Wonderful Insane World
Chapter 133: Flames inside

Chapter 133: Flames inside

Dylan scratched the back of his head, exhausted.

"Four weeks... we’re going to stink like corpses."

"If we’re lucky," Maggie smiled.

"Otherwise, we become the corpses."

----

The fire crackled—a stingy little ember under the rocky overhang, reluctant to share its warmth. The acrid stench of blood and the slain beast had faded, replaced by the softer, almost comforting scent of roasted boar-bear meat.

Maggie had skinned a leg with brutal efficiency. Élisa had found wild herbs—sharp on the tongue, but refreshing—to mask the gamey taste, and Dylan had gathered dead wood, his movements still stiff, his arms sore from clumsy blows struck with the jian.

They ate in silence at first, the weight of the past hours pressing down heavily. The meat was tough, demanding vigorous chewing. Dylan tore into his piece with a kind of grim resolve, avoiding Maggie’s gaze from across the fire. The memory of the wounds—ones she had inflicted under the control of the Midnight Lady, then absorbed into herself—hung between them, as thick and real as the smoke.

It was Maggie who broke the silence, her voice quieter, less abrasive than usual. She held out a particularly well-grilled piece of meat, cut close to the bone where it was more tender.

"Here. Take it." The gesture was brusque, almost clumsy, as if offering it cost her something. She didn’t meet his eyes, staring into the flames instead. "You’ve got to... recover. After all that energy you burned."

Dylan hesitated, surprised. Maggie, the one who’s always hungry, offering food? It was more than suspicious.

He saw the fresh scars still marking her arms—wounds taken from him, transferred by that strange power. Wounds she had earned trying to kill him.

A flash of that terrible night crossed his mind: pain, resignation, fear. And then Maggie, dying on the cemetery floor, and his mad, instinctive decision to take her agony into himself.

He took the meat. "Thanks." His voice was hoarse.

Maggie grunted—a sound that might have been annoyance, but lacked conviction. "It’s not charity. It’s practical. If you can’t hold your damn sword straight, we’re all screwed." She finally looked up, meeting his eyes. Hers, usually so hard, held an unusual complexity: restrained guilt, buried gratitude, and a rekindled loyalty that hadn’t found the right words. "What I tried to do... when you were... when I..."

"I wasn’t myself," Dylan cut in, firmer than he expected. He held her gaze. "The Midnight Lady was pulling the strings. You fought her. I saw it—at the end." He bit into the meat. "And... I’d probably have loved slicing your throat if it’d been the other way around."

A low grunt, almost a laugh, slipped from Maggie. "Probably not." She shook her head, a flicker of her usual crooked smirk returning. "You’d have been too annoying to bury. And who’d make Élisa laugh?"

Surprised, the elf looked up from her own piece of meat, which she was cutting with precise little slices using one of her still-intact daggers. "I laugh?" she asked, raising a perfectly arched brow.

"On the inside. Like a little girl with a crush," Maggie shot back, regaining some of her bite. She gestured toward the jian resting against the rock near Dylan, still dulled with mud and blood despite his attempts to clean it.

"Let’s skip pointless topics... You planning on learning how to use that thing before the next moon, Dylan? Because right now, even a stick would be more effective. At least it wouldn’t spin in your hand."

Élisa set her dagger down, a faint smile finally playing on her lips—a real smile, touched with the cold teasing they’d all missed. "He has a unique technique, Maggie. The ’Flat Edge Supreme’. Very effective for concussions... and shattering self-esteem. A double-edged weapon, quite literally."

Dylan blushed a little, but smiled back despite himself. It felt good to hear her teasing him again. "Ha ha. Hilarious. Anyway, my ’Flat Edge’ still managed to pierce that beast’s ass. It worked."

"I’d say it was a bold strategy," Élisa admitted with mock solemnity. "The rear tactical approach. Unorthodox, but the results speak for themselves. You could start a school."

Maggie chuckled. "The Academy of Ass-Stabbing. I’ll be its first patron. We’ll even have a crest: a bear with a sword sticking out where the sun doesn’t shine."

Dylan threw a piece of cartilage at her. She dodged, laughing. "You two are unbearable! Okay, fine, I’m a disaster with this sword. But I’m going to learn. I have to." His tone grew more serious, shifting from Maggie to Élisa. "And... thanks. For earlier. Without you two..." He didn’t finish. Just shrugged.

Maggie’s smile faded to something softer. "We’re a shitty team, lieutenant. But we’re our shitty team." She held out her water bottle toward him. "Cheers. To not dying before Martissant."

Élisa raised a small bark-wrapped cup of water. "To the Academy of Ass-Stabbing. May it never lack students... or appropriate targets."

Dylan shook his head, a real laugh escaping this time—freeing, in spite of fatigue and soreness. He clinked his bottle against Maggie’s, then nodded to Élisa. "Cheers. And fuck this world and its tusked bears."

They drank. The water was cool. The fire crackled softly. The tension between Dylan and Maggie hadn’t vanished—resignation and sacrifice carved deeper scars than any beast—but a fragile understanding, forged in pain and the necessity of trust, had begun to take root.

Élisa, in reviving her sharp-edged teasing, had woven a thread of normalcy, a bridge to who they’d been before horror swept them away.

The road to the mountains lay ahead, long and treacherous. But for the first time in a while, as the last embers cast light across their worn faces, they weren’t just three scattered survivors. They were a team. Flawed, wounded, determined.

And in a world that never stopped trying to break them, that changed everything.

The cold of the mountains waited.

But for now, around the dying fire, there was a warmth that had nothing to do with flame.