CHAPTER 91 **The Messy Haven**

Sahara was told, by Matthew, that it would be better for her if she did spend time at the Rolland Estate and come back here in the marriage carriage, or whatever it was.

So, this was her last day, before she goes to stay back at her original home in this life, the Rolland Estate…

Naruto was luckily getting tired now and so they teleported back home to the Second Prince’s residence.

Sahara asked to see if Matthew had returned but found that he hadn’t yet. It was already lunch time, didn’t they normally finish by now?

She was a little miffed with the emperor, so Sahara decided then that she will continue to do what she was going to, before she left for the General’s estate.

Sahara sat down within the Martial Arts area and pulled out two white pills. Naruto jumped into her lap and Steven silently sat down too.

She gave a pill to him and said, “I’m going to meditate.”

Steven said, “Thank you.”

They both went into meditation, and she forgot about her surroundings, as she desperately tried to find out why people become immune to these pills.

Hehe, my first white pill! Ah! How strong I’ll be!

Sahara waited impatiently for the pill to open up, as she thought that it was about time that she had her own white pill.

To her, it wasn’t surprising that she had forgotten all about herself, as in her previous life she practically lived for others. The only time that she lived for herself was because of her little girl and she had gone nuts when she had been kidnapped. Before then, it was like a trait though, to make others happy, because well, her happiness seemed harder to obtain all by herself.

Sahara got to the point that she just went with others happiness, making her think that that’s all she needed. It was strange, like…She was missing something about herself, something unobtainable, even back then...

Then she suddenly thought of Matthew, making her unconsciously smile. From being a ghost in her previous life, to now, where one person accepts her for who she was, craziness and all, she guessed that to a prospect, he was her happiness. That she could pout and ask for things from him without worry, that he’ll make her smile…Her strange emptiness from her last life was being filled…

Sahara was still very shocked to how much spiritual essence was attracted to the pill, and she had to remind herself on what she wanted to accomplish. Digging deeper into the spiritual essence, it was of course an overall pinkish color, yet Sahara zoomed in and found all sorts of colors from the rainbow. The strange thing was, a lot of it was a brownish color, there were others, but she’d have to say that the dominant color was brown. Why?

Literally zoomed in so much that she could see these colors was not heard of, because of not having zoomed in so much beforehand, she was a bit dazed into seeing this. Colors…Colors…Why is that familiar?

Seeing so much of the brown enter into her dantian, Sahara slowly saw some brown essence being repelled and leave the area around her. She looked closer into her dantian and found it very full of brown spiritual essence.

Brown!?

That’s right! Colors of the Elements! But what was the brown meant for again?

Sahara found herself trying to think about this and even thought back to her previous life, to help her out. Could it be some sort of Nature or Earth element? And, even if it was, what was going on? Why was it being repelled? Was there too much of it?

The pill was losing most of its concentration and she’d taken all this time with all of her thoughts and seeing what was going on.

As the last of the spiritual essence was coming in, only the brown essence was being repelled, and she found herself in rank six, already halfway through it!

Sahara wasn’t sure if having a cleansed body helped or not now, but what she did know, was that this pill definitely had something that would stop it from working, and she had to figure it out!

Sahara opened her eyes to find Steven already sitting there, as though waiting for her to finish. “You ranked up!”

She smiled and nodded, then brought out a star, putting her spiritual essence into it, with Steven silently watching.

“Time to see if I can see Purple Haven from here.” Sahara said, putting out the star in a particular direction. It had been a while since she last did this, so she had high hopes!

“Purple Haven?” Steven asked.

She found herself able to concentrate easily on the star and she turned to him, “Yeah, I could only see its walls before from a distance, but now I want to know if…”

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Sahara’s star had been traveling at a large speed and she found herself seeing the earth rumble…Out in the vast, land area...

“Sahara?”

She blinked, as she saw what her star saw.

Holy crap! It’s that big ass beast again!

Sahara remembered seeing one when she had gone into the big, vast land quite a while ago now. By then she had Naruto, and they were on top of the mountain. At first, it scared the living daylights out of her!

It was as big as the mountain that she had been on!

It was a huge deal at first! But, as it had turned out…It hadn’t been such a big deal…Naruto ‘Arf’ed at it and when the huge, black, golem looking thing had looked over at them…She didn’t know what to do!

After a while, Sahara had waved at it, showing a slight, scared smile and it seemed to move on afterwards, but in the same direction that it was originally going in.

Since then, Sahara had changed a few points on how she viewed beasts in general. They weren’t monsters! And by the way that Naruto had acted, it was like they could most definitely be friendly.

So, since it became not such a big deal, Sahara hadn’t thought much of it, till now that she saw it again…

It was still just as big and moved the ground beneath it…It also reminded her of the couple of titan movies or shows that she’d watched, they were so huge that she thought they’d fall through the Earth!

