At the End of the Hidden Greenery - Chapter 298

“No matter how much you dislike each other, don’t you have to solve the problem first before you can go your separate ways and never see one another again? So…”

“Ha! After choosing who’s going with some ridiculous vote, now you want to talk sense?”

He even snapped at Jiwoo when she was trying to ease the tension.

Shaen truly seemed determined to make an enemy of everyone present.

Quilon, who had been walking quietly at the very back, stared at the endlessly complaining Shaen.

“…”

“What? Why are you looking at me? Want me to give you something to stare at?”

Shaen bared his teeth in an open challenge. If he had not still been restrained, he looked ready to start a fight on the spot.

Compared to his flamboyant appearance, Quilon’s eyes were surprisingly subdued, a deep green that seemed almost heavy. Not the fresh green of spring, but the dense, dark green of vegetation under the scorching heat of midsummer. Shaen’s eyes, by contrast, were like blazing flames, yet Quilon’s gaze did not yield in the slightest.

“Jiwoo.”

Instead of responding to him, however, Quilon turned to Jiwoo and spoke with courtesy.

“Please allow me to… deal with this.”

Deal with it how?

Was he seriously going to beat him senseless?

Jiwoo did not even have the chance to stop him. Before she could answer, Quilon had already dragged Shaen somewhere out of sight.

“That’s right, take him away. Want to borrow a knife?”

“Tell him that if he keeps being this uncooperative, we’ll have no choice but to throw him into the void.”

Naturally, no one else tried to stop Quilon either.

“I hope he starts by beating that mouth of his shut.”

…This was definitely not a group from whom she should expect gentle dispositions.

“Aww, but it was kind of entertaining watching him bark at everyone.”

“Well…”

Not long afterward, Quilon returned. He calmly resumed his place off to the side, as though simply waiting for everyone to depart.

Shaen trudged after him. He was no longer bound tightly in vines. Apparently, there was no need.

His face was still twisted into a scowl, his lips turned down in displeasure, but the outright hostility had vanished.

“…If you’re done preparing, let’s go.”

The venom that had filled every word he directed at Jiwoo and her husbands had drained away completely.

There were no marks on Shaen that suggested he had been beaten. It really did look as though Quilon had simply talked to him.

“Are you all right?”

When Jiwoo stared at him speechlessly, Shaen frowned, but still said something he never would have before.

“…If you need more time to prepare, I can wait.”

What on earth had Quilon said to him?

***

Once everyone was ready, they headed for the underground entrance Jiwoo had previously located with Mel.

A long, cave-like passage stretched downward.

From the moment they first met, Shaen had constantly picked fights and spoken with open hostility, but after exchanging a few words with Quilon, he now walked quietly at the front and did nothing more than guide them.

Neither of them had so much as a scratch, so it truly had been settled through conversation. Judging by the fact that Shaen did not seem to harbor any particular resentment toward Quilon either, it did not appear to have been a matter of threats.

Jiwoo desperately wanted to know what Quilon had said.

Unfortunately, the path was so narrow that they had to walk nearly single file, and Quilon was following at the very back, leaving her little chance to ask.

Shaen descended first, with Reed directly behind him. Jiwoo came next, followed by Lugarmel, while the others filed in behind them.

Even after walking for quite some time, the passage showed no sign of ending.

The entrance itself had been surrounded by dense forest, so almost no light penetrated this far. And perhaps because of where they were going, the whole path felt faintly ominous.

The tunnel was also extremely narrow.

“Walk a little farther away from me. If you brush against me, I might accidentally kill you.”

Jiwoo wished they would stop saying things like that.

“And who exactly do you think would be doing the killing?”

Naturally, Shaen scoffed.

He had been behaving himself thanks to Quilon, but it already seemed as though another argument might break out.

They had said the underground-born were hot-tempered. Apparently, one warning was never enough.

Once they moved farther inside and the air stopped circulating, Kelvar’s intense lilac fragrance began to gather thickly in the tunnel.

That was when Shaen started getting irritated again.

“Can’t you manage that scent of yours? It’s suffocating, and it just keeps getting stronger.”

“What do you want me to do about it? You think I chose this?”

“You’ve probably lived your whole life smelling nothing but damp mold. Maybe your nose is just defective.”

The entire journey consisted of exchanges like that.

‘We really need to finish this quickly and leave.’

Jiwoo no longer cared whether the two sides ever got along. It would be enough if they simply separated without killing one another.

But that mood did not last long. After they had descended for some time, Shaen, who had been leading the group, abruptly stopped.

At some point, the temperature had dropped slightly below what it had been in the passage behind them.

Jiwoo’s ears also began to feel blocked, much like they did when an airplane took off. The faint traces of natural light disappeared entirely, forcing them to light the lamps they had brought from the surface.

Shaen glanced at Jiwoo. Unlike the way he spoke to the others, he at least made an effort to remain somewhat respectful with her.

“From here on, don’t look around unnecessarily. Watch where you’re going and follow me carefully.”

In other words, they needed to be cautious from this point onward.

Considering how he had behaved before, this was already a dramatic improvement.

It had to be thanks to Quilon.

After Shaen gave that quiet warning, even the minor bickering stopped.

Perhaps everyone had been using those sharp exchanges to mask the tension of entering a genuinely dangerous place.

Before long, the only sounds echoing through the tunnel were footsteps and restrained breathing.

Without thinking, Jiwoo moved closer to the person walking beside her.