Kassie looked at me, a strange expression etched on her face.

If anything, she looked astonished, really astonished.

"How do you manage it?"

Hearing her strange question, I couldn’t help but blink.

"Manage what?"

"Everything you do... deluding yourself."

I frowned slightly.

"Delusion? What the hell, Kassie? It’s one thing to say you can’t say such words. It doesn’t reduce a shred from my awesomeness."

"Stop it, Cade."

Kassie sounded different... and odd. She sounded serious.

I mean, she always did, but it was a different kind of different this time.

"The solution I was thinking about is simple, I sent my chains to explore the vastness of the space. Since you said it has to be limited, then we definitely will hit a boundary sooner or later, right?"

Kassie did not respond. Instead, she glared at me from her position, making my eyes shift away uncomfortably.

"Over and over again. I have watched you trick yourself into being a fool, are you not tired of doing the same thing every time?"

A subtle frown climbed my face.

She continued, casting me a pitiful look.

"When Lira died, you did this too, acted like it’s easy for you to move on whereas all you did was erase her memories, defile it all because you truly believed yourself to be rotten and someone rotten doesn’t deserve to mourn someone as awesome as she was. You beat yourself up for everything, make light of everything to be the clown in the room. Just so you can escape your own demons instead of confronting them.

"You latch onto vengeance because it’s way easier than confronting the fact that you slaughtered people, children. You are a monster." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Each word that came from her mouth did something to me. Something vile, something I couldn’t name... but it was a sea of pain, and it was tormenting me with every sound of her words.

Especially the last word.

Hearing the last word made me tremble. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was in the wasteland. Or in that beach house, with a bloody knife in my hand, and my father staring at me with an intensely pale, terrified look. As though I was a demon.

The moment truly blurred.

"So what if you’re a monster?"

Her words entered my young mind again.

"So what if you are a vile demon? Why do you have to be less of yourself to deny what you are?"

Her gaze straightened.

"Face it Cade, or you’ll never become worthy of being my summoner."

The words lingered even after seconds of silence.

Those seconds flowed into minutes, and the silence hung awkwardly between us too.

I was floating up and holding her with my chain beneath me.

After a while, I scratched my head.

"I’m... going to try it out."

Kassie said nothing. To be honest, I instinctively wanted to think she pulled that move to not have to say "Cade, my hero" but I guess I’ll call a raincheck on that thought.

Everything hurt after what she said and making such a statement made me feel borderline annoying. At the same time, despite the invisible pain in my heart, I felt a little bit of peace.

Was it because she noticed? And called me out.

Truly I expected the world to consider me a jerk. I had made peace with that identity before ever coming to this world. And after what happened that night, I had further decided that the identity was the only thing that could keep the monster in me locked in a cage.

So I followed it bitterly with my actions.

Fucking Nisha, thinking less and less about Lira and the moment we shared. It was shameful, but that was the only way I could survive.

But nobody knew... and that was okay.

After all, I was a supreme jerk, a peerless pervert.

But Kassie... she saw me.

Maggie too.

’How strange... why does such an odd thing feel so good? Have I been pretending to be alright all the while?’

Instead of breaking down in tears, I released the chains, sending them in four different directions.

The East, west, north and south.

The silence that existed before continued. And only the subtle metallic sound of the flowing chains that extended in four different directions filled the air.

Kassie was hanging down on the fifth chain, looking downwards.

More time passed, and the chain continued to fly, touching nothing, no hard boundary, no shadow.

After a while though...

I felt something. It was like a wall and they prevented the chains from extending any further, in all four directions.

I shifted and looked down at Kassie.

"I’ve found it!"

She finally tore her gaze from the sea of darkness.

"What direction?"

I glanced at all the directions.

"All of them, I felt the boundary on all of them."

Kassie looked down which was south of us.

"We go down then."

I hesitated.

"How about we both simultaneously inspect two directions, instead of just going down?"

Kassie gave me a scathing glare. And pointed down.

"Your pitiful kids that never got the chance to be made are gleaming from that darkness, it’s obvious they landed on something oval. Besides, that sea of darkness, it’s obvious the Demon is hiding the weakness of this place in plain sight."

I chuckled awkwardly and cleared my throat.

’That first part was absolutely unnecessary.’

She grabbed my chain, and paused, looking up at me.

"I never got to say it, did I?"

"Say... what?"

"Thank you..."

My eyes widened.

"For saving my life. I had it all under control and wouldn’t have died from the fall, but you looked out for me nonetheless, thank you. You’re my hero in some way."

She smiled. And tore my chain from her waist, plummeting down into the sea of darkness.

As for me, I stood there in the air, my mouth opened, my eyes widened.

This... this was unbelievable.

And it felt so nice, so nice beyond words.

A wide smile spread across my face and I immediately glanced down, chasing after her.

"Wait! Wait for me!"