Chapter 176 176: I will leave it to you.

“Hey, Natasha, I know I said that I wanted to look for Aurora as soon as possible but I think we should sit around and wait for Aurora to find us instead. I don’t want to lead these monsters back to our base.”

Natasha looked at Rita with a dead expression on her face. It had not been her idea to charge out and take the fastest route back possible.

It had been Rita that had decided to charge out on her own and land the pair in this situation. Had it been up to Natasha, they would be back at their starting point.

“Look, I know it is my fault o stop giving me those eyes. The more you glare at me, the worse I feel about myself.”

Natasha’s glare intensified. Only Rita who had gotten used to looking at Natasha and being able to guess her moods was able to tell recognize this small change in Natasha’s expression.

“Rita, I am not angry and I also agree with you. We cannot allow Aurora to see this ugly sight. We should deal with these monsters as soon as we can.”

Natasha’s words were well times. As soon as she finished speaking, she had to dodge the attack from the monsters that had cornered her and Rita.

There were more than a dozen small monsters, all too mindless to be a threat but the number concerned Natasha a little.

‘Is their nest nearby? Did Rita accidentally trigger these monsters?”

It would be entirely possible for Rita to unknowingly cause this situation. But Natasha did not fault the redhead even if that was the case.

The fight against the monsters could barely be called even that. These small fries were different from the elite and intelligent opponents Natasha was used to fighting.

Even Rita was able to hold her own against these monsters without her magic. It truly spoke of the growth the pair had shown ever since they had decided to seal their powers away.

“Man, this is the third time we were ambushed by monsters ever since we left our cave. I wonder if Aurora is having this problem as well.”

Rita’s question was not serious. She was just curious about what Aurora was doing all this while.

She had sent a few messages to Aurora a while back but she had not received any reply to her inquiry yet. She was not even sure if Aurora saw her messages or not.

pa??? ?<0,>?,?? “Being ignored feels bad. No wonder all those maids back home used to complain about their lovers ignoring them. I will complain to Aurora as well when I meet her next.”

“What will you complain about to me? Let me hear it as well.”

Rita would deny it forever but she did jump up in fright at Aurora’s sudden appearance. She had not even felt Aurora approach the duo and that was why she was comfortable complaining about her feelings.

But complaining about her feelings in front of the person it was about was a lot more difficult than one could imagine.

“She was complaining that you were ignoring her messages.”

Natasha, as the traitor she was, decided to spoil Rita’s fun and let the cat out of the bag. Rita’s face flashed in shame and embarrassment at being called out like this.

“Oh, I see. I thought getting to you two faster would be better than returning your message ASAP. I guess I made a mistake.”

“N-No, I misunderstood. It’s nice to have you back.”

Aurora’s sudden laughter filled the area at Rita’s quick correction of her mistake. It was a nice laugh and one that calmed Rita down.

It was rare for Aurora to laugh like this so any circumstance of hearing it, Rita would take gladly.

“It is nice to see you back. Did something happen? We all separated without any notice.”

Natasha’s calm words cut through the atmosphere and returned it to the vigilant one it had been before Aurora’s arrival.

Natasha looked serious when she eyes Aurora. The time for fun and the game was over.

===========================

Aurora had wanted to play a trick on Rita for a long time now, and she finally got her chance.

She pretended not to have heard anything Rita was saying since it was fun teasing her but Natasha’s words reminded Aurora that they were not out of danger just yet.

“Something interfered with the spell. It was too brief for me to be able to tell what interfered but it had to be something major. I think we should be careful on this floor.”

Aurora could have sworn that she felt a goddess’s power in the pool when she had been about to teleport.

But that could not be possible since the abyss was not supposed to have any other goddess other than her.

“So, you mean to say that we don’t know why this happened? Did someone want to lure us somewhere?”

Rita’s question did make sense. Aurora had thought of that before well but things did not quite connect in her mind.

Why would someone try to lure them here?

“Who knows. But we are short on time. Let’s head toward Lake Variety now. We will need to find a guide on our way there.”

Aurora did not want to spend any more time thinking about the teleportation case than she had to. Especially because there was only one conclusion Aurora could reach.

‘My instincts are telling me that it was Clove who interfered with the spell. But I cannot rationalize it.’

The more Aurora thought about this topic, the more her head hurt. So she decided to stop thinking about it.

“How are we going to find a guide to that place? No human can come back from Lake Variety alive and I somehow doubt the mindless goon on this floor will be of any help to us.”

Aurora agreed with Rita in that regard. All she had seen on this floor were mindless monsters that could not be reasoned with.

One could not put their trust in these monsters because they did not have enough intelligence to even hold a conversation.

However,

“Ava took care of our guide for us. She gave me the address of someone who can lead us into Lake Variety without getting us killed in the process.”

Aurora was suspicious of Ava’s intentions at first as well. This was too generous of an offer for the overlooker to make.

But thinking back at it, Ava was only following Aurora’s orders to help her out. It did make sense for Ava to go out of her way to acquire such contacts for Aurora.

Aurora’s safety instincts didn’t even go off when Ava gave her the information slip so Aurora felt safe to trust her on this.

“It’s from Ava? Are you sure it is alright to use it? Ava isn’t the most trustworthy and I have a feeling that she is using us for her good.”

Rita seemed to still have a bad impression of Ava. it seemed like she was never really going to warm up to Ava at this rate.

“I think we should check it out. If you brought it up now then that means you have decided to trust Ava’s judgment on this issue?”

Natasha was someone who got Aurora’s thought process. Unlike Rita who acted on her emotions, Natasha gave things a deeper thought before she spoke about them.

“Ahhh, I can just tell that things are going to get annoying. Aurora, can I back out now.”

“Rita, I cannot help but feel like you are getting more and more unhinged as time is passing. Where did that obedient and cute child from before go?”

“She died under the stress. Man, I don’t want to do anything Ava has planned for us but I will do so because you asked me to.”

Aurora felt warmth fill her being. Rita surely had a way with words and she surely had changed a lot from the time Aurora had found her.

Aurora met Natasha’s eyes on Rita’s other side and the black-haired beauty gave Aurora a reassuring smile back.

“Don’t worry. I am with you as well. As long as there are two of us, I am sure we can keep Rita in check. So you can depend on me as well.”

‘Ah, I’m no longer alone now. These two are companions who will never leave me.’

Aurora was thankful for the support and that was also why she decided to go along with her desires.

Call her weak but Aurora was never someone to hold back when she knew what she wanted from life.

“Hey, in that case, I would like your help with something. I think we should get the corruption out of the way before we head toward the lake.”

Aurora got two pairs of wide eyes looking at her before Rita grabbed her hand and decided to drag her toward the cave in the distance.

Natasha followed not too far.

“Don’t worry. We will take care of you so leave your body to us.”