By Zephyria 
With nothing to do in the empty cliff cave, and nothing more to ask, we didn’t dwell on the strange and uncomfortable atmosphere we both sensed.
After a few more pointless words, we left the cave. Despite having so many lies and secrets, his touch as he held me was excessively gentle and careful.
I quietly entrusted myself to Aska, careful not to touch his wounds.
“Are you getting breathless or anything?”
“Why suddenly asking about breath?”
“I think the oxygen is a bit thin here.”
Unlike when he was escaping, Aska ascended very slowly. I glanced down and said,
“It is a bit.”
I thought I was suffocating from the fresh shock of Aska still not trusting me, but I guess not.
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Scared? Of what?”
“You’re afraid of heights, aren’t you?”
I’m not scared.
I remembered the time we climbed the tree. I pretended to be scared then so I could keep clinging to Aska, but I wasn’t really afraid of heights.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m just about okay.”
Aska kept checking on me, asking me this and that. His voice was full of anxiety as he was watching me carefully. Aska was always observant, noticing even the slightest changes in my mood like a ghost.
He must know I’m not in a good mood right now, and that’s why he’s acting like this. His anxious appearance was both pitiful and cute, but I decided to leave him like this for a while.
I hate him lying and hiding things, but I didn’t want to force him to tell me. Still, I couldn’t help but feel hurt. I wanted Aska to feel guilty.
“……”
As I thought, I realized my true feelings. A wave of shame washed over me, and my face flushed. I didn’t know I was such a petty man…
Suddenly, I was so embarrassed that I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why my personality is like this.”
“What?”
“Haa…”
Didn’t I say I would wait until he told me himself? I made that decision while watching the sunset from that tall tree, but now I felt so pathetic and despicable for acting like this.
“Why? What’s wrong with your personality? Did someone say something?”
Aska asked with a deeply furrowed brow. Seeing his face made me even more ashamed. We’re not just casual friends, and what good does it do to treat the person I love most in the world like this?
“What’s wrong with your personality?”
At his urging, I shook my head.
“It’s nothing.”
“I like your personality.”
“……”
“Even if other people don’t like it, it’s enough if I like it.”
Without even knowing why I was like this, Aska blindly took my side. That one sentence made me feel better. So what if he lies and hides things? People are more attractive when they have mysterious and unknowable sides.
As long as he doesn’t intend to disappear or get away from me, what does it matter? Seeing how much he likes me, it doesn’t seem like that will happen, so I decided to just wait longer. Someday, when the time is right, he’ll tell me everything.
Feeling a little better, I stretched my head up and looked down.
“We’ve climbed pretty high.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Even if I’m scared, I have to do what I have to do. You can go faster.”
At this speed, it would take half a day to reach the point where we were first moved.
“Did they use magic to make it look like the sky?”
“I think so.”
The ascent speed was gradually increasing. I raised my head and carefully examined the sky for anything suspicious. No matter how hard I tried to find anything strange, it was no different from the usual blue sky.
“……”
When I first fell into this place, what I saw was a huge underground world-like space. If it wasn’t underground, they might have carved out a base inside a whole rocky mountain.
Anyway, it was a structure where you couldn’t see the sky, so why did they create a place like this? If they chose this method for security, was it necessary to imitate the sky with magic?
If the Ruins was a laboratory or experimental site for secret research, then this place must be a gateway. The words “re-examination” suddenly came to mind. It seemed that it wasn’t over just because you passed once. Why would a fake sky be needed in a place built to strictly maintain security and restrict passage?
Why would you need to see the sky? For emotional stability? To make it look less barren? To not lose hope while looking at the sky?
No matter what I thought, it didn’t make sense. It would have taken an enormous amount of time, cost, and Mana to project the sky into this large space with magic.
Or was it not a gateway? If there were resident humans… that is, civilians, then it was a residential area where people had to live, so that might be possible.
“We’re almost there.”
Aska’s quiet voice reached my ears. I put aside my thoughts and turned my gaze to see Aska flapping his wings and stopping in mid-air.
“That’s the range.”
“The range of making the ceiling look like the sky?”
