Just as he sensed they were getting close to where they had started, Sora's steps stopped.
Elena bumped her nose into his jacket. "Ow... What happened?"
Sora didn't answer.
He suddenly turned his head to the right.
A moment ago, while they were walking, Sora had heard a very faint sound.
Somewhere inside the fog, a breath slipping out from between someone's lips, a rustle, or maybe the sound of something crawling across the sand.
Even if it was only for a moment, whatever that thing was, it had made a sound.
Sora narrowed his eyes, looking in that direction as he answered.
"Something lives here."
Elena was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed.
"No, nothing does." She had laughed because she thought Sora was scared of the dark and imagining sounds.
"The first floor is a labyrinth-type floor. It doesn't have a single monster. If there were monsters here, they would've taught us that at school. Everyone would know. Everyone who died on the first floor of the tower died from getting lost, and even that was a long time ago. You know, it's been almost thirty years since the last time someone died on the first floor? The only danger is getting lost."
"How would I know that?"
"I was just saying it. I didn't actually think you'd know, sorry."
Sora didn't say anything for a while, but his eyes were still on the direction the sound had come from.
Then he took a step toward it.
"Wha... Sora! Stop!"
When Elena realized he had left the track, she lunged forward in a panic. She couldn't see anything inside the fog. She swung both hands at once toward where she guessed Sora was.
Her fingers felt around in the empty air, then rose higher, finding a spot much higher than the girl had guessed, right at the level of Sora's face.
Her outstretched index finger was about to go straight into Sora's eye.
Sora tilted his head slightly to the side.
Just as she was about to cry from fear...
thwack
Sora's hand came down on the back of the girl's head.
"Ow!"
"Calm down and wait for me here. And before you object, think it over once more. I might not be able to kill you, but I can definitely hurt you."
Elena pouted, rubbing her head, but she didn't say anything. She bent down, felt around blindly for the shoes she had dropped, and clutched them to her chest again.
Sora kept walking toward where the sound had come from.
According to what Elena had said, the tower got harder the higher the floors went. On every floor, the monsters got a little stronger. By that logic, a monster on the first floor, if one really existed, should be one of the weakest. Nothing more than cheap experience.
But that wasn't the real reason.
All of Sora's skills were sealed. The way to unseal them was probably to level up. The faster he leveled up, the faster he could get his old power back.
And if he could reach his magic abilities again...
Maybe he could even free himself from this summoning.
No matter how complex that circle was, in the end, it was still a magic circle. There was no spell that someone who had reached the eighth Circle in the world of magic couldn't solve. He just needed time and power, that was all.
Every lock had its locksmith.
Sora's feet moved silently across the sand inside the fog. Behind him, Elena sat on the ground, making plans to herself.
Even if Sora got lost, she could follow his footprints to find him.
As she thought about this, Elena noticed something.
Earlier, when her mother had asked, Sora had told her it was impossible for him to hurt Elena.
All of a sudden, Elena began to slowly wake up from the dream she had been living in.
Sora might have been summoned by her, but he wasn't a summoned beast.
Sora was a person. He could lie if he had to.
Even if he couldn't kill her himself, he could use someone else's help to kill her.
Elena couldn't help wondering whether Sora would stay in this world if she died.
If he stayed in this world, then all she was doing was holding Sora back. And if he would go back to his old world once she died, that wasn't exactly reassuring either.
After all, she didn't know what kind of world Sora had come from.
If Sora's world was full of peace and happiness, unlike this one, then once he got bored of sightseeing, he would probably start looking for a way to kill her and go back home.
An image appeared before Elena's eyes of Sora killing her, then returning to his drop-dead gorgeous wife and children and living a happy life.
Then the dark corners of Elena's brain stepped in on her imagination and built a new fantasy.
Sora went back to his previous world, threw himself into the arms of another man, a handsome blond with slightly tanned skin and blue eyes, and returned to his happy life.
"Heheheehehe."
Suddenly, Elena slapped herself and got her thoughts under control.
"Stop talking nonsense, Ele! Someone like Sora can't have a handsome blond boyfriend! Ahhh! That's not the point!"
Right then, Elena remembered a wizard who could summon knights from a manga she had read. Every knight that wizard summoned was already dead, and their last memories were cut off right in the middle of the battle before their deaths.
In the later chapters of the manga, the mystery was solved. Once the knights found out they had actually died, they lost their will to go back and offered their complete loyalty to the wizard.
Maybe Sora was actually dead too.
As Elena relaxed, as if she had found a way out for herself, she was unaware of a vampire far, far away, staring at her with glowing red eyes, relying on nothing but the direction of the sound waves.
"I need to kill this bitch at the first chance I get."