Chapter 541 - Playground

“Little kitten,” I greet her.

Myrra sits beside me and shoulder-checks me, “Not you too, feral angry kitten. I’ve had enough of that nickname. Are you looking for a fight? We can fight if you want. Let our fists do the talking.”

“So uncivilized. Typical lynthari. Go fight Lily.”

"That petite black-haired girl? Fuck no. I already sparred with her—she hurts herself more with those weird moves than I ever could."

“That’s our Lily,” I nod. “You’re early.”

“It tends to happen when the person you follow nearly explodes the entire moon. Damn, who knows how many levels she gained from that. She just got me Status and didn’t want to stay there, so we moved sooner.”

“Very reasonable thing to do. Tutorial attendee, 7th floor, floor quest, crazy lynthari, side quest.”

“I can hear it all now,” she says, her tail wagging from side to side.

As always, I feel the urge to pull it. I’m a weak man, truly.

“I’m glad you made it,” I say.

“Ohhh? Is that a hint of genuine emotion? Did the feral one get used to people? Should I call you ‘tame one’?”

Yeah, typical lynthari.

Ignoring her question, I jump to my feet, and Myrra does the same. As usual, she enjoys being an entire head taller than me. Tsk.

“We fight?” she asks excitedly. “Did I anger you?”

“Not really,” I say, and jump off the cliff. Myrra follows me.

We both start walking slowly along the forest edge. The golden light pierces the leaves, throwing shadows on us that shift as the leaves sway.

“Does Lissandra know it’s not that easy to escape the tutorial?” I ask.

“Is there something that woman wouldn’t know?” Myrra snorts and pulls a leaf from one of the trees, then sticks it in my hair where it remains.

I ignore the leaf and ask again, “So she has a plan?”

“Obviously.” Nodding, she places another leaf in my hair. “And obviously, she also won’t tell me. If I ask, she’ll probably make me guess for hours before calling me stupid.”

“I would do the same.”

“Are you really picking a fight, feral one? Fight me if you’re not a coward. I’ll show you what I’ve learned.”

“Later. If you want to beat out your frustration from months with Lissandra, look somewhere else.”

“Damn it,” she mutters, deflating. “Maybe you really are the tame one. The old you would already be going for my throat.”

“Sure he would. So, how did your 6th floor end?”

She only answers after putting another leaf and two small branches in my hair. “We went into the Mana Desert. She tested the Champion there, and he died, so she complained he was weak. Then we headed to a city full of creepy mind mages. She took over the Framework there and complained about them being weak—same as usual. She did something crazy and truly fucked up to the Framework. It was some kind of experimental mana destabilization—she mentioned forcing the Framework’s spatial locks open, triggering a cascading mana backlash through its core. Something about destabilizing the mana stores and the psychic network, creating a runaway spiral feedback loop that fed on itself until everything ruptured, blah blah.”

She waves her hand in a vaguely confused gesture.

“Anyway, a creepy giant eyeball appeared so she killed it. Then something exploded, and it started getting really cold. Out of nowhere, a lightning spear tried to kill us, but Lissandra caught it and threw it back. Then a lightning dwarf woman appeared and tried to kill Lissandra. Portals started opening and the prison guards appeared as well. Feral one, it was a real shitshow. I almost died more times than I can remember. But it was fun.”

As I listen, I can only nod in agreement—it really does sound fun.

“So you left soon after?” I ask.

“Yes. When we got here she noticed the leftover mana signature in the air of your group members she met before. Hell, maybe she smelled them or something, so we tracked them here and arrived two days ago. Then we waited for you. Someone told them the lumorans would let you go soon or maybe she made it happen.”

“I bet you would have rushed to save me if needed,” I say.

We exit the forest and continue walking next to the river, across a field full of lush green grass swaying in the wind.

There are no more leaves to put in my hair, so Myrra pulls some grass and sticks it there instead.

“Are you sure? She’d probably say you should be able to escape on your own or just stay there.”

I think about it for a while. It does sound like something she would do.

Almost out of space on my hair, Myrra starts putting stuff on the crown floating over my head. She pulls the longest blades of grass, ties them together into circles, then hangs them on the pointy parts. The entire time, her tail swishes side to side, her ears perked up. I can see how much fun she’s having.

Figuring I’ve let her guard down enough and she won’t suspect anything, I prepare.

When she bends to pick another patch of grass, I blast her with kinetic energy, sending her into the river.

Water splashes as she twists in the air, landing on her hands and feet before she jumps up. I half expect her to hiss at me, with her tail bristling straight out like that.

Returning her glare, I slowly remove the leaves, branches, and grass from my hair and crown.

Then I straighten up and calmly say, “Nya.”

“You feral fuck!” she hisses and charges at me.

Before she even reaches me, I teleport away through the [Ley Line] I extended toward the villa while we walked—something she didn’t notice. I know that escaping will only piss her off even more.

I arrive in one of the gardens, where the twins sit on the ground, watching Maya and Lily have a friendly spar.

“Hey,” I say as I sit next to them, careful not to interrupt the spar.

