Knock! Knock!

  A few seconds later, Miranda knocks at the door just as I was expecting. She does so rather gently but somehow firmly at the same time, at least with enough force that it creates a clear sound, enough to be heard even if I was sleeping for example. With the orb gone and without any other choice, I get up from the bed and walk up towards the door, opening once I was close enough, revealing the reaper with it. I mean, Miranda. Though, while she still looks the same (gorgeous but terrifying), her mood on the other hand seems to be normal or at the very least, she doesn’t feel the need to be at the very minimum a kilometre away from me. In fact, she’s actually slightly closer to me than normal… Seriously, after what happened, I was expecting her to have some distance from me and yet, either she has forgotten about it or I was the one that created the thunderstorm in the cup…

  “Is it time to go?”

  “Yes.”

  Yet again, nothing that I can comment about her answer, her tone of voice is normal (a little for the cold side) and so are her manners and demeanour. However right after this, silence consumes the both of us and even somehow, the entire place. Mind you that we are at the entrance but with the door wide open. This silence creates a rather unusual serenity between us as both us for some reason are avoiding eye contact with each other. At least I’m doing so, can’t say the same about her as well, I’m not looking at her so I have no clue.

  ……..

  ……

  …

  Yep, this is awkward.

  “Le-Let’s go then!”

  I was a little louder than normal as I said this however, she quickly nodded with agreement so, all good? Whatever, after this we get moving, walking towards the entrance of the corridor. The door is wide open so, there are no grand openings, far to dramatic openings and so on, nope, just walk past the entrance and enter the corridor. It’s that simple. Since this corridor is completely closed in a sense that there are no windows whatsoever, we could easily expect it to not have any form of natural light inside of here and that is correct but that also does not mean it’s pitch black either. The corridor is not that wide, more than enough for the two of us to walk side by side with comfort but any more than that and it's a no-go. We would be teaching each other shoulders in an uncomfortable manner. In this case I wouldn’t mind much as the other person that would be here is The Void Queen but, I cannot say the same about the two of them. The corridor ceiling is as tall as you can expect it to be and with an arch look to it. Said arch makes this corridor even bigger as the ceiling is easily at the 5 meters mark. There are no stairs here but, I can easily say that we are descending down as you can see the ceiling getting “smaller” further down the corridor. The walls are made of stone, something quite different from the walls from the lobby although the same cannot be said about the floor. In this case, it seems to be tiled with polished marvel, one that is for the bright side with a white colour to it. I did say that there isn’t any natural light but it’s not pitch black either, in fact, I can see everything pretty darn well. In the walls there is a stripe that stretches from the beginning to what I believe to the very end. Said stripe is coloured in orange and of course, it shines brightly, more than enough to light up this place with a gentle orangish light but not enough to be obnoxious at all. A nice vibe to be honest and as I was doing my usual thing, yapping away, we reached the end of the corridor and we are met with something rather interesting…

  “Shadows…”

  Before I say anything else, there are currently ten Shadows mindlessly walking around. They are nothing to be afraid of but, in a space like this, it makes them more dangerous than normal. What I mean is that, the room that the corridor led to has a little more than 150 square meters or in other words, a small size for how many Shadows are currently present here to be mindlessly roaming around. Let alone to actually fight them comfortably.

  “They weren’t here a few hours ago.”

  That sure is a random piece of information from her. I’m not sure if I should pay deep attention to what she just said as it can mean several things but, I will think about it later. Right now, it’s time to deal with the Shadows first and then make a plan afterwards. With Magic Sense I can actually sense even more Shadows throughout this entire area, as this room is only a fraction of it.

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  “Stand behind me, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Ah, once again, my Hero persona took control over me and allowed this to go out without my permission at all. To make it even more Heroic, my tone of voice is one filled with worry but at the same time, it’s assertive. I mean, Miranda is more than capable of dealing with these Shadows in a blink of an eye and yet… Here I am acting like she’s a damsel in distress and a flower that can be broken with a slight breeze.

