Dahlia stared at the soon-to-be-revived body of Josie, stone flesh cracking and crumbling under her sight, as she carried the Marquise within a massive tangle of vines. As it turned out, even without ghosts in their way, the journey down through the ancient lamia city was a long one and Dahlia was the only one with abilities suitable for hauling things long distance.
While Josie was certainly heavy considering how her body was formed from particularly dense stone, the real issue wasn't carrying capacity but instead stamina. It just so happened that Dahlia's unprecedented mana reserves that defied all convention *also* made her the perfect candidate for a jumped-up pack mule. Nevertheless, even if the task of carrying Josie was handed off to her and she was burdened the entire way down, the hike back to Avery and the ar'ca'nea certainly gave her time to think things over.
Here we go, this as well as next chapter are a sequence I've been reallllly looking forward to. There's just something about Josie's "resurrection" that really tickles my fancy.
Anyways, this chapter was, uhhhhh, really kinda hard to write, but not due to writer's block like it so often is for me. Instead it was the opposite. There's so much I want to do and address with Dahlia's shifting mentallity and it makes me really excited. And let me tell you: when I write while excited, what I end up ccreating is an absolute rambly mess. I had to rearrange as well as delete multiple paragraphs, all while what remained was heavilly edited and modified multiple times before we finally got to this stage and, tbh, I'm still not proud of it. It feels to rambly and incoherent still, but this was the best I could do for now unfortunately.
Nevertheless, I hope you still enjoyed, even if it was a bit of a struggle. Hopefully Josie's segment as well as what happens next chapter will be a nice enjoyable pallet cleanser~ (I promise it'll be totally normal and fine. Totally.)
As usual, here's the discord shout out and link, I love y'all: https://discord.com/invite/sQ4jpShWQe
And as always, I hope you're having a wonderful day~