The villainess shall be mine

"What are you going to do now?" Bianca asked, looking at me with doubtful eyes.

She probably thought that there was nothing more special about the empty room and I could understand why she would feel that way.

"As I said, there be something that could help us somewhere beyond these walls but I don't want to destroy it so I am trying to find the proper to open the door that leads there," I said, continuing to inspect the walls and every corner of the room.

I hoped to find a kind of switch somewhere inside the room because that was the only way to open the door without destroying the wall.

'This could lead to a safer place where we could hide from the monsters while preparing the ship so I can't risk destroying it. Well, I just hope that monsters didn't already go beyond these walls…' I thought, examining the weird cubic shapes on the wall.

The wall didn't have a flat surface and it looked as if it was made by putting together thousands of rectangular and cubic stones.

"This is it," I said looking at a spot on the wall and touching a particular stone on the wall.

"Did you find something?" Bianca asked and approached me. It seemed like she had also tried to examine the wall after hearing my explanation but she couldn't find anything.

"There is slightly a bigger gap between the stones around this spot," I explained, "and there could be a reason for that."

After saying these words, I put on my helmet and looked at the spot using x-ray vision and other types of scanners.

Unfortunately, the walls were too thick to see through but at least, I could see that the door was next to the spot where the gap was.

"Okay, there are a few things that we need to consider if we want to proceed," I said, noticing Blanca who looked curious to see what was beyond the door. "First, I am not sure if this door will make loud noises so we are taking a big risk by opening it. We won't be able to avoid fighting monsters if it makes noises as we can expect a lot of them coming after us, making it hard to leave from here if we want to get out later unless we find another way out."

"Yes, you are right. We also don't know what's beyond this portal so we have to be ready either way." Bianca said and I was a bit glad to see that she was actually listening to me. I didn't think that she was stupid but sometimes she looked like she didn't want to follow my instructions.

"That's right. I don't know who took all of the stuff here but from the look of it, we can expect to see some survivor or some dead bodies." I said, but I knew that either way, it would create more problems for us. "Don't forget, keep your calm no matter what happens, okay?"

"Yeah, I know," Blanca replied.

"Well, like before, Cristal will go ahead of us so we will be always prepared," I said, "but how are you feeling? Do you feel something wrong about your body?"

I asked Blanca this question because of the weird substance that was mixed in the air. I didn't want her to put on a tough act and mess up the whole plan after suddenly feeling weak.

"No, I am more or less immune to anything because of my blood," Blanca answered with a strange reaction.

'Does she think that I am worrying too much about the little details?' I thought, but I felt like my current intelligence and analyzing ability wasn't enough if I wanted to become someone that could face any kind of situation.

"I see, but tell me immediately if you don't feel well or you run out of strength." I reminded Blanca.

"Okay."

"Alright, let's do this," I said and tried to push one of the stones but it didn't move.

Realizing that my first approach was wrong, I grabbed the stone and pulled it out and this time, the stone moved but nothing else happened.

"Is it stuck?" Bianca said, keeping her eyes on the door behind me as I instructed. Fortunately, it seemed like other monsters didn't want to come to this area even after we killed the tentacle monster probably because of the disgusting substance on the wall.

"No, it seems like there's more to it. This looks like some kind of a puzzle but I wonder what would happen if someone needed to access this room in a hurry," I said, but I knew that the purpose of this puzzle was to keep the access to this pathway secure.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Blanca said, and I was curious about what she was going to ask me.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Is that woman your lover?"

"And why do you ask such a question now?"

"Well, you are too overprotective of her even though you treat me differently," Blanca said.

"I know what you are trying to do so I won't answer this kind of question," I said, realizing Blanca's intentions, "and don't even think about saying something weird to her because I won't hesitate to kill you."

"What? I was just curious." Blanca replied, looking a little bit displeased by my menace, then she stayed quiet and appeared to be thinking about something.

I didn't expect her to ask such a thing and it seemed like she was a little bit smarter than I thought she was.

'Trying to use my relationship with Liu to threaten me huh… I wonder when she begins to have such a thought. She didn't appear to be the person who use such a trick, or is it just my imagination? Well, if she was that cunning, she wouldn't have asked me such a question in the first place but I am sure that she has something in mind.' I thought and continued to solve the puzzle in front of me.

"Okay, it should be like this," I said, pushing the stone upward.

Then, something occurred and the stones on the wall retracted and a space that looked like a door appeared on the wall but there was still no way to access the pathway because another wall appeared.

"Well, that was too easy for a puzzle so it seems they decided to add another one," I commented.

"Well, at least it didn't make a loud noise," Blanca said.

"I think this one will make a lot of noise though," I said and examined the wall in front of me. "There seems to be some kind of metallic keyboard and even though there is no number of letters on them, it seems like we need to find the right combination to open the door."

"How can we find something like that here?" Blanca said.

"Don't worry, I expected something like this, knowing that I will be dealing with something similar to a safe, so I searched the building and found a smaller vault that has the same lock system," I said, inputting the right combination consisting. "It took time but dismantled it and with Cristal's help I was able to determinate which keys were used the most and in which order they were used by looking at the state of its inner components."

Crack!

The massive door made a noisy sound before sliding slowly to the right.

Vrrrrrrrr!

The room trembled slightly but it wasn't as noisy as I expected. 'Well this is a building in the middle of the city so it would be weird if there was an earthquake every time someone opened this door,' I thought.

"Still, the monsters will come here soon because they are more sensitive to noise and vibration than humans. Let's proceed before that happens." I said and Cristal's two cubic parts brightened revealing a stairway.

Blanca followed me and after I stepped on the first staircase, the door behind us closed. "It seems like this will open the door from inside," I commented, thinking that going out was easier than going in.

"I wonder why something like this exists. It must be because some people were doing something evil here." Blanca said, and she was probably right because there were dark organizations in this world like everywhere else.

"Yeah, it's highly probable," I answered back.

After hearing Blanca's words the words Holy Church crossed my mind and I couldn't help but wonder about that woman known as the Holy Mother. "Why do I feel like she was evil even though she was supposed to be a saint?" I thought, but I knew that I wouldn't find the answer to this question at the place where we were heading so I decided to not think about the topic and focus on what we could find ahead.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Blanca said and her words surprised me.