeared to get over it, just asking one thing of me.

“Please don’t leave me alone again.” She begged in barely audible voice, unable to look me in the eye.

“I won’t. I’m sorry you had to go through that. As your companion I should have been here with you. I won’t allow any danger to befall you.” I answered, attempting to emulate a sort of heroic visage.

She simply nodded meekly, still unable to look at me. That was a job well done! She just had a very vulnerable side of her exposed, hehehe. This should do something positive for our relationship and make her easier to manipulate in the future… probably. If not then at least I had a fun show to watch.