Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 36

Chapter 36

“Ruiyin… waah…”

“She-Demon… waaah…”

Two figures hurled themselves at her from left and right. After successfully knocking the dazed Ruiyin flat, they also thoroughly shattered her beautiful wish to calmly think through an escape plan alone. Truly, it was a tearjerking reunion after a long separation.

“You… why are you two here too?!” Ruiyin wriggled in bewilderment, her body bound up like a cabbage worm, dodging the green hair and pink ball rubbing wildly against her chest as she looked around.

This seemed to be a prison specifically meant for humans and non-humans alike. From the look of it, the entire cell had been made from the Black Magic Crystal she had seen before. Aside from destructive forbidden curses, any magic used here would lose its effect. Besides Galahad and Vigia, there was one other unidentified person locked up here, lying unconscious in the corner with their face turned toward the wall.

“Waaaah…” Galahad raised his head, tears streaming down his face like broad noodles, and sobbed with emotion. “I knew it… I knew it! Ruiyin, even though you don’t look like a good person, deep down you still care about me! You must have come to rescue us, right? How many troops did you bring?”

As he spoke, he gazed hopefully past Ruiyin at the prison door that had already closed behind her.

“Hmph, taking this long to arrive is simply outrageous! But seeing as you braved certain death to come protect Lord Vigia, I shall reluctantly forgive you… Wuuu, Ruiyin, those insects actually dared to treat me like this! You have to beat them up for me!” Vigia, whom Ruiyin had not seen in ages, had both claws tied around its barrel-like waist, and there were marks on its face that looked suspiciously like the aftermath of a beating. Its round body was plastered against Ruiyin’s chest, rubbing against her while smearing tears and snot all over her.

Although this was a reunion after a long separation, these two always managed to make her want to part ways all over again.

Galahad and Vigia excitedly clustered around Ruiyin. After the three bound worms of different lengths, sizes, and shapes chattered for half a day, Ruiyin finally gained some understanding of the current situation.

After Galahad sold out his teammate, Vigia had relied on its natural advantage in body shape and drifted onto the island. Then, just as the Black Knight had said, it discovered traces of its seal on the island, so it snuck into the temple to look for it. It found the seal without issue, but was quickly caught by the Dark Elves and brought here. Galahad’s situation was more or less the same as hers. He had been screwed over by Tio and locked up. Since the Dark Elves’ grandest ceremony, the Dark Moon Festival, was coming soon, they needed a man, a woman, and a creature that was neither male nor female as sacrifices, so the three of them had not been killed for the time being.

Vigia, the creature that was neither male nor female: “…”

After sobbing out his grievances for a long while, Galahad suddenly realized something. “Wait, where’s Lars? They said they only need one man! As long as Lars comes, I’ll be spared!”

Even in a situation like this, the way this guy sold out his teammates on such an advanced level still made people want to slap him.

“He isn’t here,” Ruiyin said expressionlessly. “You should be grateful he wasn’t locked up with us. In a situation where a weakling, an idiot, and a ball are trapped together, at least we can still pray that someone will come save us…”

She stopped halfway through. With great discomfort, Ruiyin remembered that the person who might have come to save them might never get the chance to appear again. She forcibly suppressed the unease in her heart and asked, “You’ve been locked up for more than a day, right? You seriously never thought about escaping?”

“Of course we did! On the second day, we launched a heroic breakout!” Vigia cried angrily.

“And then?”

“And then… we failed.” Galahad’s gaze drifted casually to the side. “Uh… they hadn’t tied us up before. After our escape attempt failed, we ended up like this.”

The two worms named Galahad and Vigia wriggled toward her together to emphasize their existence.

“…” Ruiyin slowly closed her eyes, emptied of all desire.

Ever since she had come here, she had been unable to escape all kinds of imprisonment, bondage, and other rather hardcore scenarios. What ruined her innocence even more was that the man with her was different every single time. This time, there was even a dragon added in, the kind of existence that would absolutely get censored if this were a different genre.

A Dark Elves’ prison was different from a human jail. There were no windows here, nor any sunlight that could show the passage of time. Enormous pitch-black stone extended from beneath their feet all the way to the ceiling. Ruiyin searched for ages, but there was nothing in the room sharp enough to saw through the rope.

Ruiyin’s gaze fell on the other figure in the corner. Even when she had been brought in, that person had not moved at all. And in the long string of complaints from Galahad and Vigia just now, neither of them had mentioned him in the slightest. That was rather unusual.

“Who is that person?” she asked Galahad, puzzled.

“You mean him?” Galahad shrugged. “I don’t know. He was already lying here unconscious when we were brought in. I tried kicking him, hitting him, and beating him before, but no matter what I did, he wouldn’t wake up. That has been our only entertainment these past few days,” Galahad said sorrowfully.

Ruiyin wriggled like a cabbage worm and slowly crawled toward the corner. She moved close to the unlucky fellow who had been treated as entertainment by an idiot, then used her chin and shoulder together, straining for a long while before finally flipping him over.

