“You only need me, but Naily always chooses the harder path. Enduring, troubled, hatred, avoidance, exhaustion.” His voice held a bewitching magic, luring one to sink with him, “No matter, I’ll always be watching you.”
“Because a Naily struggling is also very cute.”
Naily sat by the fountain in the tower’s garden, watching a group of ravens screech and sweep past, a fleeting envy crossing her heart.
Another half month had passed, and she had grown numb. She had thought about escaping or killing him, but no matter the process, the result would only be a post-meal entertainment, bringing deeper humiliation.
With all options exhausted, it seemed her only path was death. She began trying various ways to commit suicide. But the omnipresent familiars would always arrive first, and even her right to die had been stripped away.
She closed her eyes, sunlight filtering through thick clouds, its temperature reminding her that she was still alive.
“Naily?”
She was startled by the call.
A person emerged from behind the stone pillar, blonde-haired and green-eyed, surprisingly the knight she had seen before. Without many words, he directly approached, grabbed Naily, and walked towards the terrace’s edge. He softly said, “Excuse me,” and lifted her around the waist. Before she could react, he nimbly jumped over the railing.
Naily was too shocked to move.
They landed smoothly on an extraordinarily large eagle.
The giant eagle let out a clear cry and spread its wings, flying past Slos’s boundaries towards the capital Mez.
“This is a mount borrowed from the temple,” the blonde knight smiled gently, asking with concern, “Are you alright?”
Naily shook her head randomly: “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Sien.”
“Thank you, Sien.” Naily looked thoughtfully at the increasingly small Slos fortress, feeling no sense of reality. The miracle she had long hoped for had actually become real! She had escaped!
At this moment, a crisp sound rang out, and Naily instinctively swiped open the interface.
— “Welcome back, Guide 1028.”
“Request permission to immediately use the return scroll, coordinates: Capital Mez.”
— “Request processing.
Naily glanced back at Sean, whose emerald eyes were filled with polite curiosity.
— “Request…”
With a snap, the screen was once again filled with red.
Naily felt like she had been doused with ice water, her body going limp, her teeth chattering. She rasped, “It’s coming.”
Sean already had his sword in hand, saying in a low voice, “Hold on tight.”
The sound of wing beats rapidly approached. Sean suddenly lowered his body, and the giant eagle abruptly changed direction, darting sideways. If not for Sean behind her, Naily would have nearly been thrown off the eagle’s back.
Two arrows with fiery tips whooshed past them. The screaming arrow shafts suddenly curved mid-flight, charging straight at them again.
Sean took a sharp breath, pressing down hard with both hands. The giant eagle let out a long, piercing cry and dove downward, barely avoiding the attack.
Just as Naily’s breathing began to calm, she suddenly felt a collision.
In a blur, the giant eagle seemed to wail as it fell vertically.
The momentum was too fierce and fast. Naily’s hand loosened, and she tumbled out.
She only had time to see Sean’s golden hair flying in the air, together with the snow-white eagle, disappearing into an endless abyss.
She was momentarily stunned, realizing she was suspended in mid-air.
And in that moment, she finally began to fall.
“I won’t let you have your way.”
This cold voice, drifting between nightmare and reality, whispered right by her ear. She jolted, instinctively wanting to struggle, but her body was unresponsive. She could only allow Kalsas to hold her tightly.
The Demon King’s pitch-black wings elegantly spread, and in a few bounds, they returned above Slos.
Kalsas remained indifferent. Pressed against his chest, she couldn’t see his expression or hear his response, her despair absolute.
They landed in the courtyard. The building seemed cold even at noon, with withered vines crawling on the gray stone walls. The shadow cast by the triangular tower completely enveloped them.
Kalsas half-pushed, half-dragged Naily to the door. She looked up numbly. The door lintel was intricately carved with a row of human figures with blank eye sockets. Looking at them, she felt they were looking back at her; they were all the same, the only difference being whether they were trapped in stone or in someone’s arms.
The wooden door creaked open, and a slight smell of ancient dust wafted out.
Darkness lay ahead, and the light from behind was far from sufficient to see clearly. Naily was passively led a few steps, and a dull door-closing sound rang out.
Kalsas did not stop. He moved confidently through the darkness. Naily couldn’t see his expression but could clearly imagine his face in her mind: expressionless, but with bright eyes beneath his hair, chin slightly raised.
She didn’t know what awaited her ahead.
They seemed to pass through another metal door.
Kalsas finally stopped, and Naily, unable to halt in time, directly bumped into his chest.
Naily froze.
They were in the center of a massive golden cage. Bars as thick as an arm extended upward, curving into an arch. The cage was fully furnished, except… this cage actually had no door!
Kalsas stood backlit, only his eyes gleaming like molten red glass. He spoke in a calm tone: “I don’t want this either, but there’s no other choice.”
“From now on, you’ll live here. Only I can open the cage door.”
Naily trembled violently, staggering back two steps, leaning against the edge of a wooden table, unable to speak.
Kalsas approached step by step, easily trapping her between himself and the table. Naily was forced to bend backward, her waist arched like a bow drawn by an invisible hand.
The beautiful-faced Demon King lowered his eyes, speaking softly: “Punishment time begins.”
The pale lamp suddenly extinguished, leaving only suffocating darkness.
★, Chapter 20: Twilight
In pure darkness, the passage of time became irrelevant.
Option Three: Find a way to escape.
Naily does not want to accept the status quo. At this moment, all she can do is engage in a life-or-death struggle with Kalsas, a fight to the bitter end.
However, even this path that sounds brave and simple is beyond her reach. The power gap between the Demon King and a system elf spans multiple star rivers; in the end, her only choice is still self-destruction.
Naily’s will to survive has always been strong. But under Kalsas’s pressure, this is already her second time being forced to actively rush towards death. What should she do? The cage ceiling is too high for hanging; her belongings have been thoroughly searched, making suicide by sharp blade impossible.
Naily thinks calmly to this point and finds it amusing: she is actually analyzing ways to die with the same calm mindset as solving a mathematical proof.
She rolls restlessly on the soft fabric at the bottom of the cage, and her shoulder bumps into a cabinet at the cage’s corner, causing a muffled thud.
Naily prefers to shift her attention to the sounds outside the cage. After listening carefully for a while, she surprisingly feels an extremely low voice calling her name. Just like…
just like the voice she heard in her dream on the night she first arrived at the demon’s lair.
Could that voice have been guiding her here?
In her memory, she was indeed on a downward path, and the central courtyard was far below her residential corridor… Could this place have some connection to her?
Naily immediately sits up and, using the interface’s faint light, pulls open the half-person-high carved chest of drawers, examining each drawer.
