Back to Evan, when he saw the relief on Beatrix's face, a small voice in the back of his mind reminded him that this was the same person who had sent him back in time to begin with.
He shook his head with a sigh, then finally sat up, just as Artemisia approached.
The goddess was just about to speak, but suddenly froze, her eyes narrowing as they landed on his face. And seeing this, Evan already knew what she was about to ask.
"What happened to your eye?"
"Called it," Evan muttered, barely loud enough to hear.
Of course, she noticed.
The explosion Evan had caused while destroying the devils' camp had put Artemisia on high alert for any additional threats, and as a result, her Unique Skill was active.
Without it, she might not have noticed anything immediately, but with it, she quickly picked up on the fact that, unlike the rest of Evan's body, his left eye was distinctly 'new.'
Beatrix, on the other hand, blinked in confusion and turned her gaze back to Evan. "Huh? Your eye? What happened?"
She grabbed both sides of his face, intent on scanning him to figure out what exactly Artemisia had noticed, but before she could go any further, Evan caught her hands and responded.
"Let's just say I got a replacement."
"A…replacement?"
Beatrix was confused.
She understood the meaning of the word, but the context in which it was used was most certainly not a good one.
Evan could already see where her thoughts were going, so he just sighed and said calmly, "Can you get off me for a bit? I need to stretch my legs."
After moving Beatrix away and getting to his feet, he added,
"I had a little run-in with a Soul Devil the day after we got attacked."
At this, both girls turned their eyes toward the burning wreckage behind him.
"Does that have to do with why you destroyed this place?" Artemisia asked.
"Oh, no," Evan replied casually. "I only dropped by to ask them a few questions, but they tried to kill me."
This response earned a deadpan stare from Beatrix.
"Evan… what exactly did you think was going to happen?"
"I chose to use persuasive dialogue, like the civilized person that I am, and yet, they still chose violence," Evan replied, his voice filled with 'sincerity', before adding with a nonchalant shrug, "so I responded with even greater violence."
"Pfft….! What the hell is that supposed to me—!?"
Beatrix's question was cut short as she suddenly froze, placing a hand over her chest and taking a deep breath.
The moment Artemisia saw this, her eyes stoic expression changed to one of concern as she spoke.
"Alright, that's enough out of you. You're going back to bed."
She grabbed Beatrix by the arm and began dragging her back to wherever they had come from.
Beatrix opened her mouth to protest, but the moment she tried to speak, she stopped herself and said, "Yeah, I should probably do that," with a begrudging sigh.
Noticing the interaction, Evan tilted his head slightly, a brow rising in mild confusion.
From the way Artemisia reacted, and from how Beatrix was behaving, it was obvious that Beatrix was not in full health.
Evan had expected that, given who they were—the daughters of a god King and Queen—they would have no shortage of life-saving artifacts, healing tools, or recovery items, and he was certain they wouldn't hesitate to use them in a life-threatening situation, such as the one they'd faced on the 6th.
So for Beatrix to still not have recovered after all the time since then meant that whatever damage she had sustained must have been severe, perhaps even beyond what conventional magical remedies could heal, despite the three days that had passed.
Beatrix raised her hand, beginning to construct a teleportation spell circle, but before she could activate it, Artemisia swiftly unclipped a pair of magic-sealing cuffs from her waist and snapped them onto Beatrix's wrists faster than anyone could react.
Then, with a deadpan stare, she asked, "Beatrix Kirone Xagna, are you daft?"
Evan blinked, momentarily stunned, and Beatrix was just as taken aback. She glanced down at the cuffs on her wrists, then back up at Artemisia in disbelief.
"Why do you have magic-sealing cuffs?" she asked, voicing the exact question Evan had been about to ask himself.
"Obviously to restrain enemies I don't want to kill yet," Artemisia replied flatly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Hearing her answer, both Evan and Beatrix had to admit that she did have a valid point. Items like these could be quite useful in certain situations.
That, however, was not the issue right now.
The issue was that Artemisia had used them on Beatrix, who was very clearly not an enemy in need of restraint.
"In your condition, you still want to attempt long-distance teleportation?" Artemisia asked, giving Beatrix the kind of stare one would reserve for a madman.
Beatrix opened her mouth to protest, but the moment Artemisia's cold gaze met hers, she swallowed the words and meekly began to walk without further argument.
Seeing all this, Evan laughed and said, "Alright, I get that there's something wrong with her and you don't want her teleporting. Makes sense.
I, on the other hand, am not so keen on walking, so mind telling me where you two set up camp?"
In response, Artemisia turned toward Evan and said, "Somewhere around my three o'clock. Why?"
