Azathoth POV

In these 3-4 days, Luciana has not only recovered, but her strength also increases.

 As an experiment, he had also given her some mild poisons for paralysis, diarrhea, numbness in the name of medicine, and as expected, those poisons have affected her on the first day, she is now almost completely immune to them. It's not like she will never be paralyzed or immune to other poisons having the same effect as different poisons take different paths for the same output.

Here Azathoth had mainly used insect poison as it will be advantageous to her while traveling in the inner level. 

Tomorrow they will go to the inner level, specifically to the lake at the inner level. As his power allows him to differentiate between the things which can be harmful or not, he can feel a strong attraction from that lake.

 When he had informed her, she began to argue with him. Only after reminding her that she owes him her life, did she agree to come with him.

"Surprisingly she is hard to manipulate, and she always put a guard against me. Though she follows my suggestions, her ambition to run away from here is more visible as to how much she tried to hide it."

 

To convince her Azathoth had also handed his iron dagger to her.

"It can't be helped as her arm strength is greater than me after recovering and after studying her nature, she is prideful and after accepting that dagger she will feel obliged to use it. It can help me to manipulate her to fight in the frontline."

As they enter the inner level, the forest is always nerve-wracking, as the unique life forms and insects let one's heart in fear.

 Azathoth is closely paying attention to Luciana.

"Though she has entered the forest the first time, she has still able to take care of herself." After watching her for some time he stops paying much attention to her.

One can find many herbs in the inner level, due to the climate as well as the habitat shape by a particular organism. As they travel they encounter many things and lastly come across a large tree.

Azathoth knows about this tree as it is one of the checkpoints to their way to the lake.

 The fruits of this tree are large and beautiful, giving them the appearance of being fleshy and juicy, but there is a trap.

The insects that pollinated its flowers also lay their eggs in it. Which hatched after the fruit ripened and fall after that even a little stimulus can awake them.

As Azathoth is going to explain Luciana, his curiosity is piqued by a strange mushroom

 growing just beneath the large trunk of the tree. 

 It is star-shaped and green in color, but it has purple lines on it like veins running all over it. The strangest thing is no grass is growing around it.

He begins to dig around the mushroom to properly remove it but he got surprised.

“It is different”

The mushroom has formed a root network below it, just like some grown-up tree, sucking the nutrition from the soil. While detaching the delicate roots from the ground, he hears the sound of something been dropped.

Luciana is standing, clutching her hand, and beside her feet is that fruit. Wasting no time, He increases the pace of digging the mushroom. The fruit beside her exploded and some insects come out.

“F***”

He hurriedly put the mushroom in the bag and dashed towards Luciana, but he is still late, others fruit also exploded and now they are welcome by the swarm of insects.

Azathoth wanted to grip Luciana's hand and to run in one direction but in confusion, Luciana dodges Azathoth and began to run in another direction. Watching her run away Azathoth can't do anything but follow her.

“Hey stop!”

Azathoth yelled to Luciana, but she just kept running. He wants to stop Luciana as these insects do not follow someone who gets out of their territory which is just around that tree.

If she keeps running like that…

Azathoth hears the screeching scream near him, and his face turns pale. He knows that sound, and soon he sees the source of it. The horde of monkeys is following them for trespassing their territory. He got the urge to kill this girl running in front of him but stopped himself after remembering his effort in raising this girl.

Soon he catches up to Luciana and grip her hand and begin to run in a particular direction. After running for some time, he found his target. He picks up a stone and throws it on a swarm of mosquitoes. This agitated them and they also begin to follow him. This let to the clash between the monkeys and mosquitoes, and to remove their attention, he pulled Luciana towards himself and jumped in the mud pool.

“Alas! It’s my mistake to not feed you properly. Then you hadn’t picked up some random fruit.”

He wants to say much more but he got very tired and his body feels itchy due to crawling insects. The only silver lining is that Luciana is not affected by the paralyzing poison of those fruit insects due to his preparation.

After coming out from the mud pool, he can only reluctantly decide to go back to the cave. When he proclaimed this to Luciana, he can see that her zombie's face turn into a flower.

“I will prepare more poisons.”

Azathoth can only murmur in his heart. As they are in their return journey, he sees a lightning fall on the tree under a clear sky.

He gives a stare towards Luciana, by mutual understanding they began to run towards that tree.

As they reached near it, they slow down, to conceal their presence and hide behind a tree.

A boy and a pair of twins of their age are fighting each other. All three of them look beautiful, with a boy having black hair and blue eyes while twins have dark blue hair and yellow eyes. Their battle seems like it emerged from a picture book.

As he is watching the battle, he remembers his previous mistake and tightly gripped Luciana’s hand to prevent her from doing anything unnecessary. But suddenly Luciana turns towards him and begins to pat his back with the expression of trying to console him.

He can only stare her back, trying to understand just what is happening in her brain. As he thought to say something to her but he again got attracted to their fight. He able to evaluate their strength and their information such as their name is Mervin and Arthur, while they are fighting for something.

Mervin is good at handling a sword, also he can able to predict the path of lightning while for Arthur there is no questioning of his firepower. He makes him remember someone. But the most variable existence here is that female twin standing behind him. She looks pale but there is something different in her.

“It’s her eyes.”

