Ch.58XX Tina (3)

# XX Tina (3)

‘Shit, what the hell is this.’

Tina pondered deeply while struggling in Millia’s tentacles.

What was the cause of all this trouble.

‘No, I don’t know! What is this?!’

She truly didn’t know.

What this unpleasant thing was.

Why her friends were hostile toward her.

Why the other scholars weren’t helping and were backing away.

“Gack!”

Tina, entangled in the tentacles, fell to the floor several times.

“To me… gack?!”

Millia lifted Tina again with her tentacles, but strangely, Tina kept slipping out of them.

“Why do you keep dropping her?”

“…Unlike Eirene, there’s nothing to grip and support.”

Millia responded to Esmeralda’s criticism with cold sweat.

“What? Me? I was wrapped in those too? When? Wait, don’t tell me that time?! Ah… I’m getting dizzy…”

Eirene fainted, perhaps recalling what had happened to her back at the Glacies Magic Tower during that shocking incident.

Eirene, who was exceptionally weak-hearted.

Lug was the one who caught this frail, pitiful woman.

“Hmm, indeed. Easy to hold.”

Embracing Eirene from behind, Lug could feel two distinct masses resting on his arms.

Indeed, something that fit perfectly in one’s hand was easier to hold.

“Mr. Lug. Stop sexually harassing Eirene just because she’s unconscious and put her down gently.”

“Understood.”

While Esmeralda glared at Lug with warning eyes,

Millia, despite her cold sweat, manipulated her tentacles more carefully to bind Tina.

“Why…? Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Your acting is top-notch, Tina. No wonder you fooled Eirene too.”

“Waaaaaah! What! What did I deceive?!”

“Sigh, a formidable opponent indeed.”

Tina cried from the injustice.

Why were they suddenly bullying her?

Why were they trying to torment her with such horrible magic?

What made it even sadder was that the tentacles kept slipping near her chest area while trying to grab her.

It was utterly humiliating.

‘I shall bring the end of the world!’

Just as she began to curse the world,

Millia finally succeeded in perfectly binding Tina with her tentacles.

However, Tina’s pride was already too shattered to feel embarrassment.

Despite clearly just being wrapped in tentacles, her eyes showed the resignation of someone who had lost everything.

“Fine, just do whatever you want.”

“What…?”

Only then did Esmeralda realize something was wrong.

***

An extremely suspicious group.

The successor to such a group.

How could one not be suspicious in this situation?

Esmeralda admitted that she had overreacted.

The situation was what it was, and they had been in continuous fierce battles since entering this ruin.

But how could anyone believe that Tina had joined the hero’s party purely as Esmeralda’s friend without any ulterior motives in this situation?

“You’ll understand, right? Tina.”

“Please don’t use my name so casually. Ms. Esmeralda.”

“Ugh… T-Tina… Ms. Tina.”

Esmeralda added the honorific with a feeling like she was coughing up blood.

She was actually a good child who listened to others better than expected.

This situation was entirely due to her own failure to trust her friend.

Seeing Esmeralda’s noticeably depressed state, Tina narrowed her eyes but forgave her.

Despite being a thieving girl with bad habits, she was the kindest person in the hero’s party and couldn’t leave Esmeralda like that.

“So? Why did you do that?”

Tina stopped scolding Esmeralda and asked for an explanation of this absurd situation.

More than being angry, she couldn’t understand the current situation.

What on earth happened to make Esmeralda so suspicious?

What happened to make Eirene faint just from seeing tentacles?

What happened to make Millia handle such bizarre tentacle magic?

And…

‘This guy’s stare has been annoying me. I knew he had some perverse tendencies, but wasn’t it not this bad before?’

Why did this bastard Lug keep alternating his gaze between her chest and Millia’s? It didn’t seem this bad before.

Had he gone crazy after visiting his hometown?

And had something happened to Esmeralda during that journey too?

She couldn’t understand.

What changes had occurred to her companions to make them like this?

Despite not being separated for that long, there was an awkwardness that made them seem like completely different people.

“Well, um… Everyone else went to meet you, and I thought it would be sad if only Tina wasn’t greeted, so I entered the ruins to surprise you…”

Esmeralda explained everything. Entering the ruins, getting separated by trap magic, the subsequent meeting with the scholar group and the attack.

And finally, the truth of the murals.

“Hmm…”

Tina listened attentively to Esmeralda’s words with a calm demeanor, and by the end of the story, she was nodding with a serious face.

“Um, hmm…”

A drop of cold sweat trickled down her forehead.

‘This is the first I’m hearing of this?! What the hell is that!’

She could now see the hidden side of the group she belonged to.

While she had good intuition, she wasn’t particularly intelligent.

She heard the biggest secret of <The Eye of Truth> through her friend’s mouth and understood it immediately.

“Esmeralda.”

“Y-Yes! Ms. Tina.”

Esmeralda answered politely with an honorific as Tina had demanded earlier.

Wasn’t she the guilty one here?

But Tina’s thoughts were different. Or rather, they had changed.

“I-It’s understandable! Yes, it was definitely a situation where misunderstandings could happen.”

She came to understand.

In fact, being who she was, she deeply understood Esmeralda’s feelings.

The bewilderment, betrayal, and suspicion she was now feeling—

Tina was experiencing the same emotions toward her organization that Esmeralda had felt toward her.

She had no idea that the organization she belonged to was so dangerous.

Thinking about it, wasn’t La•Pa, the headmaster, suspicious from the start?

No, now she wasn’t even sure if he was human.

‘Based on the circumstances, is La•Pa a dragon?’

Although Tina hadn’t seen through any of her colleagues’ acting, she could at least read the situation.

‘No, damn it! Where exactly do I belong?’

She no longer cared that Esmeralda and her companions had suspected her, bound her, and beaten her.

She was starting to worry about her own safety.

“But Esmeralda. If you say that in this situation… I mean, you explained it assuming I already knew, but, well, um…”

Tina thought that probably no one would have expected this.

Who would have known?

Setting aside that a successor of an organization didn’t know the circumstances…

“I really didn’t know anything.”

What does it mean if she didn’t even know what her organization was doing?

“So, um… I don’t like the feeling of the gazes from behind.”

That would mean she wasn’t truly a successor in the real sense.

Rather, she was more like a shield to hide the truth. In other words, a sacrificial lamb.

Esmeralda, who was about to prostrate herself on the ground, slowly raised her head.

She saw Tina dripping with cold sweat, and behind her, scholars standing with their weapons.

And she felt that those weapons were aimed not just at herself, but at Tina as well.

“Um, well…”

Esmeralda finally understood that Tina knew nothing. Absolutely “nothing.”

“Esmeralda, we’re friends, right?”

Tina seemed to have forgotten that she had rejected her friend who had doubted her, as she immediately started calling Esmeralda her friend again.

A shameless situation.

But…

“Of course!”

Esmeralda had a heart as broad as her chest size.

Although it might be lacking compared to Eirene and Millia, compared to Tina, no one had a bigger heart than her.

“Excuse me, what’s going on here?”

“Wow, what do we do about this?”

“Yeah, the headmaster didn’t tell us what to do in this situation.”

“Of all times…”

The group of scholars exploring the ruins divided into three.

First, the pure scholars, noticing that the situation was turning strange, pressed themselves against the wall.

Second, the scholars who knew vaguely were looking back and forth between Tina and the third group in confusion.

And the grand third group.

Those who knew about the true nature of the group called <The Eye of Truth> had drawn their weapons and were surrounding Tina and the hero’s party.

“What should we do, Esmeralda?”

“Should we just run away for now?”

Esmeralda turned without hesitation and started running at full speed.