“Young Master! Ailiya! Hurry up!”
From the entrance above, Balke’s anxious shout echoed through the empty, deep mine, carrying a distinct, heavy reverberation.
Leo lay sprawled on the ground covered in gravel and water stains. His originally expensive beginner’s robe was splattered with mud everywhere, making him look like a beggar who had just escaped from a refugee camp.
He lifted his head with difficulty. Looking at the simple but secure basket being slowly lowered by ropes, it was as if he had seen the arrival of a Savior.
“Finally… Finally I can leave this damn place…”
Leo’s eyes were red. He felt like every bone in his body was groaning in protest.
Because he had stupidly smeared mud on Ailiya’s face, this woman had severely punished him under the guise of “practical combat instruction.”
In the end, to fill Ailiya’s seemingly bottomless leather pouch, he had drained the last trace of his magic power and physical strength.
Leo moved his legs with difficulty, crawling on all fours toward the basket that hung about half a meter above the ground.
When he finally struggled to the edge of the basket and grabbed the railing tightly, trying to lift his leg to step inside—
His utterly exhausted and limp legs trembled violently, making him lose his balance and fall into a spread-eagle position.
“Ouch…”
“Damn it… Don’t I even have the strength to climb in?”
That mere half-meter-high basket edge now looked like an insurmountable mountain in his eyes.
He was completely done for.
His butt still throbbed. With magic depleted and stamina exhausted, he had received special “attention” and could only lie on the ground like a salted fish, gasping for breath.
Just then, a slender black-and-white figure walked calmly past him.
Ailiya carried a heavy leather pouch filled with raw blue fluorite ore—at least fifty or sixty jin in weight—on one shoulder, but it was as if she were carrying a wisp of cotton. Her breathing didn’t change in the slightest, and her steps were as light as if she carried nothing.
She approached the basket and looked down at the golden-haired boy lying at the edge like a helpless, squirming caterpillar.
Their eyes met.
An extremely awkward silence hung in the air.
“Um…”
Leo blushed. Intense shame made him want to bury his face in the mud.
However, Ailiya, as if ignoring this huge obstacle under her feet, leaped lightly and landed steadily in the center of the basket.
From start to finish, she didn’t even lift an eyelid.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
Seeing that this woman intended to leave him behind and go up first, Leo panicked, his voice filled with undisguised weakness and grievance.
He looked up at Ailiya standing above him, looking down.
“Didn’t you see I can’t climb up? Give me a hand! I’ve done a lot of work!”
Standing in the basket, Ailiya unhurriedly put down the ore pouch on her back, straightened her slightly messy hem, and only then lowered her head to speak in that infuriatingly calm tone.
“Just half a meter high, and you need to lie on the ground begging for help like a boneless caterpillar?”
“It seems the premium nutritional meals the estate provides you are all turned into useless fat and waste.”
Ailiya’s words, as usual, precisely and mercilessly pierced Leo’s fragile self-esteem.
She leaned forward slightly, a hint of mockery in her eyes.
“When you smeared mud on my face with your dirty hands and then madly ran around the stone pillars, wasn’t your stamina quite abundant? Why now don’t you even have the strength to lift a leg?”
“I… I activated my potential. Now my magic is exhausted; I really have no strength.”
Leo’s voice was as thin as a mosquito’s, carrying a hint of pleading and flattery.
“Good Ailiya… please… give me a hand, I really can’t get up. We can’t let Uncle Balke and the others wait up there forever…”
He thought Ailiya would continue to mock him a couple more times, or simply stand there with her arms crossed watching the show until he crawled in himself like a dog.
“Troublesome.”
Ailiya spat out two words curtly.
Then, the woman bent down, leaned half her body over the basket edge, and grabbed the collar of his robe on his back.
“Ah?!”
Amid Leo’s terrified and incredulous shout, Ailiya effortlessly lifted him off the ground with one hand and directly hoisted him over the half-meter-high wooden railing.
