Chapter 80 [Finally Found Erika]
Mela jumped into the moat and submerged almost instantly.
At first, Mela's movements were quite light, but as her clothes got wet from the river and clung to her skin more and more heavily, even Mela felt a little strained.
The moat surrounding the royal city was so large that Mela had to repeatedly surface and dive, even reaching out to pry open what appeared to be a breach.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Erica burned down most of the palace, using the fire to temporarily stop the pursuers. But she knew very well that the drawbridge had been retracted and no one could leave this fortified city. She had to find a safe place to hide.
But where in this vast royal city is there any safe place? Once the fire is brought under control, Erica will have no chance of escaping the guards' search, no matter where she hides.
Even before the commotion at the palace, curious residents were peeking out of their windows. After witnessing the fire spread, small groups of onlookers began to gather on the streets.
Therefore, a red-haired woman blended in without alerting anyone.
Erica moved nimbly through the crowd like a fish, a single thought clear in her mind: if she could hide there, she might have a good chance of surviving the night.
*
Mela was still in the moat, her skin wrinkled from being soaked in the water, and her eyes were stinging uncontrollably. If Yuriel were to see her now, she would see that Mela's eyes were already red.
But she seemed oblivious, still keeping her eyes wide open, trying to see the details not far away through the murky river water. Even though her chest felt increasingly stuffy from being underwater for so long, Mela felt that she could probably hold on a little longer.
Little did he know, this greatly worried Silas.
For Silas, it had been a long time since Mela had last surfaced from the river. He kept peering into the water, but the black shadow representing Mela never appeared.
Silas couldn't help but fly above the river and whisper Mela's name.
"Mera, Mela, are you alright?"
However, Mela was some distance from the water, and with her ears filled with river water as a barrier, she couldn't hear Silas's voice at all.
Moreover, Mela seemed to vaguely see a crack in front of her. She swayed her body and gradually approached the crack in the wall, which looked as if it had been soaked for a long time and was somewhat cracked.
Mei stretched out her hand and carefully felt around for a while. As a result, she actually found several loose stone bricks, as if they had been taken down and put back together.
Mela gripped the edge of the stone brick and pulled it outwards with all her might. A cloud of dust burst out, and several stone bricks fell to the bottom of the river along with it.
Mela had to step back a little, and as the smoke and dust dissipated with the water, a black hole large enough for an adult to crawl through appeared before her eyes.
Hmm, where does this hole lead?
*
Erica infiltrated the prison without a sound.
Probably no one would have imagined that she would choose to hide here.
However, Erika, having made her way here by hiding, discovered that the guards outside the prison were quite lax, probably because most of the people imprisoned here were not vicious criminals, but rather a group of unlucky guys who had accidentally offended some important figures.
Hearing footsteps approaching, none of the people locked in the cells looked up curiously. Some even turned over, revealing huge holes in their clothes and their backs that had turned black from not being washed for too long.
An indescribable stench assaulted my nostrils.
Erica had no choice but to cover her nose with her sleeve and continue walking deeper into the prison.
She planned to thoroughly investigate the place, hoping to find a way out so that if something unexpected happened, she wouldn't be caught in a trap.
No one knows how this prison was designed in the first place, but it is very large and has many empty cells. Erica just tentatively reached out and pushed, and she actually opened a cell door.
It also had the smell of stale rust on it.
It seems that as long as one has some skill, escaping from here shouldn't be too difficult, Erica thought thoughtfully.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to escape.
If there is any, perhaps something useful will remain.
*
Mela followed the opening into the deep tunnel.
Judging from the marks, the tunnel wasn't newly dug. Moreover, as Mela dodged the suddenly appearing protrusion and stepped over the rock that nearly tripped her, a strange thought began to creep into her mind:
Could the people who dug this tunnel have done it by hand?
That's really... incredibly persistent.
I don't know how much free time one must have to be willing to spend on something like this.
In the darkness, even the most acute senses cannot capture the passage of time. Mela didn't know how long she had been walking. Occasionally, she would look back and see a tunnel behind her that she couldn't see the way she had come from. When she turned around again, all she could see was an endless abyss.
If one's will is even slightly weak, doubts will likely arise at this moment, and one might be tempted to back down.
But Mela showed no sign of backing down; instead, she became even more interested in the end of the tunnel.
She picked up a burst of energy, quickened her pace, and walked for a while longer, as if she had truly seen the end.
The end?
If the tunnel has an end, shouldn't we go up?
Mela stood on tiptoe and tried to push upwards with force, only to be unexpectedly greeted by a burst of light and a face blocking the entrance to the cave.
"Mera? What are you doing here?" the woman whispered.
"Erica, you're here?" Mela was also surprised.
