Chapter 803: The Protagonist’s Love Story (Part 10)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 803: The Protagonist’s Love Story (Part 10)
"Sigh, look at that. Just look. That’s what happens when amateurs get involved. His heart’s in the right place, and the idea isn't bad, but the execution is just riddled with flaws."
With a soft pop, the Pink Bear pulled off his small cat-themed headgear. Opening the bear’s mouth, he reached out a furry paw to light a cigar. He watched the "bratty kids" screaming and scattering in all directions around him, taking a long, smug drag.
Hmph. Trying to compete with me? Don't you know who the 'mightiest brat' in all of Belland is?
Too green. Go back to your mother’s womb and train for a few more years.
"Speaking of which, that kid Muen is just as green. For all the girls he’s chased and all the trouble he’s caused, he hasn't learned a single thing from his experiences."
"Lord Oranriel speaks the truth..."
Pars also removed his headgear. Watching a dignified member of the high royalty being so childish as to "get into a scrap" with a group of children made his eye twitch.
He brushed back his hair, which was slightly disheveled from the sweat trapped inside the mascot suit. Even so, he remained handsome and upright. Noblewomen passing by couldn't help but steal glances at him; even with their husbands by their sides, their beautiful eyes betrayed a certain spark of interest.
"Young Master Muen’s move was indeed a bit under-calculated," Pars judged from a professional perspective. "I imagine he intended to use this rapid heartbeat to make Miss Ariel feel a sense of excitement—perhaps even leveraging a person's natural instinct to rely on others during a crisis. But..."
The roller coaster roared overhead, but neither the Pink Bear nor Pars bothered to look up.
The Pink Bear went without saying—he could crawl faster than that thing while kneeling on durians. As for Pars, though his strength wasn't great—possessing only the aura of a Third-Tier Martial Artist—the thrill of that so-called roller coaster was, to him, roughly equivalent to the "The father of my father is my grandpa" kiddy rides the children were sitting on nearby.
And that wasn't even mentioning Miss Ariel, whose intelligence reports placed her at the Fifth-Tier—a true powerhouse.
The fact that she hadn't fallen asleep up there was already a sign of her respect for Young Master Muen.
"The angle is correct. For someone with a heart as steadfast as Miss Ariel’s, the hardest part is cracking that hardened shell. Unfortunately, the method is wrong." Pars sighed. "I actually don't understand why Young Master Muen would make such a low-level mistake. Does he really think something that moves slower than his family's horses can be associated with the word 'thrill'?"
"Hey, don't say that. If Muen weren't so unreliable, we wouldn't have the chance to step in, would we?"
The Pink Bear swayed his head, cigar smoke curling around him. With no one to nag him, his smoking had become much more flamboyant, every movement oozing the flair of a professional master.
"Oh?" Pars asked in surprise. "Lord Oranriel has a plan?"
"Heh, who do you think I am?" The Pink Bear pointed at the roller coaster streaking across the sky and suddenly gave a sinister grin. "What drives that thing? Magic. And as it happens, I know a thing or two about magic."
*
"This is so boring."
Ariel stared with dead-fish eyes as the scenery blurred past.
This was worse than being in the carriage. At least in the carriage, the scenery on both sides changed. This roller coaster was literally just spinning around the same spot; there was nothing interesting about it at all.
"This..." Muen said awkwardly. "How about I sing you a song?"
He was truly at his wit's end. On a roller coaster, if you weren't singing, what else could you do? Dance?
If he had known, he wouldn't have designed the track to be so long. He had originally thought that the longer it was, the more "heart-pounding" moments he could guarantee for Ariel. Instead, it had turned out like those terrible games from his previous life that added endless side quests just to pad the playtime—long, tedious, and utterly unremarkable.
But this was his own fault. His thinking was still stuck in the ruts of his past life, causing him to forget that a so-called roller coaster couldn't even be considered "thrilling" in this world.
"You can sing?"
"No."
"Then forget it. I'd rather not have my ears offended."
"Then how about I hum a little tune?"
"What tune..."
Drowsiness hit her again, and Ariel couldn't help but yawn.
Before she could finish her sentence, she heard Muen start humming.
The guy really couldn't sing. Even his humming was off-key and hard to evaluate; the best she could say was that it wasn't unpleasant to the ear.
But Ariel felt a strange sense of familiarity.
This melody... she felt like she had heard it somewhere before.
Thinking carefully, it seemed to be... A cute, dainty figure flashed through Ariel's mind.
The song Liya often plays?
How does Muen know it... Right, Liya must play it for him all the time.
Damn it, you're on a date with me and you dare hum Liya’s song? Aren't you afraid I'll settle all my old and new grudges with you right—
A surge of bitterness rose in Ariel’s heart. Enraged, she slammed her hand against the safety bar and moved to stand up.
Then, she froze.
