粉红的窗帘

"I won't be fooled anymore, mother," Alva looked at Usha and walked in Nikol's direction with a determined look on her face.

"I believe what I see and feel, I love Nikol and I don't really care about my faith in the goddess right now," It was a controversial and treacherous thing to say especially in front of the elven tribe, who's highly dependent on the goddess but, she didn't look bothered even a little bit as she quickly went into Nikol's arms hoping to get that missing warmth back.

Even though hesitant to betray her faith, in front of Nikol it all felt useless for her.

With Alva's initiative moment, most of the girls started to join Nikol's side surprising Usha, who thought, that the goddess had more influence on these girls than Nikol. even though it surprised her, that didn't make her any less happy because she knew it wasn't a bad decision to join Nikol's side right now for these girls and her.

"We are sorry, Nikol, Whatever punishment you give us, we will accept it but please don't hate us for what we did, We actually love you, I can't go on without you," It was Emily who spewed those cheeky words hoping Nikol will drop his stern face and go back to his kind and compassionate one but girls knew things won't be that easy because they broke his trust once, so to earn it back, they will have to work hard.

By the end of this sequence of events, more than thousands of girls joined Nikol's side leaving the other side flabbergasted.

"Well, looks like I got my answer," Looking at the Zenda, Usha, who remained on the opposite side with few girls, Nikol said with a disappointed look. They had their eyes and mouths wide open at how hard this situation was.

Usha being the chief of the tribe, she had the most faith in the goddess, so when something like this happen, she couldn't help but feel conflicted.

"Nikol. we shouldn't do this, going against the goddess' will is not a good idea," Zenda opened her mouth with an awkward look, she knew telling something like that would only cause more problems but her judgments got clouded by her faith.

"You were about to be killed because of that same goddess, let me tell you, she might be my mother and the one who gave life to me but I'm not her puppet to die when she wants me to die, you can be a puppet but those who want to experience freedom can join me," From the way, he phrased those words, Zenda started questioning whether she was doing the right thing.

"Now where's Arti? She was supposed to be in my pocket but she's not here," Hoping he would get more answers about this incident, Nikol decided to question the main culprit, but she was nowhere to be seen.

For now, they decided to calm down but Usha and Zenda plus some other girls didn't give answers to Nikol's question as they asked for more time to decide.

"Nikol, what was that power you used earlier? You were invincible with that," Alva who followed Nikol along the way questioned since she was curious and she wanted to bond with Nikol again.

Hearing her question, everyone looked at him with interest but, Nikol didn't even look at them as he kept walking without even trying to answer her question.

He was deep in his thoughts thinking, about where he went wrong for everything to turn out like this and the shocking news he heard about.

'So I'm going to be a father now'

It still felt unreal to him since this was a rather unexpected and strange thing to happen at a hectic time like this.

*Sigh

"Sister, can I really become someone you can be proud of? I think I already fucked up everything," Nikol muttered to himself, which didn't go unheard by Alva and Emily who was close to him.

They thought about doing the exact same thing they used to do when Nikol is feeling sad, but right now times were different and they knew Nikol won't enjoy their excessive physical contact.

"Where are the injured and cursed girls? Take me there," While walking along the way, Nikol suddenly remembered about the girls he attacked. At that moment, he didn't really attack them with the intention of harming them, but he didn't really care about holding back for them either. It was a really complicated feeling for Nikol, but still, he wanted to help these girls who got injured because of him.

"This way!"

Lydia took the initiative to lead him there while asking Emily to go and look after Usha without letting her do anything crazy knowing how imbalanced her mental status is.

She quickly nodded her head and left the place because even she didn't want to see the scenery inside the hut, where the injured are resting. They were easily able to hear the pained grumblings of girls, even though they were still outside, showing how bad the situation was.

"Most of them couldn't even fight back, there are almost no physical injuries this time, most of them are suffering because of the curse," Lydia said before entering the hut and seeing Nikol's interested look.

"I know,"

As soon as they entered the hut, their eyes met with the pitiful sight of many girls jumping and throwing a tantrum on the floor in pain. The whole hut had a sorrowful environment showing how absurd this situation was.

"This is your goddess's work!" With his hands clenching in anger, Nikol carefully observed everyone before taking action.

"Nikol, if you were there in the first place, would things have been different? If you were there with us can you change this result?" Lydia questioned hoping for an answer, but Nikol just looked at her with an empty look.

"I don't know, but If I was there you wouldn't have suffered great damages like this, I'm immune to curses so if I took the lead, girls would have been easily able to follow my lead and attack dark elves,"

Nikol showed Lydia that he wasn't all talk. She understood how wrong they were to attack without a proper plan while ignoring the person who had a proper plan.

She couldn't keep thinking about these thoughts peacefully. Suddenly, Nikol disturbed her and said something rather strange.

"I can cure them!"

Lydia was caught off guard by Nikol's words, even previous or current light mage couldn't cure this, but now Nikol wants to do that. She would easily ignore it if this was said by somebody else, but since it was Nikol she decided to take it seriously.

"How?"

"Remember how I attacked using cursed magic which was liquified? I vaguely remember how I did that but we need to capture some of the remaining dark elves alive,"

Lydia took mental notes about what he wanted but listening to his request, she felt it was almost impossible.

"But-"

"Don't worry, we are not going to rest from here onward, I will erase every single cursed transformation and dark elves with curse magic until no one will be able to find evidence whether they existed,"

Lydia obviously saw Nikol in a strange light right now.

How can she explain this?

He looked more vicious, cruel and-

Lydia hated to admit it but this behaviour of Nikol was more attractive to her than Nikol's normal kind behaviour. She felt like her whole being was getting swallowed by his cruelty the moment she laid her eyes upon those glistening purple colour eyes.

"For now, ask Nym to use some extra mana stone and extract as much as curse she can get, we will commence our attack soon and this time, I will be the commander, Both Zenda and Usha will work under me," Giving one last look at the injured girls, who were desperately holding their life, Nikol sighed and left the hut leaving flabbergasted Lydia in it.

Meanwhile, Usha didn't know why but she just kept looking at the injured Eva with care while treating her with a heavy heart.

"He didn't look happy," She muttered to herself.

"Damn it, why didn't I quickly join him, instead I just decided to hold onto my stupid ideals," Even though Zenda had no regrets about not joining Nikol and not betraying the goddess, Usha was the complete opposite of it. She wanted to live in the moment but her position and habits didn't allow her to do that.

It was hard for her to change her ideals but it wasn't impossible as she was already on her way to falling into the darkness because of her own ideals.

While she enveloped her mind with several thoughts, she felt someone blowing into her ear rather hard causing her body to twitch from the sensation.

She decided to kill whoever did that, but seeing Nikol's face, Usha's awkward look came back to her face filled with a little fear of how different Nikol looked and behave.

"Can we talk for a moment?"