The Lord Is Too Overbearing

A few minutes before reaching the end of the tunnel, Whitney and Thompson were leading everyone in the front, meanwhile Cray and Steve joined Iliana and Jocelyn behind the crowd.

They had been walking through the silent and dark tunnel for more than 10 minutes, but they hadn't still reached the end of it despite being able to see the light on the other side.

The walk was pretty much silent; conversation only occured between the Knights and Mages. Due to the [Shadow Entrapment] Runes decorating the wall of the tunnel, the civilians were too anxious to speak.

Even though their vision was aided by the Knights' Light Jade and the Mages' lighting Spell, they still couldn't see anything other than their own hands. If not for the fact they could hear the footsteps of the others, they would have thought they were alone.

Naturally, no matter how much the Knights and Mages tried to aid the vision of the civilians, the result would be the same—useless. Unless they could illuminate the entire tunnel, they would never be able to make the civilians see their surrounding.

"Hey, Steve. Do you remember that we have ever passed the tunnel before?"

"This tunnel or the first one?"

"Both of them are connected in a way, but you know what I mean."

Hearing that Steven and Cray were talking about something she was also curious about, Iliana paid close attention to their conversation. Of course, she was still focusing on the way while making sure none of the civilians were left behind.

"It seems familiar, but I don't recall that we have ever passed it. Basil must know something about it, but he's not here." Steven shrugged. "Thompson was with Basil at that time, but he also doesn't know a thing about that tunnel."

Cray nodded his head in agreement, and scratched his head. "Well, it just occurred to me that it is weird we don't know a thing about that tunnel despite having explored this place before."

"That's just what Exploration is: we explore the place that we encounter."

Cray hummed to himself, looked behind him, then frowned. "Hey, Steve. Hauler has 6 members, right?"

"Yeah? What's the—"

Steven's eyes widened abruptly as he finally realized that he hadn't seen Norman ever since entering the tunnel. Even as he recalled the moment when Whitney had a brief talk with Thompson before entering the Dungeon, he also didn't see Norman there.

"Holy crap! We have just left Norman behind. That guy's presence is so thin, I forgot about him," Steven cursed under his breath.

Cray blinked his eyes in surprise, then chuckled funnily. "I thought only Mages could forget their friends. It turns out, Knights are not so different, after all."

"Well, the situation was pretty chaotic back then. Forgetting about him is not that unusual." Steven shook his head, then said, "No matter where he is, Norman will be fine. We should think about whether we can get out of this place or not Instead."

As Cray smiled bitterly at that, Iliana hummed to herself. The only thing she knew about Basil was the fact that he would never hurt her—she didn't know anything about how he saw the world or the way he thought.

She also couldn't confidently say Basil was a coldly good person despite how composed he was and how stable his emotion was. The only thing she could confidently say about him was, he was good towards her—exceptionally so.

No matter how straight his face looked, and no matter how he tried to kill his emotion, she could always feel the tenderness he directed towards her whenever she was interacting with him. That's why, she liked to tease him.

Although Basil had always been unfazed with the teasing, Iliana could tell that he was secretly enjoying it. With that being said, could she say that Basil was a good person?

'No ... I don't understand him. I don't know whether he would let all of us go, but I am sure he will let me go. The question is, when and what. When will he stop playing this game and what is his purpose of doing this?'

The more she thought about Basil, the more she realized how complicated of a person he was. Although she had seen many needlessly secretive and disgustingly shady Mages, she could still confidently say Basil held more mystery than them.

"Well... I'm not the one to speak, I guess..." Iliana smiled bitterly upon remembering about the secrets she was holding. "Everything will uncover when the time comes." She stopped listening to the conversation between Cray and Steve, and focused to the front.

The walk continued for another twenty minutes, until they finally arrived at the end of the tunnel where they could see the light. They stopped right in front of it, and found out that the light came from an extremely vast and familiar room.

Looking to the opened gigantic doors of the room, Whitney gulped dryly. "Hey, don't you think we have ever been here before?" He asked as he turned to Thompson.

"Yeah. We have visited this place before." Thompson was looking into the room rigidly, and he couldn't stop his hand from shaking. "We almost lost our lives here, after all."

Cray and Steven were curious about why Whitney and Thompson were just standing in front of the room, so they parted the crowd of civilians, and went to the two's sides. Upon arriving there however, their reaction upon looking into the room was the same.

