"What is it?" Aria asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Look at it," Olivia said, staring at in awe.
With a sigh, Aria stepped forward, scanning the body of the skeleton, trying to find something wrong with it, but truth be told, she couldn't see anything wrong.
"I don't see anything," Aria said, shifting her gaze toward Olivia.
"That's the thing, though!" she proclaimed as she stretched her hand, and then… she lifted the light?
"No way," Aria muttered in awe. Olivia was holding some kind of cloth. The cloth itself wasn't anything special, except one thing… its color.
It meshed so perfectly with the light the magma was producing that it made it almost impossible to perceive.
"This… how is this possible?" Aria muttered. Usually, there were monsters that used objects to their advantage, but the current situation was unlike any she had seen before.
Because the cloth meshed so masterfully with the color of the magma, it could only mean one thing…
"Someone… someone with reason made this," Olivia remarked as she looked at the cloth in her hand. "Someone with high intelligence…"
Aria shuddered at the thought. There was a difference between a creature able to communicate with a human and someone so intelligent that they could craft equipment perfectly suited to the current environment.
It wasn't like they were going against a monster, but a human instead.
"This… is unexpected," Aria admitted as she placed a hand on her head, which had started to hurt with the revelation.
"So from now on, we can expect traps made specifically for us…" Olivia commented with a grin.
It may seem far-fetched, but it was true.
When one was in the death zone, the first rule to survive was to always expect the worst possible situation and act accordingly.
And now that they had discovered that somebody had made an item so masterfully well that it worked perfectly with the environment, the girls asked themselves,
what else could be waiting for them?
And of course, while this was happening, Eric was sleeping without a care in the world.
*****
His body still aching a bit from the exhaustion, Eric opened his eyes slowly. The first thing he saw were Olivia and Aria staring at him with thoughtful expressions.
Scratching the back of his head awkwardly, he slowly sat up. "... Sorry about that," was the first thing that came to his mind.
He more or less remembered what had transpired while his desires had been amplified too much.
Seeing that the girls didn't change their expressions much, he asked,
"Is… is something wrong?" Eric asked while thinking inwardly, 'They are not mad at me, are they?'
Without answering, Olivia threw the purple cloth at his feet.
"Yeah, it seems we have an enemy that is as intelligent as a human, if not more so,"
At the news, all Eric could do was stare at them in awe, mirroring their expression.
*****
After a bit of rest, they continued their descent into the volcano.
"So anyway, Eric…" Olivia began, "You said that you remembered what happened when you were in a frenzy, right?"
"Eric shrugged as he answered, "Yeah, pretty much… why?""
"No reason…" she admitted. "Just curious, what emotion brought you back to your senses?"
Aria's cheeks turned a bit red at the question but focused on his answer as she was too curious to let the matter go.
"Regret and shame," Eric admitted without a moment's hesitation.
It was the truth. He had decided he was going to get rid of the corruption in the world, and what did he do? He almost got corrupted by his own desires! He even made one of his companions cry.
'Why am I so pathetic? I really need to become stronger,' he thought as he continued walking forward.
"Hmm, I see," Olivia muttered. Her tone was strange, almost disappointed… or maybe it was relief?
Shifting her gaze, Olivia saw that Aria had regained her composure, or it would appear like that to most people, but Olivia was one of the people who could actually read Aria's emotions quite well.
Looking at the eyes of her companion, Olivia grinned slightly as she muttered, "I see… so the princess is disappointed as well…"
*****
Their walk continued for a while.
One could even say it was peaceful… if they didn't include the suffocating darkness, the chance that some of the trees could be monsters in disguise, and the threat of an enemy with equal or superior human intellect.
Aria was stretching her arms above her head, lost in thought as she gazed at Eric's back, who continued to walk forward without hesitation, lost in thought.
After his incident with his sword, he spoke even less than usual, as if he didn't want to interrupt his line of thought.
'What could he be thinking about?' Aria wondered.
The next second, he stopped, which made Aria startle for a moment
He grabbed his gem and opened the map.
'Why is he looking at the map when we agreed that the map was basically useless at this point?' Aria thought, irritated. No, she was irritated that Eric didn't ask her.
"That's strange," he muttered.
"What is?" Olivia asked, raising an eyebrow.
"That," he said as he stretched his hand and pointed forward… no, considering the level they were walking on, what was ahead could very well be considered downhill.
Olivia sighed as she took a step forward, only for her eyes to widen in surprise. "Are these ruins?" she muttered under her breath.
But she was right. These were ruins.
Suddenly, Eric burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?" Olivia asked, turning her gaze to his.
"No, it's just too bizarre. Think about it. We're in the middle of an volcano, where there's a forest growing from the magma, and now we find ruins, like this place has been home to a civilization in the past. It's just like I'm in some kind of fever dream."
Considering everything, he was right, and he even had the right to laugh. Though his laughter was cut short when a part of the ruin fell over, and something began to approach them.
It seemed that, unsurprisingly, laughing in the middle of the death zone like a lunatic would attract the attention of possible enemies. Who knew?