Chapter 1097: 84. Request
"Haah... It’s been so long since I ate this many potatoes at once. I’m sick to death of the taste of those mud cakes."
After filling her stomach with a full meal, Marcie contentedly rubbed her little belly and leaned back on the stone stool, nearly falling over. She flailed about for a good while before finally regaining her balance.
On the other side, Muen was also contentedly rubbing his stomach...
Pretending.
In reality, the thing he wanted to do most right now was summon a cup of clean water and quickly rinse the earthy taste out of his mouth.
Too terrifying. This was the first time he had felt that eating could be such a terrifying thing.
He still could not accept that what he had just eaten was the potato he knew. That universal staple, dish, and snack that could be steamed, boiled, fried, or stir-fried—what exactly had to be done to it for it to turn into something this awful?
Even Ariel probably would not be able to stand it.
"What are your plans after this, young man?"
Grandma Meg really did hand him a cup of clean water.
"Plans?"
Muen thought for a moment. "I’ll walk around here and there, I suppose. After all, that little girl over there is right. I can’t keep freeloading on your food and drink."
"Hmph. Good that you know!" Marcie crossed her arms and nodded with the expression of someone pleased that a child could still be taught.
"Do you have a destination?"
"A destination? Not really."
For Muen, a fixed location was meaningless. As long as he could collect intelligence, anywhere was the same.
"Traveling casually? The Daylight Period is already more than half over, and you’re still this bold, young man."
The Daylight Period?
It seemed another new term had appeared—one that left people completely confused, yet was common sense here.
"You don’t need to worry about safety, Grandma. I’m very strong."
Muen revealed his solid biceps, making Marcie at the side roll her eyes hard.
"Then how about this? Since you don’t have a destination, Grandma will point you toward one."
Grandma Meg suddenly spoke.
"Oh?"
Muen raised his brow.
This mysterious big shot was actually taking the initiative to point the way for him? Then it should...
"Where?"
"Rabuya City."
"Rabuya? That name sounds a little familiar..."
Muen rubbed his chin, then looked suddenly enlightened. "Oh, I remember. That obscene—"
"Grandma!"
Marcie suddenly slammed the table and sprang up, glaring anxiously.
"You... What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing much. Since the young man is wandering around anyway, isn’t it good to point him toward a road?"
Grandma Meg smiled. "If you help someone, you ought to help them to the end."
"But... but why does it have to be Rabuya City? You clearly know I’m going there too..."
"Then isn’t that perfect?"
Grandma Meg clapped her hands, as if this were only some wonderful coincidence.
"You two are both going to Rabuya City. The journey is far and dangerous. Why not travel together, so you’ll have someone along the way?"
"..."
Before Muen had time to say anything, Marcie had already jumped up directly.
"How can that be? Grandma, look at this guy. One glance and you can tell he’s a lecher who relies on that face to seduce innocent, ignorant girls everywhere. If I go with him... wh-what if he does something improper to me halfway there?"
"..."
Muen said seriously after hearing this, "Actually, I’m a good man."
"See? All lechers say they’re good men before they bare their fangs!"
"..."
"Actually, I don’t want this either. After all, it is indeed a very risky thing."
Grandma Meg sighed. "But you insist on going to Rabuya City, and I can’t persuade you otherwise. As your grandmother, other than finding someone to protect you a little, what else can I do?"
"Then... then it still can’t be him."
Marcie wilted a little, but at this moment, her bad impression of Muen from yesterday still held the upper hand.
"Can’t it be someone else from the village? With your reputation, Grandma, Uncle Clay and the others..."
"Enough nonsense!"
Grandma Meg, who had always spoiled her granddaughter, unexpectedly became stern.
"Do you know what you’re saying? The Daylight Period is about to end. Everyone is busy rushing to harvest grain. Where would we still have manpower to spare as your bodyguard? Do you think an idle guard who won’t delay the harvest is that easy to find?"
Muen: "..."
So his position was an idle guard who would not delay the harvest?
"But... but..." Marcie’s eyes reddened slightly. Clearly, she was rarely scolded this harshly by Grandma Meg.
"This young man isn’t a bad person. I’ve lived this long, and even if I’m not good at anything else, I should still be fairly accurate at judging people. He will take you to Rabuya City. As for after you arrive there... go chase your dream. Grandma won’t be able to stop you anymore."
Grandma Meg gave another helpless, long sigh. Only after saying this did she turn to look at Muen.
"Young man, you’ll help, won’t you?"
"...What if I say I don’t want to help?" The corner of Muen’s mouth twitched. He was going to collect intelligence. Bringing a child along or whatever...
"Hmph!"
See? Even though his unwillingness should have been exactly what she wanted, he still got glared at.
Bratty children were way too hard to get along with.
"If you don’t want to help, Grandma certainly won’t force you. It’s only a pity for all my good intentions..."
Grandma Meg rubbed her chest. She looked extremely open-minded, as if she did not mind at all. But on that aged face, which looked as if a heart attack could strike at any time, her narrowed gaze kept drifting back and forth between Muen and the empty bowl in front of him.
"How pitiful... Grandma is so old, so pitiful... My child doesn’t listen, so pitiful... Even the guest I took in is like this. Truly too pitiful..."
"..."
Muen smiled helplessly.
"Grandma, you don’t need to do that. I’ll help. I’ll help, all right?"
Under normal circumstances, if someone morally kidnapped him like this, Muen would have long since thrown a black card at them and used the power of money to teach them how to behave.