The area around them was more of a sparse forest than a dense one, with scattered trees and several rocky outcroppings jutting up above the canopy.
As she spoke, Artemisia pointed toward one of the protruding rocks, and Evan, following her gesture and spotting the landmark, nodded and said, "I see. Very well then."
Without another word, he activated Farsight, locking onto the location she had indicated. Before Artemisia could even ask why he had bothered asking, Evan grabbed both her and Beatrix by the arm and activated Blink.
In the literal blink of an eye, the three of them vanished from where they had stood and reappeared atop the rock Artemisia had pointed to. Evan then unfurled his wings, letting them catch the air like a parachute as they gently descended to the ground below.
"Problem solved," he said calmly.
"Yes indeed. Problem solved," Artemisia replied, nodding in agreement.
Beatrix raised her bound hands and said, "So… can you take the cuffs off now?"
With a snap of her fingers, the cuffs detached and flew back into Artemisia's hands.
As they moved through the air, Evan's sharp vision noticed an interesting bit about them—there was no keyhole.
The cuffs responded only to the unique pulse of magic Artemisia had released when she snapped her fingers.
"Solid security," Evan commented.
"Thank you," Artemisia replied as she walked over to a section of the rock and ran her hand across what appeared to be an ordinary stone surface, only for her hand to slip straight through as though it were made of mist, revealing that the wall had been an illusion all along.
Reaching behind it, she shifted something out of sight and stepped through.
Beatrix followed without hesitation, and after a brief shrug, Evan followed them in.
Once he passed through the illusion, he realized they had entered a hidden cave. Artemisia waved her hand again, locking the entrance, and continued forward a bit until they arrived in a wide, open chamber hollowed out of the stone.
Looking around, Evan's eyes widened slightly. "This is practically an apartment."
Beatrix echoed the sentiment. "Exactly what I said when I saw it. When the hell did you manage to do all this?"
"I had an entire day alone. And I have earth magic."
That seemed to be all the explanation Artemisia felt was necessary, and honestly, it was enough.
With her earth magic, Artemisia had apparently hollowed out the entire rock, transforming what had once been a natural cave into a small but fully functional residence.
There were beds, desks, and a sink in one corner with plates still resting in it. She had built an entire mini-home inside a boulder.
While Evan was still admiring the apartment she had created, Artemisia sat Beatrix on a bed and spoke,
"You, lie down. Sleep."
"Come on, Arty. I'm good enough to hold a conversation, at least. Besides, I still have to tell Evan about what I discovered."
Evan, who had turned around upon hearing his name, raised a brow. "What you discovered? What did you find?"
Without answering, Beatrix opened her inventory, pulled out a tablet, and tossed it toward him.
He caught it, switched on the display, and was met with a pitch-black image. Pinching the screen to zoom out, the darkness gave way to a sliver of land at the bottom of the frame.
However, the ground was dark, as if every last trace of life had been drained from the soil. Where that land ended, a vast, seemingly endless valley of darkness began, stretching toward the horizon.
Rising up above it was a shimmering wall of light, climbing from the ravine's depths and extending far past the planet's atmosphere.
At the sight, a single word came to Evan's mind.
"Chasm."
"Huh? What did you say?"
Beatrix turned away from Artemisia and faced him when she heard his voice, prompting Evan to repeat himself.
"The Chasm. This is a photo of that thing radiating immense magic power in the west, isn't it?"
Beatrix confirmed with a nod. "Yeah. That's the one. You called it a Chasm?"
His eyes still on the screen, Evan slid to the next image as he responded.
"Before that Soul Devil tried to kill me, he mentioned it. Said it was a divider that splits this entire continent in two."
The mention of the Chasm's scale made Beatrix's eyes widen, and a moment later, her expression changed to one of concern as she muttered,
"…Arthur and the others… they're on the other side of that…?"
Frowning, she continued.
"Earlier this morning, before I came here, I went close to that thing, since the token we got from Denerth said Arthur was somewhere in that direction.
But every instinct in my body and soul told me there's no crossing that thing."
Evan finally looked up from the tablet, his expression mirroring hers.
"But… we did cross it, didn't we? he asked. "When the teleportation failed."
"Yeah," Beatrix replied in a bitter tone. "Because space was wacky. The distortion from the failed teleportation created unstable spatial channels that literally dragged us through that divide. In my case, I only crossed it because a spatial storm bulldozed me through it.
I'm assuming something similar happened to you."
Her tone grew colder as she added, "Those are not conditions we can replicate at will. Even if we could, I wouldn't."
Silence filled the cave for a while, broken only when Evan looked back at the images and spoke.
"I wonder if my appraisal can show anything about it."