Liiza woke up with the sound of faint laughs and teases ringing in her ears. The warmth coming from Khan's embrace made her feel confused in front of the images that appeared in her vision when she opened her eyes. His bare chest suited those sensations, but Azni's smiling face made her tense up and try to snap back on her feet.
"It's fine!" Khan promptly shouted while tightening his embrace to keep her on him.
The fear coming from others learning about her relationship made Liiza struggle to escape Khan's embrace, but she started to calm down when one of his hands ended up on the back of her head.
Liiza kept her palms pointed on Khan's chest as her breathing slowed down, but her confusion didn't vanish. She could still see herself in her boyfriend's embrace while someone else stared at them.
"She had understood about us on her own," Khan continued through whispers alternated with kisses at the top of her head. "I explained everything while you were resting."
"Resting?" Liiza asked in a sleepy voice before recalling her condition.
Liiza noticed how she was wearing only her pants and sports bra. A few pieces of Khan's robe acted as bandages for her deepest injuries, and some circular marks still appeared on her dark-blue skin due to the troublesome effects of the leeches' bite.
"Did you go through my underwear?" Liiza asked while adjusting her sports bra.
"You had leeches in strange places," Khan explained as a warm smile appeared on his face.
Liiza was clearly better. Her face had regained its usual dark shades, and she appeared focused on her surroundings. The confusion that had afflicted her before had vanished after her short one-hour nap.
"So," Liiza uttered while shooting a glance toward Azni, "Does she know?"
"I know about you two," Azni replied while covering her mouth to suppress her giggles.
"Does she know that we are together?" Liiza repeated while turning toward Khan
"I left out many details," Khan revealed, "But she knows."
"Great!" Liiza exclaimed before turning inside Khan's embrace to face him.
Liiza spread her legs before sitting on Khan's lap and taking his neck into her arms. An eager smile had appeared on her face, and Khan didn't hesitate to satisfy her desire.
Azni's eyes widened when she saw Khan and Liiza kissing right in front of her. She even gave voice to a high-pitched gasp, but she quickly suppressed it to let that scene continue.
Khan and Liiza entered a world of their own when their gazes met. Everything around them disappeared now that they could enjoy each other's company. They had both felt worried about their partner during the fall, so they used that chance to replace those heavy emotions with better ones.
Azni slowly fell into a daze. She didn't want to stare too much about those intimate moments, but the unusual expressions that the couple revealed left her astonished.
Khan showed a liveliness that he had never revealed among the other Niqols. Azni had never seen him so relaxed and happy. His chuckles and whispers were sweet sounds that made his partner blush and smile whenever they reached her ears.
Liiza's behavior was even more astonishing. Azni had basically never seen the girl smile inside the academy, and her status as an outcast made it even harder to see her wear something different than a cold face.
However, that cold and detached Niqols didn't exist when Khan hugged her. Liiza shot captivating smiles and meaningful glances as her hands caressed Khan's face and bare chest. She even bit her lower lip when the kisses became too intense.
"She is still staring," Liiza whispered before diving into Khan's neck and chuckling.
"Can you blame her?" Khan teased. "I must look great."
"I'll make sure to aim at you the next time," Liiza threatened while biting the base of Khan's neck.
"You'll leave a sign again," Khan complained. "Though you were so cute before. Were you worried that I was cheating on you?"
"Shut up," Liiza said through her bite. "I need to brand you to keep the other girls away."
"How am I even going to justify a hickey here?" Khan scoffed without stopping her partner from playing with his neck.
"Just blame the leeches," Liiza groaned.
"The leeches' bites go deeper," Khan laughed before immersing his face in Liiza's hair to reach her ear, "And they definitely don't look like this."
Liiza left Khan's neck and fixed her gaze on her partner's eyes. She appeared ready to jump on him, but she managed to hold back due to the troublesome situation.
Azni had initially thought that Khan and Liiza were only a passionate couple, but those intense stares and gestures made her change her mind. She obviously knew about the rare compatibility between two different mana, but the Niqols taught it as if it were one of those unreasonable love stories with fated partners. Yet, she felt that the couple in front of her fit that state.
"Couldn't this happen during a formal event?" Liiza complained through an exasperated sigh. "We actually have to do important things now."
"Eight of us have fallen in the underground world," Azni announced now that the conversation had reached topics that she could join. "We must find the others and a way out of here."
"We really must," Liiza repeated in an annoyed tone before leaving a deep kiss on Khan's lips.
