I Became the Villainess, But My Beast Husbands Can Hear My Mind?!-Chapter 172: The Foe or Allies? (1)

"I’m sorry," Roxanna said softly. "I should have come to you sooner."

Calen shook his head right away. "No, don’t apologize. I know you must have done everything you could to save me." He paused, his voice turning gentler. "I know that because... I believe in you."

More than anything, Calen knew Roxanna always put others before herself, and he never liked that about her. While he was trapped inside the maze, he didn’t just struggle to survive, but he kept worrying about her.

Why? It was because he was scared she would do something reckless, like drain all her blood just to save him. Thank God she didn’t. But still... climbing the Golden Mountain wasn’t exactly a safe or normal thing to do either.

"The most important thing right now is that you’re here," Calen said. "You came to pick me up, so let’s not think about anything else."

Roxanna was about to respond, but a low growl suddenly echoed around them.

Calen reacted without thinking. He pulled her closer to his side and tightened his grip on his axe, his body moving slightly in front of hers as if to shield her.

"All this time... that monster only growled near me," Calen murmured, his eyes scanning the darkness. "That’s why I didn’t expect it to attack Azul instead."

The question was... why?

The only thing Azul did was stand not far from the darkness path. If the monster truly wanted to eat him, why didn’t it just tear him apart right there instead of dragging him away?

When Roxanna thought about the incident more carefully, she realized that the monster had only dragged him by wrapping its arms around him, instead of digging its claws into Azul’s skin.

Was the monster really as dangerous as it felt, or were they simply too prejudiced about something they didn’t understand?

"You said the monster only walked around you?" Roxanna asked gently.

Calen nodded. "Yes." He hesitated before adding, "It was worse when I was in the dark. Sometimes, it felt like it was getting closer to me. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never see it."

Or maybe... it was moving too fast for his eyes to catch.

Roxanna stayed silent for a moment, thinking about what the monster might actually want.

After a moment, she asked, "Did it do anything that made you scared? Like scratching its claws on the ground... or touching your skin?"

Calen frowned, confused about where this was going. Still, he answered honestly. "No... it didn’t." He paused. "To be honest, it never did anything to me."

In fact, Calen didn’t even have any wounds on his body because the monster had never touched him. He was scared and confused simply because of the psychological torture of being trapped inside the maze alone.

What if... the monster wasn’t the one they should be afraid of?

"Was it... following you like a sibling?" Roxanna asked carefully.

Calen stared at her as if she had just said something unbelievable. "A sibling?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"

[Ah... he’s an only child. Of course he wouldn’t understand,] Roxanna thought. [I know it sounds silly... but if I look at it in a kinder way, the monster really acts like a little brother.]

"You know how little siblings are," Roxanna explained softly. "They follow you everywhere. I used to live in an orphanage, so a lot of younger kids followed me around all the time."

"Sometimes they just walk in circles around you. Sometimes they shout near your ears just to get your attention." Roxanna bit her lower lip, because the more she said it, the stranger it sounded to compare the monster to her little siblings. "But even then... they don’t mean to hurt you."

Her voice softened. "Maybe... it just didn’t want to be alone." She added quietly, "Or maybe... it doesn’t want you to be alone."

The moment those words left her lips, the growls they had been hearing grew closer.

The sound was no longer distant or echoing through the maze. It was right there, so near that Roxanna felt a warm, heavy breath brushed against her skin.

Calen tightened his grip on his axe. His body went stiff, and without thinking, he moved slightly in front of Roxanna again.

"Whatever it wants, I don’t think we can trust it yet," Calen said. "We don’t even know why it took Azul away."

Roxanna lowered her gaze to the ground. "You’re right. I shouldn’t think about it in such a positive way." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

After all, they were talking about a monster, not a lost puppy. Even if it didn’t mean to hurt them, it still dragged Azul away and she didn’t like that at all.

Tring.

The bell rang again. The soft sound echoed through the darkness, reminding Roxanna that they couldn’t just stand still.

"Maybe we can find Azul if we keep following the bell," she said, trying to sound hopeful.

"Maybe," Calen replied. His voice was calm, but there was doubt behind it. "But if Azul is really here... why haven’t we heard him? Not even once?"

Roxanna glanced into the endless black space around them. "Maybe the darkness is too wide," she said softly. "Maybe it swallows every sound."

Calen clenched his jaw. He didn’t even know how he had survived here for so long. Days trapped in a place with no light, no direction, and no end.

Maybe he had just been lucky. Or maybe... Roxanna was right.

What if the monster had been following him all this time, growling nearby, not to scare him, but to guide him? What if it had been trying to show him the way out?

It sounded foolish, and yet it also made a strange kind of sense.

"Roxanna," Calen asked suddenly, his voice lower than before, "what did the doctor say about me before you came in here?"

Roxanna blinked, clearly caught off guard by the question because she hadn’t expected him to ask that.

"She said..." Roxanna began carefully, "Doctor Aelin said your unconscious mind created this maze. She thinks there’s something dangerous inside you that want to come out. So your mind built this place to lock it away."

She hesitated before adding softly, "But the maze ended up trapping you as well."

"But Calen..." Roxanna stepped a little closer, squinting as she tried to see his face through the shadows. Her voice turned serious. "While you were stuck here... what made you feel worse?"

She swallowed. "The monster or the maze?"

Calen didn’t answer right away. He pressed his lips into a thin line, his jaw tightening as if the question had hit somewhere deep inside him.

The monster did keep growling and circling around him like an annoying shadow, but it never actually hurt him. Meanwhile, the maze... oh, the maze was different.

"The maze," Calen answered in a low voice. "It’s the maze that drives me crazy."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "Sometimes, it feels like the walls are moving, like they’re closing in on m, and the temperature here is strange. One moment, it’s so hot that I feel like my skin is burning. The next moment, it’s so cold that I can’t stop shaking."

"Is my real body going through the same thing?" he asked softly. "Is it suffering because of this?"

Roxanna squeezed his hand gently. "Azul told me that your body sometimes turns very cold," she said. "But other than that, there aren’t any serious side effects."

Calen let out a rough breath. "Honestly, Roxanna, I really don’t know what’s happening to me."

"That’s okay." Roxanna tightened her grip on Calen’s hand. "We’ll find the answer together. But I truly think the maze is more dangerous."

[The maze may not give any physical torture to him, but dear heaven... mental torture is worse than anything!] Roxanna thought. [My poor Calen must have been suffering so much!]

She had once heard that a prisoner could lose their mind and become feral if they were locked inside a completely white room for a long time.

If a room like that could drive someone insane, wouldn’t a place like this maze be even worse?

After all, it would be impossible not to lose your mind if you kept seeing the same thing over and over again, all alone, without ever finding a way out.

That was why Roxanna no longer knew which danger Aelin had been talking about.

Now she felt lost, and Calen didn’t seem to know much about it either.

"Growl..."

Roxanna held her breath as she heard the growling sound getting closer.

Not long after, she heard a loud sound echo through the maze. It sounded like massive stone walls shifting, grinding against the ground.

The vibration traveled through the floor beneath their feet.

Calen immediately pulled Roxanna closer. "The walls..." he muttered.

The darkness around them began to fade, as if it was being forced to disappear by the shifting maze.

The grinding of stone grew louder, echoing from every direction. What had once been endless black slowly cracked apart. Thin lines of dim light appeared between the moving walls, like the maze was splitting open.