Azathoth can only praise her. Those eyes look calm just like a predator.

While fighting Mervin's sword begins to vibrate and start producing a humming sound. And as he got the proper opening, he slashed his sword toward Arthur, producing a gush of wind. Arthur who got bewildered by the sudden attack, have not able to respond in time, and as the attack is going to reach him, it suddenly vanished.

Even Mervin got astonished, and wasting no time, Arthur reaches Mervin with his fastest speed and gives a punch on his face. It was planned, they would have study Merlin for quite some time to make such a plan. The fight is concluded as Mervin is lying unconscious, and Arthur is bragging about his prowess.

"That girl she was preparing for this."

Such preparation makes even his heart chilled.

 

As he is listening to the bragging, he hears one unexpected thing, and that is these people had gone to the lake, which has awakened all his instinct. For Azathoth attraction towards the lake is something vague and he doesn't want to let others know, that’s why when Luciana had asked the reason, he can only give the ridiculous reason of want to eat fish, not even knowing whether there are fish in that or not.

So, in a moment he decided his actions.

Donning righteous aura, he turns towards Luciana and said

"We should protect people from injustice and should punish the villains. You go, just sneak up and immobilize that female twin. Remember to grip her neck for intimidation. I'll somehow handle the male one."

He can do something of that Arthur but that female twin, at least her magic should be negated. That's why he orders Luciana to grip her neck, which in front is like she is only immobilizing her physically, but in reality, she is also negating her magic.

After giving an order to Luciana, he runs towards Arthur to prevent him from finishing off Mervin. He began to levitate the stone shrapnel, which he just picks up, and as soon as he feels that Arthur is in range, he fires it towards him. Due to haste and the speed of the shrapnel, it got deviated quite largely, but at least it able to injure the left hand of Arthur.

Arthur's scream echoes in the forest. This is followed by that female twin taking action, but she is blocked by Luciana, he has to let Arthur remain entangled so that Luciana gets some time.

He makes a disgusted expression towards Arthur and said

"You're bullying a lone person. God will never forgive such heinous crimes, surrender, and give that pitiful person to me, and I will let you go."

When Arthur hears him, his reaction is in line with what he has predicted. He is injured and exhausted due to the fight with Mervin, so he instinctively asks help from his sister but got nothing in return, and when he paid attention to his sister, he gets a shock to see her taken as a hostage.

"Hmm, there is an only shock but no worry in his eyes."

Azathoth thought, so to add some burden on Arthur, he says.

“Villain your companion is also neutralized. Do you want to sacrifice her for your nefarious means?”

After some seconds, there is a flash of confusion in his eyes. Has he realized that his sister can't use her ability?

His worries become genuine now and he got only one option now

“You bastard, if you are so righteous than fight me fair and square.”

Arthur can only do something like challenging him, to prevent him from any further sneak attack.

" Does he think he can overwhelm me in frontal battle?

 Well, I can't blame him since lightning is far superior to telekinesis in frontal battle. Let's play"

To complete his role, Azathoth proclaimed.

 

"Villain if you want to fight then I will fulfill your wish."

And make a frontal attack, by shooting his stone dagger.

Azathoth starts preparing for his next course of action, as he knew that the thrown dagger will get blocked.

But he also got a surprise by the sudden turn of event. Mervin who was lying unconscious has attacked Arthur by his sound ability which disrupted him. Though he dodges the dagger, but can't prevent himself to fall.

 

Taking that opportunity, he threw a sachet of itching powder between Arthur and Mervin.

“It will be a pain if that Mervin will remain conscious.” He doesn’t want to add some new variables in his plan.

So, when Mervin tried to stand up, he fell unconscious again and effortlessly transferred to his shoulder.

When he paid attention to Luciana, she is now wrestling with Elena, but soon Elena got tied with a rope. It's better to kill them now as it will save him from some future revenge. So, he says to Luciana.

“Luciana, quickly kill her and I will finish her brother off.”

And as he is going to proceed to kill Arthur. He is stopped by Luciana

“No, stop Azathoth, we can’t kill them”

This is surprising for him, as she has voiced her own belief, to avoid any more argument he again plays his justice card.

“Why? They are villains, so they should die.”

But Luciana replied rapidly

"Have you gone mad Azathoth, who gives you the authority to decide their fate. If you take even one step to kill them, I will be the one to stop you."

 She is quite stubborn and from her body language, he can understand that she will not stop arguing and will continue her stance.

If these twins are the relatives of someone of which he is getting a feeling, then it will be a headache in the future, but he also doesn’t want to destroy the relationship between him and Luciana. At last, he has decided and said.

“Fine.”

"Pardon?"

That is Luciana's response. Her tense body is now loosened, and she has put her guard down. Azathoth thought.

"Is she enticing me to kill her? Well, let only remind her."

 

“I said fine, but you owe me, right?”

After that, she asks him to converse Elena and to convey her "feelings" due to the language barrier. As Elena agreed she took the dagger from me and place beside her.

"Luciana is still simple-minded and that girl is still having calm eyes." Azathoth can only lament in his heart. With Elena's power, she can easily escape from these mere ropes, but she is restraining herself as she also understood Luciana's specialty and to prevent changing my decision.

Unable to see it anymore he can only walk forward and ask Luciana to follow him.