Every single part of Salome froze in an instant, making Vale think he was seeing things.
The slight rise and fall of her stomach showed that his vision wasn't being magically paused; something had shocked Salome to the point where petrification looked like the natural reaction.
Salome eventually broke her statue stint with a whisper, her lips slowly drifting apart.
"Foreign land? Wait…"
The winged demoness dragged her hand over her mouth, and her eyes widened a little.
"Master… No, Vale, where… where are you from?"
Vale also held a look of confusion, but for a different reason than hers.
He hadn't brought it up because he thought she entirely knew; in fact, Vale was certain she knew more than he did about whatever otherworldly being brought him here. He had thought she'd been a conjuration of such an entity.
'Well, she said she came from a different world earlier.'
Vale just thought it was fabricated. In fact, he still did. He questioned his judgment only now because of Salome's confusion and the inexplicable nature of his current reality.
While back in his home world, there were people like his failed detective shitbag father with special abilities, there was no such species as a goblin or succubus — legends of them existed, but proof of existence did not.
'Not to mention that we can understand each other. Without Salome having used that strange ability of hers.'
"I'm from Aleyrac… It's a fairly large nation on the central continent where I'm from."
Salome closed her eyes for a moment in an apparent deep thought, then responded:
"'Where I'm from…' Forgive my impudence once again, but I must ask: by a foreign land, were you referring to the entire world, or just the continent we are on?"
Vale looked over at her. She looked almost frightened, with a pale visage.
He cast a glance toward the exit of the room as he spoke.
"Yes, I come from a different world. In my language, we call our world Terra… Sorry, I thought you knew that. To be honest, even though I was the one who summoned you, I thought you knew more than I."
'But, what is with her reaction?'
Surely, his not being a native of this world wasn't too great a shock for the beautiful succubus — she was also an alien.
To his knowledge, at least.
Salome's face contorted a little more before it finally settled down, and a placid attitude returned.
"I see… Sorry as well. I should have realized when you said the dungeon was being 'assimilated into the world' before. It appears your situation isn't much different from mine. Though your world… I'd love to learn about it."
Vale was seeing where her confusion stemmed from.
Vale didn't completely project confidence after being summoned, but he certainly didn't seem to lack it either. Or more so, because of his desires being addled, his emotions and feelings, fears and anxieties, were being suppressed.
Vale had been giving off an aura of indifference to the uncertain situation that could easily be mistaken for confidence.
Not to mention his Traits passively added to the effect.
He'd never openly acted like he didn't know what was going on in front of Salome.
To her, it probably looked like Vale knew precisely what to do when the reality was that the system was feeding him information, and he was merely reacting accordingly.
'But, Salome doesn't seem to have access to the system.'
The thing working to prove that notion was that Salome didn't know his name, when all she would have needed to do was open his status page.
A question gnawed at Vale's mind that begged to be asked.
"How… how do you speak my language?"
Sure, she seemed to have the ability to learn, or have others learn, a language — like she did with Toy — but she'd spoken to him before even touching him, which appeared to be the condition for her ability to work.
"That… when I was summoned, that strange voice made knowledge of your language and its intricacies privy to me."
'Oh…'
That made sense…
'Not at all!'
Well, it made sense in a senseless world.