Chapter 374. She Fell Into The Gorge, But I Saved Her (Part Of The Manipulation Again)

Rex didn’t stop any of this from happening. He stayed near the back of the formation, visible but not engaged.

Two constructs came straight for him. He sidestepped the first with a movement that looked like instinct.

He caught the second by the wrist with telekinesis at two-percent output, stopping its momentum completely, holding it still for a moment before walking around it and letting it fall apart on its own.

"Rex," Apollo called from the bridge without looking back. "West wall, two coming your direction."

"I’ve got it," Rex said. "Keep your eyes forward."

"Got it, buddy!"

He kept watching Nerith after Apollo just interupted him.

The constructs on the left flank, held at bay by Aisella’s barrier, had been instructed through the same channel that had summoned them.

’Push but don’t close. Apply pressure. Move the target.’

They moved Nerith sideways along the edge of the gorge, not quickly or dramatically, but steadily—one step at a time—as the barrier shifted and Aisella adjusted her efforts repeatedly. Nerith’s footing was solid, her nature affinity providing stability on the uneven ground.

However, she was focused on the battle, her attention on Aisella and the advancing constructs, and she failed to notice the ground behind her.

"Aisella, the eastern construct is flanking left," Nerith said, her channel reading the terrain faster than her eyes could. "If it gets past the barrier edge—"

"I see it," Aisella said, already adjusting. "Hold your position."

"There’s another one below us on the wall."

"Nerith. Hold your position."

Nerith stepped back to give Aisella more room to work, then took another step, tracking the construct below with her channel instead of her eyes. Rex saw the moment it was about to happen four seconds before it did.

The gorge edge on this side had no clean drop.

The ground angled away gradually and then simply stopped, and in the low-angle light of late afternoon the transition was nearly invisible. Her trailing foot found the lip of the angle. Her weight shifted onto it.

And then there was no more ground.

"AAGGGHHHH!" Nerith fell into the gorge, but she managed to grab the rock face on the way down.

Both hands finding a horizontal crack in the limestone. Her staff fell away into the gorge below.

"Oh no...! No, no, no!" Her fingers held, but the crack was already producing fine dust under her weight, and from the angle she was hanging, pulling herself up was not possible. "I should’ve stayed close to Aisella...!"

She looked down once. Then she looked up.

"Noooo...! Why did I have to look down?!"

"AISELLA!" Her voice came out sharp and scared, nothing like the controlled register she’d been using all afternoon. "HELLPPP!!!"

Aisella spun around. "Nerith—"

"I’m at the edge of the gorge...! Please help me fast...! I can’t—" Another section of the crack crumbled. "I can’t get back up from here by myself!"

"Hold on, I’m coming!"

Aisella moved toward her immediately, but there were two constructs between her and the gorge edge, and the barrier was the only thing keeping them there.

"..." Aisella glanced at Rex, knowing that he’s going to start locking in now. "Rex..."

"Let me..." he said, already dissolving the four constructs at the edge. One instruction through the channel, and they were gone.

"Rex’s coming for you, Nerith!" Aisella shouted while keeping her barrier around them so that no one could bother them.

’R-Rex...?’ Nerith was surprised to hear that Aisella just said his name.

Rex moved close to the gorge, and then he was crouching at the lip before the dust had settled, one hand extended down into the gap.

Nerith looked up at him.

"Rex... help..."

Her face was completely undone. Not just scared, but the particular kind of scared that strips everything else away, the fear of falling, of the ground not being there, of having reached for something solid and found it was not.

The leaves in her hair were trembling at a frequency Rex had not seen before; all the control she’d been applying to them since the waterfall released at once. And it reminds him of the dream in which she was being raped by him.

’Oh yeah... this is a golden chance indeed.’ Rex thought. ’With this... I fucking know that she will feel bad for having a thought that I was a bad guy, which is the truth, but still...’

’Useless knowing that shit when her desire level is not maxed out yet...’

"Don’t look down and hold onto my hand!" Rex shouted while trying to reach Nerith.