The instant she saw that face, Ruiyin was almost stunned speechless.
It was a face swollen like an overproofed mantou. Electric blue, vivid purple, lavender, and every shade in between had carved up territories across it like capitalist colonizers, leaving almost no native skin tone to be found. His eyes were swollen, the bridge of his nose was crooked, his mouth was askew, and his hair lay in greasy clumps over the mantou like rotten straw. If Galahad and the others hadn’t kindly warned her in advance, Ruiyin would absolutely have assumed this was some new species of magical beast.

…What exactly had those two done to him?! Did they have any humanity at all? They were all fellow prisoners fallen on hard times. His face had already been ruined to this extent, so how could they still bring themselves to hit him?!

Ruiyin turned back and fixed her two companions with a grief-stricken, accusatory stare. Vigia froze for a second, then immediately shrieked, “We didn’t beat him into this state! He was already like that! We only kind of… gently tested whether he would wake up, that’s all!”

…Even if he hadn’t been dead, you would have beaten him to death!

The guy had been beaten like this and still hadn’t woken up, yet he actually wasn’t dead. Ruiyin felt both sympathetic and puzzled. She studied that face, which looked like a Baozi gone wrong, and discovered that he was… uh, very difficult to identify in terms of gender and race…

She used her body like a rolling pin and rolled once over him, but found no suspicious protrusions. Barring the possibility that this was a second Tio, she could basically determine that this was a human male.

The Dark Elves’ Dark Moon Festival required one man, one woman, and one Vigia. Since they already had a man like this, why had they gone out of their way to capture Galahad too?

Ruiyin observed him carefully. Apart from a face only his homeland could love, this person had no horns, no pointed ears, and no fishtail. He really did look like an ordinary human. Her gaze drifted from his head down to his lower body, but when she drifted back up again, she saw that his eyes were open.

“…”

This was a very awkward scene, because Ruiyin was tied up like a rice dumpling, and in order to get a clearer look, her chin was currently resting on his chest. Their faces were very close together, close enough for Ruiyin to clearly see those deep blue eyes… uh, eye slits. They had been squeezed out of shape by his swollen face, making him look like a Baozi that had not only been oversteamed but had also split open.

Baozi Face silently looked at her.

“Sorry,” Ruiyin said on reflex. She struggled to twist her body and get up, but being bound hand and foot made movement extremely difficult. The man propped one hand against the floor and slowly sat up. Then he reached out, gently steadied Ruiyin, and untied her ropes.

“Hiss… He’s awake!” Galahad sucked in a sharp breath. Vigia also cried out excitedly, “Awake, awake! He’s not tied up! Come untie us! Hurry!”

The man paused for a moment, as if recalling something. Then he looked toward Galahad and Vigia. Facing two pairs of expectant eyes, his already slit-like eyes narrowed slightly, and he said coldly, “I remember those two voices.”

Contrary to his appearance, his voice was unexpectedly pleasant. He sat back down in the corner, folded his arms over his chest, and said unhurriedly, “You, knight. You struck me three times and kicked me eight times in total. And that ball over there, you used that plump body of yours to sit on my face six times. You two are the first people who have ever dared treat me like this.”

Galahad said, “…Vigia, didn’t you say he was out cold?”

Vigia said, “I… I clearly tested it many times! Damn it… so you were pretending to be unconscious the whole time to trick us?! Absolutely unforgivable!”

The man leaned back against the wall and sat with one knee drawn up. He raised a hand toward Ruiyin. It was a perfectly ordinary gesture, yet when he did it, there was an indescribable elegance to it. “My lady, for personal reasons, I have no desire to untie them. However, if they are your companions, I will not obstruct you.”

Ruiyin was still staring at him. She asked, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“My name is Juvina. I was imprisoned here because I stole something from the Dark Elves,” the man answered slowly.

His enunciation was clear, and his tone was beautiful, indescribably pleasant to the ear. But that did not make Ruiyin lower her guard. Her body remained tense as she asked, “If that’s all, then why did you pretend to be unconscious just now? Why didn’t you wake up even when the two of them were beating you?”

There was a trace of helplessness in the man’s tone. “I was not pretending to be unconscious. Those Dark Elves placed a curse on me. Although I could still perceive the outside world, my body remained in a deathlike state the entire time. My lady, you really should not be so suspicious of me. I was brought here long before you. If you do not wish to be turned into sacrifices here, I may be able to offer you some help.”

He explained everything very clearly, yet skillfully avoided the details of why he had been imprisoned here. His manner was courteous, his speech refined and gentle. While winning the other party’s goodwill, he revealed not the slightest bit of information about himself. This was someone with a background. For Ruiyin, who had been dealing with idiots and fools ever since arriving on the Magic Continent, this was the first time she felt pressure from a mature man.

“You probably wouldn’t help us for no reason, would you?” Ruiyin reminded him. “What are your conditions?”

The man smiled, his tone still exceedingly mild. “My esteemed lady, speaking with you saves me a great deal of effort. I have only one question. What method did you use to lift the Dark Curse on me?”