Leo, like a weightless rag doll, was thrown by Ailiya in a highly inelegant arc through the air and landed heavily on the wooden floor of the simple basket.
“—!”
This time, it hit exactly on his buttocks, which had received Ailiya’s “special attention” when he was running away earlier.
Intense pain instantly shot Leo up from extreme fatigue.
He covered his butt and jumped up inside the small, hanging basket like a monkey that had been electrocuted.
“You crazy woman! Can’t you be gentler?! Are you trying to kill me with pain?!”
Leo grimaced in pain, tears of physical reaction forming in his eyes, as he loudly accused the maid of her brutality.
However, as soon as he jumped, the already unstable simple basket began to shake and spin violently in midair.
“Waaaah! It’s tipping! It’s tipping!”
Seeing the bottomless black hole appear again in his shaking vision, the falling sensation of weightlessness and fear of the darkness instantly overwhelmed the pain in his buttocks.
Leo was scared out of his wits; all his young master’s temper and accusations vanished instantly.
He made the most instinctive survival reaction without hesitation.
He lunged toward Ailiya, who had just jumped lightly into the basket and stood as steady as a mountain.
His hands clamped around one of her thighs like iron tongs, and he buried his face deeply in the layers of her black maid uniform skirt.
“Help! Stop shaking! I’ll fall again!”
Leo clung on shamelessly like a drowning man catching a lifeline, refusing to let go no matter what.
Under Ailiya’s extremely precise adjustment of center of gravity, the basket soon stopped spinning and resumed a steady ascent.
But that someone’s hands, taking advantage, still clung tightly like iron tongs.
The air suddenly became eerily quiet.
Ailiya looked down, her icy blue eyes coldly fixed on the golden head stuck to her leg like a koala.
“Young Master.”
Ailiya’s voice was as light as a draft of cold wind, but it carried a chilling coldness that made one’s scalp tingle.
“Do you intend for me to drag this heavy leg accessory of yours all the way through the next forty meters of ascent?”
Leo kept his eyes tightly shut, his voice carrying clear whining and shamelessness.
“This stupid basket shakes too much! My legs are weak; if I let go, I’ll fall! I’m definitely not letting go!”
Ailiya took a deep breath, resisting the impulse to kick this “sticky candy” off with a single kick.
“Please lift your head and look around. Under the uniform pulley traction, the basket’s sway is completely within a safe range. You only need to hold the railing next to you; it’s impossible to fall.”
“I won’t look! I won’t look! The railing isn’t as stable as your leg… as you!”
Leo clung even tighter, completely shameless.
Ailiya looked at this shameless young master who wouldn’t let go, then at his robe soaked in sweat and mud, and his arms trembling slightly from the overexertion of mining earlier.
Perhaps her “practical combat instruction” earlier had indeed been a bit excessive. Although he had recklessly dirtied her face, she had also mercilessly punished him and made him mine like a laborer for half a day.
This kid’s body and magic power were indeed severely overdrawn. After all, he was just a little brat who hadn’t experienced real life-or-death situations and had just encountered danger. Forget it, let him be willful this one time.
Ailiya sighed silently in her heart. She gave up on forcibly pulling him off and allowed him to hug her leg, standing straight as a pillar in the center of the basket.
As time passed, the basket ascended steadily.
After the initial extreme weightlessness and fear gradually faded, Leo’s reason began to return.
He suddenly realized something extremely serious and blood-pumping.
Right now… whose leg was he holding?!
What reached his nose was no longer the nauseating musty smell of the mine, but that very familiar scent—slightly cool and reassuring.
Against his cheek, even through the thick fabric of the skirt, he could clearly feel the astonishing softness, the incredible elasticity from years of training, and the warm body temperature.
That was… Ailiya’s leg.
Boom—!
It was as if a bomb exploded in Leo’s mind. His face instantly became as red as a boiled crab, all the way to his earlobes, and even his neck flushed with a suspicious crimson.
