"Are you... all right?"
Misha spoke softly, her expression complicated as she looked at Maria.
Maria patted Ceobe's head, and after getting her to loosen her hold for the moment, turned to face Misha.
"A fight like that wasn't enough to hurt me... Where is your brother?"
With the others present, Maria thoughtfully chose not to call him Skullshatterer directly, using a different phrasing instead.
Judging from Misha's shocked reaction when she saw Skullshatterer earlier, not many people likely knew that he was her brother.
No one should be able to guess it from that wording.
"Alex... he left first."
When Maria suddenly brought up Alex, Misha's mood visibly sank.
But she had grown much stronger in the end. After being downcast for a moment, she raised her head seriously.
"Thank you so much for this, Miss Maria. If you hadn't protected me, things would definitely have been much worse..."
"I only did what I wanted to do."
Maria shook her head and did not accept the girl's thanks.
After a moment of silence, she asked another question.
"What do you plan to do next?"
"What I plan to do next..."
Misha looked hesitant, her gaze evasive.
Honestly, she had no idea what she should do next.
Her father had given her a large amount of documents and told her to protect them... but the problem was that he had never told her who the documents were supposed to be given to, or how long she was meant to protect them.
She could only wander around aimlessly... until she eventually came to Lungmen.
From her current perspective, going with Lungmen and handing her things over to them might have been the best choice... at the very least, she could apply for a certain degree of protection that way.
But from