Chapter 162

Chapter 162

Flash.

The moment I regained consciousness, my eyelids reflexively shot open.

It probably was because the last thing I remembered was stabbing my sword into Moby Dick’s head; before my rational mind could take over, my instincts took over, already assessing my surroundings.

What I saw around me was as follows: white stone walls and ceiling, blue tapestries hanging on them here and there, each embroidered with a unique pattern in gold, a cozy bed, and blankets.

Given my experience from this adventure thus far, there was a 99% chance that I was inside a Temple.

Rustle.

I pushed myself into a sitting position. Seeing as I only had on some bandages and a light shirt, they’d apparently removed a few layers of my clothing to make me more comfortable.

My vest and coat were lying neatly on the side table beside me.

Hmm. This gave me a bit of a déjà vu.

Surely, two weeks haven’t gone by this time, right?

I felt a bit uneasy, but sadly, I had no way of knowing what day it was.

However, my body felt extremely heavy, and my vision was somewhat blurry, so my condition was pretty clearly not the best. Considering most of my injuries usually healed rather quickly, it seemed not much time had passed.

Well, I did find out in Tatara that if pushed to the brink of death, my body still felt heavy even after two weeks, but that hadn’t happened this time, right?

I’d followed White Wind’s advice and made sure to suffer only minor injuries, nothing life-threatening.

Knock, knock.

Just then, I heard a knock coming from the door. It was a very soft sound, probably because the person outside thought I was still sleeping.

“...Who is it?”

Oh, my voice was cracking.

“...You’re awake already?”

I pulled up the blanket a little more when they entered. Just enough to cover my right arm, though. It would’ve seemed weird if I tried to cover myself completely.

“It hasn't even been an hour since your treatment finished. You should get some more rest.”

“What about... the Great Demon?”

It was the Archmage who’d entered the room. Listening to her words, I kept thinking that it always seemed to be her who gave me post-battle reports—even though I was the one who did the fighting.

“It’s dead. You killed it. Don’t you remember?”

I did, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d dealt the final blow.

Turns out, I had.

“By the way, all of you except Berserk ended up collapsing, so we had no choice but to return to the Temple. Since two of you couldn’t be treated with Divine Power, I also came along.”

So that meant that not just me but also the Inquisitor and Deb passed out, with only Bers remaining conscious?

But why Deb? Had his internal injuries worsened again? No, no, even if they did, why couldn’t he be healed with Divine Power?

The Great Demon was dead, so shouldn’t the Demonic Energy within Deb be gone? Shouldn’t it??

I calmly organized the new information while worrying about Deb and suspecting that Bers might have actually transcended mortality.

My first step should be choosing an action that would fit my character setting.

“Ah, don’t worry. I only had three people carry you here and three guard you. The rest remained behind to guard and Purify the Great Demon’s corpse. Berserk stayed back, as well.”

However, it seemed the Archmage had misunderstood my silence and hurriedly added this explanation. That wasn’t bad.

That Bers stayed back to guard the corpse meant no one had yet to relieve her of that duty, which in turn meant not much time had passed.

Considering that my treatment had only ended an hour ago and she’d followed me back because no one else around could treat me... it seemed it had been half a day at most and a few hours at least.

Factoring in how the Archmage hadn’t even changed her clothes after returning to the Temple gave this theory even more weight. It meant she hadn’t had time to change because she was so focused on healing me.

“I need to see it with my own eyes.”

So, wouldn’t this be the correct response here? I’d usually just say something like, ‘Hmm, I see,’ and let it go, but this was one of my sworn enemies.

It would be more fitting for my character to want to verify it once more. I wasn’t in the best physical condition, but it didn’t seem like there would be another battle for now.

If there were, that just meant something had generally gone wrong, so it wouldn’t be a loss. Probably.

“Are you crazy?”

“...?”

“Ah, no, that was a slip of the tongue. Are you still not thinking straight?”

Sorry, but that corrected statement didn’t seem much better.

“Do you have any idea what kind of condition you were in earlier—?!”

The Archmage, about to raise her voice, calmed herself down by raising her hand instead.

“Demon Knight, did you know that your seal shattered earlier?”

“...What?”

Huh.

“As I thought, you didn’t know, which means you didn’t intentionally break it because you were overexerting yourself, but rather, you instinctively drew on your Arcane Power to recover again.”

No, no, why? I wasn’t that badly hurt.

“...Were you, by any chance, only worrying about your external injuries?”

...Was I supposed to be concerned about the internal ones, too?

