72. Revealing the past (4)
“What kind of bullsh*t is that telling you the truth about this world?”
Rihanna asked in a rather harsh tone, but Leon didn’t particularly care about her rudeness. Rather, she seemed interested in a different look than she had at her old party.
Leon smiled like a clown, and she told Rihanna.
“I never thought the day would come when you said that to me. But I don’t have time to accept your pranks right now. If you’re stupid and don’t know what’s going on, why don’t you keep your mouth shut?”
“Ugh….”
Rihanna didn’t bite her lips until she got back words that were worse than her own words.
She wanted to swear more coolly, but she provoked Leon more than Rihanna’s pettiness, and it was something she couldn’t do with her petite courage and guts.
If Leon turns her eyes like before and she tries to harm herself, she has no means to stop it. Rihanna has her brain spinning faster than anyone else when it comes to her own survival.
“Please come quickly. Oh, you’d better take what you threw away earlier. There is something to eat here.”
Picking up her discarded food would hurt her pride, but she had nothing left to call her pride in the first place. Taking advantage of Leon’s absence, she picks up the food she threw away on the ground and puts it in her pocket. It was taking the shape of the back.
It was exactly five minutes later that she realized she was lucky she had food.
Rihanna, who hadn’t eaten much during her fainting period, roared from her stomach. She blushed and roughly shook the soil from the sweet potato in her pocket and put it into her mouth.
Compared to Ain’s cooking, it’s hard enough to swallow the food, but now wasn’t the time to cover it up. Leon smiled at her as she watched Rihanna somehow munching on her sweet potato.
“You don’t have to eat it in such a hurry. I have no intention of taking away the food that your mouth has touched.”
“Because I have no intention of giving it to you either?”
Rihanna finished her sentence curtly, hurriedly finished her sweet potato, and burped a little.
As her stomach swelled, her head cleared, and only then did she begin to see her surroundings.
However, she did not necessarily come with good results. Rihanna looked around her, startled, and she stopped her steps on the spot.
“Wait a minute, this is… !”
Leon, who would normally have left Rihanna behind her, stopped in her place, slowly turned around behind her and looked Rihanna straight in the eyes.
“Did you notice now? Isn’t it a shame to be called a skirmisher if you’re this ignorant?”
Unlike Rihanna, who put on her serious expression, Leon was still grinning. Rihanna frowned and replied in a low voice.
“I never even asked for that.”
That wasn’t the point.
This place where Rihanna and Leon are standing is not an ordinary forest.
It was kind of strange. I couldn’t hear that common bird call, and the forest was as quiet as if it were dead.
In a way, it was natural.
The place they were in was the forest where the demon castle was located.
Only then did Rihanna see the trees bearing the traces of a rough battle, the torn-off ground, the ground deeply dug by the footprints of monsters, bloodstains at first glance, and the occasional low cry heard around her.
Rihanna’s eyes widen as she witnessed the clear traces that reminded her of the moment of intense battle.
“You, are you sane? Why the hell did you come here!?”
Rihanna forgot her emotions that had dominated her until then, and she grabbed Leon by the collar and screamed at her.
Rihanna’s body began to tremble with fear in an instant due to her experience of failing to capture the Devil’s Castle. Leon, perhaps aware of Rihanna’s feelings, didn’t treat her as harshly as he did before.
“How about listening to the explanation first?”
Explanation, Nabal, and Rihanna wanted to get out of this forest right away.
Rihanna, staring blankly at her own hand that her Leon had shook off, tried to turn her pace at once, but at that moment, a monster lurking in her darkness shot her Rihanna like an arrow. Ran to Despite having a body large enough to swallow most people in one bite, no sound was heard when it moved.
She had no time to exercise her newfound sense of danger. Rihanna saw the figure of a monster that looked like a lion approaching right in front of her nose, and it hardened like a stone in her place, but she did not enter her belly.
Because she was the only one who was not taken aback by the movements of the demon beast that suddenly flew in from the darkness.
Leon, who was in front of Rihanna, grabbed the head of the beast that was flying before him and slammed it into the ground. The unsightly monster stuck in the ground struggled to escape Leon’s clutches, but Leon refused to let him.
