“Hmm… this looks like a new model,” Sabrina spoke as she looked at the bracelet I gave her, her eyes seemingly peering through the mysterious layers of the bracelet, her gaze then turning to me.
“It’s not yet released,” I replied.
My statement made Sabrina look at me with an exasperated expression. “I am starting to think anything you show me won’t surprise me anymore.”
“Well, that’s debatable,” I retorted as we stood before some corpses of dead soldiers.
“Which one should we take?” Sabrina asked, and I gave her a weird expression in response.
“You know, why are you trying so hard to act like you are an idiot? You do know I know your intelligence, and truthfully, your intelligence won’t be a backdrop for me,” I said.
My sudden reply seemed to take Sabrina back; her eyes met mine, and a small blush appeared on her face. Not out of any love, but from the fact that she was actively lowering her intelligence display, something she does every day. Yet in front of me, she doesn’t have to do so.
“Guess we are taking the green one,” Sabrina spoke after a cough, trying to hide her embarrassment. The truth behind it was simple; among the dead soldiers present, the larger number of bodies belonged to soldiers of the color blue, while the green ones were less present, indicating the stronger and winning side.
The elves I just killed belonged to the green side as they had wrapped themselves in the color green.
“Guess that’s what we will do,” I replied as the two of us soon scanned the bodies with the bracelet, and within seconds, our bodies transformed into the dead bodies of the soldiers, both being male elves and both being handsome.
“This feels weird,” Sabrina spoke as she flexed herself in her new disguise, turning to look at me.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now we move through this place, till this historic world itself guides us to where it wants us to be,” I replied, and Sabrina seemed to expect my answer.
“Then let’s. Oh, also, how do I access my space ring here?” she inquired.
“Nice try,” I replied directly.
“Tsk,” is all the sound that Sabrina made as the two of us started to walk.
…..
Third Person POV:
The scent of death and the corruptive feeling of corrupted mana surrounded the two of them as they kept walking through the destroyed city, the dead bodies, the tears of the dead, their agony, and pain all being a reflection of the evil the army committed along with the effects of war present all around.
“Does this affect you?” Austin asked with a calm voice as he walked beside Sabrina, who kept looking at all this with freezing eyes.
“Is that anything to you?” she lashed out for a moment, her expression taut. As soon as she did it, she frowned, not letting her emotions cloud her. Her superior mind always kept her emotions at bay, a situation that was both a boon and curse to Sabrina. Feeling the unknown situation, she looked at Austin, who spoke.
“It’s the corruption energy. Due to your special physique and the situation in which we came in, we won’t be fully corrupted, but the presence here is taking over the mana within you and raising your emotions to an extreme degree. But with your mind, it’s just to a real-life normal level or maybe a bit above,” Austin explained.
This response from Austin made Sabrina wide-eyed. She started to feel and express a large amount of emotions she never knew she had. Ever since that fateful day, all and every expression that Sabrina gives out is either forced or a mask of feelings she puts on not to make anyone around her feel weird.
The truth is Sabrina barely feels any emotions at all, with her intelligence or maybe with something else. She barely feels things, enough to be called apathetic. Yet using her extreme mental precision, she copies and rules with the expressions and reactions of others to play them in her hand as she deems fit.
The only ones for which she has genuine emotions are her family, the ones that were with her before the incident. But that was in the past. The one now that she feels for is the one walking beside her.
‘He really is the biggest enigma around,’ a man that she can’t see through at all. Worst of all, he is a man who is somehow making her bring out her true feelings, and she doesn’t even know how it is happening. When she first met him, all she had was the same apathy for him. Yet everything changed in that legacy world of the elves.
That damn place where she was played like a fiddle by the man named Austin Lionheart. He knew more about her than herself, played her, and took complete advantage of her. That was the first time Sabrina had ever faced such a high-level defeat.
‘And now this…’ Sabrina closed her eyes, relishing in all the feelings she was experiencing, connecting herself to it. The last time she felt it was at the lost world of the elves. It was there that she started to feel an extreme amount of hate and desire for freedom, and it was those controlled feelings that led to Austin playing her like a fiddle.
And now, after such a long time, she is able to feel all the hidden emotions within her—anger, sadness, annoyance, and somehow a sense of connection to the man beside her. The very man that is now somehow being something she is attracted to, a mystery that she wants to break and get to know everything about.
‘This bastard has already won the bet,’ just making her feel normal or even any sort of emotion is something close to impossible. The only thing that now brings her any sort of emotion is finding things about this man and binging on his surprises, along with the books of Earth—the person who she is crazy to see and is now soon close enough to get into the topmost layer to meet her sort of fan.
He is the only person for whom she, Sabrina, has respect and adoration for, and now Austin Lionheart is the second. Funny, the only feeling she had for Austin at the beginning was the ‘interest’ from Emily, who seems to be obsessed with him.
Sabrina just wanted to know what kind of man Austin Lionheart was to get such a level of adoration and love from a woman like Emily, who only seems to have schemes and money in her mind. Yet to such a woman, she seems to have thrown everything aside to just get the love of the man now walking beside her.
‘Though I can understand that a little now,’ Sabrina felt a bit of pity—an emotion for the first time for Emily, her dear ‘friend.’ The only reason she had taken her as her friend is that she found Emily to be very useful—a woman of such mind and prowess would be a very useful woman as her right-hand woman. But now she feels pity for Emily.
‘She is trying to scheme against a power she can’t hope to match,’ Sabrina thought, her mind placing Emily below her and Austin at her level. Somehow that is smart—fooling the world under their eyes. A man who hides all his cards yet isn’t unwilling to use them when he needs them. A man that now seems to match untold beauty, power, and mind.
Perhaps even having an untold power and position in the world. To the world, it would seem Austin is in their hands, yet under the eyes of the powerful, he is playing around with them all—a lonely man playing with the world in his hands just like her.
‘Come to think of it, he seems to match all of my requirements for the perfect man,’ Sabrina thought, her cute long ears bouncing a bit. Sabrina could still remember the time when she told Emily what she thought to be her ideal man.
‘Someone of untold dignity, presence of mind, someone that hides in the dark and controls the world. A man that will be able to challenge me.’ And now, ironically, that man seemed to have idealized in the form of the man that Emily seems to love.
‘The play of fate is always ironic.’ As she thought so, the little bounce in her ears got a bit higher, and Austin walked beside her, looking at all this with a hidden sly smile. The man in question looked forward in their walk, hiding the more hidden truth about this corruptive aura and the little green poison from the apple flowing within Sabrina’s body.
‘Life is good,’ Austin mused as he walked with the intelligent woman, a bit lost in her thoughts.
