The Villainous Me Turned the Losers into Blackened Bosses-Chapter 191 - The Heat Has Faded

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Noticing that Will had woken up, Shuna closed the book in her hands and placed it on her lap. She looked at him with the same calm expression.

But…

Before rescuing him, it seemed Shuna had something urgent to tell him, didn’t she?

Will pushed himself up to sit on the bed.

Hmm…

Was it just his imagination? He felt like, after everything Leah had done to him, his magical circuits felt much lighter and more fluid.

Looking at his hands, he had a rare feeling that, with these hands, he could cast any magic he wanted.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, he felt a poke on his cheek from the person beside him.

“Hmm? Awake now? You’ve been staring off into space without saying a word. Did the witch’s insanity scare you mute?”

He met Shuna’s black eyes.

They were sparkling as they looked at him.

“I… I just woke up. Give me a moment to gather my thoughts.”

When Will said this, she seemed to breathe a small sigh of relief.

Following her gaze downward, he noticed her injured right hand.

The burn marks were glaringly obvious, and they weren’t ordinary burns. He had seen similar marks during Eir’s high-temperature training sessions, but compared to the controlled burns from training, Shuna’s injuries seemed much more severe.

Ah… it seemed the Leah he had personally nurtured had indeed made great progress.

“How long was I asleep? What time is it now?”

The reason he asked was that the environment felt… off.

Different seasons brought different sensations of temperature and humidity.

Right now, the temperature and humidity didn’t feel like the summer he remembered when they had entered the dungeon.

“You’ve been asleep for two weeks.”

“What?!”

Will began patting himself down—if he had been asleep for two weeks, his nutrition would surely have been depleted. Was he feeling lighter because he had become emaciated?!

But no.

His muscles were still there.

He wasn’t so thin that he could feel his ribs, as he had been during his worst times.

Then what was it…

“I’m joking. Hahaha… I didn’t think you’d actually believe me.”

Shuna was teasing him again!

But seeing her laugh so heartily actually put Will at ease.

It showed that she wasn’t taking her injuries too seriously.

“If we’re talking about how long you were asleep, from the time I dragged you out of the dungeon, it’s only been one night.”

“One night… I don’t have any signs of imminent death, do I? Like severe rejection reactions, veins about to burst, or screaming about how my whole body hurts?”

Shuna gave him a look that said, “You might be a little unhinged.”

“The doctor and the priest I brought in both checked you. Other than being… uh… overly exhausted and sleeping deeply, there’s nothing wrong.”

She paused several times, seemingly searching for the right words to gloss over the situation.

Will lowered his head, opening and closing his hands, feeling his magical circuits and blood flow.

It was indeed strange—there was almost no rejection or lingering effects from the witch’s blood. Yet he could still feel the presence of the witch’s blood coursing through his body.

Had something neutralized the rejection caused by the witch’s blood?

“However, I wasn’t lying about one thing—we are indeed two weeks into the future.”

She pointed out the window.

Will turned his head.

Then realized he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Turning his head did nothing; he couldn’t see a thing.

“Pfft. Looks like our young master still has some physical shortcomings that haven’t improved.”

Shuna said, placing a half-broken pair of glasses on his nose.

They were indeed his glasses, though they were so damaged that only half of them remained.

“I found them on the ground. I guess we fought so hard that only half of them survived. There’s a place in Yawick Town that makes glasses. Before your next adventure, we’ll get you a new pair. Otherwise, will you end up throwing fireballs at my head because you can’t see?”

“I… my nearsightedness isn’t that bad. I can still distinguish people within four meters.”

—Though most of the time, it’s by recognizing hair color.

And so, Will once again saw the world clearly—well, with one eye, at least.

He moved closer to the window and looked outside.

Indeed.

The people walking on the streets below were dressed in autumnal long-sleeved jackets. The streets no longer had the visible haze of summer heat.

It was no longer summer.

When they had entered Moonlit Ice Extreme, it had been the tail end of summer. Entark was a place where the seasons changed quickly, so two weeks could easily mark the transition to a new season.

“What happened? Why… why did sleeping for one night bring us two weeks into the future?”

“Have you heard of a witch’s tool called the Chaos Hourglass?”

Will shook his head.

Then he noticed the book Shuna had been holding. Its cover was dark red, aged, and bore the word “Witch” on it.

Had Shuna started researching as soon as they got out?

