"..." I look around, trying to remember what this place is, but I quickly realize I don't recognize this scenery. It never appeared in the game, probably because it's a random dungeon from another city, so Grace never saw this kind of thing.

'Damn it...' I try to connect with Eve and Syl'Vyr, but I can't. They're too far away. However, my connection shouldn't be blocked by distance alone, meaning the problem is the dungeon—it's doing something.

'It's blocking my contact with Eve...' I take care to check for monsters nearby. If I can't talk to Eve and Syl'Vyr, it means I'm on my own.

Still, I know Syl'Vyr and Eve will find me. Nothing can easily break our connection. Even if we can't talk to each other, we can still sense each other's presence.

'It's far... so far... how long will it take for the two of them to come save me?' The presence is weak, very weak, which means they're an absurd distance away. It's going to take a while for them to find me.

"...Hey, Ylya, this is your fault!! Why the hell did you have to try and pick a fight with me? We never would have fallen into this if you hadn't attacked me!!!" I blame her angrily, noticing she's still on the ground. I see her tears falling and note how strange this is.

"A-Are you okay?" I kneel down, realizing she's sweating cold sweat and trembling. I start shaking her, but she doesn't seem well; she seems terrified, even though there's nothing dangerous nearby to warrant it.

"Hey!! Hey!!! Ylya!! Say something!! Look at me!!" I shake her more forcefully, but she does nothing.

Slap

I give her a hard slap across the face. The slap echoes with a crack, but not even that brings her back to her senses. She's in some kind of shock or trance.

"S-Shit! SHIT!!" I say, frightened. We're in a dangerous place, and now the only person who can help is in some bizarre state of fear. My body shudders with the realization of how screwed I am.

A dark thought of abandoning her here surfaces. If I leave her here, I can survive on my own by hiding until Eve and Syl'Vyr find me. Since I'm a living puppet, I can easily hide somewhere somehow, but with her, I won't be able to do that.

"..." I bite my lip hard, ultimately giving up on the idea. I'm not a horrible person who abandons others, even if part of the blame for this situation lies with her for fighting me earlier.

"You'd better pay me a lot of money, you hear me!!" I kneel down and start digging at the soil with my fingernails, throwing dirt on her. It's a trick adventurers use.

Monsters usually ignore the smells of their own environment, and this dirt has that strange, even somewhat foul smell. So, covering her in dirt should help disguise her scent.

My nails chip from what I'm doing, but I only stop when she's good and dirty with soil. Soon, I start covering myself with dirt too, even though it's not as necessary since I emit far less scent than others, but it's still good to hide myself this way.

"You'd better not make a sound, Ylya! I'm not going to die because you're being weird." I tear off one of the frills from my dress and go over to Ylya, wrapping the cloth over her mouth to keep her tearful sobs from being heard.

'Even being gagged, she doesn't react? What the hell happened to that rebellious girl from before?' I grab her hands and start dragging her.

I'm not strong enough to lift her off the ground, so all I can do is drag her while I look around for some hole, crevice, or cave to stuff her into and hide in myself.

While being extremely careful of any sound, the extreme caution stresses me out because I've never had to focus so intensely on dangers near me before, since Eve always handled that job.

Fortunately, since most monsters hid because the dungeon eliminated monsters, I end up not finding anything dangerous. Unfortunately, dragging someone around still makes everything more difficult.

I spend over half an hour dragging her from one place to another, searching for a spot to be our hiding place. Some good news is that since it's a dense forest, tracking us will be more difficult.

And I also managed to find a small cave opening. The entrance is only two meters wide and doesn't go very deep, but it doesn't seem inhabited, so it should be safe. I drag Ylya inside and leave her at the deepest point.

Then I leave the cave and start gathering vines from the trees to block the entrance in a makeshift way. I'm scared. I'm so very scared of dying, but I want to live.

And my determination to live is stronger than my fear, so I think strategically, using things I know combined with game knowledge and basic survival skills.

I spend another hour hiding the entrance well with interwoven vines so it looks natural. There are a few gaps here and there, but a monster would never notice the small cave's entrance.

To enter without messing up the vines, I crawl along the ground until I pass under the wall of vines I made, thus managing to get inside. I'm completely filthy with this dark soil, but I couldn't care less.

I feel uncomfortable not being pretty, but my survival always comes first. For now, I need to rest, so I walk over to where I dumped Ylya.

'She's still there.' She's hugging her own legs in the exact spot I left her. She didn't even try to remove the gag from her mouth. Her eyes are strange too, as if they're completely unfocused.

'Why the hell is she like this? I can't survive while carrying dead weight like her!!' I need her help. For starters, I don't need food, but she does.

And I'm not going to risk my life hunting food for her, so she'll have to help if she wants to eat. I still have my supplies inside the storage ring, but I can't take almost anything out from there.

Because almost all of it is food that emits a smell, and we are very deep in the dungeon. The deeper you are in a dungeon, the better monsters are at tracking and hiding, so any unfamiliar smell could attract a predator.

'We also can't stay in this cave for too long. The dungeon will definitely try to kill us... I'd say... 10 to 13 hours...' We basically have only 10 hours. Ylya needs to recover and start walking within 10 hours, or I'll have to abandon her.

I can't walk around dragging a girl. First, it leaves traces—even minimal ones, something could still find them. Second, it takes even longer; I'm about three times slower carrying her, and I'm already slow, so it's horrible.

"Hey, Ylya, are you okay? Can you answer me? Hey! Say something!" I shake Ylya again. Her gaze doesn't even seem to see that I'm here in front of her; her eyes don't follow me.

'Why is she like this? Is it some kind of trauma? She was fine before.' Before, she was completely normal, and before the teleportation, she was normal too. It was only after we appeared here that she became like this.

Which, to me, seems like a sign of some kind of trauma. I doubt it's just fear of the environment, since fear alone would never make her freeze up so badly.

'I need to find a way to bring her back to reality...' I don't want to have to abandon her, but if she doesn't snap out of it, that will be the only option left, since we can't stay put for too long and I can't carry her around.

We were lucky to find this cave with less than 3 hours of searching, but we won't be so lucky again.

'What can I do about this?' I don't know how to deal with someone who's like this. For starters, I don't even know why she's like this. After the teleport, she just froze up like a broken machine.

'Well...' I decide to try something. Maybe if I talk to her in a different way. I decide to build two small cloth puppets to put on my hand. I am a puppeteer, after all.

I don't think talking to her directly will work, but maybe I can manage it with two little puppets.

'A puppet show... it's all I can do...' I'm already trying way too hard to save her. If this fails... I'll have no choice but to leave her here to her own luck. I don't want it to come to that, so I pray she regains her sanity with the puppet show I'm going to put on. No matter how stupid the idea seems, it's all I can think of.

I sit down on the floor near her while taking materials out from the storage ring. I'll make two small puppets, one shaped like Ylya and one shaped like me.

Basically, I'll do ventriloquism with cloth dolls. After all, it's already clear Ylya won't talk if I just speak to her directly.

I put effort into making the cloth doll as fast as possible, but also as similar as possible to something that resembles the two of us. On top of that, I choose what manner of speaking I'll use.

I can try to talk directly to Ylya using the two puppets, or I can have one puppet talk to the other in front of Ylya to pull her attention back to reality.

Whichever option I choose, I need to do it quickly.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.