'Ow... My fucking head... It feels like it's about to burst, holy shit it hurts! I don't recall falling down but apparently I'd been out.' I can feel the hard floor underneath my body.
'Hold up! What's this shit? Why's my head over something soft and warm...?' Hold up...
I push myself to open my eyes. It all looks blurry but that's clearly a face, isn't it?
"GUN?!"
"Ow... My head... talk quieter."
"GUN!"
'I know this voice. The fuck is this? It's raining? No... It can't be.' I slowly try opening my eyes again, but this is odd... 'How can this be? The hell's she doing here?'
"Gloria? That you?" I ask, I can see a face on top of me, her pink hair falling over as she looks straight down. 'HOLD UP! AM I IN HER LAP?'
"Thank God. I thought... I really thought you were dead... I thought I was dead." She says something I just can't really understand...
"What are you talking about?" I ask, my head's still not quite there. I feel like I just came out of a long day of sleep after getting hammered. 'Wait, the rain... Is it her?' I open my eyes once again as I feel her hand caressing my face. Yeah, it was her, tears flowed down the tip of her nose, dripping onto me. Her eyes were completely red, she'd been crying like this for a long time.
"You passed out after going crazy over Gahan."
' Oh, yeah... that bastard.'
"OH, SHIT! MIHARA!" I tried to rise in a hurry. 'Mihara's in danger Gahan-'
*POC*
"Owww!" She cried.
'Ow... My fucking head...' Yep, I just hit my forehead on hers.
'Ah...' I opened my eyes again, looking at the monitor ahead and over me... There it...
'Wait. It's paused? How the fuck is that even possible?'
They were exactly where I last remembered them. Just seeing it made my blood boil. She was still pressed against my main body. He, however, seemed to be taken aback, paralyzed as he took a few steps back... 'Huh?! I don't recall that part. Now that I look at it, the dungeon core seems to be glowing red, right? The hell happened there!?'
"Gloria... What happened? How can it be that you are here?"
"I... still don't really know..." She sounded like she was about to cry, I turned back to look at her...
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"The hell?! Why are you naked?!" I was taken aback too. 'Why the hell's she naked? Where's her kigurumi? Wait... How can she be here? Wasn't she supposed to be in her divine subspace or something?'
"I... I... I-"
'Oh, crap. She's gonna cry?!'
I hurriedly turned around and slid on the ground towards her, embracing her tight as she began to cry loudly, sobbing. 'I guess I can afford to give her at least this... She seems to have been through a lot. It shouldn't cost me anything right?' I think as I stare into the paused image of Gahan and Mihara. 'I just hope it doesn't unpause out of nowhere... That'd be a problem...'
It's odd... Very odd... I'd normally be fucking excited at having her in my arms, naked, like this... yet those thoughts are nowhere to be found. Rather, I can feel my heart being strangled as I just watch her cry unstoppably. I caress her gorgeous pink hair while on my knees, her small hands grab onto my clothes as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world.
"It's okay, it's all fine, we're fine now, I'm here..." I told myself and her while holding onto her, caressing her back as I patted her head.
"UWAAAAAAAAAA!"
Yet, it seemed to have the opposite effect, she ended up crying even more and louder. Soon, I found tears rolling down my own cheeks inadvertently. I had no idea why, but it pained me too much to see her like this. My mouth felt dry as an indescribable knot formed in my throat. It feels so uncomfortable. I embrace her even harder. This seems to be working though, and slowly, her sobs turn into an almost silent whimper as she seems to calm down. I finally sit down, my feet were already hurting from how long I was kneeling. She, however, doesn't let go of my shirt for even a second. Rather, as I sit down, she wraps her legs around my waist and clings to my neck. I'd normally be surprised by this, but now, All I can do is hug her tight.
"I'm sorry you have to see me like this..." She mutters in my ear.
"It's ok, I don't mind." I answer, still hugging her naked body.
We just remained there. For a long, long, time. Slowly, I managed to calm myself down as I tried to digest what had just happened.
"Do you feel better?" I ask.
"Yeah... It feels much better now that you're here..." For the first time, I felt relief in her voice. Suddenly, my heart felt at ease, almost as if a weight had been removed from my chest.
'Since when did I care for this brat so much?' I ask myself. Relieved.
"Good." I wanted to say something more soothing, but nothing else came into my mind and we just hugged each other for another while. "Care to explain how the hell you managed to get here?"
"I don't know too well myself but..."
Gloria began explaining everything that happened, from this being her last shot at trying this, which she, apparently, had hidden from even her sister, and what this meant if she failed, all the way through what happened when she thought she'd died... From her explanation, I could see that this felt like a long time, but I had no way of understanding what "an eternity" meant... That is, until I realized she was literally thousands of years old. I couldn't avoid holding her tight when this happened. She quit talking as soon as it happened, asking me what was wrong. Of course, I said it was nothing and asked her to continue... I had to hold myself from crying there and then. God, she must've felt so desolate... Still... She then told me about how she walked a long time towards this tiny lit spot in the immensity of this dark place... And I only then realized, I'd been standing right here ever since this place began existing. I'd never even taken a stroll around to see how large it was... To imagine it would be this massive... In the end, it seemed she found me collapsed here and nursed me until I woke up... It didn't take that long, she said, but compared to an eternity to a being that is millennia old, it's probably still a long time for me...