He finally realized how rude his current posture was, like a perverted molester! He was almost like Cedric. His heartbeat began to race out of control, the sound like a drum, even several times faster than when he fell into the black pit earlier!
“Cough, cough, cough…”
Leo immediately let go as if electrocuted and scrambled to the other side of the basket. He pressed tightly against the rough traction rope, his face flushed red like a ripe tomato, not daring to look Ailiya in the eyes.
“I… I just lost my balance! A reflex! Definitely not intentionally taking advantage of you! Don’t misunderstand!”
Leo stammered an explanation, trying to salvage his shattered young master’s dignity. Aside from embarrassment, an indescribable strange feeling spread in his heart.
Thinking back carefully, many times it was he who deliberately provoked her or pushed her too far, which led to getting beaten.
And just now, in that desperate situation where he fell into the black pit, she didn’t just worry helplessly from above like the others; she jumped down without hesitation to save him.
Down there earlier, although she forced him to mine, she also patiently taught him the technique of mana infusion.
Although she mocked him for being like a caterpillar, she still lifted him into the basket with one hand. And even when he clung to her leg like a rascal, she didn’t kick him off.
Thinking of it this way… Didn’t she seem… unexpectedly easygoing? Even a little gentle?? Really?
At this thought, Leo, who had been silent out of fear and shyness, suddenly raised his head. He looked at Ailiya, who was so close, and suddenly opened his mouth, even grinning with some conceit.
“Heh… I knew it! You woman do care about this young master in your heart! Otherwise, why did you jump down to save me just now, and even let me hold you?”
“Stop flattering yourself.”
Ailiya looked at this arrogant, smug smile that screamed “I get you,” and a trace of total speechlessness flashed in her eyes.
What was this?
From her past perspective as a boy, this was probably like those inexperienced, chuunibyou virgins who, after a pretty girl gave them some insignificant help, automatically thought they were deeply cared for, and then started crazy self-conquest, self-fantasizing, even making up an entire romance drama in their heads. Especially players who played too many galgames.
Ailiya only coldly complained in her heart, not even bothering to explain.
“Tch, a woman who says one thing but means another.”
Leo curled his lips dismissively, not believing her cold words at all. He thought Ailiya was just shy, unable to suppress the smile at the corner of his mouth.
With the final friction sound of the pulley, the basket finally stopped steadily at the edge of the upper mine entrance. A dazzling light shone in from the light spell at the entrance.
“They’re up! Hurry and help them!”
Balke’s relieved roar sounded in their ears.
Leo quickly released his grip on the rope, crawled out of the basket on all fours, and collapsed on the safe solid ground, breathing heavily. Ailiya, holding the heavy bag of ore with one hand, jumped up lightly and naturally patted nonexistent dust off her skirt.
“Young Master, are you okay? Did you hurt anywhere?”
Balke quickly approached, nervously checking Leo’s body, afraid that this cash-cow young master had lost an arm or a leg.
“I’m fine, Uncle.”
Leo waved his hand and turned to glance at Ailiya, who stood nearby, having returned to her aloof demeanor.
He suddenly felt that although this adventure had been extremely dangerous and nearly cost him his life… it didn’t seem so bad. At least, he seemed to have discovered the hidden “other side” of this Icy Head Maid.
Misi saw that Leo was in surprisingly good condition except for some exhaustion and abrasions, and couldn’t help but sigh in relief, plopping down on the ground.
“Good that you’re fine, good that you’re fine. That really scared me just now.”
Brenda beside him glanced at the two unharmed people and laughed heartily, slapping Misi’s back with such force that Misi almost choked.
Brenda thumped his chest and said, “Hahaha, what’s there to panic about? Our Wind and Moon Squad has rich experience rescuing people from danger many times. This kind of minor accident is just routine, a piece of cake!”
“Yeah, yeah, a piece of cake…”
Balke echoed with a dry laugh, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and glanced fearfully at the bottomless mine.
“Alright, since everyone’s together, I can’t stay in this damn place for another second. Retreat! Back to Fengyue City for a drink!”