There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language — and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
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Caera Denoir's POV
Warmth
It's too warm and soft. Am I in my own bed? No, not even my favorite pillow feels this good.
Sniff, sniff
It smells so nice-where have I smelled something this pleasant before? The Convergence Zone, right?
Where am I? My slightly sleepy mind tried to open my eyes, but it was all in vain-it was too warm and comfortable to tear myself away from this feeling. I remember going down into the ancient tomb and that zone with the mirrors, yes, I remember... And then, then there was the bone zone with the monkeys and the huge bone wyvern, uhm.
So what's next? Lucius, Grey, and little Regis-zone, zone, zone, but which one exactly?
Oh, right! The snowy zone. My sleepy mind strained slightly, trying to recall more details. If I'm still in the snowy, cold zone, why is it so warm and soft?
Haaa
The eternal questions. Right now I'm having one of those dreams where I can control the dream, right? Is that why it's so warm?
As I thought that, my right leg shifted slightly upward and rested on something warm, and my hand gently squeezed something that was both firm and soft… soft and firm, something warm? My hand and foot... a familiar scent
AH!
My mind snapped awake.
That's it!
The snowy zone, Lucius, and the sleeping bag-my hand and foot, that strange warmth and softness. As soon as it all clicked, my eyes flew open and immediately froze at the sight of two bright spheres of different colors.
Bright yet soft violet and molten gold materialized as eyes, calm but with a hint of confusion, staring straight at me. Skin unnaturally white as milk made these beautiful, mesmerizing eyes even more expressive.
The face before me was so unfairly beautiful that I couldn't tear my gaze away from it. A slight bewilderment only heightened its allure. This face, with its perfect features, seemed impossible to belong to a real person.
I felt my cheeks and ears flush as the heat rushed to my head; I not only felt it but also saw my reflection in those beautiful eyes. In Lucius's eyes, my face, neck, and even my ears had turned so red that they could rival the brightness of my own eyes.
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would leap out of my chest at any moment; a numbness swept through my entire body so quickly that I only managed to open my eyes wider as my thighs clenched slightly and an intoxicating warmth flared up somewhere deep in my stomach, causing me to blush even more deeply.
The reason for all this?
Black hair with white flecks, like a constellation in the night sky, was scattered behind Lucius's back and lay softly on the floor, tangled, and yet... there was also my right hand, which lay on the back of Lucius's head, gently clutching his hair and part of his head-that was the source of that strange warmth.
Why am I seeing Lucius's face and hair from above?
While I was sleeping, did I climb on top of him and fall asleep on his chest?
The answer became clear when my leg tensed slightly and I felt something very warm against the inside of my thigh, something very close to my pussy. I knew I had a habit of hugging the blanket and throwing my leg over it, but for that to backfire on me...
But... he's still soft, so if I believe the books, is he in a relaxed state?
That big in a relaxed state? (A dragon's body isn't just for show, girl.)
I had to swallow the saliva that had risen to my throat.
"What the hell?" Lucius's calm voice snapped me out of my lewd thoughts.
"I-" I began, but what could I say? My thoughts began to jumble, forming a tangle of endless strange thoughts that left me frozen, my eyes wide open.
My blood ran cold when Lucius's white hand-soft, warm, and flawless-rested on my hand, which was tangled in his hair.
"Wha!?-" was all I managed to say, flustered, quickly unclenching my fingers and pulling my hand away from his head, jumping off his body abruptly and moving to the edge of the sleeping bag, accidentally brushing against him... him... with my pussy, causing a new wave of heat to rise within me. Clenching my teeth, too embarrassed to look at him, I tried to catch my breath.
It was unprecedented: I, the Highblood Caera Denoir, had crawled into the sleeping bag of an ascender, climbed on top of him in my sleep, and hugged him like a pillow, and when I woke up, I was turned on by it.
Damn! Damn! Damn! How embarrassing!
As if he weren't embarrassed at all, Lucius simply calmly climbed out of the sleeping bag, smoothed out his clothes and hair. "Well, your sleeping posture… is unique, but I'd prefer not to talk about it so as not to embarrass us both."
"I agree," I began hastily.
"I agree too," said a voice that was all too familiar.
My blood ran cold for the umpteenth time in the last few minutes. My head turned mechanically toward the little purple pup who was staring at me with a wolfish grin. "Did you like it? Well, his…" he paused for a second, and his grin widened as much as it possibly could. "... his manhood."
"What are you talking about?!" I cried out in embarrassment, quickly slipping out of my warm sleeping bag.
"Well, you were breathing so heavily that I could hear it even from 10 meters away," and with every word he spoke, I felt the heat rising up my face with renewed intensity. "Although... you probably didn't notice because of your 'interesting' thoughts."
Damn it! Damn wolf, you're making things worse!
