Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 199. I Saw Who You Were

The red light started to fade, and something softer took its place. It was not the warm golden glow of happy memories, nor was it the blood red of trauma.

Somewhere in the middle.

Something that felt like the faint possibility of hope.

Rick felt his awareness coming back to his body. He slowly started to feel things again, starting with the fact that he was lying on something soft and fleshy.

The smell came next. It was a sickening mix of decay and corruption that made his stomach turn.

At first, his eyes opened to complete darkness, but then his Draconic vision adjusted, and he could see in the Leviathan’s stomach, which was completely black.

Rick’s imagination had made the inside look just as gross as it really was. The only light came from the corrupted purple veins that pulsed through the walls, making everything look sickly.

The floor under him was soft and gave a little when he moved, like lying on a mattress made of rotten meat. Rick could see pools of acidic liquid in different places, and he could see the partially dissolved remains of what he hoped were just fish and not anything else.

He sat up slowly, and his body screamed in pain. The healing must have continued while he was unconscious, because even though he still hurt, his health bar showed that he was at sixty percent instead of the five percent he had been at when he was swallowed.

That was when Rick noticed her.

Nerissa was sitting about ten meters away. Her body had returned to its normal size, but she still looked like an ocean dweller instead of a human.

She had her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, and her face buried in her legs.

She was rocking back and forth, which is a sign that someone is about to break down completely.

Rick tried to get up, but the floor was too shaky. He crawled and stumbled over the filthy ground until he got to Nerissa’s side.

Rick said softly, "Hey," not wanting to scare her. "Uh... you okay?"

Nerissa’s head jerked up, and Rick saw that her eyes were wide with shock. "Y-You’re... still alive...!"

"Oh my oceans... you truly are alive...!"

She reached out and touched his face, shoulders, and arms, as if she needed to feel him to know he was real and not a figment of her imagination. "How did a mere human like you survive in this condition...?"

"We were eaten by the Leviathan, and... we should be dead or at least close to it."

Rick looked down at himself and figured out what must have happened. The Leviathan’s stomach acid had been working on them, but Nerissa must have used her magic to shield them.

Rick said, "You healed me," and understanding dawned on him.

"You were keeping us both alive in here while I was out cold."

Nerissa pulled her hands away and put them back around her knees. "I... couldn’t let you die..." she said with a shy look.

"Not after you jumped in front of that attack to protect me... and not after everything you tried to do."

Rick can’t hide the fact that he’s actually fallen in love, seeing Nerissa act that way for the first time and thought. "Why the fuck did she ask all of those questions even though she’s the one preventing me from dying...?"

"How fucking cute she truly is..."

She turned away, and her voice became empty again. "Even though... I don’t know why I did that..."

"We are stuck inside a corrupted Guardian and don’t have any chances to get out."

"The Archon is going to release the Cthulhu, and that only means one thing that... Zorathia is coming to an end."

"I let down my kingdom... my people... and everything else..."

Rick saw the signs that Nerissa was about to have another panic attack. She always shut down emotionally when things got too much for her.

But this time, he wasn’t going to let it happen.

"I saw you," Rick said softly.

Nerissa looked at him in a confused way. "What...?"

Nerissa said, "I saw you while I was unconscious... not the you that is now, but the you that was before."

"I saw you in your throne room, worrying about kelp forests and neighborhoods while holding your two hundredth child with so much love that it hurt my heart."

"And... I also saw you standing at the edge of your kingdom, proud of what you had built."

Nerissa’s eyes got bigger, and something moved in their depths. "How could you even see and know that...?"

Rick said, "I don’t know."

"Maybe the Spirit Bond network is acting strangely..."

"Perhaps this place we’re in brings souls together, or maybe the fumes from the corruption are making me crazy."

"But trust me! I really did see it, Nerissa. I saw who you were with my perfect one eye."

He got closer, close enough to see the tears starting to form in her eyes. "And then I saw what made you break..."

"I saw the moment you learned about the betrayal, and then you killed those seventeen kids without feeling anything because you had already shut yourself down to stay alive..."

"I saw the genocide of the Abyssal Trenches and saw your face when you realized what you had become."

Nerissa’s breathing got uneven. "Then you know... you know I’m a monster who deserves all of this..."

Rick said firmly, "That’s where you’re wrong!"

He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, which made her look at him. "I saw something else in all of those memories!"

"I saw that you committed all of those awful acts even when you were already broken!" The Nerissa who killed many people wasn’t the real you!"

"She was just a shell, an empty vessel going through the motions because the betrayal had already killed the real Nerissa!"

"That doesn’t make what I did justifiable...!"

Rick agreed, "No, it doesn’t."

"Nothing can make killing three thousand innocent people feel justified! There is no justification for executing those seventeen children."

"I know that you did bad things, and now you have to live with them, but here’s what else I remember."

Rick’s grip on her shoulders got tighter, not painfully, but enough to keep her from moving. "I saw that you punished yourself more than anyone else ever could..."

"You carry that guilt for fifty years without letting yourself feel anything else while pushing your kids away, give up on your own emotional health, and turn yourself into a machine because you thought that was what you deserved."

"I got what I FUCKING deserved!" Nerissa yelled.

Rick asked, "Then why are you still trying?"

"If you really thought you didn’t deserve anything, why did you just heal me?!"

"Why did you keep the walls up to keep us safe in here?"

"And tell me with all your honest feelings, why didn’t you just give up when we were eaten?!"

Nerissa opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t know what to say.

Rick kept going. "You kept us alive because there is still a part of you that wants to live, even though you feel guilty, pain, and hate yourself... that wants to make things right!"

"That remembers how it felt to be the kind, wise empress who made something beautiful."

"I can’t go back to being her," Nerissa whispered, tears streaming down her face. "So much has happened, and everything feels broken."

Rick said softly, "You’re right..."

"You can’t go back to being the same person you were eight hundred years ago, when you didn’t know betrayal, loss, or how dark you could be at that time, but... you can change into a new person."

"Someone who has learned from their painful experiences and uses that knowledge to become even stronger and wiser."