I stayed tense in my stance until the very end, but—
“A survivor!!!!”
Anticlimactically enough, what followed was just the usual course of events.
High-ranking priests and people who were clearly big shots were waiting outside,
and once I confirmed they were allies, I lost consciousness from the backlash of having wrung out every bit of aura and everything else I had.
***
“Ugh.”
The next time I opened my eyes, a white ceiling greeted me.
‘The smell of medicine…’
Without moving my body, I slowly shifted only my gaze left and right to figure out where I was.
But…
Honestly, even looking around didn’t tell me anything.
I would have had to come here at least once to know.
If I’d arrived properly, this should be somewhere inside the Magic Tower,
but the Magic Tower was somewhere I’d first come to today… right?
Anyway,
it was my first time here today.
As I was rolling my eyes around, trying to check as much as possible—
Tap.
“Hm…?”
Something touched the left side of my waist.
It seemed I’d moved my body a little while looking around.
Judging by the sensation…
‘A person’s finger?’
I shifted my eyes to see what was below me on the left.
“Haaaah… huuuuu…”
And then I saw it.
Veronica, sprawled there asleep, breathing adorably.
“Huh…”
This is a little flustering.
But
before I could even sort through that confusion—
Tap.
Uh…?
There’s something on the right too…
‘No way…’
When I rolled my eyes down to the right, this time Eladrien was lying there, sprawled over.
“What kind of situation is this, seriously…”
According to the common sense I knew… normally, this sort of thing happened to the person who woke up the latest.
Shouldn’t that be Signica, not me?
No matter how I looked at it, her wounds were way more fatal than mine.
“Mmm…”
Since they were Experts whose senses surpassed ordinary humans, they seemed to notice that I had woken up, and they slowly began to stir.
“Huh… huh?”
“Evan???”
The moment they saw me, they looked as if they had seen a ghost, so I had no choice but to scratch my head and speak.
“Uh… um… hello?”
After that, as soon as I came to my senses, I ended up spending quite a lot of time soothing a tearful Veronica.
***
I was able to hear several surprising facts from them.
Starting with the least significant one,
the place I’d been lying in was a private room for critical patients inside the Magic Tower.
Yes.
If you’re sharp, you’ve probably already realized that the moment the words “critical patient” came up, it was hard to call it insignificant.
Even so, the reason I called it insignificant was because of what I’m about to say next.
To my genuine surprise,
it was true that I had woken up later than Signica.
What I’d guessed from the fact that they had been sprawled over my bed really had been the truth.
And
the reason I woke up later than Signica, who had suffered a fatal wound from being pierced by a spear, was also truly surprising.
Apparently, I was a living corpse who only looked fine on the outside.
The circuits through which aura flowed had been shattered,
part of my brain had stopped functioning after going berserk trying to somehow manifest my mental image,
and my bones and muscles had all been wrecked too, or so they explained.
‘Wow… how did I survive? Kind of amazing, actually?’
I lived, didn’t I?
…is a joke.
It was an injury severe enough that it was strange I was alive at all.
As an aside, in Signica’s case, they said they had used a holy art called Daydream to deceive her body so it wouldn’t recognize that she was on the verge of death, maintaining her in a state where her life force did not reach zero. Thanks to that, she had been healed faster than expected.
‘So there’s definitely a reason the holy art is called Daydream.’
A dream that could never come true.
A holy art that made it reality.
I couldn’t even begin to guess how high-ranking the holy art Ariel had cast on her was.
……
Ah, right.
So how am I alive?
In my case, since I looked fine on the outside, they judged that I had simply collapsed because the tension left me, and I didn’t receive any treatment. Then, after Signica’s condition stabilized, they checked my body just in case and found it was a total mess.
A high-ranking healing priest of the Lunia Church hurried over and treated me for hours, but when there was no sign of improvement at all, Ariel eventually joined in too.
And yet, my condition apparently didn’t improve in the slightest.
Still, perhaps because they didn’t give up until the very end, when everyone was exhausted and could no longer continue treatment, I apparently repaired and recovered my body all on my own.
Heh heh…
I did have an ominous feeling that the Magic Tower and the Lunia Church might try to make me a research subject,
but feelings like that usually turn out to be wrong.
It felt similar to those times when I occasionally have weird thoughts.
Hoooo… hoooo…
The sound of an owl hooting came from outside.
I’d woken up in the morning, but I’d been repeatedly coming to my senses and losing consciousness again.
It seemed I wasn’t completely healed yet.
‘Anyway…’
Ooo… ooo… woong…
I carefully let aura flow through the circuits that had only recently reconnected.
The circuits weren’t fully stable yet, but I still thought it was worth trying.
When I first heard the explanation about my condition from them, I’d had a faint hope that maybe I had undergone Hwan’gol Taltae.
It was something I’d mentioned before when I killed the Elder Lich.
I’d said the technique symbolizing a Master was Image Manifestation.
It was a technique that allowed one to draw out the unique mental image existing within oneself and bring it into the outside world.
But aside from that technique, there was one more thing that proved a person’s realm had reached Master.
That was Hwan’gol Taltae (換骨奪胎).
It referred to the bones, muscles, and circuits throughout the body being perfectly reconstructed for a martial artist to perform martial arts.
Since that was exactly similar to the state of my body I’d just heard about, I wondered if perhaps I had reached Master through a binding that temporarily turned me into a living corpse…
But after checking, I hadn’t become a Master.
It also seemed I couldn’t use sword force, the upgraded version of sword energy, another symbol of a Sword Master.
