Chapter 115: Unfeeling Touch

When morning finally arrived, Monica was the first to wake.

She let out a shaky breath before huffing a few times, and as her vision gradually cleared, her gaze settled on the crimson-haired head resting against her abdomen. One of the arms was draped across her waist.

There was no need to guess who it was.

The person was obviously her husband, Elias Crimson.

Monica’s eyes trembled slightly as she stared down at him.

’Why is he here?’ she wondered with a faint frown.

She had no memory of him coming into her room, nor did she remember asking him to stay beside her. Usually, Elias came to see her because he needed to feed or bathe her, massage her, or allow her to examine Stella’s Auracle.

Yet this time, none of those reasons applied.

He had stayed.

The realization caused a strange warmth to spread through her chest, and despite herself, the corners of her lips slowly curved upward.

’So even when he does not need anything from me... he still thinks about me.’

That thought made her faint smile deepen.

She didn’t know how to deal with this man.

For most of her life, she had deliberately kept her distance from men because her master had repeatedly warned her to do so. Monica had listened without question, and over the years, avoiding unnecessary contact had become second nature.

Then Elias had appeared.

He was shameless, troublesome, strangely caring, and completely incapable of understanding how much his casual words affected her.

That was perhaps the worst part.

He never seemed to realize that the few words he said so casually could reach places within her that even years of emotional numbness had failed to bury.

Monica stared at the crimson hair resting against her abdomen while sunlight streamed through the curtains and illuminated his head.

She remained silent for several moments before finally muttering, "Fuck it..."

Unlike Natasha, she couldn’t simply ruffle his hair whenever she wanted.

Unlike Stella, she couldn’t grab his arm and cling to him whenever the mood struck her.

The poison had taken almost everything from her.

However, there was one thing that the poison had not managed to destroy.

Her mind.

Monica slowly closed her eyes, and the moment she did, her consciousness sank inward.

Her Mind’s Eye opened.

The familiar sensation of mana gathering around her spread through the room, and within moments, a translucent sphere formed around her physical body. She drew upon both the mana within herself and the mana naturally present in the surrounding environment before activating Mana Projection.

Because the projection relied partially on environmental mana rather than being formed entirely from her own reserves, it was considerably weaker than a pure projection.

But Monica didn’t care.

None of that mattered right now.

Her consciousness separated from her physical body, and a translucent version of herself rose slowly from the bed like a soul escaping its flesh.

She floated in the air for several seconds before turning toward Elias.

Just as she had seen before, his sleeping body was surrounded by those strange purple and red energies.

They moved violently across him, twisting around one another like enormous shackles grinding against a restrained beast. The sight was bizarre enough that Monica would normally have wanted to investigate it immediately.

This time, however, she didn’t even spare it a second glance.

Her attention was focused entirely on Elias.

She drifted closer until she stood directly behind him.

Then she slowly raised her arms and wrapped them around his body.

Her Mana Projection embraced him from behind, and for a brief moment, Monica remained completely still.

She could hold him.

She could feel the shape of his body beneath her projected arms in the sense that her projection occupied the same space, but there was no warmth.

No softness, no pressure, no sensation of flesh touching flesh. There was nothing.

The realization left a deep emptiness inside her.

She had already grown accustomed to living without touch, but being able to embrace Elias and still be unable to experience the warmth of his body somehow made the absence feel even more painful.

Monica lowered her head against his back.

’I wish I could feel your warmth...’

Her arms tightened around him.

’I wish I could feel your hard body...’

She squeezed him more firmly, almost as though she could somehow force her projection to become real through sheer determination.

For once, she didn’t care about her poison, her damaged body, or the limitations imposed upon her.

She simply wanted to hold her husband.

Even if she couldn’t feel him, the act itself brought a strange sense of satisfaction.

’Just a little longer.’

Monica tightened her embrace again, pressing herself against his back as though she wanted to become a part of him.

And then something happened.

Her consciousness suddenly trembled.

Monica’s eyes widened.

’What...?’

Before she could finish the thought, an immense force pulled her.

Something within Elias’s body had sensed her.

Her consciousness was dragged toward him with terrifying speed, and the projected form wrapped around Elias immediately began dissolving.

The translucent arms around his body disappeared first, followed by her shoulders, torso, and legs.

Monica’s expression changed completely.

’Wait—’

Her entire Mana Projection collapsed into countless particles of blue light, and her consciousness was violently sucked into Elias’s body.

There was no resistance, no time to think, and no opportunity to retreat.

In the blink of an eye, Monica’s consciousness was swallowed into him.

Her Mana Projection vanished from the room.

The next instant, she found herself, now as an orb of pure blue light, drowning in a vast, turbulent sea of purple and red.

Her thoughts were slow, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t cancel the projection.

Her consciousness continued to sink deeper into the sea until it reached the bottom, and when she saw the bottom, she felt her mind falling apart.

The eye that she had seen on Elias’s chest was there but much, much larger, and that eye had a scene engraved into it’s slitted pupil.

The orb of pure blue light fell into the eye, and the sea vanished, leaving Monica floating in the sky, staring at the strange scene before her.

’What the fuck...?’