Chapter 33: Thick Fog
TL: Potato-tan
Proofreader: Asianpotato
“You really won’t eat?”
“Mn, ah, I said I wouldn’t eat!”
“Wipe the drool from your mouth first.”
“This isn’t drool!”
“Then what is it?”
“Er, um, well, you see.”
Russell chuckled as he watched Julia ramble and took another bite of the meat in his hand. The grease stained the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t care. He simply bit down on the flesh with all his might.
“It really tastes like chicken. It’s chewy, too. It feels like I’m eating a chicken leg.”
“. . .Gulp.”
Julia, who was watching Russell eat the meat with relish, opened her mouth again and drooled. She was no different from a puppy. Who would have thought that this woman was Julia Hippolia de Hyperion, the esteemed princess of the Empire?
“Here.”
“What? Whoa!”
Russell grabbed a fully cooked piece of meat from the campfire and hurled it towards Julia. She caught it reflexively. It was a massive piece of crocodile meat that resembled a cartoon. It was probably the hind leg or the foreleg. Or maybe it was the rib cage.
“We haven’t eaten for at least five hours. Eat it. You wouldn’t want to starve in front of your ancestor or the dragon, would you?”
“Ugh, but still, this is, is, crocodile meat. . .”
Julia looked at the object in her hand with trembling eyes. What was covered in tough skin just ten minutes ago had been dismantled by Russell’s hands a few times, revealing its pink flesh. And now it was a piece of meat on the surface, dripping with oil and juice.
Gulp.
Julia’s stomach rumbled. The smell in front of her nose was simply divine, and when she came to her senses, Julia was already tearing at the meat.
“Haaa. . . nom.”
Munch, munch. The princess, whose cheeks had turned like a hamster’s, was chewing on the meat. Russell watched Julia do that and chuckled before tearing at the meat himself.
They were sitting on a boulder that they had rolled over as a substitute for a chair, with a campfire burning at the intersection. It was a three- to four-hour break and meal that they had taken.
They didn’t need separate firewood. Russell and Julia both possessed the skills to ignite flames using mana, and they could use crocodile or giant snake carcasses as firewood.
However, the basilisk seemed to be bad because of its venom-infused blood, so they burned the crocodile leather and inedible parts to make a fire. Now they were roasting crocodile meat, using the crocodile as firewood.
“People would be shocked if they knew that you dared to treat the princess to this kind of meal.”
Munch, munch. Julia, who had finished one piece of meat, grabbed a new one.
“What are you talking about when you’re eating so well?”
“Ah, no, you see. . .Like you said, we shouldn’t be hungry when we meet His Highness Ludwig or Ismenios, and we shouldn’t get in the way when we fight! That’s what I mean.”
Thud. Russell added one more to the pile of bones stacked next to him. The precariously stacked tower of bones barely stood without losing its balance.
Julia, who had eaten to her satisfaction as the abundant crocodile meat dwindled, finally had the chance to look around.
It was complete chaos. There was not a single intact floor. They had dug up or turned over every single one, filling it with broken boulders.
Additionally, not far away was the carcass of a giant snake that still reeked of burning. It was a basilisk.
“I’ll go check that out.”
“The snake?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Julia got up from the stone and walked towards the basilisk’s carcass.
The closer she got, the stronger the smell of burnt flesh became. In addition, poisonous gas was swirling around as the venom-infused blood burned or evaporated. Julia approached, her body protected by mana, and examined the carcass.
When she saw it again, it was still enormous. She couldn’t compare it to the giant crocodile she had battled in the passage above. Julia, who had acquired a lot of knowledge in the library of the hidden secret space of the imperial palace, could guess that a basilisk of this size was at least two hundred years old.
Two hundred years. It was an unimaginable amount of time. In fact, it could have been even older than two hundred years. Ancient dragonkin, like basilisks, which take the form of snakes, grow in physical strength and size as they shed their skin.
The cycle of shedding their skin becomes longer and longer after the first shedding, and later, they shed their skin once every thirty or forty years. Julia reached out and touched the scales on the relatively intact section. It was hard. It was almost as hard as the armor she was wearing now.
When she turned sideways from there, she saw the body lying sideways, cut in half. The smell became even stronger. However, she didn’t even cover her nose and carefully examine the cross-section.
‘It still feels warm. It was pierced in one shot. The place where it was thrown. . .’
There was a spot where she assumed Russell must have been standing nearby. There was a deep left footprint and a web-like trace spreading out from it. Julia stood on that spot. Then the basilisk appeared right in front of her.
‘He threw it from here. Without moving, staring straight at the basilisk.’
‘How could he have done that?’ Julia had gotten goosebumps just looking at the giant crocodile’s horrible snout earlier. How could he have watched the scene of death opening its mouth in front of his nose so calmly and responded to it?
Julia suddenly noticed that both eyes of the giant snake were missing. The place where the eyes should have been was empty, holding only darkness. She realized that the wound was very strange.
‘As soon as they started fighting, did he attack the eyes? No, that’s impossible. You have to look at the eyes to know where they are, but wouldn’t you turn to stone then?’
Julia knew that there were people who had become dynamic statues in poses where they couldn’t sense the eyes or escape, not far from where they were. You couldn’t help but turn to stone unless you were blind.
She looked back. The warrior, who had finished off half of a crocodile, was picking his teeth with a bone needle, filled with a sense of satisfaction. He didn’t look like a statue at all.
Turning her gaze again, she looked straight ahead and saw a scratch on the wall in the distance. It was a trace of the claymore that Russell had thrown. Russell had climbed up the height of a three-story building at least once, just by taking one step, and came down after pulling it out.