Aska nodded at my question. It was a really dizzying height. If this much space could be emptied without collapsing, it was highly likely that it was underground.
“Let’s go up.”
Aska nodded at my words.
If a magic circle appeared under our feet in the Ruins, then the coordinates must be fixed at the place where we were first moved. If we reverse-tracked that, we could return to the Ruins.
Was it because my memories were returning? Knowledge related to magic was also coming back to me one by one.
As a result, I discovered another one of Aska’s lies. There was no hindrance to using magic here, even if it was different in the Ruins.
If we couldn’t use magic because it was the same environment as the Ruins, then I wouldn’t have been able to summon Almas. Even if I didn’t know the principle of this unidentified magic that made it look like the sky, and even if it was a phenomenon caused by a Magical tool, summoning Almas was a separate issue.
“Kyle.”
At that time, Aska called me. Then, with a serious expression, he tapped the air.
“It’s blocked from here.”
At those words, I frowned and reached out my hand. I felt a cool, hard wall.
“There wasn’t anything like this when we fell earlier, was there? Is there a fixed exit to get out? Where did we fall?”
Aska and I floated in the air and looked around. But there were no landmarks to pinpoint our location, and we had moved a lot while running away from the earthworms.
“Around that area.”
I naturally thought we wouldn’t be able to return to where we came from, but Aska accurately pointed to one place. I was surprised and widened my eyes.
“How do you know?”
“When your palm bled earlier, it fell on the floor.”
“You know that? Can you smell it?”
Aska nodded.
“Let’s go back that way for now. We know the direction, so we might find something if we go.”
“Can’t you smell your own blood? You bled more than me.”
“I don’t know.”
Is it not just that he has a good nose, but that he only knows the smell of my blood? Even so, seeing that he smelled blood in the Ruins, it seemed that his sense of smell was better than humans.
We gradually descended and headed towards our destination. The place where we expected there would definitely be an artificial structure had already weathered and could no longer be distinguished from natural objects.
Then, as we slowly got closer to the ground, we witnessed a sight that made us doubt our eyes.
“Crazy…”
The earthworms were swarming on the dirt floor. There was no other way to express it other than the word “swarming.” It was similar to the shape of a container full of fishing earthworms. Except those were dozens of times bigger, thicker, and harder than earthworms.
Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have found us yet. I first checked Aska’s condition.
“How’s the wound?”
“It’s okay.”
“From what I saw, it’s more effective to focus your strength on one point and stab or pierce them rather than hitting them with a blunt weapon or fist. You can take out your claws, right?”
Aska hesitated at my question. I couldn’t understand why he was acting like this even in a situation where he might die.
“Claws or wings, it’s all the same.”
“…Stab them to death with your claws?”
“How strong are they? Is there a chance they’ll break? Have you ever stabbed or cut anything with your claws?”
At my urgent questions, Aska pondered and muttered.
“Bookshelf?”
Then, a scene came to mind of a young Aska taking out his claws and playing around, smashing a bookshelf.
“Come to think of it, when you were young, you used to brag to me about how amazing your claws were, saying ‘Yapyap’.”
“I didn’t know it was creepy back then.”
“What’s creepy about it? People’s nails grow really long if they don’t cut them.”
“Is that the same as this? And when did I say ‘Yapyap’?”
Aska feigned ignorance and grumbled. I fully extended five fingers in front of his eyes, made a fist, and repeated the process.
“Yap. Yap. Yap.”
“……”
His already long, slit pupils contracted even further. Aska, who had been silently fierce, changed the subject as if he didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“From what I saw earlier, they seemed to soften a bit when they were hit with ice.”
I raised my other hand and alternately did jam-jam with both hands.
“Yap. Yap. Yap.”
As I kept teasing him, Aska grabbed both of my wrists with one hand and forcibly pulled them down.
“The strength might change when they get wet, so let’s wet them all first.”
“Are you going to hit them when they get soft?”
Did he hate taking out his claws that much? Aska looked at the earthworms for a while, then glanced at me. Then, he grabbed my wrist and squeezed it so hard that the blood wouldn’t circulate.
“I’ll just crush them all.”
“……”
That’s even creepier…