"I… don't understand what you're talking about," I replied, trying my hardest to keep a straight face and coughing a couple of times to buy myself a few seconds.
"That's why you were breathing so heavily," he replied casually. "Poor innocent Lucius—he was almost attacked and eaten by a Highblood lady."
"Stop talking nonsense, Regis," I said in a calm tone, as if nothing had happened.
"Say that to your face."
"Stop teasing her, Regis," a familiar, calm voice suddenly rang out, causing the shadow pup to stop.
"When did Grey go outside?" Lucius asked, completely ignoring what had happened; there wasn't a trace of panic or confusion on his face or in his eyes.
"A couple of minutes before any of you woke up. He's over there now," Regis replied, stopping his teasing and simply pointing his paw slightly to the right of the entrance.
"Thanks," Lucius said, taking a step forward and disappearing as if into a zone of mirrors. I exhaled deeply when I realized that the one who had been making me feel self-conscious had temporarily left, giving me a chance to breathe calmly.
My gaze shifted to my soft hand, still warm from Lucius's body heat. I don't know what came over me-maybe I was still a little out of it-but
Sniff sniff
I brought my hand, which had been resting in Lucius's hair, up to my nose and inhaled that pleasant and strangely arousing scent
"Well, well, well," began a voice that sent shivers down my spine, and all thoughts of sitting here calmly vanished. My head jerked mechanically toward the purple puppy, who propped his muzzle up with a paw and looked straight at me. "How does it feel? I saw 'him' in the lava zone, so I can pretty much guess what you might have felt. Was it that pleasant? Heh, though looking at your flushed face and that panting, there's no need to ask."
I'll kill him, I decided.
Lucius Zogratis POV
Standing in front of the passageway that had already begun to collapse under the snow, I exhaled. My cold fingers brushed back my soft black hair and touched my hot, bright red ears.
It seems that, just like in my past life, my ears turned bright red when I was embarrassed.
I tried to calm down but couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. in my past life, I'd read a lot of fanfiction tagged with Grey and Caera, and I was a huge fan of Caera, so even though, thanks to the system-or more precisely, thanks to the power of my soul and intellect-I'd become more logical and could dismiss a lot or prevent it from affecting me, I still had certain thoughts I couldn't completely ignore.
And now there was a very dangerous situation. The first thing I felt when I opened my eyes was Caera's soft body on top of me, her hand tangled in my hair, her perfect, firm thigh resting right on my cock, and two firm, large breasts pressed directly against my chest.
This was dangerous! Very dangerous!
And when she opened her eyes and her predatory gaze and heavy breathing fell upon me, I realized that...
Damn, never mind
This wasn't in the original. I understand that she's a person with her own destiny and not a character in the book right now, but a plot twist like this? It was dangerous, but thanks to my high stats, I quickly put on my best poker face and didn't let a single fighter get the upper hand. I did it partly so Caera wouldn't get even more flustered-she was practically about to faint from embarrassment.
So… okay…
Breathe in, breathe out, Lucius. Breathe in, breathe out.
Let's just say that was fan service, and now I need to focus on where Arthur is and give Caera some time to think and catch her breath.
Her breath...
I enveloped myself in aether to protect my body from the cold and the sharp shards of snow and ice. I began walking along the path leading out of the tunnel. With every step, my feet sank deeper into this soft white drifts, forcing me to constantly use my hands to clear away the fresh snow.
Even with the endless supply of surrounding aether replenishing my reserves, I could clearly feel how quickly it was evaporating from my core due to the winds relentlessly chipping away at my aetheric shield. I had to slow my pace and take wide strides so the blizzard wouldn't knock me off my feet. The aether winds constantly shifted direction and altered the landscape, and with every new gust, they undermined my confidence in my ability to navigate.
"It's unlikely I'll be able to do anything here," I said, and with that, I simply sent a wave of aether toward Arthur and began to make my way back with slow steps.
The blizzard had already begun to fill the trench I'd recently dug, and I quickly found the vanishing passage to the dome-shaped shelter. By the time I returned, Caera had calmed down noticeably and was standing next to Regis, tightly wrapped in several layers of sleeping bags.
Caera stared at me and blinked slightly, looking a bit embarrassed, then shuddered.
"Just looking at you makes me feel cold," she said, trying to lighten the mood.
I looked down and saw that I was covered from head to toe in a thick layer of packed snow, even though I'd only been there for a little over ten minutes.
"Did you find anything out there? A pile of snow, for example?" Regis asked with a wolfish grin.
Gathering a thick clump of snow from my black-and-white hair and shoulders, I immediately threw it at the little shadow wolf.
"Hey!" Regis shouted, though his voice was barely audible under the snow. He struggled with all his might to free his tiny body from the snowdrift until Caera crouched down and pulled him out by the tail herself.
