The Villainess Wants to Make Her Husband Slim Down

CHAPTER 41

3 – 10

She could feel her fingertips submerged in cold water.

Had she landed on her back? A dull pain ached through her spine. Even when she opened up her eyes a crack, her surroundings were so dark it was as if they were still closed. But, she could still feel the dense miasma on her skin.

Camilla lay still, blinking in the darkness. Then, suddenly, she jerked herself upright vigorously.

– Just where am I...!?

Her feet were cold and numb. The back of her dress felt wet now that she had raised herself up as well. Actually, she could feel that her entire body was soaked through. But, it wasn't actually water. What she had fallen into was something closer to a swamp... And it hurt merely to touch it. It was like a marsh filled with liquified miasma.

Miasma was usually released as a sort of gas, travelling on the air. But when the miasma has reached a very high level of density, it liquifies instead. When this liquification solidifies into pure magical power, that's how a manastone is created.

In other words, this was a manastone vein, a place from which both miasma and manastones sprang forth into life.

– It wasn't a complete lie to say that it had withered somewhat.

Even if the manastones had dried up, this place was still rich with miasma. If it was left alone for another length of time, the miasma would become even more dense and begin to naturally form manastones again. If manastones began to be formed here once more, that would also be accompanied by violent natural reactions.

– So I was right, after all.

She wasn't wrong when she said that everyone should have escaped into the forest. As she thought that, Camilla felt a sense of self-satisfaction. On that note, what had happened to the others? There had been so many people on that street.

"Nicole! Anyone!? Is anyone there!?"

Crawling through the miasma that nipped at her skin painfully, Camilla cried out into the dark. Instead of hearing anyone calling back out to her, the only thing she could hear was another rumbling in the distance. The explosions from the manastone vein must not have stopped yet.

It was so dark that she could barely make out her hands in front of her. Camilla scrabbled around in that abyss, sweeping her arms out in front of her as if reaching for something.

"Nicole!?"

As her finger tips touched something soft, Camilla raised her voice. It felt like she touched a person. As she kept touching it, she felt a quiet moan from underneath her fingers. Was she touching someone's face? She gave what she assumed was the person's cheek a slight smack to try and wake them up, but when whoever it was beneath her woke up she slapped that hand away.

"Stop that... Where is this...?"

Camilla frowned when she heard that voice. She had heard it before, but the person in front of her spoke with a sharper tone than Nicole did. Her voice was quite low for a woman's as well.

"Who's there?"

"That was what I wanted to ask you."

Naturally.

○

Camilla had fallen deep underground when the ground had collapsed. There were pools of liquified miasma all over the place, as well as what seemed like tunnels leading out from the cavern they found themselves in.

She couldn't see where they had fallen from. Since they had fallen from the surface, she thought that she would at least be able to see some trace of light, but there was no hint of the sky above. Either they fell much deeper than she imagined or the miasma overhead was so thick that it blotted out the town above.