"Isn't this the fifth right we've taken?" Lizu murmured loudly, yet softly in the same breath; her tone somehow indicated a frustration from a lack of understanding, instead of being lost, even if being lost aided in her frustration. With her frustration gradually rising, the tip of Lizu's chonky tail rose and fell, slapping hard against the ground but only managing to make a light thud, due to the maze's soft grassy floor. The lack of impact only annoyed her more, somehow.

  "Indeed, which is conflicting to my sense of direction," Enetha added as she faintly bobbed up and down, her motion resembling someone riding a small boat in some wavy pool that had been set to a power of three out of fifteen. On another note, the little princess was now sporting a gaggle of silver pawn Mould Breaker chess pieces, seeing as the only obstacles the duo had encountered so far were some hanging vines that blocked their path. But even with the lack of any spooky threats, Enetha only allowed one of her Fifty Percent Infusement Mode Mould Breaker rings to deconnect back into three Base Mode rings, whilst keeping the other in FPI Mode, just to be safe.

  [A standard pawn chess piece made of silver with an opaque white glass-like shortsword attack to the back of its head. The piece is covered in glowing emerald lines that resemble connected jigsaw pieces]

  Speaking of those vines, Lizu stopped in her tracks before a very mighty set of vines that were obstructively plentiful and abundant, which blocked the way, almost blending in as any other part of the wall had it not been for the vines sporting a different shade of green. The obvious differences in its hue was strangely comforting to Lizu, managing to get a shaky sigh of relief out of her as she found her hands worming their ways to her respective hip sides: "This takes me back. Those extremely old-school movies were really a joy to experience"

  "How so?" Enetha asked softly as she squinted at the vines through the three Silver Pawn chess pieces she held up to her face, wondering how many she should activate to deal with the vines this time around. As the little princess decided on using the three in her hand and tossed each of them through one of the BRM Mould Breaker rings, Lizu lightly snickered at the little princess's comment.

  "Because Inkaro would point out every instance where an object would move because it was less detailed than the background," Lizu stated as the swirling masses of emerald mana shot past her, landing in three distinct spots and coalescing into three identical golems that vaguely resembled Silver King Golem.

  [Silver Pawn Golem(s) is a teen-sized suit of light silver armour. Its insides are a glowing emerald green. It is covered in glowing emerald lines that resemble jigsaw pieces. It wields an opaque white glass-like shortsword that has a muted yellow crescent star-cut moonstone cross guard (crescent star-cut means a star-shaped that has been stretched/bent like a crescent moon)]

  With swords raised, the SPGs hacked and slashed away at the vine wall, making easy work of it in no time, leaving Lizu and Enetha free to continue conversing at their leisure.

  Watching the knight golems slash away at the diminishing vines, Lizu brought a hand to her face to rest her chin, firmly resting it on her flattened out palm. Thinking away, her tail slapping stopped."I'm kind of jealous you have so many helping hands at your beck and call... although, if I did, I'd be even more lazy than I already am... hah."

  Enetha heartily huffed, managing to get the tiniest budge out of her eyebrow, radiating unbridled sass and bratty indignation at Lizu's gall to complain; it made her want to scream, but she didn't want to risk getting the attention of spooky monsters. But even if she didn't plan on screaming, Enetha still wouldn't allow Lizu to flaunt her freedom so mindlessly.

  "And yet you have Inkaro: who treats you however you want him to, and not a second him."

  Listening to the little princess's entire reaction, from the initial huffing and puffing to her not-so-subtle expression of her deeper feelings, Lizu felt somewhat guilty for openly saying something that ended up upsetting Enetha. However, she noted this wasn't the first time Enetha had brought up something along those lines, so she mentally prepped herself to question Enetha in a way where she'd open up on her own accord. Hopefully at the very least.

  But despite the dragolyte's good intentions, basic cause and effect had other ideas. A tall doorway of shadows shot up from the floor out of nowhere, stopping as quickly as it appeared with no impact, nor uttering a single sound.

  "So the basement functions like an ever-changing dungeon that spits people out at predetermined locations on the estate depending on what exit is encountered," Inkaro mused aloud as he and Louailanye hopped out the shadowy door, only for that shadowy door to slink away into the grassy ground below. Lizu instantly refocused from Enetha, sadly, to Louailanye, because Lizu recognised her by the description Inkaro had given during his story. Which she found somewhat odd, with how little the kitsune differed from said description.

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  "And there it goes," Louailanye mumbled disapointed at seeing the doorway disappear, slumping her tails defeatedly, "At least I got past the first puzzle this time, thanks to you, Inkaro, although you didn't need to bring up this Lizu person every time you committed to a move."

