After Julian killed the undead sorcerer, he rushed towards us, specifically Sophia and asked if we were alright.
I was quite drained out and deactivating Mage's Fortitude at this time was out of the question because of the tremendous pain it would cause me.
I had to quickly regain some mana otherwise I would have to forcefully end the Mage's Fortitude spell and I wouldn't even be able to pass out properly because of the pain.
I didn't want to be tortured like that, so I quickly got up and scanned the area for the undead to kill.
Strangely, I felt a rather ominous but alluring aura coming from the now-deceased undead sorcerer.
I instinctively sprinted towards the sorcerer's corpse, telling Julian to go ahead without me.
They were puzzled at my sudden reaction but didn't care much.
As I got closer to the corpse, the aura grew more and more intense.
Amaranth also started to react strangely to the corpse.
I looked back at Julian and Sophia and they seemed to not be aware of the aura being emitted by the corpse.
I finally reached the corpse and examined it. But my mana was starting to run dangerously low at this point.
I was still as calm as ice and knew exactly what to do to save myself.
"Syphon...", I chanted, raising Amaranth toward's the corpse's direction and siphoning the mana out of the undead sorcerer.
I had thought I wouldn't be able to take the undead sorcerer's mana since I didn't defeat it, but apparently, just contributing to the fight is enough it seems...
The aura still didn't go away though.
Upon closer inspection, the aura was coming from the sorcerer's neck area.
Its staff was completely destroyed with its owner being killed but there still seemed to be an item drop to collect...
I reached inside the robes of the skeleton and felt my hands touch something extremely hard that wasn't a bone.
It was some kind of stone. A very jagged and smooth stone.
I pulled it out and jumped in the realisation of what the stone was.
[Dark Diamond]
[Type: Ingredient]
[Grade: A+]
A stone roughly the size of a human fist, maybe slightly bigger, rested in my hands. It shimmered with a sinister, bluish light from within it. The stone itself looked very intimidating.
'Bloody hell... I didn't expect to get something this lucky...', I thought internally.
I pocketed the dark diamond and started sprinting towards Eve's direction.
The dark diamond was a rare item drop from mage-type monsters. It could be used to craft magical equipment. I could probably turn this gem into some sort of new weapon if I gave it to Jhon.
Anyway, the gem was a bonus. Finally, I got lucky in this damn world... maybe because I partied with the main character? Haha, I don't know...
I reached Eve and found her still there, although she looked a lot better than before and was totally capable of holding her own in a fight now.
'She probably used her crystal magic to heal herself... man, I'm kinda jealous of her crystal magic's versatility...'
"You're back!", Eve shouted excitedly when she saw me.
"Yeah. Let's go now. I know where we can go to escape this place.", I declared, signalling her to follow me.
She didn't reply and started following me.
The teachers were still fighting off the undead near the mother dungeon gate. From the way they were using their spells and aura, it was quite obvious that they were starting to get tired.
The students had either made their way to the boats, struggling with the undead, hiding, or just straight up dead.
On our way, we fought more skeletons and honestly, I was starting to get tired of looking at these hollow-eyed freaks.
Getting to the boat from our position required us to either go through a forest or climb and cross a relatively big hill.
The hill was the straightforward approach but there was a risk of flying undead monsters to target us. The forest was a roundabout way, but there was a small daughter dungeon gate in the area.
In the novel, Julian had chosen the forest since he was still not confident about aerial combat just yet.
I, however, am a mage. I specialise in aerial combat and long-distance fights. And also, I have Eve, an amazing crystal mage by my side. The hill seemed like a better approach.
Not to mention the other nasty monsters that live in the forest had also woken up because of the sudden surge of mana from the dungeon gates.
"Eve, you can climb right?", I asked.
"Yeah.", she replied shortly, straight to the point. Something I appreciated.
"Good. We're gonna have to climb over that hill to reach the boats... We will get attacked by Aerial undead while on the way... I'm counting on you to watch your back."
"... Are you sure? Wouldn't it be better to go through the forest?", she asked.
"No, because the forest is a bad environment for us mages. Also, there will be nasty-looking insect monsters in there."
Eve's skin visibly crawled at this remark.
"Let's climb the hill!", she cheered.
--- Julian's POV ---
"I don't understand... Why didn't you let me go and see how Eve was doing??!!", Sophia yelled at Julian while they were traversing the forest.
"I had the feeling that she probably wouldn't have- HMMPH! Liked it...", he said as he slashed down a monster with his blade.
"Why would she think that way? We saved her life!", she retaliated.
"*Sigh... 'We' didn't save her life. She didn't even want us to save her life. Remember, she messaged Samuel about her predicament and not us. She also trusts Samuel a lot more than us.", Julian explained.
Sophia was seething with anger at this but she had no choice but to accept the truth of the situation.
"What did you even do to her for her to loathe you this much?", Julian asked Sophia.
Sophia had never ever told anyone about what she had done to Eve and didn't have the intention to. But somehow, she felt that she could tell Julian and he would know something about it. She also trusted Julian a great deal and was already completely head over heels for him.
"Well...", she proceeded to tell Julian about what happened. From the point where she first met her to how the system suddenly appeared with a quest and how the quests started to get increasingly more heinous and twisted.
After the long and depressing story ended, Julian stood on top of a slain monster's corpse motionlessly.
His mind was stuck on one word he heard and he could not believe his ears.
"... Heir of the Bloody Witch... Is that right?", he asked Sophia. His eyes were as cold as ice, sending a shiver down Sophia's spine.
"Y-yeah...", she said, looking away as her face blushed red.
Julian's mind was racing.
'It can't be... Evangeline... is a demon?', he thought coldly.