Chapter 67 His Face This person...looks extremely familiar. ...
“You have to think of something else!” Sanova also entered the bubble. “Make the Sense Eater realize that you don’t actually have any ‘ulterior motives.’ Once it finds you’re boring and numb, it will let us go. That’s the only way. Magic doesn’t work on it.”
To be honest, he didn't seem anxious at all; in fact, he seemed to be enjoying lying in the bubble, as if he were on vacation. Perhaps the curved shape of the bubble was more suitable for his elderly spine.
Ashlyn and Lucas exchanged a glance.
What kind of monster-fighting method is this? She'd rather use magic.
"Delicious, cluck cluck, yummy yummy, cluck cluck cluck." The pigeon licked Lucas's bubbles, as if licking a giant ice cream, "bitter and sultry, yet with a sweet vanilla and mint flavor, and a hidden sadness..."
It suddenly stopped licking. "Gurgle? Why isn't it sweet at all anymore? What are you thinking about!"
Lucas smiled.
“I silently recited Chapter Three of the Helian City Tax Law: Customs Duties and Import/Export Regulations.”
The bubbles on his head started to thin.
Ashlyn wished she could recite boring texts like Lucas. But the problem was, truly boring things wouldn't stay in her mind for more than three seconds, let alone make her think of reciting them in this situation.
She began to recall the parish school in Foxtail Bend, the drowsy classrooms. Yet even the thought of those boring textbooks warmed her heart. She even missed Father Horton's deadpan voice.
"You have so many emotions, so delicious, coo coo coo." The pigeon was overjoyed and hopped onto Ashlin's head. "Delicious, delicious!"
The pigeon's body grew larger.
“Think about the nasty things, Ashley!” Lucas yelled at her.
Ashlin quickly recalled her memories of Aidan, and the image of the silver-haired elf's deceitful face appeared in her mind.
The pigeons just became even more excited.
"The anger of being deceived, spicy and flavorful, a hearty meal!"
Talia's face appeared in Ashlin's mind; perhaps the thought of a mother she had never had would make the Sense Eater leave.
"Intense sorrow, bitter yet mellow, hope destroyed by the king!" The Sense-Eating Beast pecked vigorously.
Ashlin felt helpless; the pigeon seemed utterly interested in all her memories and emotions. With each lick of her bubbles, it rose a few more centimeters higher.
At that moment, Lucas's bubble vanished completely. He landed on the ground and quickly threw a dagger at the pigeon, but the dagger bounced back and nearly shaved off a lock of his hair.
The pigeon began to coo evilly, its belly swelling to the point that it could no longer be called a pigeon.
An idea struck Ashlin.
"Do you still want to eat?" she shouted. "Eat as much as you want!"
She gave up struggling and simply let the memories and thoughts overwhelm her.
"The main course is here!" the pigeon squawked with ecstasy, its body swelling wildly like fermenting dough, like an ostrich.
Sanova raised an eyebrow, and Lucas turned pale. "What are you doing?"
“Fight fire with fire,” Ashlin replied.
She felt a void within herself, a feeling she had never experienced before.
The monster's belly grew rounder and rounder until it could no longer support itself.
"Hiccup," said the pigeon.
Finally, with a loud "bang," the pigeon exploded.
As Ashlin had anticipated, it burst completely. White feathers gushed out like snowflakes, spraying everyone in their faces.
All the emotions that had been eaten by the monster returned, and Ashlin was overwhelmed with mixed feelings.
Ashlin frowned as she opened it.
"I really love Aidan's music! He dances pretty well too, it's a shame he's a jerk."
"I don't know how to control my magic. Why am I the Child of the Forest?"
"I want to see my mother one more time..."
"I almost melted when Lucas got close."
"I really want to rub his cat ears again! And let the vines give them a good rub..."
What nonsense is this notebook spouting! All her thoughts have just been written down.
"Isn't that the notebook I gave you?" Lucas spat out a few feathers and leaned closer.
Ashlin quickly closed it, stuffed it into the deepest part of her spatial backpack, her face flushed.
“It will sort out your thoughts, you know?” Lucas pointed out. “It must be that the notebook’s magic captured the random thoughts you had about stuffing pigeons to death.”
Ashlin didn't like this kind of invasion of privacy magic. Now it looked more like a teenage girl's diary than a high-class royal magic book.
“Thank you, this is a great help. Now I have a diary where I can record my private information whenever I want,” Ashlin said.
