Chapter 35. What is happening to me...

Chapter 35: 35. What is happening to me...

The undead creature screamed, slamming itself against the door, refusing to accept defeat. The door didn’t budge, no matter how many times it tried. After slamming itself an annoying number of times, its screams escalating each time, it finally stopped.

Dr. Rhiannon and I had pushed past our limits, mine physically and metabolically, hers more on the ethereal side.

After the undead creature left, all the exhaustion hit at once, our lungs begging for air, finally becoming greedy, my tongue, for some reason, started to hate its job.

We didn’t celebrate the victory, we were just glad it was over.

The blue soul fires that had been holding back the darkness, following us without delay, were dim now, slowly fading. Her mana pool was dry.

"Muffin... I need to crash out for–"

She didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need to. Lying in the corner, peaceful sleep caught her. I thought of a reply, but crashed out too.

The data hub was the one place with no beetle buds, and I never thought I’d get the best sleep of my life in a dungeon with enemies as neighbors.

I lost track of time, and that’s a bad thing. After God knows how many hours, my subconscious self jolted me awake because the death timer was ticking.

The panel was above me, the only light in the dark dungeon. Rubbing my eyes, I forced my exhausted body up and looked at the panel. The blur in my eyes faded and the panel became clear to read.

ᕙ Lilathea’s Blade Harem System! ᕗ

⟨ Evolution state: Mortal human. ⟩

⟨ Rank: E. ⟩

⟨ Compatibility rate: 34. ⟩

⟨ Casllay mana points: 8920. ⟩

⟨ Lifespan remaining: 7 hours, 13 minutes. ⟩

The timer had turned red, and as I watched, 13 minutes turned into 12, making me swallow hard. This wasn’t good. I’d thought if I didn’t check the timer I could focus better, but that clearly backfired.

Maybe if I’d said yes to finding Seraphine instead of stopping by the data hub, we wouldn’t have fallen into the trap, and 2 hours wouldn’t have been wasted.

None of the events were avoidable, but I still blamed myself. Seraphine was in another corner of the layout. Finding her would’ve taken the same amount of time either way. But at least we would’ve found her by now; instead we had to waste another 2 hours.

"Ahhhhhhh!!"

I scratched my head, hard enough to damage my gorgeous hair.

Then I calmed myself down, before freaking out again with twice the intensity. This repeated until I realized I was wasting time. I stood up, determined to do something productive.

First I used the system panel as a flashlight and found Dr. Rhiannon. She was sleeping like a log, mouth open, drooling, and snoring, not loud enough to be annoying.

"Dr. Rhiannon!! Wake up! You can’t sleep forever."

"Ah, darling, you don’t have any stamina left in you. Take a rest."

She didn’t wake up, and I’m just going to assume she was dreaming. I tried again, this time tapping her shoulder lightly.

"Hmm, muffin, what are you doing in my dorm. Did I make a move on you?"

Dr. Rhiannon woke, eyes opening and closing, lips too tired to smile, but she did anyway.

"No, you didn’t make a move on me and we–"

"Do you want me to?"

Dr. Rhiannon suddenly heated up, grabbing my collar and pulling me closer. Before I could question whether she really wanted it or if it was just casual teasing, she ran her fingers through my hair, teasing my ear, and holding my head in a way that instantly melted me.

She slowly pulled me closer without me realizing it, lips inches apart, her other hand on my chest. God, she’s experienced and sluty. She was naturally drawing me toward her.

Well, this was easy, I guess it’s her heat after waking up. And I was going to take her.

Dr. Rhiannon teased my ear again, sending another shiver through my body and turning me on at the same time.

"Tell me, muffin, do you want to?"

"Now I do."

She smiled at my answer, like she loved it and it was exactly what she wanted, her red-lipstick-coated lips making her teeth shine, giving me one more reason to fall. Her hand moved lower, toward my no abs area.

"What were we doing before? Wasting time, right, huh? Tell me how much you want me, muffin."

