The Gathering Girl V

After being promised by the vampire boy something that might help in her quest to solve the mystery of the crawler forest, the girl inside of the black armor began to feel a faint sense of hope as the two continued to rush through the woods and defeating any creatures that appeared in their path.

She was worried for a moment that she would have to put on extra effort to keep him safe not to get infected, but it appeared that defeating the big crawler from before had finally managed to send out the message that they should probably not mess with her.

There were barely any enemies on their way, and those that did show up were extremely easy to deal with. The boy himself was proving to be a rather skilled fighter.

She nearly forgot he had given her a hard time when the two first met at the entrance of the vampire kingdom. He was no Lian Garen, but he was no pushover either.

Although, the idea of having to fight him seemed completely bizarre at the moment after listening to his small declaration of love. The girl still had no idea how she was supposed to feel about that.

Were they meant to become a couple now? Was that how it worked? She barely knew him. She didn't even know his name. And the last guy she placed her trust in left her to be eaten alive by a pile of spider monsters, so she was carrying a little bit of trust issues right now. Not to mention the last time she had to deal with someone displaying their romantic feelings, she ended up falling from a bridge.

The girl began to worry if her constant bad luck with guys might make her start developing some sort of phobia for men. Hopefully, the black-winged lad current flying by her side could help out with that.

Now that she had calmed down more and properly looked at him, she began to ask if she found him attractive at all. He didn't particularly look super-handsome but he also wasn't bad either. If she had to define him, he would be like that dorky friend that always used to sit behind her desk in math class.

Although, worrying about all that was probably pointless. She was, after all, a human-sized walking piece of metal. She couldn't even kiss someone right now, let alone engage in a relationship.

Unless he was into that, of course... But if that was the case, that would just open a whole new set of problems for her.

"So..." the black knight whispered while trying to control her emotions to the best of her abilities as they finally arrived at their destination, "When you said you had something to show me that might give us some answers... This is what you meant?"

The vampire lad in front of her seemed rather proud of his discovery, much to her disappointment.

"Pretty amazing, isn't it?" he commented while grinning to himself.

The two of them were standing right in front of a giant cylindric tower surrounded by three sets of rings that were floating around it that would occasionally emit a little bit of electric energy that appeared to be at least ten years old from how dirty its exterior was looking. They were, of course, looking at the dragon tower that was responsible for producing the safe zone inside of the crawler forest, as it could be seen by the massive spherical force field surrounding the area around it.

Little did the white-haired lad know that the girl was less than impressed as she had already been brought there by Lian Garen before, and her only reaction right now was the desire to smack her skull against a rock out of sheer rage from having backtracked all her progress.

"Oh my God, this was such a waste of tiiiime..." she groaned while hitting her forehead with the pommel of her claymore.

"What's wrong?" the boy asked.

"I've seen this stupid dragon tower already! That red salamander brought me here before! This won't help us!!"

The lad just raised an eyebrow confused, "What are you talking about? This isn't a Dragon tower. This is a Dwelfian tower."

The lass was just about to pick up a piece of rock and throw it at the huge metal building before getting her attention caught by his words, "A... A what tower...?"

"A Dwelfian tower. You know... A tower made by Dwelfs" he explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"The hell is a Dwelf...?"

"You don't know what a Dwelf is? It's one of the few surviving factions of the last couple of decades! A race of beings specialized in the science of machinery and the spiritual connection with nature! They are the descendent of the now-extinct Dwarf and Elf races, and are responsible for the development of most of the technology we see around our world!"

"Wait..." she asked while holding her forehead, "wait, wait, wait... Wait... You mean the dragons didn't build this stupid thing?"

"Of course not! Dragons are a race of combat warriors! They only know how to fight and destroy! They don't have the necessary delicacy or patience to create something like this! They just know how to use their power to steal the things others made. They are nothing but a bunch of brutes!"

The nameless knight began to find her soul starting to burn with immense anger as she was slowly realizing that Lian might have tricked her more than she initially believed.

"Can you enter this field...?" she wondered.

The vampire boy once again stared at her confused and simply opened his wings in order to glide towards the inside of the safe zone. The girl expected him to be repelled by the force field, but he simply passed through it as if it was a hologram.

"You gotta be kidding me..." she mumbled while clenching her fist.

"Is something wrong...?"

"That!!" she shouted while pointing with her weapon at the outside lab Lian was using before. A table filled with papers and documents written in a language she could not comprehend, "Are those written by dragons?"

The boy approached the table and began to move his gaze through the documents, "No, this is Dwelfian writing..."

"Are you sure!!??"

"Pretty sure."