  "Giving her her dues is only natural, after all. Although I do wonder why a puzzle I saw Lizu solve months ago appeared in that stigmai-powered dungeon. " Inkaro stated matter-of-factly. The kitsune girl rolled her eyes, wishing Inkaro had mentioned something that important while they were still in the ever-changing dungeon, since she wouldn't be able to confirm it for herself now that it was so late already and close to when her mother said she'd take her home. Seeing the face on Louailanye, one that screamed 'I'm out of time and have to leave,' Lizu took her chance to place herself into the interaction.

  "Seems you couldn't handle being away from me, I'm flattered~" Lizu announced teasingly as she playfully marched her way right up to Inkaro, unabashedly so, followed by her boldly nudging him in the leg multiple times.

  Tilting his head, Inkaro perplexedly asked, "Is that so?"

  His genuine question caught her completely on guard, having expected it but still falling victim to it. It hit her so badly that Lizu slumped her shoulders and tail before audibly exhaling, pulling up enough strength from her core she'd inadvertently let out some fire from her mouth that petered out a few seconds later.

  Seeing Lizu in person, Louailanye instantly figured out that she was the one Inkaro was refering too, not because she was a dragolyte or that Inkaro was talking to her so freely, but because Lizu and Inkaro shared a sizeable amount of the other's mana. It almost made the kitsune girl want to laugh at seeing something she knew would get arise out of someone like Lizu. But before she could even get a formulation of a comment ready, Louailanye inadvertently noticed Enetha situated on the other girl's dragony tail.

  "Hi, Enetha," Louailanye retorted with a raised hand, followed by Enetha returning the gesture using one of her cloth-like appendages.

  Having missed her chance and mid-wave, Louailanye... just sort of blipped out of existence, or so it seemed. It was such an abrupt sight, or lack of, that even Lizu found herself pausing in her teasing of Inkaro to look at the disappearance spot herself, while Enetha wasn't fazed in the slightest.

  "Say, was that the girl you mentioned in your story? What are the odds? Is what I would say had I not predicted her showing up hours ago," Lizu said cheekily, sporting devilish girl as she repeatedly wiggled her finger at Inkaro, trying desperately to recover from the devastating soul damage she'd dealt herself, because she couldn't bring herself to blame Inkaro for his Inkaroness. "Although, where did she even go? I don't sense her mana anymore."

  "It was unquestionably her mother; she is part of the Time Noble Demon House," Enetha stated boldly, speaking a little more softly than before. Enetha even went on to explain how she suspected the kitsune's mother's use of demonic time magic worked, based purely on the tidbits she'd gleaned from her own mother and Louailanye: boiled down to the simplest explanation possible, the kitsune mother had some sort of bubble-like time bubbles that encase targets, to which the mother can then manually control the timeflow of.

  Hearing that explanation and getting a full-body shiver out of her, Lizu managed to mumble something out: "That's... kind of scary to think about; imagine being where you are one minute, then finding yourself in the next millennium. Right... Inkaro?"

  Seeing Inkaro having disappeared himself, Lizu darted her head around, fearing her joke had been jinxed to life. But with some manual headturning at Enetha's little hands, the dragolyte spotted Inkaro heading back on the path she and Enetha had just walked, only in reverse. So the girl who was enthralled to be his fiancée hurried after him, while Enetha's three Silver Pawn Golems followed after her in single file.

  As she caught up and walked beside him with ease, Lizu poked Inkaro in the back of the hand. "Where are you off in a hurry, Aro?"

  "I've gotten the insight I needed for how to help Anazenpha, so I'll be heading back soon," Inkaro stated calmly, while G.Galore overhead effectively puppettered Dazzling Candlelight to continue creating small beads of light to guide the three out of the hedge maze. Lizu was absolutely awestruck; it hadn't even been that long, yet Inkaro was already thinking of leaving after only three hours. It was maddeningly satisfying for Lizu because she was right on the money for predicting how long Inkaro would take to get what he was after.

  "After driving all the way here, you're just going home?!" Lizu grumbled, mainly out of expectant exhaustion at Inkaro's flippant switch in attachment to something; distinctly, the instant he finds what he was looking for. "...honestly, what am I to do-"

  Lizu found herself cut-off by Inkaro pulling something out of his golden agate curio, distinctly book-shaped yet not a grimoire, much to the statistically improbable chance of Inkaro ever storing anything other than magical doodads that Lizu's brain had come to anticipate. Not that she'd complain as Inkaro placed the book in her outstretched and anticipating mits.

  "I found it in this place's odd dungeon. I recalled Morilore mentioning you reading something involving dragons, so I figured you'd want to read this yourself," Inkaro stated as he and Lizu swiftly exited the outwardly small hedge maze. As she already had the book open, intending to make good on the last part of Inkaro's words, Lizu gave Inkaro an affectionate horn bump while wasting no time in reading away.

  "In a land both pleasant and sweet, a dragon once so little lived free..."