Reincarnated As The Heroine?! I refuse!

14: Fear | 2 |

Raize growled in realization. "Its absorbing our very own essences....!"

Ulla involuntary escaped a gasped. She was feeling even more terrible now, as well as the gnawing feeling of devastation due to her uselessness.

A painful silence took over.

"Hmm... Your essence really does make me feel so good~" 

"You feeling alright?" Lea asked, her expression softer. It seemed the effect of [Nightmare Prison] was not very effective on her afterall.

"You tell me!" Bright said with his beaming face.

With his response, Lea unconsciously broke into a relieved smile. "You really make people worry about you...." She said quietly.

Noticing their progress, Raize simply said, "Celebrate later. What shall we do with that guy? I'm useless right now. I can't use my illusions with a limited supply of essence."

"If you don't mind, I'll have you guys fight. I can provide you three with essences in return." Suggested Lea, moving to the others' back, farthest away from the queer youth.

"What? Why would you do that?!" Ulla asked, her voice came out a little louder.

Raize turned to gaze at Lea. He seemed to have a thought of what she was planning, but for others' sake, he bothered to ask. "Another testing?"

Lea cracked a small smile at Raize. "Remind me not to get close to you if I want to keep a secret."

He chuckled at her response. At the same time, Ulla felt relieved that the reason was that they weren't going to lose after all. But simply because Lea was confident they would win that she would use the situation as a testing ground to another of her curious experiments. "Alright. I understand. Bright, stand up already!"

"Geez. And here I thought you were looking so passionately with me earlier." Bright said with a playful wink. Although his wounds weren't completely healed due to the pain residue, he could start working his body again. "Anytime."

"Fire it away, Lea." And as Raize said so, Lea closed her eyes to feel every essences in her surroundings. She could see plenty of them as always, like they never really get used but rather only going through. Her essences never seemed to be within her at times, but when she summoned anything at all with her mind, it was doable. 

With that thought, she felt she was starting to understand more what essences really were. She would have to do more experiments to prove her understanding to be true, however.

And thus, with her thoughts, she channeled tube-like links that connects each of her companions to her. Burst of essences surging through the tubes made their way to the appropriate end-connectors. As this occurred, the three of them thought of boundless possibilities that wouldn't normally be possible.

"This is what you would call queer." Bright offhandedly said. "I never knew myself to be brilliant."

"Oh? I'm amazed you even know how to properly evaluate yourself." Said Raize with his deadpan expression.

Bright simply groaned at Raize's sarcastic remark. Without the other two's notice, Ulla was already using up thousands of essences to summon monstrous plants out from the ground. With intricate control, she weaved series of silent commands to the thorny vines with mouths at their ends. A flower could be seen spraying gas in one corner.

The sight was unbelievable that everyone but the people on the podium were struck silent.

Noticing the plants, Bright rolled his eyes, and muttered, "...Girls..."