Ah,
in case you were about to ask what a binding is,
it no longer exists in our era,
but there are records from an extremely long time ago about some guy with four arms who was called the King of Bindings. I guess it feels like I borrowed the idea a little.
Anyway,
‘Got my hopes up for nothing.’
Still…
It was only that my expectations had been too high; it wasn’t as if I had gained nothing at all.
The experience of someone like me, who had only been an intermediate Expert, temporarily reaching the very peak of Expert and manifesting an image, however incomplete it was, had turned into enlightenment.
Thanks to that, my realm seemed to have reached advanced Expert.
Probably…? In my opinion, it was an extremely fast rate of growth.
It made no sense.
It hadn’t even been half a year since I started using sword energy, yet I’d climbed from lower Expert to advanced Expert.
There was no need for anyone to objectively say whether this was amazing or not.
‘My talent is definitely real.’
Having come to that conclusion, I leaned my head back onto the pillow with a quietly proud feeling.
……
………
…………
‘The world would not have given you such power for no reason.’
Ah, shit. Seriously.
I’d lain down to sleep with such positive, hopeful, self-esteem-filled emotions, but useless thoughts kept coming to me.
The words he’d said at the end.
It didn’t seem like that Death Knight had said them to curse me or anything.
It just felt like, since he was a man who’d made some kind of deal with the world, he knew something when he said it, which made me feel even more uneasy.
That damned fate.
Yes.
The word “fate,” which had suddenly surfaced, was making my head this complicated.
But…
Well, as anyone who’s watched me up until now would know.
‘I’m not the type to agonize over this kind of thing for that long.’
It’s not that I don’t care at all, but I don’t get too bound up in it either.
Why?
Because agonizing over it doesn’t give me anything I can do.
The best thing I could do right now was quickly recover my body and become able to swing my sword like before.
‘And for that, I need to get proper sleep, right?’
With that thought, I shook off the complicated thoughts and closed my eyes again.
***
The next day.
“Ah.”
I’d said all that, but in the end, I couldn’t sleep properly.
‘I’m tired.’
Eventually, before long, I fell asleep as if I’d fainted.
When I woke up again, it was noon, with the sun high in the sky.
I rubbed my eyes, came to my senses, and looked at the clock. To be precise, it was 3 p.m.
It was truly the first time in my entire life that I had slept this much.
It felt like I had gathered all the sleep I’d missed until now and slept it all at once.
Maybe because of that, I now felt a slight sense of crisis about my condition.
The fear that I might have to undergo rehabilitation therapy just to walk because I hadn’t moved for too long.
I thought it made a great deal of sense.
Creak.
I grabbed the bed frame and slowly raised myself up.
I put on the patient slippers prepared for me beneath the bed, then slowly took steps and headed outside.
“Huh? Brother??”
Then a healing priest who seemed to be in charge of nursing me approached.
“I see… Then please wait just a moment.”
Saying that my body might not have fully recovered yet, he told me he would bring a priest of higher rank than himself, then left for a moment.
And so my plan to shout, “Evan is free now!” ended in failure.
I lay back down on the bed and waited for someone to come.
About ten minutes passed like that.
Step. Step.
The door to the hospital room opened, and a woman with a familiar silhouette appeared.
“Hello, Brother. Are you feeling a little better?”
It was Ariel.
“What about you, Lady Ariel? Is the place where you were hit by the arrow all right?”
“Ah…”
She unconsciously looked down at her own side.
“Yes, I’m fine. The saintess robes I’m wearing have more functions engraved into them than you might expect.”
She said that with a slight smile.
Well, it made sense. Healers were always targeted first in any situation.
Having some kind of insurance wasn’t just reasonable—it was only natural.
“By the way… when I first checked your condition, I was so shocked. You were in worse shape than Nica… It was really the first time I’d ever seen someone injured that badly while looking so perfectly fine.”
“Haha…”
I scratched my head lightly.
Seeing that, Ariel smiled and came closer, holding out her hand to me.
“Now, would you give me one arm? I need to check you with divine power.”
When I offered her my arm, a warm, gentle energy began to circulate through my body, checking here and there.
“At this level, you’ve recovered a lot. I’m glad.”
“Looks like it. Considering what I heard about my initial state, I’m alive and well enough.”
“We were wondering about that too. But for now, the important thing is that a person survived.”
At her words, I felt a shining radiance from Ariel, along with the thought that she really was a saintess after all.
“Then I can walk around a bit now, right?”
I brought up the main point.
Fortunately, Ariel nodded.
“Yes, that’s fine. But it could still be a little dangerous, so I’ll accompany you and act as your guardian. Is that all right?”
“Well… that sounds good. I’d have one of the continent’s top healers by my side.”
“Oh my… Thank you for the compliment.”
A moment later, she supported me and helped me stand.
“Ah, right. Come to think of it, I think I need to wash…”
“If it’s that, apparently there’s magic that cleans the body? The Magic Tower used it for you, so you should be all right.”
“That’s a relief. I was worried I might be unpleasant.”
“Even if there were a bad smell, I could endure it. If I couldn’t even do that much, I’d be disqualified as a saintess.”
“I don’t particularly want to be someone who gives off a bad smell in front of someone like you, Lady Saintess.”
“Is that so? Hehe.”
We slowly left the hospital room while chatting.
The ground beneath my feet after so long, and the muscles and bones that had been severed and reattached, felt a little unfamiliar.
Well… if I rehabilitated, I felt like I’d be fine soon enough.