Doubts Regarding Allie

“I didn't expect the quality of beautiful girls around you to be so high.”

When Greg finally hauled his newly purchased supplies back to the dungeon camp and frantically began assembling them, Nightmare's voice suddenly drifted out from his shadow.

The head of a black cat rose lazily from the shadow on the ground, its eerie green eyes curiously sizing up the small patch of cleared ground before him.

“To think even that maid reaches such a standard is quite rare. However, that other gray-haired girl is a bit lacking... After all, her chest is rather... barren.”

Greg was wrestling with a coil of rope and replied without even looking up:

“What do you know? The gray-haired brat's legs are practically flawless. That alone earns her plenty of bonus points.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he felt a bit stupid. Arguing about this with a cat—he really must have too much time on his hands.

Still, his hands didn't stop.

After taking a good while to secure the final tent stake, Greg straightened his aching back, let out a long breath, and looked at the result before him.

A dark gray, sturdy-looking thick canvas tent stood firmly on a relatively flat and dry patch inside the cave.

Thanks to the thriving adventurer industry in this world, tents were high-demand supplies, leading to intense competition among manufacturers. Not only were the fabrics waterproof and windproof, but the interiors were also lined with soft padding. More importantly, embedded at the tip of the central tent pole was a low-grade magic crystal, capable of activating a basic defensive barrier that covered the entire tent.

The barrier couldn't block powerful attacks, but it was enough to serve as an early warning system during rest, or to bounce off the weak bugs and small magical beasts in the dungeon's shallow layers that liked to sneak in for a midnight ambush.

For an adventurer, that meant getting a relatively restful sleep without having to keep their nerves constantly frayed.

In a dungeon fraught with danger, that peace of mind was worth far more than the tent itself.

Although it had cost him two full gold coins—nearly the majority of the funds he had wheedled out of Allie—looking at the sense of security the tent offered, Greg still felt it was worth every penny.

At the very least, he no longer had to sleep directly on the cold, damp stone floor that made his bones ache.

However, just as he wiped his sweat and prepared to enjoy the fruits of his labor, a dark blur shot past his feet with lightning speed, zipping inside the tent before him.

Nightmare found the softest spot deep inside the tent, curled up elegantly, and even stretched out with total satisfaction.

“Hey!”

Greg pulled aside the tent flap and yelled inside, annoyed:

“A bad cat like you who contributed zero labor has no right to enjoy the fruits of my hard work! Don't you know the rules?”

Nightmare paid him no mind at all, leisurely shifting into a more comfortable posture. Her eerie green eyes gleamed in the dim tent as she posed a new question:

“By the way, that maid of yours earlier was named Allie, correct? I could feel from her life essence that she seems to be only twenty-seven years old, yet her level has already reached LV68—the Hero Realm. Such a rate of growth would qualify as absolute genius even in my era. I am quite curious... why would she choose to follow a mere LV16 fellow like you?”

Greg stood at the entrance of the tent, feeling a bit chilled by the wind.

He let out a sigh, too exhausted to squabble with a cat over sleeping space. Bending over, he crawled inside and sat down a short distance from Nightmare.

It was much warmer and drier inside the tent than outside.

“I don't know either.”

Leaning back against the tent wall, he closed his eyes in fatigue, his voice sounding listless.

It wasn't a brush-off.

He genuinely had no idea.

In fact, it wasn't just him; even the hardcore players from his past life who had replayed the original game countless times and obsessively dug into every character's backstory could never explain it.

Why would Allie Hill—a sword genius with top-tier talent, strength, and looks—willingly stay by the side of a villainous noble like Greg Sass, who had a terrible personality, acted foolishly, and possessed virtually nothing of worth besides his family background and a handsome face, serving as his personal maid?

The Greg Sass in the original game hadn't treated Allie well at all.

Ordering her around was an everyday occurrence; while it didn't cross into physical abuse, it was certainly nowhere near respectful.

Yet even so, across every known storyline and every ending branch, Allie had never left.