Julia shook her head, walked back to the campfire, and sat down. Turning her head slightly to the side, she saw Russell, his upper body exposed, sitting with his face flushed by the campfire’s naked light.
“How did you avoid the curse of petrification?”
Russell looked at Julia with only his eyes.
Julia continued.
“I went to check just now and found the basilisk’s eyes gouged out. The wound didn’t result from a sword or knife stab or cut from the outside. If so, there should have been other wounds around the eyes. It’s like. . . . . .”
As she spoke, the question that had been lingering in her mind since she first noticed that the basilisk’s eyes were missing became more clear. Russell still didn’t open his mouth and listen to her.
“It looked like it had exploded from the inside.”
“. . . . . . .”
“How is that possible?”
The campfire’s amber and golden eyes flickered and met each other. Russell noted the orange light and shade on each other’s half-faces.
“I told you I’m good at staring contests. I’ve never lost.”
“. . . . . . .”
“You seem to dislike that excuse. Then I’ll give you another reason. Do you know the saying ‘hitting a cow behind a mountain’?”
“. . .It’s a technique that transmits shock through a medium, right? Are you saying you gouged the eyes out by doing that?”
“Then will you believe me when I say I won the staring contest? It doesn’t matter to me either way.”
Julia sighed, knowing that Russell wouldn’t give her a proper answer.
She suddenly felt sleepy. She chuckled softly. Fighting, eating, and getting sleepy. Is this life?
Julia, who had a similar thought to what the red-haired wizard had said the day before, turned her head and looked for something to lean on. It was not too far away. She approached it with a smile, drunk on sleepiness, and rested her head on it.
“What are you doing?”
“Your shoulder is too wide, empty, and lonely to carry just one head. I added my head.”
“That’s a rather advanced way of saying you’re sleepy.”
“I have my pride, too. . .Hwaam. I’ll just stay like this for a bit. Just a little bit. . .”
Julia mumbled something that she couldn’t even understand, then fell asleep.
Coool.
Russell looked down at Julia, who had fallen asleep without any caution, with eyes that were filled with amazement. She was so defenseless in front of a strange man. Was it because she trusted him so much, or because she had a different feeling?
‘Different feeling, my ass.’ Russell chuckled and carefully lifted Julia’s head onto his thigh. She curled up without any sign of resistance and leaned against Russell’s body.
Crackle, crackle. Crackle, crackle.
The campfire continued to burn, sending sparks upward. Russell watched the flashy birth and death of the sparks and unconsciously stroked Julia’s head. It felt as though he had previously caressed the slumbering head of someone else. ‘Sleep well.’
Julia, in her dream, felt a gentle touch. The touch was endlessly affectionate and warm, and it made her think of someone she missed.
“Mom. . .”
Russell continued to stroke Julia’s head as she mumbled in her sleep. Without any snags, the silver hair moved smoothly between his fingers.
Crackle, crackle. Crackle, crackle.
🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷
Thirty minutes later,.
There was a small incident in which Julia, who had woken up from her sleep “Mom?”, squirmed in embarrassment “Uwaaa! Why are you here? Why are you stroking my hair?”, “You’re mistaken”, but they have resumed their exploration of the labyrinth. “Let’s go, let’s go! What are you waiting for? Oh, did you just laugh? Did you?!”
As before, Russell chose the path with less mana distribution among the forks.
The monsters that appeared had clearly decreased since the basilisk and the giant crocodile appeared, the monsters have clearly decreased. No, it would be more accurate to say that there were none. At best, all they met were living corpses that couldn’t move an inch and lay on the ground.
Julia said she had easily decapitated the head of a corpse that was barely moving.
“Something’s strange.”
“I think so too.”
“There are too few monsters. There are no more forks either. Maybe. . .?”
“Yeah. I think we’re almost there.”
They realized intuitively that they were approaching the end of the labyrinth. Then, the light that had been illuminating the darkness above Russell and Julia’s heads flickered, as if it couldn’t penetrate a certain boundary. The two stopped in front of that fence.
It was a white mass of fog, standing like a wall. Julia said it with a dumbfounded face.
“Why is there fog in the labyrinth? No, can this even be called fog?”
It was certainly difficult to simply call it fog. Fog didn’t spread widely like this and gather in one place.
Julia carefully reached out and touched the wall of fog. The fog swirled and whirled without resistance, following her hand’s direction. However, when she removed her hand, it slowly returned to its original state.
Russell also narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t see the inside of the fog, not even when he shot mana into it. It was strange, considering his eyes had far superior performance than any telescope or X-ray device.
So he opened his eyes.
The two indigo will-o’-the-wisps, which had made Julia look up in surprise and shoot lightning bolts at him, flared up. She looked up at Russell with a surprised face, but she didn’t attack like last time. She just waited.
Russell’s eyes peered through the fog. Russell’s ‘eyes’ penetrated the fog wall, transmitting the scene inside his brain. Russell spoke without turning off his ’eyes’.
“Let’s go in.”
“Huh? Do you know what this is? Shouldn’t you throw a stone or something first?”
“No. Take my hand. We’re going in.”
“Eh? Huh?”
Without responding, Russell seized Julia’s gauntlet-clad hand. He then walked straight into the fog wall.
Julia unconsciously closed her eyes and held her breath. It was because the billowing fog seemed to enter her nostrils and fill her lungs. Her heart pounded. She wasn’t sure if the tension and fear were to blame, or if Russell was holding her hand.
“Whew!”
Julia, who couldn’t hold her breath any longer, exhaled. And she opened her eyes wide at the scent that she had caught on the tip of her nose. And she witnessed an unbelievable sight.
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