Nathan was lying on the ceiling of the room, resting his head on his hands, and looking up at Lynn tied to the bed.
It was quite a comical sight, but Nathan was thinking of other things.
"Do you know why gravity rotates?"
A couple of seconds later the voice answered him.
"No... since I've been in this place it's always been the same. Although it doesn't affect me because I don't have a body..."
For a couple of hours Nathan rested, in that time the voice seemed to have also fallen asleep, so when he woke up, he asked it how it slept if it had no body, to which the voice replied that it didn't really know how it worked either.
In addition to the little information the voice seemed to know, Nathan realized that it really loved to talk, or it just hadn't spoken for so long to a human that it was enjoying the moment without knowing how long it would last.
Thinking about that, Nathan asked the voice in his head another question.
"Before I showed up... Were you usually taken by a calamity?" Nathan referred to the voice as an object.
"Yes... I don't even remember how many types of monsters I went through. But most of the time I was unconscious trying to ignore their thoughts"
Nathan didn't have to keep asking to understand what the voice was referring to.
He couldn't imagine listening to the thoughts of the calamities for years... But what did the calamities think about?
Nathan was a little curious but didn't ask, seeing how the tone of the voice had changed a little, seeming a little more displeased.
"Oh! But when I saw several humans meet that ghoul, I really felt hope. Though they were converted soon after..."
He understood that the voice was referring to the converted humans who were possibly already slowly dying somewhere in the castle unable to feed... though some would probably survive as they would devour each other.
"Then I saw how the ghoul met you in that red mist and I thought you would be another prey. I tried to annoy the ghoul as much as I could, until you finally defeated it"
Nathan frowned suspiciously.
"So, the ghoul was banging its head because of you?"
The voice nodded.
"Well... I could really only yell at it, but apparently it was pretty effective"
Nathan only scoffed slightly, he didn't want to imagine trying to fight someone while someone was shouting directly into his ears the whole time. It was then that he realized that without the help of the voice he would probably be wandering the corridors of the castle as a ghoul right now.
Suddenly Nathan heard a slight scream and looked towards the bed.
"Huh?! Why am I tied up?!"
Lynn screamed and began to struggle her body in an attempt to free herself. Nathan wanted to tell her to calm down, but she was quicker to break free, falling face first to the ceiling.
"Ughh...my face!"
Lynn clutched her face in pain while Nathan could only sigh.
For almost ten minutes, Nathan began to explain to Lynn the situation they were in. Then they set off and left the room in search of a way down from that floor.
Compared to before, when they had walked through the corridors without worrying about anything, Nathan was now quite tense, knowing the dangers he might encounter.
He had asked the voice about the red mist, but the voice could not tell him where it came from, only that it happened every couple of days. Nathan was just …lucky that he was there at the precise moment it happened.
Besides, he knew he could run into another ghoul or other calamity roaming this floor. At least he was with Lynn, who could more easily deal with the ghouls at long range without worrying about being attacked. Nathan, on the other hand, just had to hope that he wouldn't get hurt, but that was on the off chance that they would encounter more ghouls.
As they continued walking, they began to encounter several corpses of mundane humans who had been killed in various ways. Some had been torn apart by what appeared to be calamities. There were signs of bites on their bodies and some limbs were missing. Some others had cuts from weapons, most likely made by other humans.
In a way, knowing that there were calamities around was a relief for Nathan, because he felt more and more hungry and thirsty, and so he could hunt some calamities to eat them. But the thirst would also have to be taken care of, or he might dehydrate to death.
'Ah... what a nuisance'
He didn't remember what it was like to have no food inside a realm, for that reason they always took supplies with them to avoid exactly this.
For almost two hours, they both walked following the right wall the whole time with the intention of finding a way down... but instead of finding the stairs to the lower floor, they found the dining room below them.
Nathan wanted to go down quickly, but then he saw two people downstairs. He looked at them with a frown to see what they were doing, only to notice that in the dining room, exactly at the table, there were full plates of food and different kinds of drinks, including wine and water in large quantities.
Nathan's mouth was watering, but he was reluctant to go downstairs, when one of the people who was eating quietly turned his head up and stared at him.
"Hey, you two, why don't you come down and eat? There's enough food for everyone here"
Nathan clicked his tongue as he saw how he had been discovered. By using essence, the others could sense him, but only if they were of a higher rank or category than him, so naturally he raised his guard at the two people downstairs.
But soon after he recognized the man who had spoken to him. It was the same man he had encountered a week ago when he had left the bar and knocked those two drunks' unconscious. The same man who had been knocked out by Lynn who stood behind him looking at the food with drool on his mouth.
Not caring, Lynn jumped off the balcony and landed on the other side of the table from where the two men were eating.
Nathan sighed and came down as well, then approached the table before looking at the food cautiously, he could not tell if the food was poisoned or not. He couldn't trust anything in a upper realm, it was then that the voice spoke directly into his head.
"Don't worry, it's not poisoned. I've seen how the calamities sometimes feed in this place, but they don't seem to like seasoned food too much... only raw meat as usual"
Nathan remained silent.
'Wait... you knew there was food here?'
The voice was silent.
"Maybe... I might have forgotten"
Nathan sighed heavily and looked back down at the food, it was then that the man who was eating looked up at him and his eyes widened in surprise.
"Wait, you're the one from that day!"
Nathan knew there might be trouble, but then the man's expression changed again.
"Well, what difference does it make. We're in an upper realm now, better to put that behind us and focus on surviving!"
Nathan was surprised to see that the man who had earlier tried to capture him for stupidity seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.
It was at that moment that Lynn took a piece of chicken out of his mouth and pointed at the man.
"So, you're the one I knocked unconscious that night!"