"Looks like we'll have to stay here for a little while," I said to Caera, brushing the remaining snow off myself.
Caera sighed quietly. "I thought so."
Walking back through the tunnel to the dome, I sat down in our makeshift camp and began to think. Thoughts about the best way to get through this zone and how to play our cards right never left my mind.
In my mind, I also simulated how much time we needed to spend in this zone so as not to leave too early or too late. Back in Maerin, I'd learned when the semesters started and ended, so part of my mind was always calculating how much time we needed to spend.
It was a bit of a constant mental strain, but if Arthur and I could get into the academy, it would be worth it.
As I continued to mull over our next steps, my gaze was drawn to Arthur, who had returned from his reconnaissance, looking more like a snowman than a human. Nodding slightly at me, he gave me a strange look-a mix of understanding and mockery-that made it clear I didn't need to guess what it meant; he'd woken up earlier, so he'd definitely seen Caera sleeping on top of me.
Sigh... what a strange feeling, just like my mom's look.
Looking away, I saw Caera rummaging through a pile of trash at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes lit up when she picked up a small object, which she soon put in her pocket, then went back to searching. After a while, she returned to the pile of sleeping bags we had laid out, carrying a handful of small bones and smooth stones.
"What are you doing?" I asked, though I already knew.
"Come over and see," she said, patting the ground next to her.
I walked over to where she was using a knife to scratch thin lines into a smooth stone until a rough hexagonal grid formed, then she began arranging a random assortment of stones and bones on two opposite sides of the grid.
"Is this, by any chance, a game?" asked Arthur, who had just walked over, furrowing his brow.
"Yes, it's a strategy game popular among the highborn," she explained, adjusting some of the pieces so they stood in the center of their corresponding hexagons. "During my ascents, I carry a portable board with me, but since my spatial ring is broken, we'll have to make do with what we have."
"Grey, can you play?" I asked, turning slightly, about to do something else.
"No," replied two voices, one male, one female.
Caera, realizing that the words had flown out faster than she'd had time to think them through, simply closed her eyes, took a quick breath, and said, "As far as I remember, before we dove into the Relictombs, you said you had exceptional intelligence, right? I'm curious what it's like to play against you."
Nodding slightly, I shifted my gaze to Arthur, who simply looked over at little Regis, and then, almost imperceptibly, his gaze lingered on the board. "I need to gather more aether for Regis."
"Tell that to your eyes… like little children." I rolled my eyes at the antics of these two idiots, but still sat down at the opposite end of the homemade game board. "Fine, but you'll have to teach me the basics."
× × × × ×
Inside the dome, each of us settled onto a folded sleeping bag, and the game board carved into the stone stood between us while Regis sat in Arthur's body, replenishing his aether. In front of me lay fragments of bone, each carved with a small image of a square, a line, a triangle, or a circle. Caera's pieces were smooth stones, with the same patterns as mine.
"And the shapes with lines are the attackers?" I asked; these lines-or rather, swords-looked as if a child had carved them.
"Yes," Caera pouted. "And that's not a line, it's a sword."
I leaned my head toward the board to get a closer look and said with conviction, "I can tell you with certainty that this is a line."
"I had to improvise, so just use your imagination," Caera retorted. "Anyway, the caster's pieces, the ones with the fire symbol..."
"Triangle," I corrected, waiting for her reaction.
Wait.
Why the hell am I so casually waiting for her reaction?
"Fire," she emphasized, "are the most flexible. Defenders are best used in defense, while attackers are good at capturing pieces. Remember, you can only capture a piece by jumping over it."
"And you win if you capture my sentry?"
"Yep," Caera nodded. "Or if my sentry reaches your territory, that's called a clean victory. Are you ready?"
I nodded. Although I hadn't played this particular game before-since I was, so to speak, from another world-it was quite similar to the strategy board games from my past world, so the rules easily fell into place in my mind.
"Traditionally, White goes second," she said, pointing to my stone pieces.
Bowing slightly, I moved my outside forward to the far left corner of my side of the board. Caera moved her stone defender forward one space. The game continued until she blocked my forward, and it became clear that I would lose in a couple of moves.
"I see," I said thoughtfully, looking at the pieces on the board. "I lost this time."
"Hm?" She looked up at me, then lowered her gaze to the board, and after ten seconds of a frowning, pensive look, she raised her sparkling eyes to me. "Yeah, you're right, you could have moved around the board, but..."
"Yeah," I said briefly, starting to set up the pieces again. "But there's no point. You won. Good job."
"Hmm! How else? I haven't been playing this for a couple of years for nothing," she replied, tilting her nose up charmingly.
Charmingly? Pull yourself together, Lucius.
"Shall we continue?" I asked.
She nodded.
