The moment Amivy left the slope, the female worm had just adjusted its posture, ready to enjoy the prey delivered to its mouth.
Before it could react, the sudden torrent of boulders slammed head-on into it!
BOOOOOM—!!!
A deafening crash of impact, the sound of rock shattering, and a dull noise of carapace and flesh being crushed mixed together, rolling dust and smoke billowing into the sky!
The entire peak seemed to tremble!
Amivy curled up behind the rock wall, her ears ringing, unable to hear anything.
After a long while, the terrifying roar and vibration gradually subsided, leaving only the sporadic sound of falling gravel.
She trembled and cautiously poked her head out.
Before her, the gravel slope had completely changed, covered by a massive trace of crushing.
At the end of the trace, a barely distinguishable mess of dark mucus and carapace fragments was half-buried under countless fallen rocks, no longer moving.
And the boulder that caused all this, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, had rolled to the foot of the mountain below, lying quietly as if it had been there since time immemorial.
The mountain wind blew, stirring the still-settling dust.
Amivy collapsed, her back against the cold rock, gasping for air.
The post-escape exhaustion and violent heartbeat left her momentarily speechless.
As Amivy’s heartbeat gradually calmed, Ian’s footsteps came from above, unhurried.
Amivy looked up, through the not-yet-fully-settled dust, and saw the familiar figure carefully moving down along the rock wall, finally stopping in front of her.
Ian looked a bit disheveled, his clothes covered in dust and rock chips, with several obvious scrapes and bruises on his exposed palms and wrists, probably left from prying the massive rock loose.
The silver mask on his face was firmly in place, hiding all expression, only his black eyes, through the eyeholes of the mask, calmly looked at her.
Ian extended his hand toward Amivy, who was sitting on the ground.
That hand wasn’t clean, stained with dirt and fresh scrapes.
Amivy stared at that hand, then looked up at Ian’s damned masked face, and finally took it.
After Ian pulled her up, neither spoke, both silently continuing to climb toward the summit.
In the silence, the scenes of that terrifying moment uncontrollably replayed in Amivy’s mind.
Especially the look in Ian’s eyes when he asked her, “Do you trust me?” and her own nearly insane leap… She couldn’t help but speak:
“…Hey, Kevin.”
“Mm?”
“What if… at that time, I said ‘I don’t trust you,’ or I simply didn’t do what you said? What would you have done?”
As Amivy asked this question, her eyes were fixed on Ian’s back.
Ian’s steps didn’t pause at all, he didn’t even turn his head, his tone as flat as if discussing the weather:
“Then I’d switch to another plan.”
“What plan?”
“Have you go push the rock, and I’d lure the worm.”
Ian’s answer made Amivy pause for a moment. After a brief silence, she asked the doubt in her heart.
“Then aren’t you afraid I’d miscalculate the timing and get you killed?”
“Of course I am—after all, you haven’t received compulsory education. But rather than wait for that worm to slowly crawl up, I’d rather gamble on Your Highness’s luck.”
“Huh? What education?”
“Don’t mind the details. Just some painful memories from childhood…”
Ian’s mention of childhood made Amivy recall again the first time they met at the summit, when due to hypoxia, the images of Ian and ‘her’ had overlapped.
Although Amivy herself didn’t quite believe it, what if?
‘What if this masked man really is ‘her’?’
“Kevin, you said childhood? Weren’t you always at the Tower of Stars since you were little? Where would there be any ‘compulsory education’ there?”
Amivy began her probing, she desperately wanted an answer.
“Not really. I only joined the Tower of Stars not long ago.”
Seeming to recall some memories from before the transmigration, Ian didn’t notice Amivy guiding the conversation.
“Oh? Is that so? Then where were you before joining the Tower of Stars?”
“Mm… Just barely surviving in the territory of a marquis…”
Amivy: “!”
A marquis’s territory?!
Amivy remembered that when she woke up again back then, she had been sent back to the Imperial Capital.
According to the people at the medical center, she and the other children had been rescued by a marquis.
Later, after being reclaimed by that man and brought back to the palace, through layers of investigation, Amivy finally learned the name of the person who saved them that year—Bert Philimons!
According to records, the human traffickers who kidnapped them at the time had transported Amivy and the others all the way to a hideout near the Philimons Territory.
Marquis Bert Philimons, happening to pass by, discovered them and killed the traffickers, thus rescuing this group of Imperial Capital children and sending them back to the capital.
Amivy’s name was also on that rescue list.
But Amivy clearly remembered that she had been saved by that ‘black-haired fairy,’ and had never seen Marquis Bert Philimons.
Moreover, during her time as ‘Arthur Reinhardt,’ Amivy had found an opportunity to ask Marquis Bert about that year’s events.
What Marquis Bert said was almost exactly the same as the records.
Multiple investigations all yielded the same result, which made Amivy subconsciously believe that the ‘her’ she saw back then was just an illusion.
Added to that, the busy life afterward caused Amivy to temporarily bury her obsession with finding ‘her.’
It wasn’t until this ‘damn dog’ used her to test poison.
By a twist of fate, the hallucination from the poison instead dug out the obsession Amivy had hidden away.
Just as Amivy wanted to ask more, the two reached the summit again.
“Alright, Your Highness Prince Arthur. Let’s prepare to camp here tonight. Only at night can we observe that ‘sun’ more clearly.”
Seeing that Ian had already changed the subject, Amivy chose not to continue probing.
For now, the most important thing was to find a way to leave this place first.
“Okay, I’ll listen to you.”
“Mm, then I’ll trouble Your Highness to take out the camping gear.”
Amivy: “?”
“Camping gear? Weren’t you supposed to bring it? You’re asking me?”
“I bring it? I still have to poison things, how could I bring it? I thought Your Highness knew we were going to camp tonight.”
“No, how was I supposed to know we were going to stay on this mountain overnight!? You didn’t say!”
Ian: “……”
Amivy: “……”
The two who had been passing the blame looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, then reluctantly chose to go down the mountain again while the ‘sky’ was still bright enough to return to the shelter and fetch the necessary camping gear.
However, when the two left, the little white dog that had been lying on top of Amivy’s head stared fixedly at the ‘sun’ in the sky with its golden vertical pupils, for a long time.
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