"Son of a biscuit eater, this place reminds me of nothing but a painful memory," Cray muttered in astonishment.

"Even I prefer marrying my nightmare of a childhood friend over this," Steven commented in dread.

At this point, Iliana was equally curious and irked. She didn't like the way the four people acted like a group of PTSD veterans, so she parted the crowd, and directly strode into the room nonchalantly, much to the four's utter bewilderment.

"Iliana, stop! There is a—"

"The Kinslayer is dead. Basil has said it himself."

Whitney shut his mouth upon receiving Iliana's cold gaze, before nodding his head in the next moment. He turned to the other three, nodded his head at them, and led the civilians into the room.

While the civilians were happy they could finally breathe freely once again, the four people, who had fought with Caesar in the room, were looking around cautiously.

They could see some stone pillars in the room, and many doors attached to the wall of the room—just like the way it was. They could also see another gigantic doors on the other side of the room that would lead them to the exit of the Dungeon.

They spent minutes looking around, and only heaved a sigh of relief when they couldn't sense any presence of Caesar, the Kinslayer who had traumatized them. Turning to Iliana, they could see she had already organized the civilians.

"There are only 72 of you now, and I don't know where the 16 of you have gone to. I have only freed one of you, so I can only say the 16 people decided to free themselves."

The civilians lowered their head upon hearing Iliana's word as they couldn't help thinking about what might have happened to the sixteen people. Considering how fast Iliana had ordered them to move, it wasn't improbable that they were left behind.

Iliana could feel the dissatisfaction the civilians felt towards her, but she didn't even bat an eyelash at that. Turning to Whitney and Cray, she motioned them to close the opened gigantic doors of the room.

"Whitney, Cray, close the doors! We will recuperate ourselves here."

"Yes, ma'am!"

When Whitney and Cray walked towards the door, Iliana turned Thompson and Steven. The two immediately nodded their head when they noticed her gaze, and Iliana motioned them to come over.

"Do you need something from us?"

"Food supply."

"Yes?" Thompson blinked his eyes, and quirked his eyebrow.

Iliana gestured her hands at the civilians. "Let's distribute some of our food supply evenly to these useless meat. Ah, I want to entrust that job the two of you too; I am sick of them already."

Thompson smiled awkwardly at Iliana's word as he thought about how contradicting her action and what she was actually feeling was. It was evident that she didn't like being around the civilians, but she was also determined to save them on the other hand.

It was strange, to say the least.

"Ah, let me help you two. I have recovered most of my energy, so I will share some of my food too!"

"You will?" Thompson turned his surprised gaze to Jocelyn, who had suddenly chimed in. "That will be helpful. Thank you."

"Hehehe. There is no need to thank me. I'm just helping out leader Iliana, after all. I don't want her to lose all of her food supply just for feeding these useless meat."

"O-Oh, so that's the case? Hm."

Thompson was genuinely caught off guard by Jocelyn's reason on why she wanted to help them. He had thought that she had an exceptionally kind heart amongst Mages, but it turns out that she just wanted to lessen the burden of her leader.

Shaking his head to put the thought aside, Thompson gathered their food supply along with Iliana, Steven, and Jocelyn. Iliana immediately left after the food was gathered and went to eat with Whitney and Cray, leaving the three of them to distribute it.

"We, Mages, you know, are good at setting up priority. We know that family is more important than friends, and friends are more important than strangers."

As they distributed the food, Jocelyn, who was close to Thompson, spoke to him. Thompson listened closely to whatever she said, and didn't comment a single thing about it.

"But most importantly, you know, we know that oneself is more important than the other people." Jocelyn stopped in front of a civilian, and stared at Thompson. "We rarely save people, because we know how to appreciate ourselves."

As Jocelyn gave the civilian in front of her his ration, Thompson couldn't help biting his lower lip. He was instantly reminded of Basil and the puzzling things he had done.

After handing the last civilian her ration, Thompson walked side by side with Jocelyn on their way to join Iliana and the others.

"Say, what do you get from being selfish?"

"We can do much more things when we are alive. Added by the fact that we contribute the most to society, being selfish is a must, no?"

As Thompson was made speechless by Jocelyn's answer, on the other side of the room, Cray and Whitney widened their eyes in shock at what Iliana had just informed them.