Kairos narrowed his eyes as he listened closely to the nearby whispers. There was one that seemed a little different, prompting him to reach out towards it until he picked that particular crystal up. Holding it up to his ear, the whispers became quite clear.
“Brother, I’m sorry for deceiving you. Please forget about me and keep moving forward, the exit is deep in the void. As long as you keep walking, you’ll eventually reach the end.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow. For a split second, he was confused as he didn’t remember having a sister. But then as he thought about it, these whispers weren’t exactly targeted at him.
His mind couldn’t help but flash back to the comment Nicole had said a while ago. That Oliver’s sister hadn’t actually betrayed him, but rather tricked him into killing her. He didn’t exactly believe it, especially with how little evidence there was behind that claim.
Yet, the whispers of the red crystal he just picked up made him think differently.
Kairos took a deep breath.
“This red crystal is saying that the exit is close by. We just have to keep going forward and we’ll eventually reach it”
Nicole pouted, dismissing everything he was saying.
“So… do you think of me as a friend or…?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“I guess to put it simply, I don’t really know. The best way I can put it is that I see you as Nicole.”
Nicole pursed her lips together.
“Mm… ok.”
She didn’t seem thrilled by that answer, but at the very least it satisfied her enough to stop talking as of now. As for Kaede, she was a little curious.
“Wait, we’re close to the exit? Why are the red crystals helping you?”
Kairos sighed.
“It’s not that the red crystals are helping me. From what I can gather, these red crystals are similar to a person’s last thoughts as they die, or something similar to that. I guess for whatever reason, the dungeon doesn’t want these red crystals in here so it’s making us move them out.”
Kaede let out a small huff.
“And here I was thinking getting out of this floor would be difficult! All we had to do was walk a little bit?”
Kairos smiled bitterly.
“It’s not like we walked a small bit. If I were to give a rough judgment of the time, we were walking for at least a few hours. Going through a pitch black place like this is far too unreliable to do, especially as you get further and further.”
Kaede laughed.
“You’re exaggerating! We hardly even moved, come on.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“Sure, sure, whatever. Let’s just focus on moving. The exit should be close.”
With that, the group continued walking through the nothingness. Though, they didn’t do so quietly. After a short moment of silence, Nicole asked for more tips on how to “seduce” people, and Kaede happily responded. Once again, Kairos was subjected to things that he would rather not hear.
Letting Nicole do this filled him with quite a bit of regret. He was a little worried about the person she would become after picking up all these… strange things Kaede was teaching her. It had gotten to the point that Kairos would verbally interject, but Nicole would just tell him to be quiet and the two of them would continue talking, completely ignoring his existence.
It was quite painful for Kairos. The entire time, he reassured himself into believing that they would get out of here soon enough, but as time continued to progress that didn’t seem to be the case.
By the time an entire hour had passed, Kairos was beginning to lose quite a bit of hope. Were they really going to get trapped in a place like this, left only to talk about… very unique things?
But that was when he saw a faint light in the distance.
Kairos’ eyes widened.
“Hey, I think that’s the exit. We can finally stop… er, get out of here!”
Kaede let out a surprised hum.
“Ah, it really was so close by! Anyway, we can continue this conversation after we get to the next floor.”
Nicole sounded rather excited.
“Alright!”
As the group continued to approach the faint light, it got stronger, allowing them to see themselves and their surroundings better. Once they reached the bright blue beam, they were able to clearly see their surroundings. It looked like a cave, and within there were a multitude of red crystals all around the place, letting out a nauseating cacophony of whispers.
Kairos looked at the other two and noticed neither of them had picked up even a single crystal.
“Hey, were you not even thinking about getting more evolution points?”
Kaede shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, we can just get these, right?”
Hearing that, Kairos didn’t know what to say back. In reality, he just wasted his own time, because the crystals left here were more than enough. They wouldn’t even be able to carry all of them.
Nicole scratched her cheek.
“Will we have to go back to the entrance for that to count?”
Kairos sighed.
“Well, I’m not going back there, alright? I’m done with this place.”
With those words, he stepped into the bright blue beam of light. His entire surroundings were filled with blue once more, and a few moments later he found himself in another large expanse once more.