  While the Hero might be feeling perplexed and confused about what he just did, his “target” however, she’s feeling a little different than him.

  “(Eh? Again!?)”

  Bump! Dump! Bump! Dump!

  Just like what happened a few short hours ago, her heart beats faster than normal. As the Hero proclaimed to the very world that he will take care of the eminent danger ahead of them, all because he does not want her to get hurt even though those defects are nothing more than a small drop in an ocean, not dangerous at all to her, what he did forced her heart to skip a single beat in that moment. Even though he was looking at the defects of this world dead on while he said that, his tone of voice is filled with worry but with assertiveness, easily able to portray to her that he means what he said.

  The temperature of her body rapidly increases, more so on her silklike cheeks to the point that they gain a shade to them, one that is red and quite visible to those that look at her. She brings both of her hands towards her chest, towards her rapid beating heart all in an attempt of calming it down, while she tightly holds her clothes, unable to fathom why this is happening. Her mind slowly wavers away from her body as it’s unable to comprehend why she is feeling like this, why the words of this individual in front of her are making her feel like this. As all of this is happening in a span of a few short moments, she stands still, unable to do anything as her mind has temporarily shut down; however, the same cannot be said about him and those pests.

  Woosh! Bam!

  It was a simple, quick and powerful straight punch, one where I hit the Shadow right on his core and of course, destroying it in the process and defeating him as a consequence. In a sense, Shadows and monsters are the same as they both have “cores”. Destroy said cores and, they are defeated as consequence of such. In the monsters’ case they have magic stones and the Shadows should also have one but since they never drop it once defeated, there is no concrete evidence that we can designate their cores as magic stones. The Elder Black wolf that Kiana defeated, that thing transformed into a Shadows but while doing so, what tells us that the magic stone he normally has, didn’t undergo some type of transformation or modification? Since there is no way to confirm this, it is why we can’t really say that the Shadows have magic stones or not. The easiest way to defeat a Shadow is to destroy the core, it’s not the only way of course but, the other options are not viable at all as they are extremely hard to accomplish. For example, let’s say that you cut his neck, if that was a normal monster, they would be defeated in that instant but a Shadow? Unless the core is within the neck, they will simply create another neck-more so a head to be precise, by using magic for it. However, do it enough times and there will be a time where he won’t have enough magic energy for such and when that happens, it will be enough to destabilize the core, dispersing his magic into the air and of course, destroying the core afterwards. But once again, enough of my usual “encyclopaedia” and yapping, there still are nine Shadows to go.

  They are not strong at all, I will rank all of them at C+ rank, weaker than Alice for example and far weaker than the Crystal Knights. However, they are stronger than your average Shadow so, let’s keep that in mind as with this, there might be a chance that stronger Shadows might appear in the future. Anyway, I have two other Shadows right in front of me, at the end of this room and three others on each side, with a single lone one just outside of this room doing whatever a Shadow does with its free time. The two in front of me have noticed me already, while the rest of them are more than oblivious to me even though my magic energy should be at B rank, more than enough for them to notice me in an instant. Shadows are similar to slimes in a sense that their ability to sense magic is really good, extremely so I would say. Not only that, they base their actions on what they are currently sensing as they like to consume anything and everything that has magic on it, growing stronger as they do so. Yep, this is the fact that makes them terrifying and quite strong as there is no limit to how strong they can get. In the past, there has been a single C rank Shadow growing past S rank, all because he just kept on consuming monsters and humans alike nonstop. He got lucky to be honest. I would deeply believe in at that but I’m not the only one as a few people believe that the goddess of luck was playing some type of prank on the entire world from how lucky that thing was. Somehow, he was able to consume the right individuals, never fighting someone that was stronger than him and of course, not getting defeated in the process because of it.

  And I went on another tangent… God dammit, just shut up for once!