Both Lily and Maya notice me but keep going, too into it to stop. Lily has an incredibly tough body, but with her [Compounding], Maya seems to be able to hurt her. The more she draws blood with her mana weapons, the sharper they get against Lily. It’s a sort of temporary buff, probably adjusting the frequency of her weapons to Lily’s wavelength or something.

Who knows how these high-tier skills work? I will need to observe it a bit more, but it really seems strong.

“Hey, are you betting with us on who’ll win? And it’s nice to see you made it. Of course, we never suspected otherwise. You’re a tough motherfucker to kill,” Denis smiles broadly.

Aaron nods. “Really hard to kill.”

“That’s true,” I confirm proudly. “I’m betting on Lily. Is Lissandra here?”

“Well, Maya would be sad to hear we all bet on Lily,” Denis smirks. “Some time ago, Min-Jae, Sophie, Tess, and Izzy tried to bet on Maya, but they stopped after a while, hehe. That scary woman came here not that long ago with sassy lynthari. She insulted everyone she could, left Myrra for us to deal with, and fucked off somewhere,” Denis says.

His brother corrects him, “She insulted everyone but Biscuit. She just stared at him for a minute and nodded once. What do you think that means, Nat?”

“Hell if I know. But damn, I’m happy to be out of that fucking cube.”

Finished sparring, Maya walks over, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “You being out means we’re free to do whatever we want and lumorans will leave us alone?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” I shake my head. “I don’t think they’re absolutely sure; only mostly. So our prison got changed from a cube to this golden cage. We’ll get rewards, materials, and more thanks to my achievements while we sit here.”

“That fucks up our floor performance,” Maya grumbles as she sits on the ground. “We’ll probably survive a lot of waves, but with us doing nothing, the rewards won’t be as good.”

Lily waves at me happily and sits down beside her. “What would happen if we tried to escape?”

“Likely nothing good,” I shrug. “But I wouldn’t worry about rewards. As the waves progress, things will get more dangerous. The Lumorans will be forced to focus on their own tasks, leaving us free to act when the difficulty spikes. Plus, there’s the tournament to look forward to.”

They get into an excited conversation, and I think about it as well. With the tutorial so close, I don’t care much about this floor overall. Sure, I’m curious about the floors of Hell difficulty. I can level up, learn, and gain a lot there, and they’re often truly dangerous. But after tasting Beyond and the outside world from the Beyond Quest, I now want fancier stuff.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have someone to talk to,” I interrupt the conversation and stand.

“Is she back?” Denis asks, looking around nervously.

“Seems like it,” I confirm and wave.

I head toward the waterfalls, crossing the river, the bank, and the calm lake before reaching it. Boosting myself into the air, I add a few jumps and land at the top of the cliff where the water cascades down. Even though the area should be deafening with all that water, it’s quiet here.

Lissandra sits on a nearby stone, just like before when I met her on the 5th floor. She appears around my age, with what I can only call a perfect body she made for herself.

Her hair shines silver, and her ordinary-looking brown eyes watch me with interest. There’s no longer the bone-and-flesh dagger made of the Saint Absolute, but she still holds that pitch black one.

A single mana orb floats near her, apparently part of her training. Something about that orb is deeply wrong—just looking at it makes my brain ache, even with my mid arcane passive, and I haven’t even used my full senses.

She glances at the crown above my head, at the evil pyramids I use for training, and at the Fracture on my waist. Even though I can’t feel anything from her, and her eyes look so normal, I’m sure she’s seeing right through me.

“You’re early,” I say, sitting down on a nearby boulder.

“Go into your mind space to meet that guest,” she replies.

No greetings, no wasted time. That’s just how she is.

I do as told and appear in my mind.

The area is now a children’s playground, and Whitey is wearing casual clothes: just a bleached-out black shirt and loose blue shorts. The playground is empty and surrounded by a small park. There’s a wheel in the middle, some swings, and a tunnel.

Whitey sits on that small wooden horse on a big spring.

“Yo,” I greet him.

“Yoo,” he says back. “What’s that bitch doing here?” he nods toward Lissandra.

The silver-haired woman ignores his words and sits on a nearby bench. As with everything she does, there’s an air of dignity about her. Even in this younger version, it suits her.

I don’t hesitate for long and sit on the other wooden horse next to Whitey. It looks way too fun not to.

After rocking back and forth for a while, Whitey finally addresses her: “You can’t do anything about me. I know it, you know it, and even that cheating mana-bitch maniac here knows it.”

Lissandra nods. “I thought maybe I could, but you are too different from Myrra. The only way for you to join me and Myrra would be to overwrite the little pup’s memories. After that, I could make further modifications until you ended up like us.”

“I told you,” Whitey says, turning back to me while continuing to rock on the horse.

“Not even if we move him to the other attendee and let him take over?” I ask her.

“He’s the result of the Challenge. In this specific case, he can’t be ‘moved’ or separated from you.”

“I see.”

Whitey smiles brightly. “Damn. I guess I really do have to kill you if I want to live.”

***

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