World's Last Hope-Chapter 56: Girls Talk

"Where the hell is it?!" Olivia cursed under her breath as she looked at the sky, searching for an easy prey.

She and Aria had returned to the peak of the mountain where they had crashed earlier, searching for something that was capable of flying.

"Be patient, Olivia," Aria spoke as she, too, was looking at the sky.

"You know catching a monster isn’t something easy, even less a flying one." She spoke, her voice relaxed.

"Aren’t you worried though?" Olivia asked, raising an eyebrow.

"If Eric would be able to survive without us?"

"Of course I am. You have no idea how much I want to see him again." Aria tried to sound indifferent, but a hint of worry was present in her voice.

"But I just know that he would be fine," she added.

"Why are you so certain?"

Aria hesitated if it was a good idea to share the information, but considering that Olivia was her friend, in the end, she decided to explain.

"This is something I haven’t told Eric, but actually, he helped me with the battle against the Corruption."

"What do you mean?" Olivia asked, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

"The Corruption subjected me to my memories and tried to make me lose my touch with reality, by giving me illusions that were almost the same as the real thing." Aria began as her voice got colder.

"To break the illusion, I had to kill everyone that was present in the memory, no matter if it was a stranger or my father or mother." Her voice trembled slightly, remembering the things she experienced not too long ago.

"Of course, I killed and killed, but I slowly began to lose myself in the process. In the end, I would have probably been a completely different person entirely if that continued."

"So, what changed?" Olivia asked curiously.

After all, she was also soon going to liberate a cathedral, or at least that was the plan, so getting information on how to fight the Corruption was bound to be beneficial.

"It was Eric. The Corruption began running out of memories that it could show me and soon began to show memories of us after we began the expedition. It managed to replicate you almost perfectly, but Eric... for some reason, the Corruption didn’t see him as a human, but as a light."

"A light?" Olivia said, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes, a blinding light. I’m not sure how, but once you entered the cathedral with Eric’s body, his soul somehow joined the fight against the Corruption. After each memory, he remained with his memories intact, so he became the only person I could talk to."

"Huh... no wonder you were so attached to him once you became a Grandmaster. How much time did you and him spend fighting the Corruption?"

"Well, from your perspective, it was about a day, but from mine, it was a few months at least."

"And all that time, the only person you could talk with was..."

"Eric," Aria finished Olivia’s thought.

"He is the sole reason I didn’t lose my mind fighting the Corruption, and he was the only person I was able to depend on... so it’s natural I would fall for him, I guess."

"So what you’re saying is that he’s special."

"Yes, so he will not die so easily. I’m certain of that." Aria sighed as she rested her back on the cold rock.

"And does he remember any of that?"

"No, it seems that what helped me was his soul and not his consciousness, so he probably has no idea what he did."

"Aren’t you going to tell him?"

"Maybe in the future... once we meet again. But even if he knew that, it wouldn’t change anything... he will still be mine."

Olivia laughed hearing Aria’s declaration.

"I guess you can be a bit possessive, princess," she spoke, clutching her stomach.

Aria’s face got a bit red. "Well, he is mine! He is bound to my cathedral, so he is quite literally mine..."

In embarrassment, Aria almost missed the pack of monsters that were floating in the air.

She grinned before speaking.

"It seems our ride has arrived. Let’s go, we don’t want to keep Eric waiting."

*****

Massaging his tired eyes, Eric sighed inwardly.

"Alright, how the hell do I survive this? There is a giant spider close to me, and a rain of acid is about to fall. Hunger is not a dire problem yet, but the last time I drank something was about two days ago, so dying of dehydration is a real possibility."

The only thing that came to Eric’s mind was a pretty idiotic plan, but considering the circumstances, he didn’t have much of a choice.

With a grunt, he hung from the tree branch and began to move downward, clutching the branch tightly as it shielded him from the rain.

’The only problem is, will my grip give out first, or will the rain stop?’

Glancing down, he saw that if he let go, it was at least a forty-meter drop. Maybe he could survive the fall, but he would surely injure his ankles.

If something like that happened, it would mean he wouldn’t be able to move at top speed, which would basically doom him in a place like this.

The echoes of the drops began to increase as soon as the rain started.

The acid drops were slowly but surely destroying the soil as well as the trees.

But considering that the trees had managed to grow so tall, Eric doubted that they would fall so easily.

So as long as he didn’t let go of the branch, he should be safe... theoretically.

"Maybe the rain would kill the giant spider?" he muttered, but his hopes were quickly crushed as he glanced at the countless cocoons on the ground and how unbothered they were under the acid rain.

"Of course, their blood is quite literally acid, so why would acid rain damage them? It seems being dehydrated really has made me dumber than I already am."

Eric cursed himself silently as the intensity of the rain increased even more.

From now on, it was a waiting game.