“I just learned about it myself. Our witch teammate… she used a tool to manipulate the flow of time in certain dungeon layers—though it seems to only work on specific floors. By the way, it’s pretty expensive. According to this five- or six-year-old manual, one of these costs about four or five times what I’d earn from a commission.”

“Manipulating… time?! Witches have tools that powerful?! And she could afford it?!”

Shuna expertly flipped to a page in the book and showed Will an illustration of the hourglass.

“It doesn’t actually jump time; it just alters the perception of time in certain areas. For example, an hour outside might feel like four or five hours inside. It can work the other way around too.”

Hearing Shuna’s explanation, Will quickly pieced things together.

No wonder he had been tied to that chair, cycling between lucidity and confusion, over and over, without Shuna showing up!

In his memory, he had been repeatedly drained. If he hadn’t been physically restrained, he might have surrendered long ago.

So it turned out…

The time he experienced in that dungeon room was stretched?

For instance, four or five hours inside might have only been one hour outside.

But…

“…Then wouldn’t Leah have slowed down the dungeon’s time? Why did we come out and find that external time had moved faster?”

“Unfortunately, we knocked it over during our fight.”

Shuna flipped the book in her hands upside down.

“Of course, that’s not the main reason we were in there for two weeks.”

“If external time was faster, we should’ve been rescued sooner. Why did it take two weeks for a rescue team to find us?”

Will immediately connected the dots.

“Exactly. After we got out, I asked around…”

Shuna snapped her fingers.

“—After I forced Kolodai to take me to your door, she hid the entrance to Leah’s room. Maybe they had planned it together.”

I see.

Leah was impressive!

Not only had she orchestrated this elaborate trap to capture him, but she had also cut off the rescue route afterward.

It seemed she had planned to drain him completely, turn him into her witch’s little slave, and then quietly disappear with him.

But…

This raised another question…

“If you only realized it was two weeks later after leaving the dungeon, then… what was the ‘bad situation’ you mentioned in the dungeon?”

Hearing Will’s question, Shuna smiled, almost relieved.

“Oh? So you were conscious enough to remember what I said. I thought you’d been completely drained.”

“…You sounded so urgent at the time. I rarely see you that flustered.”

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“We’ve only known each other for a few days, and you act like you know me so well.”

Shuna joked, then paused before answering:

“Moonlit Ice Extreme was conquered.”

“That’s not a big deal… huh?”

What?! A 60-floor dungeon was conquered just like that?!

“Roughly ten days after we entered, while we were still inside. Coincidentally, it happened during a cold snap in Entark, which sped up the dungeon’s conquest. Oh, and the team that did it? The Radiant Knights. How’s that for irony?”

“……”

“Speechless? What’s wrong? Need some time to process the news?”

“Y-yeah.”

Actually, considering it was now early autumn, Will could guess what had happened.

But since this was future knowledge from the original story, he refrained from saying it aloud.

Within the next year, under the influence and restructuring of the Hysterm family, dungeons like the first ten floors of Moonlit Ice Extreme—essentially ice sculpture exhibitions—would gradually become symbols of entertainment and commerce.

Through this, the Hysterm family would slowly cultivate a group of highly skilled, disciplined adventuring teams—essentially mercenaries. Teams like the Radiant Knights were among them.

By then, dungeons that had lost their commercial value would be treated like “laid-off employees” by the Hysterm family, who would send their strongest “mercenaries” to conquer them. It was a common practice.

This allowed them to control the dungeons they wanted while training a loyal group of adventurers.

It turned out the signs of this were already evident a year earlier.

Summer had passed, and the heat had faded.

Will gazed out at the early autumn streets, now tinged with a hint of desolation.

So, a dungeon like “Moonlit Ice Extreme,” once a cool refuge from the summer heat, no longer had a reason to exist.

It felt like a corporate executive’s decision—”Winter is coming. It’s time for Moonlit Ice Extreme to go bankrupt.”

Now that he understood the current situation, it was time to think about what to do next…

“Hey, hey, hey?”

Shuna waved her hand in front of his face.

“You just woke up, and you’re already analyzing everything so rationally and objectively?”

“…Isn’t that very ‘Will’ of me? I get it—Shuna’s telling me to take a break first?”

“No. What I’m saying is…”

Shuna’s expression suddenly became very subtle—both expectant and slightly reluctant.

“What are you going to do?”

Her lips curled into a faint smile as she added, with a slight pause:

“—About Leah.”