The scenery was still rushing backward. The wind howled, and the roller coaster screeched against the rails with a grating, metallic sound.
But there was no humming. That familiar voice just now seemed to have been nothing more than a hallucination.
She had somehow fallen asleep.
"Dammit, what kind of ghost of a dream was that?" Ariel shook her head.
She was clearly on a date with that guy, yet she was still thinking about the past where Liya was snatched away by him... Had she awakened some kind of weird personality trait?
No, no, it was just an accident.
"It’s all your fault anyway!" Ariel glared unhappily to her side. If this guy’s dating methods weren't so boring, she wouldn't be letting her mind wander...
"Huh?"
But as soon as she turned her head, Ariel froze again.
The seat beside her was empty.
"Muen?"
Her anger vanished instantly. Ariel called out tentatively, "Where are you?"
There was no answer, only the whistling wind. It was as if she were the only person left in the entire world.
"What’s going on?"
Ariel instinctively tried to release her perception, but then she remembered that she currently couldn't use any of her power. She was no different from an ordinary girl.
And then, the situation changed again.
The sound of the wind grew louder.
Even without spiritual perception, Ariel could clearly feel the wind becoming frantic through touch alone. It felt like blades, slicing across her cheeks one by one, making it hard to keep her eyes open.
And it wasn't just the wind. A sensation of weightlessness pressed down on her like falling rocks, as if trying to drive her soul out of her body.
The world seemed to be constantly flipping upside down, then righting itself, then flipping again, over and over.
Ariel forced her eyes open a crack and found that the scenery on both sides was no longer just receding; it had become an oil painting soaked in water, colors bleeding together. The scenery was moving too fast for her eyes to capture any detail.
The roller coaster was flying.
It was moving dozens, hundreds of times faster than before. It had transformed into a steel behemoth, breaking free from the shackles of its tracks to dance wildly in the sky.
Sparks flew, steel roared, and the laws of physics on the roller coaster seemed utterly warped. The dance continued, growing more frenzied by the second!
The wind pressure had long since made it difficult for Ariel to breathe. Stripped of her power, she had no way to resist. She could only curl her fragile body and grip the safety bar—the only thing that could provide a shred of security.
She felt her heart pounding and her blood racing through her veins. It wasn't fear, but a primal instinct triggered by the physical stimulus. If Muen’s goal in designing this thing had been this, then she had to admit he had succeeded.
But...
Creeeeak... Creeeeak...
It wasn't over yet.
The roller coaster, hurtling in its madness, had long since exceeded the structural limits of its design.
As it danced wildly, overburdened and broken parts began to fall from its massive steel frame.
No, they didn't fall; they were flung out.
Every component became a meteor, kissing the earth in the most self-immolating way possible. In the high heat and violent impact, not even the smallest scrap remained.
Ariel felt like she was about to become one of those scraps.
Creeeeak... Creeeeak... SNAP!
The precarious safety bar finally reached its end with a piercing shriek of agony. With nothing left to hold her, Ariel was suddenly swept out, like a thin sheet of paper caught in a storm.
If she were an ordinary girl, her body would have been torn apart by the terrifying forces the moment she was flung out.
Fortunately, though Ariel had no power, her physical constitution remained. She didn't wither and perish in that instant.
But that didn't mean she was safe.
At such high speeds, she couldn't even open her eyes, but she knew she was like those meteors, hurtling toward the earth at a speed far exceeding the roller coaster.
Even though she had once fallen from a thousand-meter tower and emerged unscathed, that time was completely different from this. Right now, she couldn't muster a single shred of Fighting Spirit or Mana for protection. No matter how well-trained her physical body was, the outcome was inevitable.
She would slam into the ground, her bones shattered, reduced to a pile of gore.
It was the most hideous death imaginable, one no one would want to accept. Even if someone spent as much money and labor as it took to build this amusement park, they wouldn't be able to find all the pieces of her corpse.
Without a doubt, this was a desperate situation.
Normally, facing such a crisis, even Ariel would be tense. Panic would rise in her heart, and she would rack her brain for that one faint glimmer of hope that might exist somewhere.
She never gave up, even in the face of death.
Every time she had encountered a desperate situation before, that was what Ariel had done.
But this time, she remained remarkably composed.
From beginning to end, she watched it all happen calmly. Like a fisherman at sea watching a colossal wave rise, she didn't change her expression, as if she didn't know she would be swallowed by that wave in the next moment.
It wasn't because her heart had become toughened beyond human limits, nor was it because she had given up.
It was simply because she still remembered who had been sitting beside her before all of this happened.
Even if her eyes couldn't see him at that moment, for some reason, she believed in him from the bottom of her heart.
"Muen."
"I'm here."
This time, her call was answered.
Ariel opened her eyes. Amidst the afterglow of burning steel falling through the air, she saw the man smiling as he reached out and caught her hand.
"I've been here the whole time."