"I-I’m trying... please... hang on..." She reached up with one hand, the other still gripping the crack, and her fingers found his wrist. "I’m scared, Rex... I don’t know what’s happening to me...!"

"Forget about the dream and all bad things happening to you because those are going to be your biggest weakness and will be the reason for your downfall like this!!!"

"Ahh..." Nerith felt her eyes were wide open, seeing Rex’s expression look exactly the same as when she met him for the first time. ’This is... the real Rex...?’

’Who saves me back then...?’

Nerith closed her eyes. ’I’m sorry, Rex... I should’ve not thought any of those dreams were real...’

’I need to trust him... and it’s clear from this kind of situation!’ Nerith managed to get ahold of his hand. ’Rex’s hand... it’s warm... different than what I felt in my dream...’

Rex closed his hand around hers.

"I have you, hang on now," he said. "Don’t let go."

"B-but the rock is—"

"I know, I said don’t let go."

He pulled her up, the telekinesis carrying most of the actual weight, and she came over the lip and landed on solid ground on her hands and knees, breathing in the uneven way of someone whose body had been convinced for several seconds that it was about to fall and hadn’t fully received the update yet.

Rex stayed crouched beside her.

He didn’t stand up immediately or look back at the battle. He just waited at her level, one hand still loosely around her wrist, until her breathing started to even out.

"Rest assured... you’re on solid ground," he said. "Take a second to take a breather."

"I’m here to protect you as well," Rex said that intentionally to ruin her mind even further. "No one is going to hurt you anymore."

"Rex..."

Nerith pressed her free hand flat against the earth and held it there. Rex recognized what she was doing.

She was grounding through the channel, feeling the root system under the surface, confirming for the part of her mind that processed through nature rather than logic that the ground was real and stable and was not going anywhere.

After a moment, the trembling in the leaves slowed.

She looked at him. Her eyes were wet, and she didn’t try to do anything about that.

"You... were right there," she said.

"Yeah," Rex said.

"How did you—" She stopped.

The answer was in the question, and she was a druid who had been watching him work all day, and she already knew what the answer was.

"It’s one of your abilities, huh...?"

"I had it four seconds out," Rex said. "I was already moving."

Nerith looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone recalibrating something they had been certain about. Not grateful exactly, or not only that.

Something more careful than gratitude, the specific look of a person who had been holding a particular version of someone in their mind all afternoon and was now finding that the version had a gap in it where this moment was.

She had been so certain about his true nature.

The dream had been vivid, and her own reasoning in the forest had felt airtight, and she had built a picture of Rex from those two things and from every moment at the waterfall and on the path.

It had been a complete picture. It had its own internal logic.

And he had been right there to save her life.

Four seconds of advance knowledge, and he had already been moving, and now she was on solid ground with her hand in his instead of at the bottom of the gorge.

The leaves in her hair shifted from their trembling amber to something slower and more complicated, the same warm gold that appeared when the channel registered something it didn’t categorize yet.

"Thank you," she said.

It came out quietly, like it carried more weight than the words themselves.

Rex looked at her with the calm that she had described to Apollo as feeling like old growth, steady and deep and there before she arrived and still there after.

"Don’t go near edges when you’re tracking something underground," he said. "The channel pulls your attention down and you’ll lose the surface again."

It was practical. It was the kind of thing someone said when they understood how the thing worked, not when they were performing concern.

Nerith almost laughed. It came out as something smaller than a laugh, but it was in that direction.

"Yeah... that’s a real lesson for me, huh?"

"Yep, that’s the lesson," Rex said.

He let go of her wrist and stood, and she stood a moment after, and he looked back at the bridge where the last constructs were being taken apart by the rest of the group.

’I do need to stop thinking about that dream and moved forward... trying to at least get close to him and maybe do something for him as a sign of my gratitude.’

[Nerith Sylvarune — Desire Level: 75/100 → 85/100]

’Oh? That’s a high jump...’ Rex thought. ’Heh! Seems like it did work...’

’I just need to push her more, and I know that her body will still remember the pleasure...’

’It just has to wait more...’