The girl was about to scream but managed to hold herself back, "And what does it say? Is it a diary containing the discovery of a couple of scientists from the days they spent searching and studying this area?"

"Not really... It's actually a letter from someone to their family. It even has a poem! It's actually really beautiful! You mind if keep this?"

"AAAAAARGHHHH!!!!! That two-faced, backstabbing, cowardly, little pest!!! When I get my hands on him I'm going to-" she began to scream and run around while slashing everything in sight with her blade after realizing everything that Lian had told her was a complete and utter lie.

The boy tried to stop her but she was swinging her sword so wildly that any attempt at spotting her would result in his wings or head getting sliced off.

He simply kept his distance while shouting from afar, "what are you doing?? Have you gone mad??"

"Damn right I'm mad!!" she admitted while stabbing the ground over and over again, "I've just been duped by the biggest liar on the planet as if I was a goddamn toddler!!! I can't believe how freaking stupid I was for trusting anything that guy said!!"

Now that she thought about it, Lian also told her that he wasn't able to use his dragon form inside of the forest, but when they were facing the crawlers before, he still managed to change with no problem. She was so focused on the fighting that she didn't even catch on to him lying straight to her face.

Just how much of the information he shared with her was she meant to believe. What was true and what was a lie?

The lad seemed to want to console her, but was unsure of how to do it without getting hurt. he tried to slowly walk towards her as she kept mumbling "I'm gonna kill him! I'm gonna kill him! I'm gonna kill him..." to herself.

"I..." he attempted to speak, "I've been meaning to ask... Why were you placing so much trust on a dragon? It's a little hard to believe that a human and a dragon could ever get along."

The girl took a deep breath, or at least she simulated to act of doing so, and looked at him while trying not to stab anything else.

"I was kinda out of options, okay?" she explained, "My choices were either trust him or spend the rest of my eternity slicing him to pieces... But I see now that the second option wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it to be..."

"And you never considered that he might betray you?"

She shrugged, "It was a gamble. I assumed that I might have more value to him as an ally than as an enemy. But I guess I made it too clear that I had no intentions of being his ally... That was a dumb mistake honestly... I just hoped that he would be too scared of me to even try anything."

The boy couldn't help but release a small laugh at her remark.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, but... You're just not scary."

"Eh...?"

"I mean, think about it," he commented, "You refused to engage in battle with our master, kept talking about uniting all races and protecting our people, you always panic at every little thing and you even talked to a dragon, one of the most dangerous races to ever exist, as if he was your pet...

You may look like a warrior, and have the power to take down foes five times your size... But you still act and talk like a young girl.

You're too cute to be scary."

"Excuse me!!?" she screamed while grabbing him by the neck, knocking him against the ground, and placing her blade an inch away from his neck, "You think I'm not scary??? I could stab you five times with my blade if I wanted to!!"

"You could..." he admitted while not even changing his expression, "But I know you won't. Scary people don't talk about how they are going to hurt you. They just hurt you."

The girl then flashed back to the day she met Lian, and was reminded that the first sight she caught of him was of the dragon killing Thomas without even saying anything.

"You are too kind to be scary... I'm sorry, but that dragon probably not once was afraid of you..."

"Ugh... I'm gonna have to change that..." she commented while backing away and helping him stand up.

She began to wonder what would be enough to cause that red dragon to be afraid if even spending months cutting him up wasn't enough to do the trick.

"Regardless," the boy whispered, "We might use this tower in our favor."

"How so?"

The lad began to search around the improvised lab and managed to find some sort of tablet, very similar to what is commonly used in the girl's old world.

He pressed his palm against it, and a red line began to scroll from the top of the screen towards the bottom as if it was performing a scan.

"What is this?" she asked.

"A Dwelfian key. We can use it to turn on the vehicle that was left behind and explore this forest more safely!"

The lass felt like the boy was skipping a bit of context, "Vehicle?"

He then aimed the tablet at the tower which caused the entire structure to suddenly start to move, causing the ground to shake.

"Wait, what!!?? That tower is a vehicle!!?" she gasped.

The young vampire simply giggled at her reaction, "See what I mean? You panic at everything! Hihi. How did you think the Dwelfs brought this thing here in the first place?"

The tower continued to tremble as if it was a rocket about to take off.

Before long, smoke began to come out from various places of its structure and small division lines began to turn visible.

The giant cylindrical object suddenly split itself vertically in the middle while still connected by an internal compartment of the size of an apartment.

The two halves of the cylinder then separated horizontally in the middle, as if trying to form a pair of legs at the bottom and a pair of arms at the top.

"You have got to be kidding me..." the black knight mumbled.

What was once a giant mechanical tower now stood before then as a twenty feet tall bipedal giant robot.