“He was killed…”
The white-haired, red-eyed girl, Fiss Mogsar, muttered.
Her gaze was fixed on Molten’s corpse, his face contorted in agony, his chest and abdomen pierced through.
The emotion that filled her chest was pity.
Molten had tried to kill her, and Fiss herself had fought with the intent to kill, but that didn’t mean she was so resolved as to feel nothing at the death of a person.
She gently shook her hand three times—a gesture of mourning in this region—and then noticed a book lying nearby. Curious, she picked it up.
It was the very page Molten had seen in his final moments—the page that recorded Fue Toukouya’s Status.
“…I don’t understand.”
Fiss tilted her head. She couldn’t read the words.
She flipped through the pages, occasionally marveling at the detailed illustrations, but paying no attention to the text written beside them.
“I don’t understand.”
She closed the book and muttered again.
Her gaze was not on the book, but on Molten’s corpse.
To the girl, the man before her, who had worshipped a being called a Demon God, was an incomprehensible existence.
It felt contradictory that he advocated for the respect of Demon Beasts while using them as pawns himself.
In any case, he was an illogical and unfathomable opponent.
“…………”
Even so, she couldn’t help but feel pity. It was as if she saw a part of her former self in him.
Fiss had no ability to read minds or see the past, so she didn’t know that Molten was from a noble family or that he had a useless Attribute.
She also didn’t know that he had been abused and mistreated for being the child of a concubine.
Furthermore, she had no way of knowing that he had been manipulated by a Demon Beast Cult operative and had impulsively cooperated, or that he had become obsessed with the Demon Beast Cult due to the psychological shock of his family’s death, which he had indirectly caused.
She only felt that his inconsistent stance toward Demon Beasts made him seem like her former self, bound by a compulsion and stubbornly clinging to his beliefs.
“What did you want to do, I wonder?”
Leaving behind a question with no answer, she left the place.
She had only stopped because she had found the corpse; the reason she had returned to the wasteland was something else entirely.
“It’s deep…”
Stepping into the wasteland, she advanced a little and stood at the edge of a chasm.
What she was looking down at was a large hole. It had appeared during Kouya’s battle with the Chaos Spawn.
Her reason for returning after evacuating was to find out what had happened to her friend who had been swallowed by the hole.
“I can’t find him…”
Her eyes, enhanced with Night Vision and magic, could see all the way to the bottom of the chasm.
The chasm seemed to connect to the ceiling of a cave. Kouya was not within her field of vision.
A large amount of earth and sand, likely from a collapse, had piled up, but it didn’t seem like he was buried alive.
“…The ground is sloped. Did he slide down?”
After observing carefully, she came to that conclusion.
Since the cave was a single path, she could tell the direction if he had slid down.
“With Physical Extend, I can reach the wall… I can go.”
Nodding slightly, Fiss resolved to jump into the chasm.
It wasn’t a lie that she was worried about Kouya, but it was a minor concern.
She had confirmed that Kouya had destroyed the giant tree with a falling attack just before the collapse. She also knew of his extraordinary Toughness.
She didn’t think for a moment that a monster-like human who didn’t even flinch from a Feral Beast’s attack would die from a simple fall.
That was why what welled up in her heart was—,
“The Mana is about the same as in the Twilight Zone. There must be something there…!”
—pure curiosity.
A “Colossus” was perched directly above this cave. Despite the thin Mana.
There was a high possibility that there was some secret.
Of course, there was also the possibility that it was unrelated. There was also the possibility that danger awaited.
If it had been the old her, she wouldn’t have even approached just because it seemed “interesting.”
“Master Keen, Master Boost—”
But she was different now.
The girl had gained power. The power to push through even if it was a bit reckless.
And the self-confidence that came with having that much power.
“—Master Enhance.”
With all the buffs applied, she threw herself into the air.
Driven by the curiosity that filled her chest, Fiss Mogsar jumped into the chasm.