They all fell to the ground from the bubbles. Nova silently picked up her tools, while Zach lay down in the feathers and rolled around.
"Well done," Sanova praised.
“It’s good, Ashlin. But…” Lucas said, “It’s too loud. Your magic didn’t work just now, will the soundproofing spell work?”
He's absolutely right.
Just then, the sound of stones colliding and rubbing came from the front of the tunnel.
“Guards,” Sanova whispered, “usually appear at the junction with the ground. Didn’t you encounter any when you came in?”
“No, because the guards’ job is to prevent monsters from leaving the labyrinth; they don’t care about creatures that fall in. It must have been our noise that woke it up,” Lucas said. “My God, I was always curious about what they looked like when I was a kid.”
“Me too,” Sanova said.
The two of them had a really good understanding, but unfortunately, this understanding came at the worst possible time.
As they were talking, Stone's voice fell silent, and a huge shadow was cast on the wall opposite them, looking like a monster that only appears in a child's nightmare.
“I’ll take this as a good omen,” Ashlin said nervously. “At least we’re not far from the exit, right?”
This seemed to remind Sanova of something, prompting him to step forward.
“Sir, what are you doing? We should pretend we don’t exist,” Lucas said hastily in a low voice.
"The gate is not far away, and guarding our territory is our only way out."
“Are you sure this is a guard? It’s not even as big as me,” Zach scoffed.
He was telling the truth. Ashlin squinted, taking a long time to make out what it was. It was a very small stone, with moss growing on its top, placed in front of a doorway radiating white light.
Sanova's expression changed. "Don't provoke him!"
As expected, the stone became enraged. It began to tremble violently and suddenly started to expand, causing them to retreat continuously.
Within seconds, a giant stone figure stood before them, its body covered in cracks and its eyes were two holes. However, it had no limbs, only a head and a body.
“Dark monster! Passage is forbidden!” the stone man cried out. Ashlin really wanted to know how it made a sound, considering it didn’t actually have a mouth.
“I think you have eyes,” Ashlin said. “Look closely, we’re not monsters. We’re benevolent beings.”
The stone figure's head is tilted forward, its hollow eyes half-closed.
"My eyesight is poor, and no one has ever gotten me glasses," it said, feeling aggrieved. "Besides, you might be illusion monsters in disguise. I have to prove myself!"
Logically, the moss should spread according to her will. In her imagination, she could clothe the stone figure in a new emerald green garment.
The moss remained still.
"Sorry. I haven't practiced snapping my fingers much," Ashlin said, and tried again.
"How embarrassing," the stone man said after a moment of silence.
"I don't need your reminder." Ashlin was annoyed and cast several more spells. "Damn it, what's going on today?"
Lucas narrowed his eyes as well. "Your magic was enough to bind me yesterday. How come it's all used up after a nap? When we were facing the Sense-Eating Beast, I thought it was because it was too powerful."
Ashlin stared at her hands, devoid of any green light, utterly perplexed. Clearly, the maze didn't affect her magic; otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to tie Lucas up and leave wildflowers scattered everywhere. Previously, the Twin Grass's effects had made her too dizzy to think clearly; but now she had regained some of her sanity.
It felt like her magic was being controlled by someone else. But she was a descendant of gods; her magic wouldn't just break down so easily. The last time she was suppressed was because Aidan tampered with the music.
Ashlin glanced at Sanova, then at Lucas. A seed of doubt took root in her heart, but she had no proof…
"Go back, children of darkness!" the stone man said gloatingly. "Follow the direction I'm pointing, and return to the depths of the labyrinth!"
“Uh, how can you point if you don’t have hands?” Ashlin asked.
Clang, clang, clang. The stone figure rose even higher.
"How rude of you, monster!" it roared. "In that case, let us fight to the death!"
As it spoke, it grew larger and larger, causing a great earthquake, and stones fell from above their heads like hail.
"This is outrageous!" Ashlin dodged the pebbles and quickly raised her green fluorite staff. Magic didn't protect her, but she didn't back down. "We're innocent humans, we just want to get out!"
They dodged in terror from the barrage of stones.
“Let me handle this,” Sanova gently pushed Ashlin away. “My magic is more than enough to deal with this kind of thing.”
“You? But…” Lucas was unconvinced, but Sanova had already stepped forward and chanted a spell she couldn’t understand to the stone man.
A gray light flashed, the rain of stones stopped, and the stone figure actually shrank obediently.
Ashlyn's heart stopped beating.
