When she said she understood, he took out food from his inventory.

“If we go in that direction, there’s hardly any place to eat comfortably. It’s better to eat here and go.”

Saying this, he began crunching on biscuits that were food rations. When Anaïs stared blankly, one of his eyebrows shot up.

“Aren’t you hungry? It would be better to eat anyway.”

Instead of Anaïs’s mouth, her stomach answered with a growling sound. To make such an unladylike sound…. Her face instantly flushed red.

Roderick looked puzzled about why she wasn’t eating when she seemed hungry.

“I, I don’t have any food to eat……”

“Even if you’ve come up empty until now, you should have received supplies, so why don’t you have any?”

Anaïs absolutely couldn’t say it with her own mouth. An awkward silence flowed. She prayed that he would just let it pass without saying anything.

Roderick, who found the answer in the silence, spat out curses in a low voice.

“No wonder you were shot in the leg and nearly died.”

“……”

“A penniless beggar without even food. I’m really thinking I formed the wrong pair. Damn unlucky.”

He muttered to himself that it would be better to just throw away this round. At his serious appearance, Anaïs became dejected. Just when he laughed, she had hoped that she could get along well with him in the future, but now she couldn’t feel such a thing. The future looked bleak.

She was sitting on an empty wooden box looking only at her toes when something suddenly flew onto her lap. It was 3 food rations.

“This is the last thing I’m giving you. From now on, find things yourself.”

“……”

“What?”

When she opened her eyes wide in surprise, he frowned sharply and asked irritably. The irritable attitude wasn’t a problem for her. He had maintained that attitude continuously from the beginning until now.

Though he looked like he wouldn’t bat an eye whether she collapsed from hunger in front of him or not, he was unexpectedly kind. Anaïs was moved by his small kindness.

“Thank you.”

When she held back tears and gave thanks, Roderick let out a hollow laugh. He grumbled that though he thought she should naturally be grateful to him, he was worried about the future seeing her get emotional so easily.

“You’ll die first when we get to the citadel. No, will you die before that?”

Roderick’s harsh evaluation halved her gratitude. At his definitive words that she would die, Anaïs’s already drooping eyes drooped much further down.

She turned away from him to avoid showing her hurt feelings and opened the biscuit wrapper. When she took a bite, her mouth became dry. She desperately wanted water. But there seemed to be nothing around that could be used as drinking water. She endured her throat closing up and swallowed all the biscuits with dry saliva.

Then amazingly, her hunger disappeared instantly while her thirst also vanished. For a biscuit without moisture to eliminate thirst was logically impossible.

She gradually began to feel viscerally that this suspicious jungle seemed to be a completely different world from the places she knew. Actually, she had suspected something wasn’t normal from when strange letters suddenly appeared and disappeared.

When Anaïs finished eating the biscuits, Roderick immediately resumed walking. As he had warned, it was “rough terrain”—completely different from the paths they had taken so far. The two people walked precariously along cliffs and passed suspicious places that looked like monster lairs.

Of course, they also encountered monsters. But each time, Roderick wasn’t surprised at all and dealt with the monsters as if what should naturally come had come. He looked even more skilled than Harper or Mason.

How many times was he playing this game? Why was he playing it?

She suddenly became curious.

“Have you been playing this game continuously since you went missing?”

That’s why you know it inside and out, Anaïs asked. Hope sprang up like a small fountain that she might be able to survive if she stayed well by his side.

He revealed that he had already played this game through to the end several times, just as Anaïs had hoped. That was quite fortunate. While Anaïs was pleased, she suddenly noticed something strange.

“Why didn’t you finish the game and go home? Your father is waiting too…… Is there a reason you can’t leave?”

“It seems you weren’t lying when you said you work at a detective office.”

Roderick only made meaningful remarks and gave no more information.

Anaïs tried to guess on her own. There were only two conclusions. Either he wasn’t going back, or he couldn’t go back.

From what she could tell, there seemed to be something at the end. That probably referred to the ’rounds’ that occasionally appeared in text to remind her.

She wanted to press him more about the final round, but Roderick wasn’t a man who answered everything she asked. He was secretive and didn’t want to have more conversation with Anaïs than necessary.

