Lillian wiped her forehead, breathing a sigh as she leaned her back against a crumbled wall.
"Man... Maybe I shouldn't have ran away without saying anything..."
Right after Marionette took her inside her bedroom, Lillian managed to break free and make a dash outside.
Under any normal circumstances, she may have allowed the woman to have what she wanted, but this wasn't one of those scenarios, especially when she was able to notice a subtle glow in the corner of her room.
She couldn't allow herself to be teleported, thus leading to her escape, which she... Almost didn't succeed if it wasn't for the fact that Marionette hadn't been taking it seriously in their chase.
She scratched the back of her head, "Should I... Have said that the glow was a teleportation spell?"
If she recalled correctly, the split second after the teleportation spell had gone off, the woman had a rather... intense look on her face as she was swept away by the teleportation without Lillian.
"She looked hella pissed..." She pushed herself off the wall and wandered in a direction.
She didn't know why, but she felt almost sad as she remembered the look in the woman's eyes.
She sighed and shrugged, "Probably abandonment issues..." She rubbed her chin as she peeked out from a corner.
'Did the game say something about her past?'
She can't really remember these days.
As Lillian was thinking this, her ears twitched at the sounds of a distant whistle in the sky. Curious about the sound, she tilted her head up before squinting.
What she found was a speeding missile darting towards her.
She widened her eyes.
"Not again!"
She quickly summoned her newly acquired leather boots, Swiftsteps, to run and teleport out of the way.
Fortunately, unlike last time, she was able to avoid taking serious damage. However, she was unable to dodge it completely and was swept along by the edges of the blast radius.
Lillian flew forward before folding her body into a roll.
Skrrr...!
Her body bounced a couple of times before slowly coming to an end, eventually rolling into something.
Lillian slowly pushed herself up, groaning.
'I thought Mirage were dealing with the missiles... What happened?'
"Whoever said I love explosions are so dead-wrong..."
Getting into a crouch, she looked to the side before flinching and falling back onto her rear.
What she found was the pale face of a severed head.
She slowly raised her gaze, finding both heads and bodies stacked on top of one another.
And with all of them stacked on top of one another... Made for a rather disturbing hill of corpses with streams of blood still leaking from every lethal wound inflicted on the deceased.
Eventually, Lillian's gaze made its way to the top, finding a dark and tall cloaked individual with a single-edged silver blade.
Lillian froze as they turned around; however, she relaxed a bit after finding out who it was.
"Mister Roselle!"
The robotic man, Marek Von Roselle, pulled down his hood and stared down at Lillian, tilting his head slightly at how casually he referred to him.
However, if one were to be able to read the expression of a still mechanical face, they would find shock.
"Y-... You remember me...?" He muttered in a glitched and low voice.
Lillian tilted her head, getting up from the bloodied ground and onto her feet, "Yeah! I remember our talk about how you hoped Marionette has been treating me well, so and so... You remember that?"
"..."
Marek leapt down from the hill of corpses—
Thud!
—And landed in front of Lillian before staring her down again.
His robotic eyes swerved and spun, making strange mechanical noises as they moved, which slightly discomforted Lillian.
He then leaned in and began scrutinising Lillian's face. After a few seconds, he muttered:
"H-... How?"
Lillian's face twitched. She slowly leaned away from the face of the mechanical man before asking in an uneasy voice:
"Could I... Ask what you are referring to?"
She didn't know why, but she could feel her body sweat the longer Marek continued to stare down at her.
It was... Almost like she was scared of the man.
Although she knew the man was a seasoned assassin, capable of killing a large majority in the world, with the hill of corpses being evidence, she wasn't sure why she was suddenly trembling.
Could it be her body knew something she didn't?
Eventually, Marek leaned away, ending his scrutiny of Lillian's face.
"N-... Nothing... H-... Have you seen my daughter?"
Lillian gulped, "Uhm... I did, but she was teleported to the underground shelter."
"Is that so—"
As soon as Marek's words left his mechanical voicebox, a sudden rumble appeared on the ground, shaking the cobblestone.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Lillian stumbled, watching as the ground cracked and tore apart.
Was it an earthquake?
'No... There isn't anything like that in the academy realm!' Lillian avoided the cracks in the ground, trying not to stumble and possibly trip over the appearing crevices.
Marek was doing the same, except with much greater elegance than Lillian.
This continued on for a while.
The buildings around them that hadn't yet been fully destroyed by the missile shower crumbled, breaking apart and crashing down.
Marek, who was meticulously watching what was going on, noticed something in between the cracks. He dashed towards Lillian, who had discovered a guard trapped under rubble.
The white-haired girl grabbed onto the man's hand, pulling him out and wrapping his arm over her shoulder.
Fortunately, for her, the weight training she had been doing with Marionette had proven rather useful in carrying the unconscious man.
Unfortunately, it proved rather difficult to carry the man to safety with her current predicament.
'Crap... Where do I go?'
The terrain had become completely uneven, jagged, and looked more like an obstacle course rather than a street.
She groaned internally, trying to find a path to safety before feeling the weight on her shoulder disappear.
Stiffening and even fearing that she had somehow dropped the man, she looked back, finding a robotic man with the soldier she was just carrying.
Marek—upon reaching Lillian—picked her up like a sack of potatoes before swiftly leaping across the rocky and unstable terrain that continued to shift around.
Once they reached flat and even ground, Marek roughly dropped Lillian onto her stomach, causing her to groan and unconsciously recall how similar the treatment was with a certain someone else.
As she was going to get back up to her feet, the ground shuddered once more, except this time...
Something else happened besides destructive cracks in the ground.
BOOM!
Lillian widened her eyes as something bursted from the ground.