374 Out of the tower

Taking the first step on this strange footing, I was sure that it would either instantly fail and cause me to fail, or do so only when I would put my trust into Golem and start walking through it. With my shockwave at the tip of my tongue, I crossed the formerly broken floor and arrived back at the open platform, where the princess waited for me with her eyes wide open.

"How did you do that?"

Unable to scream, she had to limit herself to a soft whisper, that would easily escape my attention if not for the predator's mindset making sure to pick up and deliver all kinds of information that my unconscious part of the brain would deem important.

Taking a look around, surprised by her question a bit, I only now realised that what I took for a stable floor, looked just like the hole I used to cross to the other side before! There wasn't even a hint of this platform that the golem created for me ever existing!

"No questions now. We need to hurry to the ground level. This place will collapse soon."

There was no point in explaining the whole matter to this girl, even if there was any need for it at all. Pushing this matter aside would give me precious time that I needed to come up with a plausible story of what happened on the other side since I doubted that this Golem would allow any of the aboriginals to learn of such kind of complicated and classified matters.

"Get down? And how do you want to do so when the staircase collapsed?!"

Finally gathering the wits to raise her voice, the girl shrank in herself when I weighted my current options and gave her a long, meaningful look. Just when I was about to approach her in order to grab her into my arms and give her a ride of her life, the tower twitched a little, with a big stone slab suddenly growing out of the platform, before most of it got varved out and moved aside, showing the interior of a cosy elevator that I remember seeing in one of the 006 agent Bund movies.

"Just follow me. All your folk should be waking up from their trance soon."

Just a single look at the walls of the elevator with only a minuscule amount of energy holding them together made me certain that I could break them at any given moment. After all, there was no way I would enter a damned elevator without any insurance when it was made by someone who could potentially target my life!

"Calm the fuck down, you idiot!"

*What's happening?*

"You keep ranting like if everyone in this world wanted to loop your head off. Do you really think that if that thing really wanted to do you harm, it would need to resort to such a silly means? We were right in its part ever since we entered this dimension!"

*Well, I know that but what if it was simply too busy with the ritual? What if it initially wanted me to succumb to the charm and score the princess in order to merge that consciousness of its host with my body?*

"Eh… Let me approach this topic in a different way. If somebody entered not only your island, not even the sphere of influence of your stronghold but the small world itself, would you have any real trouble of doing whatever you would like with them?"

*Well… You have a point here. If I consider the stark difference between the prowess of this dimension and my own, I don't think my own could ever compare. But that also depends. After all, you never told me how the core works or what are the pros and cons of the other types of the stronghold heart. In the end, I still know literally nothing about this world…*

As the elevator raced towards the earth, the princess hugged my side tightly, maybe hoping to achieve something by sticking glued to me with just a small cloth wrapped around her hips, or maybe she was just scared. Diving down at such speed could scare anyone without the ability to fly.

*Speaking of which, what do you think about everything that this thing told us? Why were you silent the whole time in the first place?*

Even if I didn't put my attention into it with how wary of the golem's potential tricks I was, calling it strange would be a huge underevaluation of Bonger's behaviour!

"Did you forget about the evolution of the predator's mindset? Unless you can find a way to quickly upgrade me, I have barely enough energy to spare on speaking with you. If I were to let go of this fragile control of its influence, you would end up killing everyone in this dimension instead of bringing them away."

*Ugh… I didn't know that. I'm sorry.*

Only at this point, it dawned on me how far my relationship with Bonger changed. From a system-clueless user at first, through the times where I observed its growth into a greedy and pranky companion, all the way to the current reality where its inner persona got freed. Thinking about how it gradually changed from just give and take sort of relationship into something I wasn't scared to call friendship in its budding stage, I couldn't help but get back to the words of the golem. 

Was Bonger just an evolved form of my hidden personality? Did the act of his very creation took away a part of my real self?

Looking at it from the perspective of time, it was a fact that me on earth and my past self, freshly after transmigration… wasn't exactly the same!

"It's better to not think about this for now."

Out of sudden, for the very first time since he gained his freedom of speech and limited autonomy of actions, Bonger's voice seemed tense.

"It's not that I want you to ignore this topic and hide something from you, but as you mentioned earlier, we don't have enough information to really figure the truth out. Before we will have the chance to gain a better understanding of this world, I think it's better to focus our attention on the task at hand."

With a clear mental nudge, Bonger drew my attention back to reality. Just a single moment later, the elevator finally started slowing its descend, lightly touching the ground in the middle of what I took earlier for a garden, and what was an area riddled with magical traps and arrays all over.