"Correct, we escaped an undead creature, and ended up alone."

"THAT’S RIGHT!! WE’RE IN THE DATA HUB!"

Dr. Rhiannon pushed, no, tossed me aside, like she’d lost the heat completely. She was wide awake with an energy I hadn’t seen from her before.

"Sorry, muffin, I have something important to do right now."

I dropped to the ground, hit with pure disappointment, right in a very vulnerable nerve. All I could feel was emptiness.

I swear, this is the worst habit of women. They turn us on and leave, like they’re not even interested. On top of that, they don’t think of the consequences and expect us to suppress our desires.

Women are angels. I just wish they were kind.

Dr. Rhiannon cast Everflame of the Departed and the blue soul fire took form, lighting up the data room. Too bad it couldn’t light up my heart.

Then she began flipping through the pages of her ghostly book, looking for something, and accidentally noticed my existence.

"Ohh, muffin. I’m sorry, we can get freaky later. After this mission and a good shower. Maybe in the shower~"

Dr. Rhiannon teased, stretching the last word out sweetly, and focused back on the book almost immediately after. I’m surprised her words landed, and I actually got some motivation from them, if I manage to get out of this hellhole in 7 hours, she’ll let me hit.

Which is bullshit! What’s the point? It’s impossible. The third stage is twice the size of the second and first combined. And we still have to fight?

I’m dead. I’m so dead.

"It’s not fair. You told me you’d give me a reward. And you can’t just leave me hanging."

I pointed at her, letting out my frustration, like a simp. Not something I usually do, but with death around the corner, shit happens.

"Ahh, quite eager and desperate, are we? I like that about you."

She leaned close, touching my chest with just her fingertips, not her whole palm.

"You’ve moved me. But mommy really does have something important to do. Can’t my sweet little muffin wait just a bit, while mommy does her work?"

She imitated the voice of a mother trying to stuff some common sense into a child, role-playing, lowering her voice. She shifted her hand mid-sentence from my chest to pinching my cheek.

"Really?"

"Yes. I promise."

With that, she backed off, busying herself with her ghostly book. And I have to say, I’d lost my grip on dominance. Which I’m not sure what to make of. It was nice, actually, I felt at ease, and I didn’t have to worry about anything for a moment. But I’m not used to it.

Since my dominance affects my Casllay earnings, I don’t benefit from being vulnerable. Still, I wish I didn’t have to worry about it.

Back to the topic, I finally scanned around. The data hub was livelier than most of the dungeon. Old, dusty tables and rugs, candles that had been lit some time ago, papers on the floor, a chair with one broken leg. The furniture was stuck to the wall, leaving the front area completely empty. Even the rug was tossed like–

"Ohh, the gravity is fixed!!"

"You noticed that now?"

I’m glad the gravity was fixed now, everything looked normal again. Dr. Rhiannon was ahead of me, still absorbed in her book, flipping through the pages aggressively.

Turns out the data hub was a completely different section, rather than being just a room. There was another door in front of me, and all the experiment data was behind it.

"There. Found it."

The ghostly book flipped through a few more pages, the letters crawled onto her hand and straightened themselves out. Now she had a fancy-looking tattoo on her hand.

"What’s that?"

"Just a convenient way to copy the data."

Dr. Rhiannon didn’t waste any time and moved toward the door to open it. I stood up and followed her.

We entered a hall with many rooms, except the rooms’ doors were burned, ash covering every wall and piece of half-burnt furniture.

"Wait, everything’s burnt. All the data is burnt, then?"

I panicked and ran ahead to check the rooms, and found nothing but charcoal, ash in every single room. After all that chasing, this was the result. I was angry and didn’t want to believe it.

"I’m not sure why you’re surprised. You were the one who came up with the theory that someone was trying to keep this whole place sealed. Perhaps those same people didn’t want anybody looking through their research."

Dr. Rhiannon pointed out, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t myself right now. What was happening to me? After that, I shut my mind off for a change.

"Yeah, you’re right. What should we do now?"