The Villainess Wants to Make Her Husband Slim Down

CHAPTER 43

3 – 12

They followed Nicole's footsteps as she illuminated the cave with a faint magical light.

Just how long had they walked? They found it hard to tell if it had been a few hours or already an entire day.

The rumbling in the deep never ceased. The concurrent sounds of explosions and collapsing rock could be heard echoing far in the distance and booming from what felt like right behind them.

As they trudged through that perilous darkness, they only became more and more anxious. Especially once they lost their sense of time and direction.

"Ah."

Nicole stopped moving, her quiet voice slipping out shakily.

"I-I'm sorry. It's a dead end..."

Nicole's light showed that the end of the tunnel they had been following connected to nowhere. All that was in front of them was a crevice far too narrow for anyone to fit through, densely packed with thick miasma.

"Well then, we'll just have to turn back, won't we? Let us return to that fork in the road."

"B-But, this place had a really strong reaction, even more than before..."

"All the more reason to go back more quickly. I would rather not get caught up in an explosive reaction in this dead-end."

As Camilla said that, the people around her sighed in exhaustion, but they didn't try to argue or complain.

Although she couldn't see everyone's faces clearly, she had a feeling that they were getting more and more apprehensive. Their plodding steps were becoming heavier and more laboured, and the voices that called out to each other in the dark were little more than whispers now.

It was no wonder, Camilla thought, as she turned around. How many times had they already been turned around like this? Just how many of them were thinking 'Are we really going to be okay?' as they constantly advance to one dead-end after another?

When it came to following the breadcrumb trail of Alois' magical energies, Nicole was clearly having trouble.

Every time she thought she had caught his trail, she ended up following the reaction of dense pools or foggy soups of miasma instead. Of course, she would make some mistakes but it seemed like it was incredibly hard for her to separate the magical reactions given off by the miasma to the magical power she was trying to follow. Whenever Nicole made a decision to go down one route or another, she never seemed confident and it felt like people were getting more and more dubious with every wrong choice she made.

Whenever Nicole stopped up against another dead-end, Camilla could heard the audible sighs of fear and frustration behind her. Even if no one said a word, she could tell what they were feeling.

Nicole, by nature, was never a person with truly strong self-conviction. She was a person afraid of the consequences of her own choices, quickly losing confidence in herself.

But, it was also true that Nicole was the only one amongst them with the power to direct them where to go. Much to her chagrin, Camilla had no choice but to leave it to her.

When they returned to where they had taken that dead end, Nicole stopped once more.

From that slightly cavernous break in the tunnels, there were several more tunnels leading off in different directions. The largest opening was the tunnel they had taken to get here in the first place. The second was covered in a dense fog of miasma and they avoided it. The third was the one that they had just gone through. However, it was a dead-end.