Now that's good, she doesn't have to worry about where to find Erica after entering the royal city.
However, now is not a good time for idle chatter. Mela stepped aside, letting Erica jump down and follow her outside first.
"Wait a minute." Erica quietly prepared herself, then blocked the hole with something after jumping down before following Mela back the way they came.
"Erica, what happened to your foot?"
Although Erika concealed it well, Mela still sensed something was off from her actions.
"It's nothing, I just twisted my ankle when I jumped out of the window to escape," Erica said casually.
This kind of injury is nothing to her.
"Jumped out the window to escape? What kind of life have you been living these days?" Mela found it hard to imagine.
"I haven't even asked you yet, how did you suddenly end up in the royal city? Didn't we tell you to leave White Pine Town but you wouldn't leave?" Erica frowned, taking advantage of being older than Mela to put on airs as an elder, even with a hint of smugness in her tone.
She said that as a witch, Mela couldn't stay in Whitepine Town and maintain her peaceful life forever; it's always difficult for an outcast to stand out from the crowd.
“That was eleven years ago,” Mela replied calmly. “Instead of that, you should think about how to explain to Yuriel why you suddenly disappeared without a word. Your elder’s airs probably won’t be of much use then.”
"What? Yuriel is here too?" Erica deflated instantly like a burst bubble. She touched her nose guiltily and fell silent.
I don't know if he was seriously thinking about the excuse he would use to fool Yuriel later.
*
"What's going on? Could something have happened to Mela down there? No matter how I called her, she didn't respond, and I haven't seen her come up for air in a long time."
Silas hurriedly flew up to report the situation to Yuriel, and at the same time, he asked her to make a decision, wondering what to do now.
“You wait here, I’m going down too,” Yuriel said, and started to jump into the river.
It was only when Silas desperately bit her collar that she was able to stop her impulse.
"You can't swim, what are you doing in there? Are you trying to drown yourself?"
"What should we do? We have to go down and check on Mela, right?" Even after hearing Silas's words, Yuriel was still somewhat eager to go.
"This...this...or should I go down?" Silas suggested a terrible idea.
“…I’ve never seen a bird swim before.” Yuriel glanced at Silas’s feathers with a complicated expression.
"Then what can we do!" Silas said angrily.
Yuriel didn't know what they could do either.
The only one they could blame was Mela, who was the only one who could go into the water. At this moment, no matter how anxious Yuriel and Silas were, they could only circle around the river, trying to find Mela.
"Wait a minute, I think I really saw a dark shadow." Yuriel rubbed her eyes in disbelief.
"What? Where?" Silas flew back from not far away in a flash.
“Right there,” Yuriel pointed out to Silas.
The next second, Mela suddenly appeared from the direction she pointed, her face still bearing her usual smiling expression, "Yuriel, Silas, I'm back."
Silas yelled "Mera!" and charged at Mela's head, "Where did you go? Do you know how worried Yuriel and I were? We were afraid something had happened to you underwater, and we almost jumped into the river to look for you."
"I'm fine, but I don't know if Erica is alright."
"What, Erica?" Silas was a little confused.
"Mera, you...you found my aunt?" Yuriel was also taken aback by this sudden news, and her mind couldn't process it for a moment.
"Alright, stop hiding." Mela then looked down into the water.
Erica was holding her breath down below, too afraid to peek out with Mela.
Hearing Yuriel's voice, a sense of fear rose in her heart.
It was like a child who had made a mistake and was finally caught red-handed.
Just now in the tunnel, Mela mentioned in a few words that she and Yuriel had traveled from such a far place to find her. During the journey, Yuriel was not only captured and tortured by the church, but also lay weakly in bed due to poisoning, almost losing half her life.
Even if Erika were given another chance, she would still do the same, since she had reasons for having to leave.
But when Erica faced Yuriel, she couldn't help but feel a little guilty towards the child she had watched grow up. After all, if she hadn't been worried about her, why would Yuriel have suffered so much to find her?
"Hurry up and get on, how can you talk while you're soaking in the water?"
Yuriel clearly knew that Erica was hiding underwater and didn't dare to face her. Her expression instantly turned cold, and she didn't even call out her name, just letting Mela and Erica climb out of the moat.
It wasn't Mela who had done something wrong, so she climbed up quickly and cleanly, dripping water all the way. She needed to find a safe place to warm herself by the fire.
Erica followed closely behind Mela, avoiding eye contact with Yuriel, as if doing so would truly be self-deception.
However, the more she tried to hide it, the angrier Yuriel became.
So Erica knew perfectly well that doing this would worry her, but she still did it anyway. Did she really think that just because she's an elder she could do whatever she wanted?
She'll definitely have to ask her why she did that later.
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