Gray.
Everything seemed to slow down. Sanova's manner of chanting the spell was not much different from before, quite languid, as if magic was merely a pastime. His hands waved casually, just as before, without paying any attention to the details of the magic.
But in that instant, she caught something.
The stone men turned back into stone. Their path was now unobstructed. But Ashlin felt as if countless stones were stuck in every part of her body.
“Thank you, sir,” Lucas said politely, though his tone still carried a hint of skepticism. “No offense intended, but I thought you were only skilled in healing; I didn’t expect you could also tame stone guardians.”
“Ah, I have many secrets,” Sanova said casually. “Come on.”
At the end of the tunnel was a gate radiating white light. Ashlin could feel the powerful energy surrounding it and even hear the footsteps and laughter of the people from the royal city.
But at that moment, only one thing was on her mind.
They all walked toward the White Gate, except Ashley.
"Ash?" Lucas asked, "Are you alright?"
Ashlin stared intently at Sanova.
Sanova was very surprised. "What?"
“Your magic should be silver, not gray. Not a gloomy gray,” Ashlin said.
That night, beside the altar of the moon goddess, Sanova's magic was also this gray. But she was too preoccupied with the joy of finding her adoptive father to notice. Aisusa had said that Knox's magic was a deathly gray.
At the time, Sanova had a dagger marked with the moon goddess, but later that dagger appeared in his home in Foxtail Bay.
Ashley recalled Mia's reply. "Sanova" hadn't relayed Ashley's words to Mia, which explained Mia's alarm.
Lucas glanced back and forth warily, then retreated to Ashlin's side. Zach ducked into Nova's hood.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Sanova said. “We’re almost at the capital, dear Ashlin. Staying in the labyrinth for too long might get us into trouble.”
“This is a scam! We’ve all been scammed,” she exclaimed. “This isn’t Sanova.”
Lucas and Nova took a few steps back.
Sanova frowned. "What, who else could I be?"
“Knox,” Ashlin said clearly, “you are Knox.”
The maze seemed to grow even darker because of her words, and the light from the white door suddenly dimmed.
"Sanova" flashed a crazy smile that the real Sanova would never show.
"Haha, you finally figured it out!" he said ecstatically. "You're not as naive as I thought, little girl. The plan has changed."
He tilted his head back and chanted the dispel for the illusion spell. Gray magic enveloped him like dark clouds, while the white door behind him shone brightly, making his figure appear even darker.
They retreated one after another. Nova grabbed Ashlin's cloak, while Lucas pulled out a dagger.
But they all knew that the dagger was obviously useless against the black wizard's magic.
They wanted to escape in the opposite direction, but the road suddenly branched into hundreds of forks, leaving them disoriented and confused. No one knew which path was right.
Too many roads are the same as no roads at all.
Zach tried to bite Knox, but the wizard in the gray light simply waved his hand, and the rat flew away, collapsing unconscious in Ashlin's arms.
Lucas's dagger bounced off the magical layer and exploded into silver fragments.
Ashlin's magic flowed in her heart, but it was stuck by something like syrup, making it impossible for her to cast it.
Finally, the gray magic faded away, and "Sanova" was no longer "Sanova." A young man with black hair and black eyes emerged from the gray mist.
"By the Moon Goddess, I'm finally free from playing a boring old man!" He smiled broadly, his voice completely different from his previous weathered self. "This play, performed with no audience, was driving me crazy. Why isn't anyone giving me a round of applause?"
Ashlin was so shocked she almost forgot everything.
This person...this person...looks extremely familiar.
She couldn't immediately recall why he looked familiar until she turned to Lucas. The latter gasped.
Knox looks exactly like Lucas.
Author's Note: Actually, I stayed up all night writing the climax and the ending! It'll be finished soon, and I expect it to be around 350,000 words! [crying][crying][praising] I'll revise it a bit and then update daily until the end! It'll be quick!
Life is really busy right now, and I have so much homework to do. It feels so great that I was able to steal a moment to finish writing a novel! I really enjoy interacting in the comments section, so please come and chat more. I will read all the comments carefully! [Dog head with rose in hand] Love you all.
After it's truly finished, I'll probably rewrite my writing notes and stuff, haha. Consider this just a late-night rant...
I accidentally clicked "post" on a whim. I was wrong, I should have posted at 12 o'clock. I'm so sorry! From now on, I'll post at 12 o'clock. My fingers are clumsy, that's my problem.
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