Liiza stood up at that point, and she took Khan's hand to make him imitate her. Azni also went back on her feet, and the romantic atmosphere slowly vanished as everyone focused on their situation.
The main issue there was the lack of a way out. Azni and the others would leave the matter in the hands of their superiors otherwise. The unknown nature of the leeches made the eight members of the group not enough to face that threat. Still, they were stuck in the underground world now, so gathering everyone sounded like the best option.
"Remember, not a word with the others," Khan reminded Azni before taking Liiza into his arms and kissing her again.
Azni giggled and nodded, but her expression showed disappointment when she saw how Khan and Liiza behaved outside of the cave. Both wore cold faces and stopped exchanging gazes as they inspected the large area with the river.
The sudden change in their behavior made Azni feel as if the previous scenes had been nothing more than a dream. She struggled to imagine Liiza and Khan as happy as before when she inspected their current expressions.
Azni kept her disappointment for herself since the mission came before her desire for gossips. The three even had to find the backpacks since she had lost hers during the fall.
The travel through the underground structure resumed in silence. Only a few whispers resounded among Khan and the two girls when branches that led in different parts of the lair appeared in their vision.
Azni, Khan, and Liiza decided to remain inside the large areas since they gave them an advantage over the leeches hiding inside the soft spots. Having some space allowed them to dodge sudden attacks without risking hitting the walls.
The group didn't bother speaking about the situation because it was impossible to gain a clear idea of the threat even after they fell inside the lair. Only a study of the actual cause behind that underground structure could reveal something, but the tunnels continued to offer them nothing more than leeches.
The dull and slow march gained some meaning once the group found footsteps stretching toward one of the narrow cavities to their right. The river had long since disappeared, and only rocky walls filled with holes and soft spots surrounded them. Dangers would surely accompany those tracks, but the trio didn't hesitate to proceed ahead.
Khan could see perfectly with the two Niqols a few steps behind him. Their glowing eyes were like electric torches in that almost complete darkness. The narrow cavity unfolded in his vision in its entirety after the group took a single step inside it, and he could immediately see an unusual pile of dirt accumulated in the distant corner.
That cave was small, and its entrance allowed only two grown-up men to pass at the same time. Khan had to glare at Liiza a few times before she stopped fighting him for the spot in front of the group, but the inspection proceeded smoothly afterward.
Khan could study the small area and confirm that it didn't have threats that he could sense. That didn't say anything about the leeches, but he didn't fear them too much. His speed and his new proficiency level made him quite good against those frail opponents, and his companions were there to help if the situation even became dangerous.
Multiple black spots jumped out of the pile of dirt once Khan entered its range, but he almost expected that to happen after witnessing the same event multiple times throughout the exploration. Many leeches tried to reach him with their threatening mouths, but his kicks arrived before them.
The leeches exploded mid-air as Khan delivered three fast kicks and took another step toward the pile of dirt. More of those creatures came out, but he killed them quickly before repeating the process until he was in front of the actual terrain.
The tracks led there, so Khan didn't hesitate to kick away part of the soil to dig through the insides of the pile, and a Niqols' foot eventually appeared in his vision. Liiza and Azni couldn't miss that detail, and their expressions inevitably darkened, but Khan didn't let that scene stop his actions.
Khan carefully bent forward and stopped multiple times to make sure that no leeches jumped at him. Still, the soil seemed safe now, so he could grab the Niqols' foot and pull that body from the pile. The figure that unfolded in his eyes immediately made him think about Elbek, but a peculiar detail made him forget about the alien altogether.
Khan had only managed to pull half of the Niqols' body out of the dirt before a disgusting scene filled his vision. He saw the familiar rough skin of the leeches covering the alien's waist, but that feature didn't belong to multiple Tainted animals. Instead, it came from a single creature that was trying to eat Elbek.
The biggest leech that Khan had ever seen was sucking Elbek's body inside its sharp mouth. The creature was almost two meters long and thirty centimeters large, but its figure stretched to let the Niqols pass through its cavity.
The Tainted animal ignored Khan and focused on sucking the boy deeper inside its body, and that process continued even after he kicked the lower part of its rough figure. He was trying to make the creature let go of Elbek, and the attack seemed to work since the boy's body slowly came out of the sharp mouth.
Khan continued to stomp his foot on the creature until the entirety of Elbek's body left the sharp mouth. He understood that nothing could help the boy at that point. The giant leech had made the skin of the corpse's upper part melt.
