Eric had his piece of experience with women. He understood that instinctively when all rationality was removed, the naturally attractive traits they searched for in a possible partner were confidence and strength. In a more general way, the capabilities which make easy the survival and propagation of their genetic traits.
With these ideas fixed in his mind, he was consciously showing her the exact opposite of that!
He asked her with a soft voice to be protected by nocturnal monsters.
Made her light a small flame because he feared the darkness.
When a lv. 70 monster attacked, screamed as if life depended on it, and when an lv. 10 rabbit produced a sudden noise passing through a bush, and he shouted even louder.
After showing her the tens of ways that could make their survival a living hell, he stopped, feigning to be traumatized and incapable of speaking anymore.
In fact, he was worried if he continued this way, Rubra would abandon him to his final demise in the night forest.
He was attracting the attention of the nearby monsters so much that, had he behaved this way the first night after possessing his new body, he would have died, attacked by a monster horde.
The two were slowly progressing through the Cinder Forest when, after some time, the plants started thinning out, and a mirror-like lake entered Eric's view.
Its shape was perfectly circular.
White cherry blossom surrounded it, and from time to time, some petals fell thanks to the wind and created small, delicate waves in the apparently immovable water surface.
A walking road was delimited by the same dark rocks that were present on the bottom of the water basin, and at the center of it was a big white circular opening.
If Eric watched the lake from a high enough point, he would have exchanged it for the night sky he saw on Earth.
At the center, the opening became the Moon, and the many cherry petals were the night stars.
These words left his mouth, even without the best point to observe such a wonderful scene.
''Nature sure is wonderful. ''
For a moment, Rubra watched him with a sad smile, like that of parents when their son asked them to meet Santa.
She tried saving that relaxed smile for a second in her long-term memory and then proceeded with the assassination of Eric's Santa.
''Actually... ''
Eric was instinctively prepared for that kind of situation and started imagining the worst tragic ends his rare poetic imagination could meet.
*I guess the equivalent of slipping on a wet floor and grabbing a hair dryer into a bathtub would be the lake being the feces of some strange rocky monster.
Yeah, I think that's the worse. *
Thinking that he was ready for the worst, he steadied his mind.
''...this lake was created by my parents when they had just become a couple, as an entrance to their love nest. ''
*Somehow, my poetic imagination slipped on the floor and solved the problem with a stylish split!
Sure, it loses in naturalness, not being a product of time and random natural events, but the symbolism of something this tidy, symmetrical, and beautiful born from a new love sure is stylish. *
But she continued.
''My father told me that he needed the lake to lower the temperature of their room after their love session. ''
*I thought I was ready for the worst, but...
Why?
Why use a lake as an air conditioner?!
In the end, because of the split, my imagination hit his balls on the ground with so much force, that fainted from the intense pain.
Finally, his head stayed underwater for too much...and that's it, flatline ECG. *
In this way, Rubra made the situation awkward and decided to continue along the delimited path.
Then, as the most normal thing in the world, flames enveloped her before surrounding the both of them.
''Follow me. ''
The words were simple, but the control of her power was nothing short of exceptional.
They continued walking until her feet started entering the water.
Eric waited uselessly for his limbs to feel the humidity of the lake.
The sphere of flames they were enveloped in was able to evaporate the water surrounding it and had such a crazy precision that they felt no particular heat inside of it.
They should have died out of asphyxiation under water or because of the oxygen the flame sphere used, but they were actually fine.
In this unrealistic way, they arrived at the center point of the circumference.
They were tens of meters underwater, at the bottom of the lake.
At that moment, Rubra used a drop of her blood, and the white concentrical circle started lowering itself, as the platform of a lift.
Just when Eric thought the lake's water was gonna enter in the same cylindrical tunnel they were in, another white, circular rock slab was positioned over their heads, and in this way, the lake on top slowly regained his equilibrium.
During the descent process, Eric noted that the illumination was actuated through a luxurious mix of an apparently spiraling flame and precious multicolor metals encased in the surrounding walls.
Continuing their time in the most expensive elevator Eric had ever seen, he remembered checking on himself.
His mouth was still agape from when they continued walking inside the lake.
He closed it instantly, self-reproaching for his lacking performance.
*I should have cried, worrying about dying underwater! *
What was the most strange was the slight grin on Rubra's face, as if she had figured him out.
Differently from his thoughts, she was already tasting his future reactions while remembering his past ones.
Arrived at their destination, she raised her chest together with her nose.
''Welcome to my humble house! ''
Strangely his reactions weren't satisfactory.
In front of him, a large hall filled everywhere with white marble, and in front of them, a ten-meter tall phoenix statue.
The door was the phoenix's open beak.
*Humble?! *
His thoughts would have made him laugh or wrinkle his nose, had he been honest, but luckily managed to keep his straight face.
*Everything is becoming increasingly kitsch! *
But he cared for his life so...