“What an odd-looking box.” Claud and Lily walked around a desk, which had a weird item on it. At first glance, it looked like a mirror with buttons or something, but this ruin definitely wouldn’t have mirrors sitting on a desk for some reason. “Should we bring it back?”
“Better check if we can even move this from its original place, though,” Lily replied. “Let’s see…nope!”
“It’s a bit heavy, but we can just bring it down slowly, I suppose.” Claud looked at the odd, thin box that reminded him of the Comms Console he’d seen back in the Nightfall Palace. As for why he made such a connection to begin with, he wasn’t too sure.
Maybe it was because of having a side that was made of glass? Regardless, it was great that no one had moved it out of the place yet, so—
His vision tilted oddly, turning to the side and then landing on the ground. “Eh?”
A moment later, the Second Shadow that Lily was operating came apart in wisps of darkness, and the scene of the second floor fizzled out at the same time. The sensation of wearing the headband was very vivid now, and it took Claud a heartbeat to realise the substitute that they had dispatched no longer existed.
He pushed the metal band away from his head. “We died.”
“Yeah.” Lily looked at him. “Painlessly, though. I wonder what happened.”
“There’s a reason why that thing was still sitting there all along, huh.” Claud grimaced. “What should we do about that little box? Should we struggle to bring it out anyway?”
“Well, we haven’t checked. It seems that touching it will kill us on the spot,” Lily replied.
“Be more confident,” Claud replied. “If that thing is touched, everyone in the room will probably die. However, if we sacrifice a few shadows and act in such a way that our first action will modify the position of that box thing, we should be able to get it out of the room after around ten deaths. That’s assuming that we can move that thing out, though. And that bringing it out of the room won’t kill us.”
He paused. “There are a whole lot of other risks, and there are still plenty of places that remain unexplored on the second floor. The most disturbing thing is the absence of corpses altogether. There must have been a few people who died from the second floor and onwards, given the risks we faced, but…”
Lily grimaced. “Yeah. Now that I think about it, there weren’t any corpses when we made our way to the top back then, right?”
The couple exchanged glances.
“…Maybe that’s enough exploration for one day, don’t you think?” Claud muttered. “I’m beginning to feel scared.”
Lily nodded, and then frowned. “Wait, that’s my line! And you’re supposed to say that I’m clever for feeling scared, because it proves that I have a working set of wits!”
“What’s the point of going through that whole exchange when you already know what I’m going to say?” Claud asked, putting aside his fear. “Wouldn’t it be more fun if you could interpret my words at a glance and vice-versa?”
“I just want to hear you say it, okay?” Lily pouted, and then snuggled up to him. “Still, I am really scared, though. We never really gave it much thought, since there were so many things going on and we were on a deadline of sorts…but there are no bodies.”
“The absence of bodies doesn’t mean that no one died, after all. More often than not…they were either vigorously sliced up or just sucked into a spatial rift.” Claud thought about the glowing corpse that they had spotted on the first floor. “It’s fortunate we were using the Second Shadow, or else we would have died there.”
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Lily nodded. “Still, you’d think that the information we gathered would warn us about the dangers of that building, right? Right?”
“Maybe those that could have written that down are all dead,” Claud replied. “After all, that trap killed you and me instantly. And I don’t think any self-respecting party would enter the place piecemeal, right?”
The two looked at each other. Claud, prior to joining the Moon Lords, had always ventured out alone, so he had virtually no experience in understanding how groups of larger than two people worked together when exploring ruins. This was a very specific scenario that he had not quite prepared himself for.
As for Lily…
“Don’t look at me with such hopeful eyes,” Lily replied.
“You did work as a mercenary for some time before joining up with the Moon Lords, though. I’m just someone who moves through the shadows alone,” Claud replied. “Your experience as a mercenary in a party is probably a bit higher than me.”
“Well, I did party up with some second-generation nobles.” Lily tapped her chin. “But we mostly ran around doing odd jobs and escort missions for cold, hard cash. As for things like exploring ruins and hunting criminals…well, no one wanted to try. Or at least I made it known that I would leave the party if they took on such jobs.”
Claud nodded.
“Incidentally, I left that party a few months afterwards,” Lily replied. “Never heard about them again ever since then.”
The implications behind those words were a bit frightening, but Claud couldn’t help but feel a bit bad when he looked at Lily’s expression. Patting her on the head, he hugged her once and said, “It’s not your fault, so don’t worry too much about it. Like it or not, your presence probably wouldn’t have changed anything. And besides, until you receive confirmation about what happened to them, feeling bad over something you don’t know about is a waste of effort.”
He paused. “Of course, the heart does what it does, so…”
Lily nodded, a hint of sorrow in her face. Claud promptly tried to cheer her up, which included getting the two napping little shapes to amuse her. He didn’t mind doing so either; Claud wasn’t in the mood to actually do anything after his shadow had died once.
It was quite traumatising to have his upper torso lopped off, even if it was just a substitute. In essence, it meant that he had died once, and as a rule of thumb, people only had one life. If he had taken the same actions in person, even if they somehow survived, the two of them would have been crippled or maimed.
Was he comforting Lily, or was he comforting himself? Claud didn’t want to know the answer to that question.
After half an hour or so, Lily noticed his anomalous feelings and nudged him. “You’re scared?”
“We just died once.” Claud looked at her and tried to smile. “I’m naturally scared too.”
He tried to breath properly, but the stifling feeling in his heart didn’t want to go away, and insisted on squatting there until it had expressed itself adequately.
Probably, anyway.
In the end, both of them cuddled for a while, before the sounds of rumbling stomachs got them to get up properly.
“Let’s make some dinner,” Claud suggested, before peering out at the sky. The firmament they saw was black in colour, with little blips of light shining down on them, so the only way they could tell whether it was day or night was the city’s illumination…which didn’t help much either.
The place was constantly bright, after all.
“We should have thought about timekeeping,” Claud complained. “It’s forever bright out there too…I’ll need to use another dome artefact to cover our bedroom. Sheesh. The total mana expenditure to make these things last really long isn’t anything to sneeze at too!”
“Isn’t it nice when we can complain about things like this when we’re not at home?” Lily asked.
“Yes, indeed. We’re really quite lucky.” Claud laughed. “So, what should we have for tonight?”
“Not much to choose; either meat soup or meat stew,” Lily replied, before pulling out a small pot, which increased in size a moment later. Setting it down on the ground, she asked, “What did you bring?”
“Lots of dried meat,” Claud replied. “Still, this place has a never-ending farm. We should gather some potatoes, carrots and other greens there.”
Lily nodded. “We should regulate our meat intake while we’re here. Also, I recall the farm also has wheat, so maybe we can make some pastries with that too.”
“Pastries…really?”
“Really, really.” Lily grinned. “I even got some dried fruits too, so we can definitely make some sweet desserts.”
“Alright, some wheat, then.” Claud rubbed his nose. This long-term trip was turning out to be more and more luxurious with every passing issue, up to and including the complaints about things being too bright or whatever. Claud didn’t know that much about exploring ruins, but he was quite sure that no one had ever complained about a ruin being too bright.
Quite the first, in his opinion.
Reaching out for the Second Shadow, Claud channelled some mana into it. Having a substitute was quite convenient; his body didn’t need to step out and he didn’t need to expose his real body to danger. It was the perfect tool for the lazy and the cautious.
To his side, Lily asked, “Should I use my Second Shadow to cook instead? I won’t be affected by the heat that way…”
“We really are spoiling ourselves, huh.”