Flare, who was sitting on my shoulder, flew towards the roof when Sistina hugged me. She probably felt uncomfortable being on my shoulder in this kind of situation.
"You dummy, I was so worried."
It looked like she was trying to hold her tears but that wasn't working well. Even though she used to act tough most of the time, deep down, she was just a normal girl.
"It's alright, we're back," I said petting her head.
At this point, petting someone's heads to calm them down had become somewhat of a habit of mine. Hopefully, it's not seen as something too weird by others.
She wasn't calming down, so I moved a little right and showed everyone to her, "See, everyone is alright."
"Okay"—Her eyes widened when she saw Yoru— "But, who's that?"
"Sistina, why don't you let them come in first? They must be tired so let's talk the rest in the sitting room," Nina, who was standing behind Sistina, said. Despite the calm tone, she too looked glad to see our return.
After we entered, Sam who was watching all this happen, greeted us with a slight bow. "Welcome back master and mistresses. Dinner will be ready soon."
"You look well Sam," Princess Anna replied right before I was about to with the usual 'thank you'.
All of us then walked towards the sitting room. On our way there, I looked towards the kitchen where the dinner was being prepared. Since the rest of us joined without notice, it would probably take Sam a little longer to finish preparing it.
The carriage was already cram-full, and with Yoru's addition on the group, everyone could barely adjust. So, everyone stretched out a little before sitting.
"Phew! Finally, I can breathe properly," Lucy said while showing her head out of Marina's hair.
Both Nina and Sistina looked towards Lucy in surprise, but Sistina was the first one to change that surprise into words.
"Who is… she?"
I knew that there were several things that we had to tell them, but before that, there was something that I needed to do.
"We can talk about that all night. But before that, how is Ronald doing? And where's Miss Lilith? "
All the excitement and look of relief flew away when I mentioned Ronald. The whole room fell silent. After a brief moment of silence, Nina looked at me and asked, "Were you able to get what's needed to save Ronald?"
It looked like she was hesitant to ask this before since we just arrived. But now that I brought the topic out myself, she was finally able to ask.
"Yes, but since we only have a vial of it, I was hoping that Miss Lilith would instruct us so that nothing goes wrong."
It may look like I was being overcautious, but after everything we had to go through to get this, I didn't want to mess things up by being hasty.
"What's this potion? It's blue, unlike any potion I have ever seen." Nina said in a curious tone.
"It's Nectar."
"Really?! I never expected it to be real." Her surprise turned into a shock when I told her what that was.
"Yeah, at least that's what the person who gave that to us said."
"It must be it then. It is exactly how it is described in legends. A blue liquid that can heal anything and everything."
"Hou! You are back already? I thought you would spend a month or two more in that cave."
'Looks like someone hasn't changed much.'
Miss Lilith entered the room, making her usual casual comments. She looked at the nectar that Nina was holding and smiled. It looked like she was expecting us to come back with this.
"Oh, looks like you got what you went there for. Now, just go up and feed him that. I think he will wake up in a day or two after drinking that."
"Okay, but there isn't any procedure that we will have to follow, right?"
"Well, it's not called the drink of god for no reason. Do you think god would worry about something like procedures?"
That did make sense… a little bit. It turned out that I was just being over-cautious. But this caution wasn't necessarily a bad thing considering how the saying, 'it's better to be safe than sorry' went.
I took the vial from Nina and rushed to Ronald's room while everyone else followed me. The atmosphere of the room hadn't changed much compared to the last time. Only Marina, Nina, and I entered the room, the rest of them were just watching from the door.
I opened the lid of the vile and slowly fed Ronald the liquid inside it. It must be because of the smell of this liquid that Ronald didn't show any resistance and gulped it in one go.
Right after Ronald finished swallowing the liquid, his whole body shone blue. I moved a little back as his body started floating in the air. The cloth that was covering the injured part of his right arm came off, and from his shoulder, a new arm started growing.
It was a miracle of the highest level. What's visible from outside looked like pure magic with no logical explanation. But to me, who could sense the mana causing this miracle, what was happening made sense.
This was exactly like how spirits were manifested from the concentrated mana. His hand wasn't being regenerated; it was being created by concentrating the surrounding mana. It wasn't just his hand either, his internal systems that were damaged because of the injury were also being recovered.
After he was back to his normal state — or at least what appeared to be his normal state — the concentrated mana that was lifting him started dispersing, and he gently fell on the bed.
I looked towards Miss Lilith who was staring at us as all this was happening. The look on her eyes was clearly saying that she could also see what I just saw.
"Okay everyone, let some fresh air in. It will take some time for his body to accept the medicine completely. He will be back on his feet in a day or two," Miss Lilith said after which everyone outside slowly walked down. Following them, the three of us who were inside also went towards the sitting room.
I still had a few questions that I wanted to ask about this, but I thought it would be better to wait for a better opportunity.
'For now, I guess it's better to assume that everything is alright."
I felt this would be the right course of action since everyone was already stressed out enough because of everything that happened.
This time, even though the atmosphere was a little less intense than before, there was an awkward silence. Miss Lilith didn't join us and went straight towards her room, so it was just the rest of us in the sitting room. It looked like the conversation would go nowhere like this, so I took the initiative to introduce Yoru and Lucy.
"Nina, Sistina, this is Yoru, she is my summon, and this is Lucy, a fairy that we met on our way."
"Okay, I am Sistina, I am training to become a magician."
"And I am Nina, I too am training to become a magician."
It was going to be a long night, but now that the introductions were done, I was hoping that the rest of the conversation would go smoothly.