Dungeon? This Tree? Why Don't You Join Me for Lunch? (Dungeon Core)
Chapter 113: The Fire Inside

Chapter 113: Chapter 113: The Fire Inside

Cooking your own last meal was wrong.

I knew that even as I washed the nettle, no gloves on my hand. I felt that if I did not feel the sting, I would be lost.

Nettle...

I was just going to boil it. Make it as a side dish for the gruel. It would be my last meal if Nick didn’t stop looking at me so as if he didn’t love me anymore.

I didn’t want to beg it of him. I didn’t want to make him turn his back on his own people.

I didn’t want to die, either.

"Sylvan," Amdis sat by me, putting the salt and pepper in the boiling nettle.

"Yes, Amdis?" He was someone who knew who I was from the start. Someone I knew was going to leave as soon as I was dead.

Were Desmond, Nick, and Nate going to remain together?

They were a unit, yes, but they were a fighting unit.

What about Aron and Titan? Was Titan even going to survive my death?

I watched as he placed more of the sauce over one of the pigs that was on a split.

A bird stuck in its mouth.

I had no idea if the bird was going to cook in there or not. But it was there. The refugees were staring at the pigs on their splits.

No one paid me any attention.

Nick still refused to come over. Still sitting by Aron, who was hurriedly whispering something in his ear.

I just knew that my dear vampire was trying to save my life.

Nick was a man around my own age. He had made his own choice.

So much for love.

"Hold your breath," the fairy told me, as he leaned in, to brush his lips on my ears. "Hold your breath and don’t kick your feet."

He was trying to give me advice on how to sink. Just like a rock.

But I wasn’t heavy enough to. The river was rich with the water from the spring melt.

It was so muddy that one could go from one end to the other. It was closer to a swamp.

"I,"

I looked at the boiling nettle. It was light. It wasn’t sinking.

My gaze found the demons behind the barrier. They were boiling nettle and gruel with smiles on their faces.

How come everyone believed in me but me?

"And if you happen to find the bottom," Amdis continued.

A soft wind ruffled my hair.

Did he hate me? Did he want to get even for the war I declared on his aunt?

"Fold your legs."

Fold your legs?

There, in the mud? In the dark, because heaven forbid that Trial by Water was held during the day?

Fold your legs?!

"Get lost!" I snarled.

I took the knife I used to cut the nettle.

I must have looked like a fright. My hair was a mess of twigs and weeds. My skin was covered in dirt.

Something that should give me peace. Dirt was the lifeforce of the universe for a nymph.

But it did not.

"Sylvan, I’m trying to..." Amdis began, only for me to grip the knife the wrong way.

To point it at him.

One never points a kitchen knife at someone. The blade must always be down. The handle must be the one thing you give to the other.

I wasn’t going to give him the knife. A part of me even realized it.

I still stood up.

"Why?" My eyes were embers. But at that moment, they were flames.

Shining. Sending off mana into the air.

Mana which would have a response from nature, but I didn’t know it at the time. Those poor people would pay for this "justice" with bitter tears.

I would cry with them.

But that didn’t bother me as I closed in on Amdis.

"Sylvan?" He wasn’t afraid of me. Why should he be? I had given him only caresses and kisses up to that point.

There was a cutting board behind him. A cabbage head rested on it, its outer yellow leaves reminding me of fat on meat.

I felt hungry for the first time in eons.

Amdis stepped aside, letting me see the cutting board clearly.

My knife fell from my hands.

He was smiling at me.

He only knew my love. He had never seen my rage.

Something Methuselah had seen, once. Something he had protected that woodcutter from.

"I need to take a nap," I needed to be by myself. Without the powerhouses who had let me walk into mortal danger and looked from the sidelines.

I blinked.

Was I really going to blame my lovers for my own stupid decision? What? Just because I normally got my way and people agreed with me, did that mean that the one time they didn’t they were to blame?

"I need to sleep," I looked around. The tree at the far corner was a wild apple tree.

Blossoms already bejeweled its branches. The small leaf buds looked like precious gems.

I missed them.

My Old Girl and my Grumpy Pants. Theanore and Marinus.

My parents.

The ones who had stepped in to take care of me as soon as they had been able to.

Because I now knew what it meant to be a Dark Nymph.

I had nearly beheaded Amdis... who was next?

Was I going to poison Desmond with something made from wheat, but made to look like the magical pancake mix he loved so much?

I knew how to make one food look like something else. It was a skill I had developed out of boredom.

A skill that could kill just as easily as bring joy.

And knifework...

I could chop through bones to get at the bone morrow. It was a good source of fat.

Onechop, and the bone split into two.

With a start, I realized that I had everything I needed to kill.

"I am not like that."

It was a whisper the winds conjured by my mana carried. I didn’t have the will to yell it out.

My conviction was wavering. I was cold.

The apple tree let me rest under its branches. Placed blossoms in my golden curls.

I closed my eyes.

"I am not like that."

It was something I repeated until sleep finally took me.

Something I was slowly losing faith in.