Survival Guide After Accidentally Kissing a Demon - Chapter 257

Chapter 257

Mana… How could it be disappearing so quickly?

Ashera lowered his eyes to glance at his palm, his expression turning a little complicated.

“There’s no water left.”

Beili hugged his arm and tilted her face up from his embrace, interrupting his thoughts.

“Ashera, why did you sleep for so long? It’s been more than ten days, you know?”

Moonlight was still flowing.

The night remained silent.

Yet so much time had passed in between.

A hint of surprise appeared on that beautifully contoured face, but Ashera chose to set his confusion aside for now.

Because when his golden gaze fell on the girl, he suddenly realized her face had clearly thinned, leaving her features looking somewhat worn and haggard.

“Yes, ten days. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up this whole time, Ashera.”

Beili nodded with her brows drawn together. She pulled away from him and sat to the side, pressing her lips together as her tone carried a pitiful little complaint.

“Ashera, I’m hungry and thirsty right now. The water and food I took from the palace are all gone. I split the last portion of dry rations over three days…”

Beili spoke with deliberate exaggeration, then felt Ashera’s hand touch her cheek.

She met those golden eyes and saw unmistakable heartache surfacing in their depths.

Beili’s words paused.

“Then we’ll go out and find something to eat now.”

Ashera spoke softly, then wrapped an arm around her and rose.

The moment he opened the door, something was startled by the movement and sprang up at once.

Beili let out a startled cry. Just as she was about to turn and hide, Ashera had already instinctively tightened his arms around her.

At the same time, a wisp of black mist drifted out like a ribbon and swiftly strangled the thing that had leaped up.

Croaks of “ribbit-ribbit-” sounded all around them.

Beili looked back and saw countless frogs in the corridor and on the stairs outside the room.

Big ones and small ones, pale green ones and dark green ones, some with smooth skin and others covered in bumps.

There was almost nowhere to step in the entire corridor or stairwell.

After the door opened, they began making an ear-splitting racket.

Ashera lifted his eyes and looked outside.

He seemed to find the creatures on the floor utterly repulsive. His elegant brows drew together, then soon relaxed again.

He raised his hand, and a cloud of black mist seeped from his palm, sweeping toward the frogs.

A few seconds after coming into contact with the black mist, the frogs melted into patches of rotten, bubbling green sludge.

“Don’t be afraid, Little Butterfly.”

He comforted her, gently patting her back.

“Use Beast Transformation now. We’ll leave through the window.”

Under the moonlit night,

A mass of black mist wrapped around a butterfly and flew out the window.

The streets were just as much of a mess. The roads were covered in croaking frogs.

Beili knew that fish kept frog populations in check.

Now that nearly all the fish in the river were dead, huge numbers of frogs had crawled onto shore and invaded the houses.

But this was still far too many…

Although Beili didn’t hate frogs, she didn’t want to touch them either.

…

Even in the dead of night,

many guards still stood in orderly lines outside the palace.

That was because many commoners and Half-beast were sitting outside the palace walls, waiting.

No matter how many times it was boiled, the red water still couldn’t be drunk.

Most people who drank it would feel abdominal pain after some time.

Some were still struggling to survive through the pain. Others had already died.

It was said that the people in the palace did not have to worry about water, because dedicated Mage purified it for them. However, there was only enough for the Noble inside the palace to use.
The commoners and Half-beast people stared past the guards at the resplendent palace behind them, waiting for the Noble inside to throw out some moldy bread or rotten fruit.

Though most of that food had been looted from people’s homes when the disaster first struck.

Even so, it was enough for the starving, near-mad commoners and Half-beast people outside the palace and the Noble within to reach a delicate sort of harmony.

…

No one noticed the cloud of black mist and butterflies flying across the night sky.

Beili, who had used Beast Transformation to turn into a butterfly, was swept along by the black mist and brought straight into Tilisha Palace.

There was indeed still plenty of food and water inside the palace, but most of it was being watched over by Mage.

“All right. Everything is here.”

A man’s deep, heavy voice sounded in the night.

Then the black mist descended, and a silver-haired man in a Black Robe slowly walked out from within it.

Holding the hand of a gray-haired, red-eyed girl, he headed straight toward the Mage guarding the supplies.

When the soldiers saw them approaching, their lips moved as they rapidly began chanting spells.

Ashera merely flicked a fingertip. Thick black mist, like ribbons of silk, wrapped those Mage up into mummies.

The “mummies” quickly withered inside the black mist, as if all their flesh and blood had been sucked away.

The black mist vanished, and so did the Mage who had been guarding the food and water. Not even their bones remained.

But…

No Mana had been absorbed.

Ashera’s golden eyes lowered slowly. Thoughtfully, he looked at his pale, gray-tinged hand.

When he turned back, he saw that the girl had already started eating in the storeroom, practically wolfing the food down.

Some kind of magic must have been placed on the storeroom to slow the food from spoiling.

Beili picked up a piece of bread and tore into it in huge bites.

The Morpho Butterflies had accelerated the flow of time in the dream, making her skip straight over everything in between.

So the moment Beili opened her eyes, she felt so hungry her stomach seemed glued to her spine. The word “hunger” shot through every nerve in her brain.

After a few bites, she nearly couldn’t swallow. A cup of water was offered in front of her.

“Now…”

After Beili had eaten her fill, Ashera stroked her head and said,

“Tell me what happened.”

He did not even remember when he had fallen asleep.

After all, sleeping had never been part of his plan.

The loss of Mana, the change in her thoughts, and everything happening around them were all reasons he could not rest at ease.

And yet.

It felt as if he had only blinked, and time had slipped by without his knowing.

If he had not slept for so long, his Little Butterfly would never have grown so thin.

Beili blinked, her red eyes flickering faintly.

She decided to keep herself completely out of it.

“I stayed in the room the whole time, eating the food and drinking the water from the bag. I didn’t go out.”

“We only took a few days’ worth of food back then, so after I finished it, there was nothing left to eat.”

“You kept sleeping and wouldn’t wake up no matter what. I was planning to go out and look for food if I still couldn’t wake you up in the end. Good thing you woke up…”

She did not want the process to feel that abrupt either.

The dream had been shaped from memories of the Tilisha Disaster Year. If she moved the dream to the Nauze Kingdom, there would definitely be many inconsistencies that clashed with reality.

For now, Ashera had to stay in Tilisha.

So Beili could only speed up time and consume the Mana he had in the dream.

Once the Dream Cage took shape and no longer required her intervention, he could go wherever he wanted.