Caera moved cautiously, but never remained on the defensive. She stuck to a single strategy, which consisted of her obvious desire to preserve as many of her pieces as possible while she took mine. For two more games, I played along with her script, but soon she revealed her weakness; her personality seeped into the game, and I was able to exploit that weakness.
"I've got this game," I said with a smirk, deliberately lifting her rook off the board slowly so she could see.
"W-wait," she said, her scarlet eyes scanning every inch of the board for even the slightest mistake.
I stifled a chuckle. My victory was obvious; I hadn't played much chess, but I did have some experience, and with a rank 10 intelligence, I was more like a supercomputer capable of calculating several move options at once. It helped that, due to Caera's desire to achieve a clean victory over me, she was letting some pieces go.
"Look all you want; it won't change a thing," I smirked.
Caera snapped her head up, shooting me a fierce glare, but a second later her eyes widened slightly and a very faint blush appeared on her face; in that same instant, she lowered her eyes to the board. After a brief pause, she parted her lips and said, "You've played this game before, haven't you?"
I shook my head. "No."
"I've been playing this game for years, and though I'm not the best at it, I can't lose so easily to a beginner playing for the first time," her tone was full of disbelief.
Sighing, I put the sentinel back on the board. "I won so quickly only because you were greedy. Did you really think I wouldn't notice you trying to secure a clean victory?"
Caera's eyes widened, and she coughed awkwardly.
"You isolated your caster for three turns, then hoped to remove my guard from the board to clear the way for your own guard, right?" I said, propping my cheek with the back of my hand.
"See! The fact that you're thinking that way already proves you've played this game before," she said stubbornly.
"The only thing that proves is your recklessness and inability to lose gracefully," I replied, raising an eyebrow.
"You just got lucky," she muttered, poking at the bon-ahem-fire figure.
Receiving no reply, she looked up at me, her eyes narrowing with a strange determination.
"Let's do it one more time," Caera said, beginning to rearrange the bone figures.
"No, let Grey play. I have something to do," I replied, and with those words, ignoring Caera's passionate gaze, I walked off to a secluded spot.
Settling in comfortably, I took out another warm, rank 4 sleeping bag and some rank 3 black thread.
With a single thought, my rank 8 weapon transformed into a pair of scissors. Estimating the approximate dimensions in my mind, I quickly cut the sleeping bag to fit Caera.
Then I took out the thread and 3rd-rank buttons and transformed my 8th-rank weapon into a needle. In a couple of seconds, the sleeping bag turned into something resembling a ski suit.
Nodding to myself, I took out a smooth, water-repellent, thin hide from a beast resembling a cross between a rhinoceros, a lion, and a snake. After the upgrades from Regis and Arthur, this hide had become 5th-rank.
Since there was snow everywhere, I thought this hide would be perfect because it was very light and water-repellent, so the snow wouldn't stick to it and melt. With these thoughts in mind, I spent another couple of minutes applying this leather over the sleeping bag, which had become a ski suit. Finally, I attached a couple of buttons, also rank 3.
As soon as I was done, I activated mental communication and connected with Regis.
"What's up?" Regis's slightly lazy voice echoed through the aether in Arthur's core.
"I need your help for a second," I replied, admiring the rank 5 ski suit-by every criterion except beauty, it was close to a world-class masterpiece-"just don't draw too much attention."
The best humans could create were 3rd or 4th-rank. Asuras most likely made 5th to 9th-rank. I'm not sure about the Asuras, but it's safe to assume that's the case. So a 5th-rank, which would become a 6th-rank in a few seconds, was something a person could frame and look at with incense, but never touch unless absolutely necessary.
A few seconds later, a small puppy with a rounded belly touched the winter ski suit, and upon receiving my nod, it became immaterial and flew toward Arthur's core.
Opening the system, I shifted my gaze to the dark red window, mentally tapped the mail icon, and selected the most recent message.
[Rank 5 White-Blue Winter Ski Suit x10 or upgrade to Rank 6?]
Choosing to upgrade to Rank 6, I put everything else back into my inventory except for the Rank 8 weapon, which turned into a black bracelet and wrapped around my left wrist like a snake.
At my command, the newly upgraded Rank 6 white-blue winter ski suit appeared in my hand. Upon upgrading to Rank 6, all the minor flaws I had made disappeared; the rough stitching, which hadn't been very pretty to begin with, became so subtle that it seemed as though someone had created this jumpsuit rather than sewn it.
The color remained the same, mostly white, but with bluish hues of ocean waves; in this completely white environment, this color was practically ideal for concealment.
And the 6th-rank warmth made the external cold insignificant; I didn't even need to wrap myself in mana to stay warm-this winter ski suit would make this frost feel like a warm breeze. Also, since it was 6th rank, it was extremely resistant to attacks and damage, stronger than any protective gear made by humans.
It wasn't for nothing that I was always mending my younger brother's clothes; it even came in handy in another world.