I’d been a little worried about altitude sickness before, but did it seriously progress to something like cerebral edema or pulmonary edema to the point where I could have died?

“...Demon Knight, people don’t just die from being stabbed or having their bones shattered. They can die from internal bleeding in the brain or the heart suddenly stopping for any number of reasons.”

I realized something.

Jumping down from the corpse, Berserk grabbed the still-dazed guys by their collars.

Their screams filled the air in response, but the effect was substantial. Even if they hadn’t fully grasped the situation, they still managed to sense some danger and began to retreat.

And just as they barely escaped to the area pointed out by Berserk.

Boooom!

“—!!”

Massive tree roots sprouted from the ground and began engulfing the dead Great Demon’s body.

* * *

While I was confined to the Temple, the Archmage left before dawn broke, using the excuse of investigating the Great Demon’s body more closely.

Of course, I couldn't say anything about that. She was the only wizard around, and there were some things in this world that only a wizard could do.

Clink.

But after she left, the soup bowl I was served at breakfast cracked, making it seem like something bad might happen.

Since ancient times, hadn’t the breaking of dishes and the like always been used as a cliché, an omen foreshadowing the occurrence of something problematic?

“Oh. Are you alright?!”

More importantly, why did it break? Did they pour hot soup into a super cold bowl? Or did the bowl’s natural frequency just coincidentally match the external vibration created when it was set on the table?

“I-I’ll bring you a new bowl right away!”

In any case, what was done was done.

As I set down the spoon I’d just raised, I watched the priest hurriedly clean up the broken bowl and the spilled food.

After the priest rushed out of the dining room, I was left alone.

It had been a while since I’d experienced unintentional solitude, and I was slightly thrown off by it. I was a bit bored, too.

“...”

However, as I thought back to how this boredom was caused by the others fainting, my mood quickly turned serious again.

Well, the Archmage and Bers had gone out to investigate the Great Demon, but the cause for the two dumplings’ absence was different.

One fainted due to the aftereffects of her overexerting herself, and the other fainted due to the worsening of his internal injuries.

Moreover, the latter was difficult to treat because of the Demonic Energy in his body.

This wasn’t a situation where I could say something like, ‘Welp, good luck,’ like usual.

“...Sigh.”

At least I had some faith that the Inquisitor was strong enough and would wake up soon, but Deb... I didn’t know about Deb.

I was sure he wasn’t a traitor—his behavior was too clumsy for that, and he had been occasionally coughing up blood for some reason, so what were we supposed to be suspicious of?—but that didn’t mean I could fully relax.

That’s just how the situation was right now.

I defeated the Great Demon, who we guessed was responsible, but this kid was still full of Demonic Energy.

Deb’s sincerity aside, I couldn’t deny the possibility that he was forced into something. In that case, I wondered how much longer I could keep up my character like I had.

And then there were Deb’s feelings.

Even though we’d dealt with its probable cause, the problem hadn’t been resolved, and even the Sea Dragon pearl I’d secretly given him didn’t work, which made me think that Energy might be something he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.

If that was the case, just how hard would this be for our meat dumpling?

I’d thought he might be okay since he didn’t carry any intense hatred like my character, but I couldn’t help but worry.

Especially since he’d always struggled with an abysmally low self-esteem due to his background, this might have just made it worse. At the very least, it wouldn’t have made it better.

Thud.

I ended up resting my forehead on my hands with my elbows on the table. My head hurt.

“Damn it.”

My head hurt, but my thoughts just wouldn’t stop.

Had I known something like this would happen, I would’ve been more suspicious when I found Deb on that rooftop that time. Could Deb stay with us? Could we even solve Deb’s problems? And if we couldn’t, what then? All sorts of questions were swirling around in my head.

And at the end of all those thoughts was the image of Deb thrusting his dagger at me.

I rubbed my cheek, which was now unblemished.

‘Does Deb even want to stay with us, with me?’

Again, my head hurt.

Knock, knock, knock.

Ah, why was I still suffering like this, even after killing one of the Seven Great Demons?

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

If this was how things ended up after bringing down just the one in the forest, how were we supposed to get the remaining six, no, five? How were we going to kill those five and then Satan?

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

Damn it. Instead of celebrating our victory, we were just facing one crisis after the other endlessly...

Bam!

“Ah, Sir Demon Knight!”

I slowly lifted my head from my hand, then turned my gaze to the person who’d just burst into the room.

“A messenger from the group watching over the Great Demon is here!”

That broken dish cliché always led to trouble.

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