Aria's eyes wavered through her eyelids.
Regaining her senses, a familiar sight greeted her as her eyes opened.
A castle-like architecture now ruined to the ground, lushes of forest slowly reclaiming what was once theirs.
A place she had been to before, a few days after her arrival in this world.
Aria sat up.
Unlike last time, she was not hopeless. She has some energy stored leftover.
Scanning the location, her irises inevitably landed on a throne in the middle of a rocky platform.
It was in a very inconspicuous location. With a sword embedded through the seat, seemingly left there to collect dust for all eternity.
But another formation caught her eye. It was a tombstone located a few meters before the throne.
Aria thought of inspecting them, but her body went against her wishes.
She was too hurt to move.
Although, it was quite fortunate that she doesn't feel as much pain as last time.
Speaking of which, this was also the place she first encountered Rachel, wasn't it?
She was probably laying somewhere on the ground, groaning and panting in pain. What did she look like for Rachel then?
…Right, Rachel was blind. Even so, she has her own method of 'looking'.
In that case, Aria's thoughts weren't in vain.
What did she look like from Rachel's 'perspective'?
How does the 'echolocation' she mentioned even work?
Is there a concept she'd be able to compare it to? To make it easier to understand?
Since she herself doesn't have echolocation, she can't really say what that would look like.
'Ah… I want to see her again.'
It's barely been a few hours since she left Rachel's living quarter. Yet it felt like multiple years had passed by.
So many things happened. So many trauma-inducing scenarios.
Was it a fortune that she was the victim? Had it been anyone else, no doubt they would lose their mind over the mind numbing pain.
Even at this moment, her whole body was screaming at her to go back into slumber.
No wonder she didn't feel pain the moment she woke up.
Adrenaline had been pumping non-stop, even while she was unconscious.
Was it also beginning to rest? Would all the pain come rushing at once?
How curious.
She wondered if she should just lay down again.
Though such thoughts wouldn't linger for long as she had her own mission to accomplish.
From what she could make out, she had taken a full brunt of the dragon's attack, that one was pretty obvious.
Yet, she survived.
Against all odds, she had survived an attack that could annihilate an entire city.
"..."
Thinking so, she suddenly became speechless.
Was lady luck on her side or not?
On one hand, she had been transported to another world, possessing a body too, it seemed.
She has no idea what had happened to the original owner nor does she have the intention to learn.
In such a world she had been transported to, she first had to learn to survive entirely dependent on mother nature's grace.
She had been naked for most of the time, too.
Her gender had also changed.
She had been chased by creatures she doesn't even know exist.
She had been burnt almost to the crisp had Rachel not come to the rescue.
She had to experience what it was like to fly through the air at nearly Mach speed with little to no safety gears.
And lastly, she encountered a fucking dragon of all things.
All in the span of a single week.
But on the other hand, she had survived through all of them.
In which case, which edge of the spectrum was lady luck leaning towards?
It will be decided right this moment.
Her insides feel empty, which she had once experienced before.
Rachel had explained to her before she left that mana shortage in a body could lead to deathly consequences.
Due to that, Aria wanted to see.
Would she live? Would she die?
How will the world treat her after pairing her against misfortune?
She doesn't even know the things she did while facing that dragon. Some kind of magic circle or the like had helped her massively in terms of reducing the damage supposedly taken.
But it had drained her reserves very quickly.
Maybe that helped her survive against the final attack.
Finally, the adrenaline stopped pumping.
With no pain killer in hand, she had to inevitably lay down yet again.
She decided at this point, her end.
"..."
Let's allow fate to spin the wheel.
Shortly after her thoughts ended, she lost consciousness.
And then, darkness.
—
"Phew…"
It's been a few hours since the start of the stampede.
The adventurers had succeeded in defending their city.
Though many people got injured, there was a surprisingly low amount of casualties, if any at all.
They might not be able to confirm them yet, but Elisa has no doubt that there's practically less than 5 deaths, if not lower.
Due to that, everyone's morals sky rocketed.
They thought that they could survive anything at this point.
That was until…
BOOOM
Another pillar of magic rises up in the far distance.
It was not made of flame.
It was made of purely light, condensed enough to heat up and destroy everything in its path.
The size was absolutely massive. If compared to the pillar of flame a night before, this one could double the size of the pillar of flame.
Since she's quite far away from the sources of the attack, she's barely able to see it stretched out in the horizon.
But the size was real.
Her eyes could easily see that.
Thinking about it again, the sudden attack on the city made sense.
How come the stampede arrived a day after the pillar of flame?
If that was truly the source of the sudden movement of beasts, then why not last night?
What about yesterday?
Unless, it was not the cause.
"...[The Bringer of Destruction], Tiamat."
She mumbled the name of the mythological creature that had haunted humanity since the dawn of time.
This knowledge had been taught since the moment she entered a facility specializing in teaching students that had access to magic.
Humanity's greatest threat, only barely behind the [Fallen Angel], Lucifer, the demon king.
[The Bringer of Destruction] is known for its firepower capable of erasing everything in the blink of an eye.
Using magic that consisted of purely light magic, it had risen to the top of the food chain.
She watched as the pillar of light came into existence, and immediately disappeared as quickly as it appeared, as if it never happened.
But her instinct says otherwise.
She made a conclusion.
The pillar of flame, the stampede and immediately after a pillar of light.
She currently has no doubt that the stampede was not caused by the pillar of flame, instead it was caused by the existence of Tiamat.
The beasts were escaping from that very existence.
But what caused the dragon to get interested enough to pay a visit?
"...Did the demon lord resurrect? Did they fight for the whole night until now?"
She pushed that thought away. After all, the stampede just started, therefore it couldn't have been long before the dragon appeared.
At the earliest, after the sun rises.
"Civilization is reaching its end very soon, unless another hero is born."
Either way, she realized that these could be signs of the end of humanity.
Without a hero to take down the demon king if he did resurrect, they're practically rats cornered without any chance of survival.
Plus, there's no human strong enough to take down Tiamat.
"..."
Elisa wholeheartedly wished for her thoughts to not be of significance.