Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Dio - Chapter Eleven

"I've told you, I'm nothing special."

Our strange savior evaded my questions, and let me say, I was not convinced. It was no easy feat to dispel a tornado.

"Right, I am still most grateful," I told her and stopped prying to remain on her good side. We advanced slowly and thanks to carrying a wounded ogre with us, had to stop often. She stuck around even at night when we set up camp. "Not anyone can do what you did, and you did it without hesitation. Allow us to repay you."

"Aww, stop. It was nothing." She grinned although she didn't have an actual face, the shell she possessed was humanoid, yet completely featureless. Every time she had strong feelings about something, an image of that magically appeared in my head, nothing like I'd ever seen. Her voice felt organic too, and she liked to talk a lot.

The mental pictures reminded me of someone, but it could have been part of her magic. Maybe she didn't do it on purpose, her shell couldn't contain her thoughts, and the body sometimes emitted light and illuminated the valley around us. All in all, she was most certainly powerful, but her behavior was strange. So far she was friendly, and I did not want to upset her.

"I expected nothing in return." She claimed but asked a lot of questions. "So where are you headed now?"

"We try to... Ouch." Fang kicked my ankle, looking angry and pale. He carried Bastion on his shoulders and was wary of the creature. I couldn't blame him for it when we treaded on thin ice. "We want to descend from the Gates of Hell towards the north."

We weren't dressed for this climate, Fang lost most of his armor pieces and wore the padding from underneath. His gray outfit and silver hair blended in nicely with the snow, but the huge green creature he carried did not. Bastion had a tremendous body, incredibly muscular legs, and arms, but a barrel-like torso, in a sense, he looked like a gigantic goblin baby.

He dressed somewhat similar to one too. I almost froze in my dark cloak just by looking at him, but he had plenty of fat to shield him from the cold, punches, or anything else.

"Is your friend all right?" Our follower asked curiously, nodding towards the ogre. He was still half out, his limbs healed nicely, but because of the potion and lack of dinner, he was practically sleepwalking all day. In a way, this was fortunate since he wasn't the brightest one in the shed. If he were to anger the creature, that could have led to a fight.

And none of us had our weapons anymore.

"He will survive, at least I hope," I told her. "Maybe if we had an extra healing potion or some food..."

"Man, it's crazy to think how easily Cranta crumbled, right?" She completely ignored what I said. And I had no answer to that, even those who lived through the Collapse couldn't believe it. "How did the Lesser Races come out of it? Are they treated better nowadays?"

"Oh, we most certainly are. All the slave contracts broke once the owners disappeared." I answered. She did not know much about the world after the Collapse. "The tribes that worked for the humans all earned their freedom. Most of them set out to find a new homeland, and the old cities became deserted. Many of them are nomadic now, others sought to unite with the rest of their races, but most are scattered."

"Is there no central government anymore?" She asked curiously.

"Not really. Cranta completely fell apart, even their old kingdoms. The humans will never recover from this." I said, trying to skip all the information regarding the New Order. While it covered just a small part of the continent, it certainly counted as the central government of the Lesser Races now. "As the distances suddenly became an issue, and they couldn't rely on their vast slave empire to work for them, the humans retreated north. A few city-states remained at first, but they starved out fast."