I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 255

The world dissolved into a blinding cascade of light followed by a nauseating lurch. Although Tiffany had never used a teleportation array before, she was knowledgeable enough to understand the feel of it activating and pulling her away. The last thing she had seen was that man being impaled by several vicious tentacle-like spikes. She was standing in the array within the buried antecedent prison when her benefactor was killed in front of her. She had been frozen in place; the pressure given off by that insane old man keeping her from acting at all. She could only watch as he was pulled apart, and she was sent away.

The teleportation was nearly instantaneous; the transition ending as abruptly as it started. On the other hand, the old man’s pressure was nonexistent. Tiffany’s boots sank into soft wet sand, but the sudden change in environment was enough that her knees buckled, and she collapsed to the ground. New sensations truck her all at once. The smell of lake water and damp earth, the sound of gulls flying overhead, and the taste of fish rotting on the shore. The rising sun glinted off the gentle waves coming just short of where she was kneeling.

This was not the side of the lake they had previously dived into. She wasn’t at the same cliff where she had jumped into it in the first place, but she could tell that she wasn’t all that far from it. However, she wasn’t taking in the environment. Rather, her mind was still replaying those last few moments. Shakily, she reached up with a hand and touched her cheek. When she pulled it away, she found red on her fingertips. This was his blood. He had given it to save her life.

A cold, hollow ache bloomed in her chest, a pain so sharp and sudden it stole her breath. She fell back, landing hard on the sand, the impact barely registering. Her hands flew to her mouth, but a strangled sob escaped anyway. She curled into a fetal position and began to cry. Tears she couldn’t control streamed down her face, hot and relentless. She didn’t even know his name. This brave, infuriating, mysterious man who had shattered her world and then saved it, and she didn’t even know the sound of his name.

Tiffany had thought that she had become an extremely resilient woman. She could handle any loss and do what needed to be done for the Stride family. Yet, for a man she had only met three times and spent only a few days with, she felt an unimaginable pain. She didn’t know how long she lay there, but it couldn’t have been all that long before a low groan from beside her broke her from her grief. She looked up, a moment of hopefulness, but it was immediately dashed when she saw the face of Lord Blanche stirring.

That was right; I wasn’t the only one he saved. The thought was bitter.

Lord Blanche and the two other surviving elders were also lying on the beach next to her. In her shock, she had completely forgotten to notice them, but now they seemed to all be stirring at once. Either the old man had been keeping them asleep through some means only broken after transport, or he had never knocked them out for long.

She quickly scrambled to her feet, wiping the tears from her face. She couldn’t be seen as weak in this moment. She had to return to being the Lady Stride everyone expected, a smart, calculating, proper lady of the Stride family. She could not be the defenseless girl clinging to the shoulder of a man she had just met. Why had his back always seemed so stable and strong? She couldn’t even guess.

As she worked on scouring any bit of weakness, the three men sat up one after another. Lord Blanche had also seen Tiffany scrambling to her feet but was still fighting against his exhaustion. He finally stood up, but his eyes immediately danced around the beach wildly, a fearful expression on his face, and a near look of panic.

“He’s not here.” Tiffany guessed his problem immediately. “The old man.”

Lord Blanche’s eyes flickered a moment, but then the confusion melted away to a smile. “So, he did as he promised and brought us to the surface. Why are you still here? Did that boyfriend of yours ultimately abandon you?”

His words were too raw for Tiffany, and she put on a pained look.

“Haha, after everything, he knocked her out and left her here,” one elder chuckled.

“The old man did the same to us,” the other elder replied.

“Don’t even speak of that! I would have killed him myself if he hadn’t caught me by surprise!”

“Quiet, both of you!” Lord Blanche snapped at the two elders before his eyes fell on Tiffany, looking even more dangerous. “The question now seems to be, what should we do with you?”

Tiffany was confused for a moment, but it only took a moment to realize things from their point of view. Lord Blanche didn’t know that her benefactor had teleported the pair of them deeper into the prison. For all he knew, the two of them had abandoned Lord Blanche and his man and teleported directly to the surface. Afterward, they met the old man and were knocked unconscious by him. They never saw her benefactor giving his life to send all four of them away.

From their point of view, it must have looked like Tiffany had been knocked unconscious by her benefactor once they reached the surface so that he could escape. Then, the old man followed his agreement to bring them to the surface, along with knocking them unconscious, but still leaving them as he agreed. They had no clue that the old man likely had no plan of letting them live. From their point of view, the last time they had seen Tiffany, it was when she left them for dead.

“W-wait…” she tried to protest as the three men circled her, their eyes filled with malicious light. “I’m still from the Stride household!”

“Hehe, if no one finds your body, no one will be the wiser. I’ll get that boyfriend of yours, too, eventually, but someone like you cannot be allowed to live!”

As she felt the three men summoning their mana, she panicked. She was just in the second evolutionary realm. She couldn’t fight any of these three. She considered leaping back into the lake. She considered killing herself. However, a moment later, the decision was taken for her.

“Over here! I found intruders!”

A group of men emerged from the forest and surrounded the party in an instant. They were familiar to Tiffany, wearing the blue and silver livery that belonged to House Stride. They formed a circle far more encompassing, and the dark expressions of Lord Blanche and his men disappeared in an instant.

Lord Blanche held up his hands and put on a fawning expression. “House Stride. Oh, it is so lucky that we found you. We were attacked by wild sage beasts. We barely escaped with our lives!”

“Shameless!” Tiffany couldn’t help but hiss.

Lord Blanche was going to use confusion and lies to absolve himself of any responsibility here. The leader of the Stride patrol, a ligand Tiffany recognized but didn’t know the name of, stepped forward and looked over all of them. When his eyes landed on Tiffany, they widened for a moment, but he otherwise ignored her.

“This is Stride territory. We felt a disturbance with some of our detection arrays a few days ago. We were just about to give up our search when we felt a resurgence. Was the disturbance between the three of you?”

Lord Blanche’s defenseless smile slipped. The Stride leader did not include Tiffany in his accusation. It was obvious things could get difficult for him soon. Although they were strong enough that even this party wouldn’t be able to keep them from running, if they killed any guards or caused a scene, it would escalate into a full-blown confrontation with the Stride family, who were a stronger and more stable house.

Before he could come up with an excuse, though, another voice came from behind the leader. “Tiffany? Is that you?”

Another familiar face pushed themselves to the front. Normally, the leader would glare at whoever disrupted his interrogation, but this person was someone he couldn’t afford to offend. So, he quietly waited as that person walked right up to Tiffany.

“Brother.” Tiffany nodded; her voice was icy and aloof, returning to the typical voice she gave when she was acting like a proper lady.

Her brother didn’t act nearly so proper. “What has happened to you? You’ve been missing for days. Father is worried! If these men have hurt you…”

His hand immediately went for his sword as he glared at the three men. He had the same evolutionary rank as Lord Blanche and was at the same level as the leader of this group. Between the two of them, they could give Lord Blanche and his elders a great deal of problems. With Tiffany’s word, the entire beach would turn into a battlefield.

After a tense moment, Tiffany lowered her head. “It is as they have said. A sage beast attacked me. I called for help. They were close enough to help and scared it off.”