Chapter 265: Darkness Within the Shadows
"You seriously don"t have the house key?" Victoria asked Zach.
"How am I supposed to have the key? We were in the dungeon expedition during the start of the demon invasion, remember?"
"But why don"t you have any spare key or something?"
"That"s not how it works in this game." Zach let out a weary sigh and uttered, "The door automatically gets unlocked when the owner is near, or if the owner has permitted access to the house."
"Let me guess…" Victoria squinted her eyes at Zach and said, "Because the capital was destroyed and rebuilt, you lost your access?"
"I don"t know." Zach shrugged his shoulders and tried to open the door, but it didn"t open.
"It"s not opening, so I guess that"s the case," he sighed.
"So you brought us all the way here only to go back to the inn?" Victoria asked in disbelief.
"Hey, hey. We were supposed to go to the inn in the first place. It was you who suggested coming here, not me," Zach remarked.
"Yeah, so? I simply suggested it, and you are the one who brought us here," Victoria retorted with a shoulder shrug.
Zach and Victoria glared at each other for a few seconds and turned to Aria.
"See? This is how we were before we broke up," Zach said to Aria. "Who do you think is at fault here?"
"…"
Aria stared at both of them with an annoyed look on her face. Seemingly, she was bored and wanted to get some sleep.
"Let"s discuss this tomorrow," she said.
Zach, Aria, and Victoria made their way to the nearest inn and rented two rooms.
"…"
Zach wanted to rent one room so they could sleep in one bed, but then he remembered something and let Aria and Victoria get a separate room.
"Good night," Victoria said to Zach before closing the door of her room.
"Good night!" Aria yelled from behind the closed door.
SIGH!
Aria didn"t waste a single second and jumped on the bed, falling asleep in a few seconds.
"…"
Victoria raised her brows at Aria and thought, ‘She was cheerful when we were eating dinner, but then suddenly her energy died down."
Victoria changed her clothes to a nightdress to sleep comfortably and laid down on another bed beside Aria"s bed.
"I wonder why Zach booked two rooms. This room is big enough for four people to stay, and even the beds are big enough for two people to sleep in one," Victoria thought to herself.
Victoria had an exhausting day from running away from the guild, meeting Zach, and spending the rest of the day meeting her friends.
Leaving the guild wasn"t an easy task for Victoria. She had friends and cla.s.smates in the guild, who were close to her, and she felt bad for leaving them behind in Elliott"s hand. But it was their choice to stay in the guild despite knowing everything.
Victoria closed her eyes and fell asleep after a few minutes.
Meanwhile, Zach was sitting on his bed in a dark room with his eyes wide-opened. He was staring at the wall in front of him with an amused look on his face, seemingly thinking of something interesting.
SIGH!
Suddenly, he sighed with a groan, as though he lost interest in whatever he was thinking.
"I have already made my plans for tomorrow. But what after that? Now that Victoria is with me, I don"t have to worry about anything else."
Zach pondered for a while and muttered, "I also want to complete some unfinished business before Aurora is fully healed."
"I will have to make sure she doesn"t get in danger."
Zach closed his eyes and recalled everything that had happened today. He woke up early to clear the dungeon, met with Aria, met with Aurora, met with Victoria, met with Ninia and his followers.
Then his unwanted and unnecessary encounter with Elliott, the boring ten battles, and chatting with Shay. Of course, it wasn"t as though Zach never had a worse day than today, but the impact was still fresh on him.
"It"s not like it was my first time killing humans… I have killed a few in the real world, too. But it still feels weird knowing I killed them. What if they were a better person in a real-world?" Zach wondered. But then he shook his head and uttered, "That doesn"t matter, as it"s not changing the fact that they were in the wrong."
Zach then recalled Thomas" Chick, who didn"t seem like a bad person to him. She was betrayed by everyone she trusted and cornered to fight with Zach to prove her strength.
"The world is full of all kinds of people. It"s truly a good luck to meet the right people at the right time."
Lost in his thoughts, Zach fell asleep while sitting on the bed.
It was a dark room with no source of light in the room. Even the window was closed and covered with a curtain. The room was filled with silence, and the eerie atmosphere grew intense as time pa.s.sed.
The room was on the third floor of the inn, and Aria and Victoria were staying in the room next to him.
Zach"s breath was quiet, and his body movement was still. But suddenly, the curtain moved a little.
One would expect it moved because of the wind, but the window was closed and there was no other source of the wind. And besides, the curtain moved from inside the room.
Zach was fast asleep by that time, and he had no idea something was lurking in the darkness of his room.
Once again, the curtain moved, but this time, a little aggressive, as though it was moved by someone.
For some reason, the windows illuminated a bright light into the room, straight on the bed Zach was sleeping in. But suddenly, the window was covered by a black mist that obstructed the light from falling on Zach.
However, the mist didn"t stop there. It gathered behind the curtain and slowly manifested a shape. But a tiny ray of light managed to pa.s.s through the mist and fell on Zach"s eyes.
"…."
Zach slowly opened his eyes, confused about what was happening and what caused him to wake up.
As soon as Zach opened his eyes, the mist faded away into the darkness of the shadows.
Naturally, the first thing one would do after waking up in the middle of the night was to look around the bed, look at the door, and then the window before going back to sleep again.
Zach did the same thing, and after inspecting everything was clear, Zach laid down on the bed and fell asleep.
***
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