Chapter 45: Ambiguous Recovery

Chapter 45: Ambiguous Recovery

As he drifted in soft darkness, Kai felt as though there should be pain. Some animal part of him knew that he was injured and should be fighting for his life. And yet there was only a tight warmth through his body. It didn't respond when he tried to move and it was difficult to tell where his skin ended and the softness began.

His mind returned after the sensations and he forced himself to open his eyes. Was that Juray's ceiling? Moving his head to look at the rest of the house was too difficult, but he'd become familiar with how the ceiling looked over the previous months. That meant that the worst hadn't come to pass.

It didn't mean everything was alright. He'd collapsed in the monster pit surrounded by people who didn't care about him. They could well have robbed him of his flask and everything else he carried, or perhaps he hadn't been found soon enough. Maybe he couldn't feel his legs because they had been torn off in the Isulfr's final thrashing.

Just as Kai began to convince himself that he was doomed, Juray's face slid overhead. She gave a relieved smile and smoothed back his hair gently.

"You're okay, Kai. Just focus on recovering for now."

"Wh... wha..." He couldn't get out anything else.

"I'm not sure what you were involved in, but some very suspicious characters brought you into the city and said that you had fought off a monster. They were going to take you to the Granfian clan, but I intercepted you. Don't worry, you'll be alright."

He tried to nod and it hurt, so Kai gave up on that idea. The best he could do was smile at Juray, then his eyes fell closed again.

If he had survived the battle, he wanted to see if it had helped him progress. When he tried to examine himself with his spiritual sight, his mind spun and he drifted away again.

.

..

.

The next time Kai awoke, he knew he was sleeping in a bed instead of floating in a void. Actually, his entire body ached, and he felt so much tension from healing that it almost felt like it would tear apart his body on its own. When he struggled to sit up, however, he managed it.

Juray was cheerfully talking to a customer at her shop window and he just stared at her for a while, drinking in the sight. Belatedly he realized that he should use this opportunity to do what he couldn't before and examine his soul.

???: ???

"Ugh. What about its core?"

"I'm not sure exactly what you fought, but they didn't say anything about it. I'm pretty sure that the suspicious folks who brought you here were happy to pocket that for themselves."

He shouldn't have been surprised. Still, if the entire ordeal had been roughly a wash, that was actually progress. Briefly he worried about the flask, but then he spotted it lying on the table beside him, along with his other items. If they hadn't stolen that, then the monster pit owner had basically treated him fairly. Exploited him, but fairly.

"I felt a bit bad taking all your winnings," Juray said, "but it really took a lot to patch you up, and my shop doesn't have such high margins that-"

"No, it's fine." Kai pushed free from his thoughts to smile at her. "Fair's fair. This relationship is supposed to help both of us, after all."

"I'm glad you feel that way. This treatment has been a professional service, but..." Juray's smile turned much warmer and she walked a pair of fingers up his thigh. "Once you're feeling a little better, you'll get something from me personally."

"Ooh, don't tempt me. Everything hurts too much right now."

Juray laughed and left him to focus on his recovery. Being able to rest in her house was surprisingly comfortable, but he couldn't relax for long before he began thinking about training again. Throwing himself into his full physical routine would be terrible in his current condition, but he didn't want to waste the time he had.

After some thought, Kai decided to cycle through his various mana exercises. He wasn't sure if he had actually made any progress on applying his spiritual sight to monsters, since his impressions could well be based on all his other knowledge of them. When he examined his own spirit, however, he felt a strange kinship to the distorted symbols he didn't understand. Gunjin had said they were useless, but Kai pulled them closer to the center of his spirit.

After waking, he was able to move around within an hour, then it took him most of a day to feel like he was healthy again. He'd been asleep for over a full day, so the recovery had taken quite some time. It bothered him to admit, but he had to accept that fights like this were probably not the wisest course. Maybe if he was a clan scion who could easily afford expensive treatments and entire days lying in bed.

Still, he had killed the Isulfr. If he hadn't been the one to fight it, the monster would probably have hurt more people, and the city was better off with it dead. No matter what anyone thought of him, he was doing his job as a monster hunter.

Juray was very successful at preventing him from getting back to work immediately, but eventually his drive to keep moving forward pulled him from her embrace. Only the least serious of his rivals would be wasting time, so he needed to get back into action as soon as he was able.

The first morning he felt fully healed, Kai returned to his grueling exercise routine. It might take him years to reach the next Physique rank, but it no longer felt beyond his grasp. If he could reach that, he would have an advantage that even most veteran hunters lacked. The cost of his treatment hadn't even been as bad as Juray implied, so the fight hadn't lost him money overall. He was spending more on all his training-enhancing potions.

One way or another, he would find a solution. The next incursion was only nine months away, which was simultaneously forever and all too soon.