Chapter 51: How disgusting

But now was obviously not the time to be thinking about any of that.

“Alice?” Aphrodite called out tentatively, her voice sounding especially hollow in the enclosed space.

There was even the faintest trace of an echo, but it was quickly swallowed by the surrounding silence.

“Alice! Can you hear me? Say something!” She raised her voice a little.

Still, there was no response.

All that remained was the dead silence after her own voice faded, and a certain… extremely faint, as if coming from all directions, rustling sound of something wet and slippery slowly squirming.

It was elusive, barely audible.

“She’s not here.” Aphrodite came to a conclusion immediately. “We’ve been separated. Was this aimed at her? Or me as well?”

An absurd thought suddenly popped into Aphrodite’s mind.

“It can’t be that the Drink Shop is giving its customers some kind of ‘Surprise Experience,’ right? Like an Immersive Dark Adventure or something?”

“If that’s really the case, the first thing I’ll do when I get out is make Bella buy that stupid shop and tear it down!”

However, as soon as that idea appeared, she squashed it.

This was clearly a premeditated attack. From the precise teleportation to the method of separating them, it all smacked of experience.

The top priority now was to quickly figure out where she was, then find a way to escape and locate Alice.

That brat had a bad temper, but she wasn’t a bad person. She’d better not really get into trouble.

Aphrodite tried to stand up, planning to first explore this dark space.

However, the moment she pressed her feet down, she noticed something was wrong.

The “ground” beneath her was soft and slippery, with nowhere to get any traction.

At the slightest movement, her whole body began to sink uncontrollably, as if she had stepped into a big, springy, and wet mire.

“What the hell is this place?” Aphrodite couldn’t help but complain.

She began feeling her way around with both hands and feet, probing the sticky “ground” and the nearby “walls.” The sensation beneath her fingertips was clammy and warm, making her extremely uncomfortable.

Aphrodite tried to find a relatively solid spot to get some leverage, hoping to free herself from the feeling of being stuck in a swamp.

After a careful round of groping, her right hand touched a slightly protruding spot in the darkness.

“Got it!” Aphrodite immediately latched onto the bulge, tightened her core, and tried to use it as a pivot to lift herself up.

However, just as she exerted force—

Something unexpected happened!

The “support” she had pinned her hopes on suddenly slipped away, as if it had been greased—or perhaps it was moving by itself—and with a swift motion, it slid right out of Aphrodite’s grasp!

“Ow!” Aphrodite’s strength instantly failed her, and she fell heavily back into that pile of soft sludge, splashing up even more cold, slippery slime.

“Damn it!” she cursed, a nameless rage flaring up, but it was quickly suppressed by a sense of strangeness.

Aphrodite realized, belatedly, that something was off.

This made no sense.

How could a fixed protrusion slide away? Unless… it wasn’t fixed at all—or even… it was alive?

And this time, after falling, Aphrodite distinctly felt even more cold, viscous fluid sticking to her clothes, and the sweet, metallic scent in the air grew stronger.

She instinctively touched her damp clothes, and her fingertips were met with an intensely uncomfortable, sticky sensation.

It was mucus.

Could it be that she’d fallen into…

As if to confirm Aphrodite’s increasingly ominous suspicion, the “ground” beneath her suddenly began to writhe violently and rapidly, without any warning.

The feeling was unmistakable, like a gigantic worm twisting its body beneath her, trying to fling her off.

“Waaah!” For the third time, Aphrodite completely lost her balance, letting out a startled cry as the force flipped her over, sending her sprawling in a sorry heap onto the “ground.”

“Enough already! You really think I’m that easy to bully?!”

The constant torment and this absolutely disgusting sensation finally pushed Aphrodite’s anger beyond her caution.

“I don’t care what the hell you are—messing with me is your bad luck today.”

She stopped trying to reason with the slippery, bizarre “ground” or struggling to keep her balance. Instead, with a single thought, the now-familiar power within her began to flow with precision.

During those boring days in the mansion, Aphrodite hadn’t spent all her time doing nothing.

Besides the few daily routines she had to do,

As long as she had a free moment, Aphrodite would study the powers of her current body.

After all, if something happened one day and she didn’t know how to use this body, she’d be done for.

Better safe than sorry.

She couldn’t rely on Bella for help every single time.

Aphrodite did have her pride, after all.

With every step she took and with her experience in the forest, Aphrodite, who was already highly accomplished in magic, gradually gained precise control over the Holy Light power within her.

She’d even managed to recreate some of her old spells by manipulating corruption.

A gentle but exceptionally stable buoyancy instantly lifted her body.

Aphrodite’s body seemed to lose its weight, rising steadily into the air, her feet leaving the ground, finally breaking free from the suffocating, slippery surface.

At the same time, she impatiently raised her right hand, palm up, and recited in a low voice the spell she’d constructed based on her understanding of energy’s essence: “Helligr Logi (Holy Flame)”

Using the method for conjuring magic fire, Aphrodite had discovered a different way to channel it.

A pure, scorching flame burst into life in her palm, like a miniature sun born in darkness, instantly sweeping away the oppressive, thick shadows around her.

It illuminated the area around her with brilliant clarity—the light even stung her eyes, which had grown used to the dark.

By the warm, bright fire flickering in her palm, Aphrodite finally saw the environment she was in.

She hadn’t fallen into some kind of “jelly” or “slime” at all.

Aphrodite had fallen into a…

Nest woven from countless thick and thin, slowly writhing, dark pink tentacles, their surfaces glistening with sticky mucus!

These nauseating tentacles twisted and tangled together like a swarm of living serpents, forming the “ground” she’d landed on and the enclosing “walls” all around.

Those “protrusions” and “support points” she’d thought she’d found were actually just the tips of these living tentacles!

Everything she had touched, sat on, or fallen against just now was made up of these living, mucus-secreting, autonomously moving tentacles!

Wherever the light reached, even more tentacles seemed disturbed by the sudden intense light and heat.

Their squirming sped up, making the wet, slippery sounds much clearer.

Some tentacle tips even lifted themselves in alert, like sensors detecting prey.

They all turned in unison toward Aphrodite, who floated in midair, holding a flame aloft—an obvious beacon in the darkness.

Aphrodite hovered in the air, gazing down at the writhing, pink, viscous “sea” beneath her.

The blue of her eyes reflected the flickering firelight and the bizarre scene before her. Her mouth twitched uncontrollably, and she finally spat out a line thick with disgust.

“How disgusting!!!”