[You have made it to the third floor]
It was familiar, as it was the room he was originally trapped in. The ceiling was incredibly high up, while a bright crystal was rotating up in the air, shining rather brightly
The red crystals he was carrying all began disintegrating, turning into tiny pieces of dust and dissipating into the air.
[Retrieved Red Crystal – 1 point awarded] x 34
Everything looked just like what he remembered, but he noticed something near the center of the room. It appeared to be a status panel, but was much larger than normal.
[Be the only living creature in the room for over thirty minutes to complete the dungeon.]
Kairos raised his eyebrow when he looked at it. Though, a few moments later it disappeared entirely. At the same time, two flashes of blue light appeared next to him. That light quickly dissipated to reveal both Nicole and Kaede.
The two of them looked around, taking in the scene around them. Nicole let out a sigh before scratching the side of her head.
“What are we supposed to do here?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
“Right before you guys got here, there was a message that said to be the only living thing for thirty minutes to complete the dungeon.”
Hearing this, both Nicole and Kaede’s expressions froze. After a second Kaede leaped backwards, repeatedly doing backflips to gain some distance. As for Nicole, her eyes went a little bloodshot.
“I have to… I have to…”
Her eyes began widening, while she reached her hand out towards her own neck. But as she was doing that, it suddenly froze.
“Wait, I still need to…”
She slowly turned to look at Kaede with a hollow gaze. It was very clear that the hours they spent talking early meant almost nothing to Nicole, as she cast it aside that very moment.
Kaede furrowed her brows and raised her hands up in defense awkwardly.
“W-Wait, we don’t have to do this, right? I… I was thinking we could become friends!”
Nicole didn’t say anything, though her answer was rather clear from the way she was looking back at her. The entire time, Kairos decided to observe for a few moments. He wanted to see if Nicole would remember what he had told her earlier.
That she shouldn’t sacrifice herself for his sake.
Though, as Nicole’s body gradually became transparent, it was fairly clear that she was hardly thinking at all. Or more accurately, she was already dead set on her decision and refused to have any other thoughts.
Kaede had a rather sad expression on her face, but she tensed up her body and got ready to fight. Though she had a fairly fun time earlier, she wasn’t just going to let herself die just like that.
Though, she couldn’t help but begin sweating when she saw that Nicole had quite literally disappeared.
Suddenly, her eyes widened as she suddenly lunged to the side. Right afterwards, she ran up the side of a wall. Then, she shot off of it at an angle, slamming into another wall nearby.
Almost immediately after, she leaped once more.
Kairos couldn’t really see Nicole. Though he still had faint remnants of his mana vision, it wasn’t enough for him to actually discern much at all just from the mana in Nicole’s body. Perhaps if she stood still and gave him a minute or so, he would be able to find her, but otherwise, she may as well be completely invisible.
As such, it made it look as though Kaede was leaping around the place like she was performing some sort of show. The only exception was the ugly expression on her face showing that it obviously wasn’t some sort of circus show.
Kairos couldn’t help but wonder how exactly Kaede was detecting Nicole, and just rubbed his chin while he watched.
At some point, Kaede grit her teeth.
“You… You’ve forced me to do this!”
Lighting abruptly burst out from her body, separating into three distinct chains that scoured the area. They moved around as though they had a life of their own. Though, it did not take long for Kaede’s expression to sour even further.
The three chains suddenly burst into countless tiny little bolts that covered pretty much every area one hundred meters around her.
Kairos was fascinated, as it looked like she was using the same spell, but for different purposes. He thought to himself rather intensely, wondering how she was able to do that, as he himself had no idea.
And then he thought about the ability to upgrade the rank of spells. It appeared if a spell was high rank enough, it could be used rather flexibly and essentially become multiple spells.
As he was thinking this, he began channeling the gale spell silently. From the way things were going, it looked like Nicole was going to win. His plan was the moment Nicole used that decay spell, he would use the gale spell like a knife to cut away that decayed flesh.
Though, as he was thinking that, Kaede began rushing towards him.
“Please calm her down!”
However, Kairos simply stood there without moving, which seemed to imply he had no intentions of doing anything.
It was then that a spot on Kaede’s back suddenly turned gray.