"Nom… Nom… Nom…"
There was an awkward silence in the abandoned building as Levin stared at the little girl in front of him in confusion. He didn't know why he let this girl get closer to him. Hell, in a normal situation, he would be wary of a stranger no matter how old they were, considering it wasn't that rare for aliens in his world to use children as bait. Now that he was just being betrayed by Alex, this feeling should've been intensified. However, he couldn't muster the courage to tell the girl to fuck off or even kill her just like what that crow man told as the condition to advance to the next round.
No, the girl was too pure, too innocent for an event like this.
Moreover, the girl reminded him so much of someone important that he had failed to protect in the past, and a painful memory suddenly flooded inside his head. The way she spoke, how she widened her eyes in curiosity, her clumsiness, her messy eating habits—all of those little things reminded him of the girl he had failed to protect in the past, making it hard for him to turn around at the little girl in front of him.
"Sara…" He murmured unconsciously.
"Who is Sara, Uncle?" It seemed the little girl overheard his murmur. Well, that was easy, since those two were the only people in the building. "You've been saying her name for a while. Is she something important?" She looked at him with her big eyes full of curiosity.
Levin frowned a little, especially after seeing the crumbles of the food sticking to the corner of her mouth. "Clean up yourself first. Is this how you usually eat?" He chided gently.
The little girl blushed when she realized what Levin was talking about, turned her head around, and started cleaning her face as quickly as possible. "I am so sorry, Uncle!! Usually, I am not this messy, but your food is so good!"
Her words made Levin stunned instantly. After all, what he gave was a normal ration from the military that should not be delicious. So, for the little girl to think that it was delicious, he couldn't imagine how harsh the little girl's living conditions were in her world.
"So, who is Sara, Uncle?" The little girl asked once again.
"Sara…" Levin's gaze wandered far as memories sipped gently into his head. Then, a soft, genuine smile suddenly formed on his face, making the little girl gasp a little. "She was my fiancée. A cheerful girl who always thought the best of the world. It is just a pity that I failed to save her and was unable to be on her side in her last moment." The smile turned into a painful one as the memory of the girl's last moment rushed into his head once again.
"… Is she the regret you have that makes you decide to join this cruel game?" The little girl asked, whispered.
The silence fell right after the question was thrown, and it was so loud, telling the girl instantly the answer to it. Well, of course, Levin's motivation wasn't just his fiancée. Whenever he remembered about the comrades who died in his last operation, he could feel his heart ached. After all, for about twenty years he was in the military, he had never lost any members of his team, so this was a pretty huge blow for him.
In the end, Levin shook his head quickly and asked, "What about you? Why do you want to join this cruel game? What is your name, by the way?"
"Oh! I am Mira, and I am a priest trainee! Nice to meet you, Uncle!" She bowed politely, her silver ponytail hair bobbed up and down cutely. "As for why I decided to join this game… Well, even though I died peacefully, I still regret that I cannot help my priest sisters providing food for the other refugees. You know, there are a lot of natural disasters in my place! A flood that was far taller than you, Uncle, and mountain explosions too, were common in my place! It is a bit strange to live on the boat, but there are not a lot of lands available anymore!"
Just from this explanation alone, Levin could understand a lot of things that happened in the little girl's world. First, just like in his world, there was a major thing happened that was threatening to eradicate human beings in her world. If in his world, it was the presence of cannibalism aliens who became the problem, in her world, natural disasters seemed to occur pretty often there. In hindsight, Levin felt that he was luckier since humans in his world still had the ability to fight the aliens, whereas in her world, they couldn't do anything since it was the mother of nature who took them down.
However, there was one thing that Levin caught in her explanation.
She died.
He didn't know how, but she also died in her world. Just the exact same scenario as him. Even though he could just brush it off as a coincidence and the sample was still too little, his instinct told him that things weren't as simple as they looked like.
'Two people died before they came here. Is it a coincidence or do the other players have the same fate? If so, is there any involvement from the crow man in each world? But to control the fate of 500 people in different dimensions? That is a crazy ability that he has. I need to be careful here.'
However, he hadn't had a chance to think about it carefully as in the next second, an explosion suddenly happened outside of the building.
BAM!
Levin didn't know what happened, but his instinct kicked in quickly as he engulfed the little girl in front of him to protect her from the explosion while also finding the closest wall that was still intact to take cover and see what just happened.
"Psst." Levin hissed to the little girl, signaling her to stay quiet. "Don't make a sound. We still don't know how dangerous the person who made the explosion here is." The little girl nodded firmly, her face full of tension. Then, to Levin's surprise, she pulled out a small branch of a tree from the little bag she tied on her waist, and in the next second, the branch expanded instantly, resembling the shape of a staff that he imagined coming from a fantasy world.
'Yeah, I forgot that she is also coming from a different dimension.' He murmured lowly.
Right after that, he pulled the laser gun from its belt, and after switching it on, it transformed instantly with a neon color glowed in it. The little girl watched the scene curiously, finding the laser gun in Levin's hand fascinating.
However, Levin had no time to pay attention to her. Right now, he tried to peek outside cautiously, not wanting to give a hint of his presence to the person who just created an explosion. He believed that the person didn't know where he was right now and just charged blindly, which even though the display of explosion was enough to intimidate him, it was still far from being powerful enough to make him surrendering himself.
A second later, Levin was dumbfounded when he heard the shout coming from the other side of the building, announcing that person's presence so loudly.
"COME ON! I KNOW THERE IS A PLAYER HERE! COME OUT AND FACE ME, THE GREAT FIRE MAGE FROM THE ARONIA KINGDOM, GISTAR III!"