Unfortunately, the power of money most likely would not work here. And more importantly...
The one asking him was still a mysterious, unknown big shot he had yet to see through.
No matter how he thought about it, refusing was not a very good option.
"I’ll safely take her to Rabuya City," Muen sighed softly. "I promise."
Thinking on the bright side, at least now he had a free guide. He did not need to wander around blindly. And unlike her grandmother, this Marcie was clearly filled with pure, transparent stupidity at a glance, very easy to fool. He should be able to draw out quite a bit of intelligence about this place.
"Then I’ll have to trouble you, young man."
Grandma Meg instantly became ten years healthier and smiled like an old fox.
"..."
...
...
After breakfast, noon arrived very quickly.
Or rather, noon arrived too quickly.
Muen sat in front of the door and calculated for a while against the sun in the sky. He discovered that although less than three hours had clearly passed since dawn, the sun was already hanging at the highest point in the sky.
This was abnormal.
The abnormality was not simply that the day only lasted a little over six hours, but that the shortening of the daylight was happening too rapidly.
Although he had not experienced an entire day yesterday, yesterday’s daytime had clearly been far more than six hours. That could roughly be inferred from the speed at which the sun had set.
In other words, the daylight here was decreasing at an extremely fast speed, and that speed had actually reached the point where bodily perception could detect it.
If this decrease had no end, then perhaps it would not be long before this place completely lost its daytime.
Was this the Daylight Period Grandma Meg had just mentioned?
Then was there also a so-called Night Period?
Polar day and polar night? But this place clearly was not an icy polar region.
"What are you doing?"
Marcie walked out with the backpack that had almost hit Muen yesterday, eyeing Muen, who was writing, drawing, and calculating something, with great vigilance.
"You wouldn’t be plotting something bad, would you?"
"According to your logic, a person who is truly plotting something bad wouldn’t show it. Since I’m being so open and aboveboard, I’m clearly a one-hundred-percent pure good man."
Muen casually wiped away the marks he had drawn on the ground with his foot. "Just doing a few math problems after eating to help digestion."
"You know math too?"
Marcie looked extremely doubtful.
"To be honest, I’m rather talented when it comes to mathematics. Especially in time management. Long-term training has already brought me to the peak in that area. I guarantee I won’t be off by even a minute or a second."
Muen patted his chest confidently.
"Oh. Then you’re quite suited to calculating farming seasons."
"Farming seasons?"
"You don’t understand? Right now, the Daylight Period is getting shorter and shorter, so the growth cycles of crops have been forced to shorten too. If no one calculates the sowing time, it’s very easy for a situation to happen where the Daylight Period has passed, but the crops still haven’t matured."
"If the crops don’t mature, then during the Long Night Period, they can only survive on mud cakes."
Marcie sighed. When speaking of these things, even she seemed to become much more mature.
"Is that so..."
The Daylight Period again.
And there really was a so-called Long Night Period.
Muen’s eyes flickered. It seemed this aspect was more or less the same as his guess.
The daytime here really was constantly shortening.
Because of that, even crop planting was extremely rushed. Just like the village before his eyes—such a thing had clearly happened last night, yet early this morning, the entire village’s labor force still seemed to have gone out to harvest crops.
And those potatoes...
Could those potatoes tasting so awful also have a great deal to do with this?
Muen raised his head and looked into the distance. That sparse forest was gradually swaying in the breeze. Scattered leaves fell from it with the wind, and many branches had already gone bare, as if they had already sensed the arrival of the endless long night.
Daylight.
Long night.
It seemed that this place was not simply remote and isolated from the world.
It seemed to exist entirely within a completely different space, with its own set of operating laws.
Yet, at the same time, this place did not appear overly different from the ordinary.
For example, the girl beside him. Although the fact that she was immune to his handsome appearance was very strange, she was indeed a vivid, ordinary girl. Those eyes were lively, with light in their depths, like a fledgling full of curiosity toward this world, preparing for its first flight.
"What, you don’t really have improper thoughts about me, do you?"
Noticing Muen’s gaze, Marcie quickly crossed her arms over her chest and said warily.
"Why are your thoughts so vulgar?"
Muen gave an almost imperceptible sigh and said helplessly,
"I wanted to ask when we’re leaving."
"Right now!"
Marcie patted her bag and raised her head proudly. "I’ve already prepared everything. What are we waiting for? We’re leaving now!"
...
After the two of them left, however, a stooped figure lingered for a long time in the small courtyard before the house, silently watching their backs as they departed.
"Marcie, my dear Marcie..."
Only after the two of them had completely disappeared from sight did the lonely old woman murmur,
"This chance to face the truth—for you, who have always pursued hope, is it a blessing, or a cruelty?"
"I’m sorry. Forgive Grandma. This is the only method I have."
She lowered her head and lifted her apron and trouser leg.
Revealing the leg that had always made her limp, the crippled leg.
But strictly speaking, that leg was not crippled at all. It was even far stronger than her normal leg.
Only...
Long, slender pieces of muscle, like a swarm of snakes, as if they possessed their own consciousness, were constantly writhing beneath the wrinkled skin.
Hideous beyond description.
"Goddess."
Meg did not know how long she stayed there. Only when the sky gradually darkened and night covered the entire village did she light a candle in the darkness.
Then, facing that bright candlelight, she murmured,
"Perhaps, back then, you should not have let me see..."