But the land only grumbled beneath its feet and the sound of the footsteps seemed so loud, that Sahara wondered how far the sound would travel…Honestly, weren’t they strong enough to go through the anti-beast barrier? Why hadn’t they? What is it that made the barrier, if beasts as big of that didn’t even go through them!?

If Sahara found out what it was, and put it into a simple, basic understanding, she would have said that the anti-barrier was more of a repellent. You know, like sprays or certain plants to certain animals on Earth, it's like that. The beasts didn't want to go near the barrier at all…Even after all these years. It seemed obvious that it doesn’t seem like something that the beasts can become immune to over time…Which was good! But…How!? Was it a spiritual essence thing?

...But, then Sahara would want to know how it was made and how it stays up all the time and...So, luckily, she doesn't know much at all, otherwise her curiosity would most likely kill her!

Sahara would come up with ideas and assumptions, like that of it probably having something to do with someone a long time ago, trying to understand beasts and keep them away from a certain area...Blah, blah, blah...But, luckily, she’s doesn’t know much about the barrier...At least not in this point of time.

Strangely though, Sahara wasn’t afraid now of this ‘big ass’ beast. Having thought about beasts not being monsters, they didn’t seem to faze her so much anymore. It reminded her of spiders and snakes. They looked freakishly scary and all, but honestly, they were just living their lives, protecting their homes, and probably were more scared of the big, huge humans, then they were of it. Sadly, humans would kill the smaller things, whereas this big ass, humongous beast, had just walked past us. In which gave Sahara respect towards it…

Thanks for not killing me, Mr Beast!

“Sahara?”

She ignored her name and continued on to Purple Haven, to see a few people running outside of the wall. They looked like they had known a Divine Beast was close by and ran back, to be inside the anti-beast barrier.

Why did they go outside of the barrier in the first place?

Yeah…Her curiosity was peeked…Sigh.

“Sahara!?” She ignored her name again, even though the voice was the sweetest one that she’s ever heard.

Sahara put her star down towards these people and watched as they snuck back into the Purple Haven wall and were breathing heavily.

“Your Highness, we can’t stay.”

“Shh! Until further notice, don’t call me that!” One angrily said to the other.

“…Sir, we are losing too many people! For your safety, we must try and escape!” The other said desperately.

The one that seemed to be royalty sighed heavily, “Can’t stay here, can’t run away, is this really the fate of our people?”

The other four people were quiet, one in which was a female, who held this highness’s hand firmly.

“We should have left earlier…Sir…We can’t stay any longer! The whole of Purple Haven is starving, even eating their own people! We have lost too many, we need to take the chance and get out of here!”

Sahara moved her star up and saw a bit more of Purple Haven, inside of the wall, and gasped. It was different to what she saw the last time that she had looked. They had been fighting amongst each other so much that she had enough and hadn’t looked again. But she knew that it had been better then, because now, it was like a barren wasteland, even inside the ‘cities’. People looked thin and hopeless, almost like they had given up…What the hell!? Why was it like this!?

Did they forget about food? Where they a bunch of idiots?

Sahara was flabbergasted at the sight of a few corpses still at the side of a broken building, that seemed to have been dead for days.

Wasn’t it only natural to burn them? Or bury…Pick one…Actually, for health reasons, it would probably be better to burn em right?

Sahara shook her head at the mess!

Putting her star back down to the people, who had come back from running outside of the barrier, Sahara saw them silent.

They looked like starved, scared, little kittens to her…

“Your…Sir, we will have more luck outside, I swear it on my life! Even with the Divine Beast that was walking past, we will still be better off away from here! It already took us too long to find you, how could we just die here!”

Sahara watched as the female brought out a small sachet and gave it to ‘His Highness’, “Drink the last of it.”

“No! We will not die here! Dammit, how did Purple Haven become like this! I have let my people down!”

“Sir, no, we already told you that there was nothing you could do! We only found you, to hide you, and to keep you safe! Not to change the people, they can’t be saved!”

“…It is my duty to look after my people! Yet here I am running away from them!”

“You saw them yourself, Your Highness, you must open your eyes! They had led themselves down this path and became lost, so lost that even you are not safe! Let us leave, while we are able to still walk! There was food out there, did you not see! While we continue to stay here, we are wasting what strength we need to survive the wilderness!”

They looked so tired already…Truly, Sahara was on that man's side. Leave, leave now! As it was, them surviving the wilderness was slim at best because there was two at the rank of three cultivation base, the other guard being at rank two. Those 'protectors' are really trying!

You can't save anyone when you're dead, stupid Highness!

Well, that was what she felt, really...Her instincts were certain that he needed to get out of Purple Haven, to give him the best chance at survival...And looking at the barren, famine and crazed people and land of Purple Haven, she could understand why her instincts were like that...Literally, it was like they had gone back to the stone age, not even wearing proper clothing anymore!

…It reminded Sahara of a saying that she had heard in her last life, ‘We are our own enemies’…