‘It’s foolish to keep prying at someone who’s putting up walls, Anaïs. In such cases, you should step back.’

She recalled something Mr. Fred had once told her. She retreated with silence according to her respected boss’s advice.

Meanwhile, the first wooden box was discovered. It was an intact item that no one had opened. There were three boxes in total.

“Take care of your own items.”

Roderick coldly spat this out and immediately began breaking the nearest box. At his quick speed, Anaïs felt a sense of crisis and hurriedly picked up an iron crowbar.

When she struggled to open just one, he had already opened two boxes and finished organizing his inventory.

“Hurry up.”

Roderick urged her, saying it would be good to get out of this path before sunset. His crossed arms and disapproving gaze were a bonus.

Anaïs was doing her best too. She wasn’t trying to dawdle at all. She suppressed her resentful feelings and opened the box, putting her hand inside to grab an item.

One healing medicine. She was a bit disappointed it wasn’t the food she had hoped for. But fortunately there was more. She reached her hand further.

Eight bullets.

When she took out the bullets, Roderick’s eyes instantly sharpened. He coveted the bullets. She intuited this, and the servile survival instinct within her whispered to hand the bullets to him and gain his favor.

But what if he used these bullets to shoot her like Harper had? Anxiety offered the opposing opinion.

He already had a gun anyway, so having eight more bullets wouldn’t change anything, would it? While she pondered, Roderick uncrossed his arms and gripped the iron crowbar.

“If you’ve gathered everything, let’s move to the next point.”

Honestly, when he gripped the iron crowbar, she thought he was going to threaten her with it. Anaïs stroked her pounding heart and hurriedly chased after Roderick who had lost interest in her.

How long had they walked? A tremendous roar came rumbling. It was from the direction where they had been just a little while ago.

“What was that sound?”

Thinking another monster had appeared, the startled Anaïs approached Roderick and asked. The man who already knew what the roar was treated it as nothing serious and answered that it was just the ground caving downward.

“After time passes, everything disappears except the castle in the center of the jungle. That’s why we have to go to the castle.”

How could he say such a thing as if it were nothing, like saying ‘it’s raining today’? If they had stayed there just a little longer, wouldn’t they have fallen together with the ground?

Anaïs wondered whether he was bold, or whether something had broken in him as a human from continuing this strange game full of such pressure.

If not, the man who had seemed especially close to his brother wouldn’t glare as if he’d kill her whenever his brother was mentioned. Something must have happened with Harry. Anaïs speculated. Originally this kind of thing was what Mr. Fred did, but since he wasn’t here, she somehow ended up imitating him.

MONSTER APPROACHING!

What on earth had happened? Just as her thoughts were deepening, another warning appeared. This time too, Roderick shot and blew off the monster’s head first. It was no different from what he had been doing, and was even caught easily. Yet he looked full of dissatisfaction.

“What are you staring blankly at? Are your bullets too precious?”

At his irritated tone, Anaïs was startled. Roderick misunderstood that she wasn’t actively participating because she found the bullets precious. She explained that it was because she didn’t have a gun.

Roderick didn’t believe her.

“You should have one gun you received as basic supplies.”

“Yes. I did have one automatic pistol. A .45 caliber……”

“Then use that……wait, don’t tell me you handed that over too?”

Fortunately, he seemed to realize something midway. And he scratched his head irritably, finding her frustrating.

No matter how much he cursed her as a fool, Anaïs had nothing to say. She knew better than anyone that she had been foolish.

“A gun is no different from your life. Especially here! Do you hand your life over to someone else?”

If he hadn’t frowned deeply and opened his mouth wide, Anaïs would have almost believed it was the hallucination she always heard saying the same thing. How could someone completely unrelated say exactly the same words? It was amazing.

“Damn. Why did I pair with something like this? Rather than going to the end with a woman like this, it would be better to fall off a cliff and die, then start over.”

At his words that it would be better to die, Anaïs became desperate. She begged him to somehow show that she could be helpful.

“If, if you could just lend me one gun, I could somehow be helpful!”

He had several guns. From what she had confirmed, there were at least three. If he lent her just one .45 caliber among them, she too could kill monsters together with him.

Contrary to Anaïs’s expectations, Roderick was furious.

“Are you crazy? Do I look stupid?”