"What the hell is that thing?" Anna asked.
"I don't know, but don't let it see us," Goon-woo said.
Each of us was gathered behind the dining room doors, which were barely open so we could see outside. At the entrance to the cult, there were several men, in addition to the elders and the cult leader, who seemed to be discussing something with one of the men, while the others carried boxes toward a carriage.
"Look! The boxes are full of the crystals I absorbed last night," I said, pointing to the boxes the men were carrying.
"Stop looking at that and pay attention to that thing!" Clare scolded me, giving me a hard slap on the head.
I held my head in pain before looking outside again. In front of the carriage, there was a large white creature on all fours that seemed to be carrying the things inside. None of us could help but look at it with disgust; we were used to seeing horses pulling the carriage, not that thing.
"Hey, Conan, you used to pay more attention to the books on the farm. Have you ever seen anything like this?" Ghislaine asked me.
"No, they didn't say anything about a creature like that," I replied, shaking my head.
It seems that my answer only frightened them more, because they pushed me back to hide even further from the creature's gaze. Something I didn't understand, since it doesn't seem to have eyes.
"What are you doing here?" someone said from behind us.
Hearing the voice, we all let out a loud scream. Wanting to escape, we pushed each other and fell backwards out of the dining room. We looked up only to see that the one who had scared us was none other than Ryna, the oldest girl I had spoken to in the last few days.
"Don't scare us!" we all shouted at the same time.
We instantly realized our mistake, covering our mouths to look behind us. What we feared had come true, for now the creature was 'looking' at us. Ophelia, who was talking to one of the men, gave us an annoyed look before she seemed to realize something and smiled at us, starting to snap her fingers at the creature, which began to approach.
None of us wasted any time and we ran off in different directions, without looking back. I only stopped when I reached the back of the sect, a part that Ophelia wouldn't let us go to because there was a garden that she herself tended.
After looking back and seeing that only Della and Clare were there, I collapsed, falling to the ground completely exhausted.
"I'm... tired..." Della said quietly, falling to her knees on the ground.
"Yes, we've never run so much since the snake," Clare replied, sitting down next to me as she wiped the sweat from her brow.
"It seems that Della doesn't have as much stamina as we do. Is that normal for magicians?" I thought as I looked at the flowers in the garden next to me.
Now that I looked at them, I could see that the garden was huge. There were also several types of flowers in different colors. As I looked at the flowers, I didn't notice that Della and Clare had come to stand next to me.
"I see why the cult leader won't let us come here," Della said, her eyes lighting up.
"I agree, it's beautiful," Clare nodded.
Della seemed to forget that we were forbidden to come here, as she got up and started walking through the garden, picking some flowers from the ground.
"I hope Ophelia doesn't notice," I thought, seeing that Clare was also picking some flowers.
They were both walking deeper into the garden, so I decided to follow them while keeping an eye out for Ophelia. When we got to the center of the garden, we saw several more flowers, bigger than us.
"Ah!" I screamed as I felt something bite my leg.
Looking down, I saw that a plant with a mouth had bitten my leg, so I kicked it away from where I was standing. Claire and Della seemed startled by my scream, as they turned around and looked at me angrily.
"What's wrong with you?" Claire asked.
"That thing bit me!" I replied as I looked at the bite on my leg.
"It's not poisonous, is it?" asked Della, frightened, as she came closer to look at my leg.
"Poisonous...? Could it be poisonous?" I thought, even more frightened than they were.
Luckily, my leg didn't look any different in color or anything, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Even so, we decided to leave the garden, not wanting something to bite me and this time be poisonous. After a few minutes, we reached the entrance to the cult; it took us so long that I was surprised at how far we had run.
When we got to the entrance, we didn't see it. The place looked abandoned, except for the laughter coming from outside. So we decided to tiptoe closer, not wanting the creature outside to realize we were nearby. But none of us could help being surprised to see that everyone else was close to the creature, even on top of it.
"What's going on?" I asked Niko as we approached.
"Oh, how long have you been there? We thought you had run away," he said when he saw us. "That thing wasn't so bad, they even helped us climb on it."
I looked at the creature, seeing Isolde, Goon-woo, and several others on top of it. The others were also looking at it, petting it, or trying to climb on it.
"Anyway, I'm not getting on it," I thought, feeling less afraid than before, but still keeping my distance.
After a few hours, the men left, as did the creature, which we discovered was another homunculus. When we discovered this, we were all amazed; we had seen one recently, but this one was very different from the previous one, larger, stronger, and, above all, less disgusting.
It seems that we were the only ones who didn't know, since the others didn't even give it any importance. This was in contrast to the bags and bags full of coins that even Ophelia smiled at after seeing them.
"We sure got a lot of money after selling that," she said, with a big smile on her face.
"That's right, leader. With this, we can invest more in the growth of our students," said an old man.
"In addition to investing in other things for the sect," replied another.
Everyone looked so happy that we could even see saliva dripping from their mouths. Even some of us were excited after seeing so much money.
"Did you get that much money after going to the dungeon once? If we went to one, would we get that rich too?" Anna asked.
"I don't know if we'll get that much money, but I'd like to go to one," I thought as we walked behind the adults.
Ophelia was walking in the other direction, toward her office, before letting out a loud angry scream.
"Who was in the garden!?"
Claire, Della, and I were even more scared than when we first saw the creature, running into the dining room trying to hide.