Time seemed to lose meaning as they floated through the endless, grotesque tunnel. Despite their levitation, Elvira somehow still managed to cling to Ben. At first, he found it annoying, but now he just ignored it.
Bored by the silence, Elvira finally spoke up. "Hey, my beloved, how's life in your old world?"
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Nothing interesting. Just a boring life."
"A boring life? That doesn't sound like the kind of place someone like you would come from," Elvira replied, her tone laced with curiosity.
In her previous lives, the books she'd read always depicted humans as living in utopias, standing at the top, creating all other species. Humans were practically gods.
Ben let out a dry chuckle. "Someone like me? Ha! Believe me, Elvira, I'm nothing special. A dime a dozen. Heck, a dime of a billion. Even if I died, no one would care. Nothing would change. The world would just keep spinning like I was never there."
Elvira's gaze softened. "Well, that's… kind of diabolical. I'm sure someone must have cared about you. I don't know much about human culture outside of what I've read, but even my kind—Aetheris, known for calculating gain and loss—value family bonds."
Ben snorted. "Family bonds? Is that what got you killed twice?"
"That's… different…" Elvira's voice faltered, her usual confidence slipping. She didn't need to say it aloud; she knew exactly what Ben meant. After all, it was her own blood relative that had betrayed her, pushing her into this cycle of regression.
The shift in her mood made Ben feel a pang of guilt. Not wanting to apologize directly, he sighed heavily. "Before I ended up here, I was just a construction worker."
"Construction worker?" Elvira tilted her head. "Isn't that a privileged position?"
Aetheris is civilization focused on magic, everyone there even toddler can use magic to create a small building, molding sand into rock is not that hard as long they have the mana for it. So for someone to be specialized in construction, they need to be really good at what they're doing. Not just in architecture. Each one have their own secret formula on creating unique material with special effect making highly sought after. Usually they will have a long queue that to good their service not only one need to pay exorbitant price they could wait for years.
Ben blinked. "Privileged? Uh, no. Where I come from, being a construction worker is bottom of the barrel. We barely earn enough to survive, let alone pay off bills. My life was nothing but waking up, working all day, buying some cheap beer, and scraping by. Rinse and repeat. It was a boring, dead-end life."
Elvira frowned, confused. "That's… quite bleak." She tried to process what he was saying, comparing it to her understanding of serfs—people stuck as servants forever, with no hope for a better life.
"Hah, tell me about it," Ben muttered. "People talk about changing their lives, but so what? If you're not born into a rich family, changing anything is like trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle."
"Camel? Eye of a needle?" Elvira tilted her head again, her curiosity piqued.
Ben waved it off. "It's just a saying. Doesn't matter. The point is, life back there sucked. And stop comparing me to the humans from your world. We're clearly not the same."
"Hmm… what about family? Or friends? Surely you had someone."
"Not really." Ben shrugged. "My parents passed when I was young. Friends? Sure, but they were just people I hung out with when I had time. Life gets in the way of anything deeper. Everyone's too busy trying to survive."
He smirked faintly. "Besides, who wants to hang out with a guy covered in dirt and cement dust all the time?"
"Cement?" Elvira's brow furrowed. "What's that?"
"Building material. Back in my world, we didn't have magic, so we invented stuff to make life easier. Cement, concrete, steel—you name it. But honestly, compared to what I've seen here, it's all junk."
He paused, then added, "Anyway, enough about me. Why don't you tell me more about this world? That's more useful than rehashing my boring past."
"Hmm… let's see… There are seven factions dominating this world—"
"No, no." Ben cut her off with a groan. "Spare me the politics. I'll figure it out as we go. For now, I just care about getting out of this worm."
Elvira pouted but relented. "Fine. What do you want to know, then?"
"You. Your world. Magic, mana, weapons—anything we can use to escape. Maybe I can come up with something using my creation system."
Hearing his words made Elvira's heart flutter, but she deliberately avoided talking about herself. "Magic? You're asking the wrong person. Every Aetheris is born with the innate ability to control magic."
"Wait, what? So, you're telling me everyone in your race is born with unique abilities and can use magic like it's nothing?"
"Exactly. Our unique abilities come from the high concentration of mana we're born with. Of course, not everyone has the same talent. Some are more gifted than others. For example…" She straightened up proudly. "I was born with an SSS-tier magic talent."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Of course you were. You wouldn't be royalty otherwise."
Her proud smile quickly faded into a pout, but she didn't argue. Ben wasn't wrong. In the Aetheris hierarchy, strength and talent were everything. Without them, her family would've been dethroned long ago.
"So, what can you do? Anything useful? Like, I don't know, imbuing items with magic?" Ben pressed, still clinging to the hope that she might have a way out of their predicament.
"No, at least not now." Elvira said with a pang of guilt.
"There it was, another secret. You say you want to be my partner even going around calling me your beloved, but in the end you still keep many secrets. Elvira… If you're really serious you should tell me everything."
"That…" Elvira wanted to say something but she hesitated.
"See, don't blame me for not believing you. It's not like we had a good first impression." Ben said with a gruff, then changed his focus, observing his surroundings.