He simply sat back down, resting against the cold cave wall, his legs drawn close, staring upward with a thousand thoughts running through his mind.

As Kei stormed out, frustration radiated from her entire body. Even the steps she took carried far more force than necessary, each one striking the ground like she was trying to crush it beneath her feet.

She kept replaying the earlier conversation in her head, over and over again.

"Jerk."

’I appreciate your trust... but I hope you understand I can’t.’

In her mind, she repeated the words while mocking them in Kelly’s cold, emotionless tone.

Her irritation only grew.

"Well, shove that appreciation up your ass."

Kei muttered aloud, her voice full of frustration.

"What does he even think of himself? I understand the need to keep some things secret, but this? Our lives are literally at stake. He could at least cooperate a little bit."

Kei kept ranting to herself as she walked, her frustration carrying her all the way to the shore of the nearby river outside the cave.

The soft sound of flowing water filled the quiet surroundings, but it did little to calm her mood.

She pulled out her small mirror and looked at her reflection.

Her face was marked with exhaustion, dirt, and the obvious signs of stress.

"Ahhh, my face... I’m taking this much stress, and that bastard is out there taking everything in stride. Even his face was glowing."

Kei muttered angrily, her nostrils flaring the moment she saw the state she was in.

After a little more ranting complaining to the river, the rocks, and probably the gods themselves she finally let some of that frustration leave her chest.

Slowly, she sat down by the riverbank, pulling her knees close and hugging them tightly.

She took a deep breath. Then another. And after calming down just a little, her expression grew more serious.

"Now what...?"

She lowered her voice.

"I walked out with all that confidence, but honestly... what can I even do alone? This place is still a complete mystery, and I can’t see any sign of a settlement... or anything, really. Actually, the probability of anyone coming to look for us is basically zero. I’m pretty sure no one could even guess we survived that fall."

After voicing her thoughts aloud, Kei once again looked around at her surroundings and continued speaking, more to herself than anyone else.

"I don’t even know if it’s day or night. There’s no sky just these aurora-like lights and this endless black cavern... where the fuck are we? Is this still the same dungeon? Do we have to climb all the way back up? Please, no..."

She kept mumbling, letting every anxious thought spill out as it came.

She had no idea how much time had passed.

Minutes, maybe longer.

But by the end of it, all of her anger had slowly faded away, replaced by something far worse.

Fear.

As she kept imagining one terrible possibility after another, her mind spiralled deeper into paranoia, feeding itself with endless what-ifs and worst-case scenarios.

The more she thought, the heavier everything felt.

Until finally, after exhausting herself with overthinking, she forced herself to sort through the chaos in her head and come to a conclusion.

"He’s a jerk... an asshole, even. But he’s the only one I can rely on, the only one I can talk to. Why was I even so angry anyway? So what if he doesn’t tell me anything and doesn’t trust me? It’s not like I do either."

She paused.

A bad memory began to resurface in her mind, dragging something bitter and unpleasant back to the surface.

Her expression twisted into a frown of pure distaste.

"To trust someone especially a man is the last thing I will ever do."

After saying that, her frown slowly relaxed.

And when she stood up again, her voice had already returned to its usual sharpness, carrying that familiar hint of cunning.

’I’m done relaxing. Let’s go back. Maybe I can use this situation to my advantage. I could guilt-trip him say I showed him trust, but he couldn’t do the same, so now he’ll have to earn mine. Yes... I can use him to get out of this shithole.’

"And now he seems strong. I’m getting the same kind of reading from his mana that I get from Agawa still far below William and that Pope, and way lower than that monster nun... just standing beside her was enough."

Kei unconsciously gulped as the memory resurfaced.

She remembered that feeling all too clearly the overwhelming pressure she had felt standing beside a certain nun who was always accompanying Lotario.

"She was like a bottomless well... I couldn’t even compare her to anyone. I couldn’t even properly measure it. It just felt like her mana was greater than everyone in that royal castle combined... and that was a lot of people."

A shiver ran through her.

’A monster indeed... I still don’t understand why everyone treated her like she was just a normal person.’

She thought back to the first time she had met that nun. The moment their eyes met, Kei had felt like she was staring directly at death itself. It was the kind of instinctive terror that no words could properly explain her entire body screaming at her to stay away. And yet, somehow, everyone else seemed to ignore it. Some of her idiot classmates had even gone as far as casually commenting on the nun’s beauty, completely oblivious to the monster standing right in front of them.

After observing for a while and noticing that only the Pope treated her with the utmost respect along with a very obvious layer of fear Kei had immediately understood one thing.

Keep your mouth shut. And so, she did. She treated that woman exactly like everyone else did just a normal nun, nothing more than the Pope’s quiet assistant.

"Anyway, it has nothing to do with me now. Just thinking about her... that woman was trouble."

"Which woman?"

"AHHHH!"