18.5

They hadn’t gone far when a silver-haired little girl in a white dress appeared beside her, silently following Yueye like a little sidekick.

White Radiance was still dressed entirely in white, just as she had been the last time she appeared, but her face had changed…

If White Radiance’s last attempt to imitate Yueye’s appearance in her previous life had made her seem like a dangerous being no one could touch, then her current appearance was more like that of an Eastern fairy… Her blue eyes looked like a boundless starry sky—impossible to fathom, yet brimming with power.

“You’re still softhearted, Master…” White Radiance’s deep-blue eyes flickered with hesitation as she spoke softly beside Yueye.

“What do you mean, I’m still softhearted? Why do you always know what I’m going to do, White Radiance? Did I go through something like this before…?” Yueye asked the little girl beside her. From the information White Radiance had just given her, Yueye could tell she must know something.

“…I’m sorry, Master. I can’t tell you.” White Radiance realized she’d let something slip again and hurried to apologize.

“…You’re so mysterious.” Yueye was completely confused. Ever since she’d changed into this body, she felt like people were always keeping all kinds of things from her.

“I can only say that what happened before is connected to your current state, wandering through the lower realm. But I can’t tell you exactly what happened.” White Radiance lowered her head apologetically, looking like she’d done something wrong.

“It’s fine. Knowing all that now wouldn’t help anyway. If I can’t do anything about it, I might as well not know…” Seeing how apologetic White Radiance looked, Yueye couldn’t help reaching out to rub her head.

“Thank you, Master… I’ll tell you when the time is right. Just believe one thing, Master! I would never hurt you!” White Radiance raised her little fist, her expression firm and resolute.

“…” Yueye said nothing. As things stood, what had happened before was completely meaningless. She didn’t know what awaited her in the forest before her, or who she even was now. A timeless philosophical question surfaced in her mind: “Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going?”

“Yueye, leave the party…” On the back of her pale hand, a few blue-green scales glimmered faintly in the night. Yueye paused over that option for three seconds, then pressed it. Just as she’d said before, the human she used to be was dead. Now, she’d been reborn.

Yueye glanced at the tree beside her, as if she’d known all along that something was there.

“You and your companions have been following me all this way. Aren’t you tired?”

Without warning, a water blade screamed through the air and sliced through a giant tree beside Yueye. Behind it, eight terrified eyes were revealed…

“Tss!” An insect’s shriek rang through the quiet forest…

The water blade sliced through the joints behind her, and in a single exchange, the enormous spider was left completely unable to fight.

Ever since Yueye had still been with the group, these giant-dog-sized spiders had been secretly following them, as if waiting for the right opportunity. When Yueye left the party, more than a dozen of them followed her.

These spiders weren’t very strong, but there were an astonishing number of them—more than a hundred. That was why Yueye hadn’t acted rashly while she was still with the group, afraid something unexpected might happen.

“With numbers like yours, you think you can hunt me down!? I’m warning you: you’re surrounded! Surrender at once…” The pride of the Dragon Clan erupted from Yueye’s chest. Her voice, edged with a dragon’s roar, made the surrounding trees rustle.

“Boom!” A massive explosion, thick with water-element energy, froze every tree within a 30-meter radius of Yueye solid…

“I only need three seconds to wipe you out…” Yueye’s blue-gold slit pupils glowed eerily in the night… like those of an apex predator…

Every spider on the trees within 30 meters of Yueye had been frozen solid. Sharp, orderly hexagonal ice spikes pierced straight through their bodies…

“Level-one monster slain: 17 Shadow Spiders. Reward: 850 points.” Yueye ignored the reward notification beside her ear. That many points were no use to her.

“A Dragon Clan girl? How interesting…” The beautiful woman smiled at the young man beside her, as if she’d just seen something delightful.

“I didn’t recognize her at first either, but she’s definitely no ordinary person. We’d better not provoke her. Just think about it—a being who can withstand the storm of world transfer with nothing but her soul.” The young man shook his head helplessly, seeming both surprised and exasperated by Yueye’s appearance.

“That collision between the worlds did a lot of damage to both of them. I imagine the creatures of The Void will start invading soon…” The woman’s eyes filled with worry as she spoke.

“Yes. Every collision of this scale causes enormous losses to both worlds. As this world’s guardians, we need to be fully prepared. The other world we collided with sent over its information after the impact. It was generous of them…” The young man sighed, as if something were troubling him.

“Information? That world is so much bigger than ours. They just gave it to us?” The woman seemed unable to believe it.

“They did give us information, but only the surface-level stuff. It’s useless to us on its own. It’s all bound to the children who came here from their world. Those children will be our weapons against the Void…” The young man’s eyes were full of worry. He didn’t know whether the other world was showing pity for the weak or had some other reason for giving them aid.

“What about their world? Don’t they need to worry about the Void?”

“Their world is much bigger than ours. It seems they don’t need to worry much about the threat of the Void. You can tell from the collision: they only took a few people from their world, while we lost almost half of our world’s energy.” The young man’s mind was elsewhere. What worried him most was the imminent Void crisis. He was staking everything on whether they could survive it on the children currently suffering in the forest… He’d even given them almost all the combat information this world had.

“The vanguard plan?” The words suddenly surfaced in the young man’s mind.

“Grow up quickly, children. If you don’t, we’ll all be swallowed by the Void.” The young man’s eyes were full of sorrow…