Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day - Chapter 322: Something Wrong [I]

Chapter 322: Something Wrong [I]

It had been six days since our fight against the Moon Eater. Six days since we escaped the caldera and entered this Valley.

Six days of continuous walking, still without any proper food, by the way. Exhaustion wasn’t merely clawing at our minds anymore, it had made a small residence there that it refused to leave.

Our wobbling legs dragged us forward even as our lungs burned with every step.

The prickling, stinging sensation of our nerves being damaged by too little energy and too much strain had long since settled into a persistent ache.

I don’t know if you’ve ever suffered from constant neuropathy, but it’s not a pleasant experience at all.

I also don’t know if you’ve ever gone hungry for an extended period of time, but when you do, hunger stops feeling sharp.

It becomes dull.

It becomes an endless, hollow pressure gnawing at you from the inside, making every movement feel heavier than the last. Even swallowing takes effort.

That was our situation.

The valley stretched endlessly ahead, its terrain shifting between treacherous stone paths and shallow ravines.

With no greenery in sight, the crimson glow of the bleeding moon tinted everything in shades of rust, stretching our shadows long and thin across the cracked canyon walls.

In such a haunting scene, we moved like ghosts.

Ray had woken up four days ago, and after blaming himself over and over again for what happened to Alexia, he hadn’t left her side even once.

I had never seen him so serious.

Kang’s reaction was largely the same. At any other time, he would’ve been annoyed by Ray hovering so close, but right now he didn’t care. He simply walked on Alexia’s other side, his face pitifully contorted in concern, like a kicked puppy.

Even I felt a little for him.

I mean, I’d never liked a girl as obsessively as him, but if I had, I’d be worried about her too.

Anyway, speaking of Alexia, the good news was that she was alive.

The bad news about her was that the black veins spreading from the sealed wounds across her chest hadn’t receded. If anything, they’d grown thinner and more refined, like fine roots burrowing deeper into her flesh.

She was in constant pain, yet still refused to be carried. No matter how many times we told her to lean on us more, she just shook her head and kept walking with gritted teeth, stifling grunts and whimpers but never slowing down.

She didn’t have the focus to summon her Origin Card, and the black veins were also cutting off her Essence sense, rendering her unable to deploy her powers.

So Kang had to guide her by the hand.

Seeing her in that state made my heart pang.

I kept telling myself there was no other way.

…But wasn’t there?

We could find the God of this valley, challenge him, and steal his relics after slaying him. One of those relics, if I remembered correctly, was a healing ring.

We could use that ring to heal Alexia.

Trying that would be a monumental risk, a gamble with less than a one percent chance of success.

Still, wouldn’t it be better than watching Alexia die this agonizingly slow death right in front of me?

I tightened my fists until my knuckles turned white, until I felt the sting of my nails biting into my skin.

No, I told myself. I can’t risk everyone’s lives for one person. I… can’t.

I really couldn’t.

We were in no condition to fight a deity, even a fallen one.

Vince was barely holding on as it was, looking like he might collapse from starvation at any moment.

And Lily… well, she just seemed depressed. After every few steps, she’d stare up at the shattered sky and start crying.

Honestly, she was creeping me out.

I knew prolonged hunger could trigger depression in some people, but this felt like it went a little beyond that.

And just to clarify, she wasn’t sobbing or breaking down. No!

Tears would simply well up in her eyes and slide quietly down her face while she never stopped walking.

It was unsettling as fuck!

“Lily,” I once asked after she nearly walked into a rock wall for the third time, “you good?”

She blinked dazedly, wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, and nodded far too quickly for it to be a genuine response. “Mm. Yeah. Sorry.”

That was it.

She was acting really strange.

Weirder than Juliana, and that was saying something.

I turned my gaze forward and saw my Shadow walking at the front. She pushed onward in silence, but every so often, she’d glance back toward the caldera.

Apparently, the news of Kevin’s death had hit her pretty hard. She had liked that thing from the very beginning, because in his presence, years of negative emotions she’d brewed inside her mind were dampened, allowing her to feel again.

But now that he was gone, and she was cut off from that emotional buffer, Juliana had gone quiet in a way that bothered me far more than her usual indifferent self.

Because right now, she didn’t look like she was scheming or masking anything.

She just looked… sad.

And that sadness worried me more than I cared to admit.

To be honest, I missed Kevin too. If he was here, we wouldn’t have been feeling this much pain or exhaustion.

If he was here, at least the misery would’ve been muffled.

•••

After a few hours of nonstop walking, we finally took a short break. Not because we found a good spot, but because we quite literally couldn’t walk anymore.

We collapsed near a shallow indentation in the canyon floor where the wind howled a little less viciously, slumping against the cold stone.

Ray carefully sat Alexia down, lowering her like she was made of glass.

The blind girl hissed softly through her teeth when her back touched the rock, her fingers digging into the stone hard enough to scrape skin.

“I’m fine,” she muttered before anyone could ask.

Kang crouched beside her anyway, offering his shoulder. She hesitated for just a fraction of a second before leaning into it.

That alone told me how ’fine’ she really was.

Vince sat a little apart with his back against the canyon wall and head tipped forward. His chest rose and fell shallowly, lips cracked, and face sickly pale.

I had no doubt that if he pushed himself any harder, he was going to faint.

A few places away, Lily stayed standing. Her eyes were fixed on the distance again, unfocused and glassy, like she was watching something only she could see… or couldn’t see.

“Lily,” I said quietly.

She didn’t seem to hear me.

I sighed, stood up, and walked over, positioning myself directly in her line of sight. “Lily.”

She flinched this time. Her pupils snapped to me, so fast and sharp like she’d just been splashed with cold water.

“Oh— sorry,” she said quickly. “I was just… thinking.”

“About what?” I raised an eyebrow.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “…I don’t know.”

Oh my fucking god!

She’d gone far past the safe range of being creepy.

Now she was straight-up spooking me.