She always stood silently behind Greg. As he repeatedly courted death, failed again and again, and plummeted into the abyss time after time, she still chose to follow him, walking beside him to their ultimate destruction without a single word of complaint.

Back then, this trait had left countless players frustrated. Eight out of ten one-star reviews complained that “the devs must have had brain damage to design such an illogical, loyal dog character.”

Even when the final DLC for the game was released, no clear explanation was ever provided regarding Allie's background or motivation.

In the end, the player community reached a resentful consensus: the character designer must have suffered a short circuit in their brain and forced in an absurd, ungrounded setting.

“Hehehe.”

Nightmare laughed with the sinister, chaos-loving glee of an amused bystander. “To think even you do not know the reason... Now that is truly interesting.”

Greg didn't reply. He simply rolled over, turning his back to the blob of dark shadow.

Although he had dealt with a few urgent problems, there were only going to be more challenges ahead.

Lacking the energy to bicker with this goddess of twisted humor, exhaustion washed over him like a wave, and he quickly sank into sleep.

When he woke up, the tent was shrouded in darkness, lit only by the faint, dim glow of luminescent moss filtering through the gap in the entrance flap.

Greg cracked his neck, feeling most of the fatigue accumulated from the night before ebb away.

He pulled out the old pocket watch he had bought yesterday for five copper coins and brought it close to his eyes.

Four in the afternoon.

In a pitch-black place like a dungeon devoid of reference points, one's sense of time could easily become warped.

This old pocket watch, which kept fairly accurate time, was a necessary investment that helped him plan his actions and rests without getting his day and night inverted.

Putting away the watch, he finally noticed that the tent was completely empty.

Nightmare had vanished.

Whether She had slipped back into his shadow or wandered off for a stroll, he couldn't tell.

However, considering She was a deity after all, it was unlikely that any monsters on the dungeon's first layer could do anything to Her, so Greg felt there was no need to worry too much.

He opened his food pack. The dried meat that had originally stuffed it full was now running low, leaving only enough for a meal or two.

Hunting for supplies had once again become an urgent task.

But before that, there was another, more crucial matter he needed to verify.

He needed to head toward the passage connecting the shallow layers to the middle layers and scout out the situation.

Mainly, he wanted to see if the pack of Goblins that used to occupy that spot were still roaming nearby, just as he remembered.

Although he had now mastered dark-attribute magic, Greg felt he wasn't completely helpless in battle.

However, dark-attribute magic consumed a massive amount of mana. With his current level and mana pool, it would run dry after only a few uses.

In a perilous dungeon, running out of mana was practically a death sentence. The risk was far too high.

In his original plan, he had intended to wait until Victoria and Silvia settled down, then invite them to form a party.

With Silvia providing buffs and support while he and Victoria served as the main attackers, the three of them working together could clear out the Goblins and forge a path to the middle layers.

That way, the pressure would be much lighter and far safer.

But now, circumstances had changed.

Victoria was unexpectedly injured and hospitalized. Judging by her injuries, it would likely take at least a week before she was fit to fight again.

As for himself, during last night's chaos while fleeing the teachers, he had accidentally triggered the early spawn of a juvenile Wandering Evil Spirit—a mini-boss that was supposed to appear only during the late stage of Chapter One to trouble players.

And that juvenile form had been instantly obliterated by the teachers' concentrated firepower.

This would undoubtedly shorten the default timeline of Chapter One's story progression by a huge margin.

The narrative momentum of the world would likely accelerate as a result, causing events or threats that could have been faced later to arrive prematurely.

He couldn't afford to wait for Victoria to fully recover.

To prepare for the worst-case scenario—where he might have to clear the dungeon entirely alone...

...He had to act as quickly as possible.

First, he had to thoroughly assess the current state of the shallow layers, getting a clear picture of the situation before formulating his next plan.

Greg packed his personal items, strapped his essential tools and dagger to his waist, gave his brand-new tent one last look, took a deep breath, lifted the flap, and stepped into the dim, damp corridor.