When she pressed her hand holding the monster’s head firmly, an uncomfortable sound resonated from her monster’s head, and soon the head split like a ripe watermelon and scattered brain water in all directions.
Leon, who killed the large monster in the blink of an eye and roughly wiped the blood from her body, looked at Rihanna casually and asked.
“Well, I’m not forcing you. If you say you go back like this, I won’t stop you and won’t hold you back. But you don’t want me to be kind enough to drive you to town? Unlike you, I am a person who has no time.”
Rihanna gulped down her saliva and looked back and forth between the monster that had changed into her ghastly form and Leon, who was about to leave at any moment.
Being left alone in this forest was no different than asking to be killed. Rihanna, who had no fighting power, did not have the skills to overcome the strong monsters living in the forest where the demon castle is located, and although Leon was brutally defeated by the elves, it was because the elves were abnormally strong beings belonging to the category of gods. It wasn’t that Leon was weak.
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Following Leon, who was called the undefeated warrior until she faced the demon king, was the safest path for Rihanna to take now.
Her goal was to protect this vile body, at least until she returned to Ain.
Taking Rihanna’s bowing head without saying anything as her affirmation, Leon gave a slight smile and moved her steps again.
“Yes, it should.”
Slowly, the densely packed trees in the forest began to dwindle little by little, and Rihanna, who had been to the Devil’s Castle, knew what this meant.
That the demon king’s castle was right in front of her nose.
As if to prove it, a huge castle appeared in front of Rihanna, boasting the same majesty as before.
Unlike Rihanna, who was overwhelmed by the sense of intimidation, Leon calmly put his hand on the gate of the Devil Castle and said to Rihanna.
“Let’s go.”
Rihanna tightly closed her eyes and, unlike before, pushed her foot into the entrance of the Demon King’s Castle, where no monsters could be seen.
●
Controlled by nervous emotions, I unknowingly bite my nails.
If Stella hadn’t stopped me by holding her wrist carefully beside her, I would have cut her wounds and ripped her until she bleed.
She looked up at the ceiling and let out a deep sigh before finally being able to speak.
“Leon wants Rihanna….”
Noah, who was next to me, answered right away.
“Yes, that is the only way I can think of right now.”
Even after convincing Sharon with a threatening conversation and mobilizing her elves to search the Great Forest, Rihanna was nowhere to be found.
There was no way she could get out of the great forest without leaving any traces on her own. This couldn’t be explained unless Leon took it on his own.
But I didn’t understand.
“Why?”
Sorry for her Rihanna, but Leon had no advantage in taking her. Rather, it was no different from her burden to Leon, who usually disliked Rihanna.
Revenge by any chance? She thought about it, but she gave up soon. If it were me, there’s no way Leon would have feelings for revenge on Rihanna or me.
Elia cautiously approached me as I was in trouble.
“Dad, what are you worrying about so much? The man simply wants a deal. I’m sorry for his sister, but he’s just a beggar and a wizard with a promising future. It’s obvious which one the hero wants, isn’t it?”
In other words, according to Elia, Leon took Rihanna because he wanted Cassandra back….
Cassandra, who barely opened her eyes beside her, denied her opinion.
“Do you think Leon would do such a hassle to get me back?”
The children who looked at me with worried eyes responded to Cassandra’s words with an infinitely cold attitude.
“I hope you don’t join our conversation?”
Elia cast a sneaky glance, and Cassandra trembled and averted her eyes.
“Dad, what are you going to do?”
“What?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Will she go after that guy named Leon and go find her older sister, or will she go to meet the person this woman said called Maria. Dad makes the choice.”
Even without saying anything, they already understood my concerns.
I rubbed my face roughly, deep in thought.
Rihanna is definitely a precious person to me. I didn’t want to reconcile by resolving misunderstandings accumulated between each other, and end the relationship that I started again. Rihanna next to Leon had no idea what would happen to her, so her priority was to go find her as soon as possible. Reason had been giving orders, but her name, Maria, was firmly imprinted in her mind.
Even if you think you’ve barely forgotten, it’s the feeling of first love that keeps coming to mind if there’s just one small occasion.
Moreover, Cassandra even left a meaningful statement that Maria was the problem, and I wanted to see with my own eyes what the true meaning of those words was.
After thinking about it for a long time, I came up with one answer.
“I….”