Adventurer's Guild Café: I Was Wrongfully Exiled by the Saint, So I Will Enjoy My Second Life with My Fluffy Friends - V 2.1 Chapter 3.16

I walked forward, deeper and deeper into the pitch-black space.
With each step, the gentle splash of water echoed through the darkness—it felt kind of strange.
Actually, this place inside the fish… it’s way bigger than I thought.
I can’t see the end at all.

Could this be… another dimension?

“Pii?”

Lili tilted her head.

“What is it?”

“Pii.”

She gestured with her wing toward the scale I was holding.

“Hmm?”

I looked at the scale, trying to see what she meant.

It was still glowing faintly, just like before. Nothing seemed particularly different—
Wait.

“Huh?”

Looking closer, I realized it was blinking faintly now. The glow pulsed, dimming and brightening again.
I don’t think it was doing that earlier…

“What is this…?”

“Pii.”

I raised the scale high, just on a hunch, and slowly turned it in different directions.

“!”

For just a moment, the glow flared slightly in one direction.

I thought I imagined it—but when I pointed the scale that way again…

“It’s not just my imagination…”

The glow definitely got stronger.
I started walking in that direction, and the light grew even brighter.

What on earth is going on?

“Pii~”

“…Let’s try going this way.”

I’d been wandering around aimlessly without the faintest idea where the exit might be,
so I decided to follow the direction where the scale’s glow grew stronger.
The farther I went, the more intensely it blinked.

“Huh?”

I’d been so focused on the scale, I hadn’t noticed my feet—
Now, looking down, I saw golden flowers blooming on the surface of the water.
Dozens of them, all around me.

“There are flowers… blooming…”

“Pii~”

The blossoms gave off a faint glow.
And they felt… somehow warm.

“Why would there be flowers in a place like this…?”

I didn’t know the answer, but the flowers felt so gentle, so comforting.
Wanting to see more of them, I stepped toward the densest patch of blossoms.
And as I did, the scale’s light flared even brighter.

“This flower… I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before…”

As I gazed at the flowers, a wave of nostalgia swelled in my chest.
I couldn’t quite remember where I had seen them before—but I knew this flower.
Just looking at it filled me with a quiet comfort, a sense of relief, as if everything was going to be okay.

Guided by the blossoms, I walked on.
And then I realized—the darkness around me was slowly beginning to brighten.
Narrowing my eyes and looking into the distance, I thought I could see a faint source of light up ahead.

“Lili, that might be the exit.”

“Pii!”

We made our way toward the light.

But… it turned out not to be an exit after all.

“…What is that?”

As we got closer, the true nature of the light revealed itself.

Suspended near the ceiling of a vast, hall-like chamber was a round object.
Like a floating sphere—radiating a dazzling brilliance, illuminating everything around it.
And just like before, golden flowers were blooming all throughout the space.

When I stepped closer, I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
What… is this feeling? It’s like… I’m being crushed by something invisible.

I instinctively backed away from the orb.

“That startled me… what is that thing?”

A glowing orb inside a fish? I’d never heard of such a thing.
And that strange pressure… it wasn’t just my imagination.

I wanted to touch it and find out what it was, but it floated far too high up for me to reach.
And besides, something about it was making me feel… unwell.

My body felt strange.

Sleepy…
So sleepy, I could fall asleep standing up…

“Pii!”

Just as I was struggling to figure out what to do, Lili once again pointed at my scale with her wing.

When I looked, the scale was glowing with a fierce light—and trembling slightly in my hands.

But I couldn’t focus enough to think about what it meant.

“Pii…?”

“I’m sorry, Lili… I just need… a little rest…”

The sleepiness was overwhelming. My head was spinning, my chest tight.

“Pii—! Piiiii!”

I sat down on the damp ground, clutching at my temples.

Lili was flapping frantically beside me, but she and the light both seemed to be drifting farther and farther away…

“I’m… sorry…”

It felt like my thoughts were being smothered by a thick fog.
Like my body itself was being pulled toward the light up on the ceiling.
And then—my vision was slowly swallowed by darkness…