Sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Fear that made her spine freeze filled her at the sound of something’s scales brushing against the grass as it chased her.

In the distance, through the winding ravine, a valley black with death revealed itself. Ian would be somewhere in that valley, dried up without a drop of water due to magical contamination.

‘Please.’

Just a little more…!

As Evelyn was running toward the valley, dripping blood, just as she was about to completely exit the ravine. A presence so massive it made the hair on her body stand on end was felt behind her, and then her vision went completely black.

A damp and fishy smell that one would only encounter in a swamp stung her nose, and she felt slick mucus beneath her feet. Most likely, she was now with high probability….

‘Swallowed by the magical beast.’

Despite having prepared herself for this, her hands and feet trembled. Fortunately, amid the misfortune, the magical beast only kept her trapped in its mouth without sending her completely into its stomach. As Hezel and Ian had predicted, it seemed to be planning to safely transport her as a sacrifice despite being hungry.

Although when she played the game, she had to witness the miserable bait ending where Evelyn became the angry magical beast’s prey because Hezel attacked it.

‘It will be different now.’

…won’t it?

Evelyn hummed a tune to keep from going crazy in the dark, damp darkness. According to the information provided by Hezel, this magical beast that had swallowed her was currently moving with just an empty shell of a body, having hidden its core elsewhere. If they succeeded in capturing the beast’s body, they could find the link connected to the core.

In the end, this meant she had to endure alone in this suffocating mouth of the magical beast until then. Could she really trust only the official psychopath and sociopath of <Evelyn’s Manor>? Even though Hezel’s affection was approaching almost 90% after accepting the bait proposal, and Ian’s affection had also surpassed 60%, if a crazy situation occurred where Ian was suddenly replaced by a demon…

Bang! Her thought process, which was heading in an increasingly negative direction, was suddenly cut off by the darkness heaving. Evelyn, who almost rolled down into what was presumably the magical beast’s esophagus, barely managed to maintain her balance. If she fell beyond that, then everything would truly be over. With the male leads’ affection at nearly 100%, she couldn’t die so futilely here.

“Groooooar!”

Whether it had been caught in the trap Ian had set in the valley, the magical beast writhed and let out a long cry. In the violently shaking mouth, she desperately clung to the long fangs, determined to survive somehow. The occasional glimpses of the outside world helped her maintain her sanity.

And finally, when the magical beast spat her out and slumped its body onto the large magic circle engraved on the valley floor. A giant raven that dive-bombed from somewhere snatched Evelyn with its sharp talons.

“……!”

“That crazy!”

Ian, who was gathering up the magic circle that had bound the captured magical beast, and Hezel, who was walking toward Evelyn with a thick blanket, hurriedly looked up at the sky. Ian immediately employed his magical power, abandoning the unconscious magical beast as Evelyn’s figure rapidly receded into a distant dot.

“Guard that well.”

“Wait. I’m coming with… Hey! Tower Master!”

Ignoring Hezel’s desperate call from below, Ian rushed toward the sky at the speed of light. He could see the back of the raven flying at a terrifying speed toward a rift that had risen above the mountain range. Evelyn’s face, precariously dangling from the giant raven’s front talons, was on the verge of fainting.

The lightning created by Ian striking the raven and Evelyn falling through the gap in the rift happened almost simultaneously. Without even glancing at the raven that turned to ash and scattered, Ian maximized his magical power.

He immediately flew toward Evelyn, who was falling toward the rift, but missed her by a split second.

“F*ck.”

He, whose emotions had almost worn away after his contract with the devil, felt anger so strong that his vision turned red for the first time in a long while. As Ian prepared to immediately jump into the rift after Evelyn, the voice of a sage who had devoted his life to studying rifts brushed past his ear.

“The Tower Master must never go near the rift. Even approaching the rift will likely cause you to gradually lose control over the demon who brought the demonic rift, resulting in a high probability of your body being completely taken over.”

That’s why all kinds of elaborate spells were placed at every entrance to prevent him from leaving the Tower whenever the demon took possession of his body. Unless he could deactivate the magic circles he had designed himself, he could never leave the Tower. Of course, this penalty applied only to that one person who was the master of the Tower.

Later, when the demon learned the truth, it raged furiously and tried to kill every living being in the Tower. But even that failed because of the sealing magic circles Ian had engraved on his body and the control of all passages in the Tower by the empire’s foremost sages working together.

The only living beings the demon could kill without interference were the prisoners regularly provided by the imperial family. This meant that the only places it could freely access were the underground and the top floor of the Tower. Ian did not prevent the demon from k*lling prisoners to stop its rampage.

If he jumped through that rift now, all the time he had struggled with the sages to control the demon, and even Evelyn’s treatment, would all be for nothing.

But even so.

“Anyway, if I lose you like this, there will be no hope for this world going forward.”

That would be better.

He could feel the demon sleeping inside him awakening, as if resonating with the rift. Before jumping into the rift, Ian broke the magic orb he had shared with Hezel in preparation for the worst-case scenario.

***

Am I possibly screwed right now?

Evelyn, opening her eyes in the black ashes, looked up with trembling eyes at the two moons hanging in the sky. Setting aside their abnormally large size which covered half the sky. She had never seen such blood-red moons hanging side by side in her life.

Where am I? Who am I? She never thought she’d sincerely use these lines in this situation. An intense chill penetrated between the folds of her thin clothes, making her afraid to get up. Fearing her face would freeze in the cold, Evelyn rose as quietly as possible.

The place where she had opened her eyes was a forest on the verge of turning into black ashes. A forest where bizarrely twisted black trees grew in winding patterns. For some reason, just looking at those trees made her nauseous.

‘I was definitely kidnapped after being caught by some crazy raven…’

She remembered being sucked somewhere as she fell. She thought she might have glimpsed Ian flying toward her at the last moment, but she wasn’t sure.

‘Where on earth is this?’

It was seriously abnormal from those two moons hanging in the sky to simply call this land contaminated by magical energy. Given the circumstances, she had clearly fallen somewhere other than the continent.

‘Haha, no way. This couldn’t be the middle of the demon realm or some crazy development like that.’