Chapter 141: The Anticipated Future

Chapter 141: The Anticipated Future

The guards beckoned us over, down the road toward them.

“You’ve got medical personnel, right?” I asked as I limped forward alongside Erani and Ainash.

“Yeah,” one of them said. “We’ve got—woah! Hold on!”

I stopped short.

“You’ve got flamin’ monsters with you?! The Hell’s wrong with you?! Get back!”

Confused, I looked over at Ainash. Was she...on fire? What was this guy talking about?

“Uh,” I waved with my unbroken arm, unsure of what to do, “we’re friendly. She’s friendly, too. Just got out of a really bad fight, and we could really use some medical attention. If you have Clerics, or potions, I’d be more than willing to pay back any sort of debt—”

“Dry yourself! And stay there!” the guard yelled, and then turned to his two companions, whispering among them.

I frowned. Dry myself? After so long not really talking with anyone other than Erani and Ainash outside of strict combat negotiations or interrogations, I suddenly felt completely out of my depth in a normal conversation with a weirdo.

I turned to Erani. “Do you know what’s up with these guys?”

“Not really,” she shrugged back. “But I guess they want us to wait?”

“Father, what happening?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think they want us here. You remember talking to them in the previous timeline, right? Were they like this then, too?”

“Do not know much, mother was one who spoke to them. But they are same people, and seemed much more friendly. Can sense...fear, nervousness, hostility from them.”

“They’re probably on edge because of the noise from the boulders dropping. Assuming there’s some sort of monster attack going on, or something, and now they see us. A monster and a couple Humans looking completely beaten up, they might think we’re just leading more monsters to them.”

“These Humans do not like me or you. Seem okay with mother.”

Yeah, my Dark Plate was probably causing some issues. It was apparently pretty scary-looking, if Erani was to be believed. I’d kept it on just to ensure we’d be safe in case of an ambush, but suddenly I was regretting that decision.

Or...no. No, maybe it was helping more than it hurt. The Demons had publicized my name and face around the Kingdom, and some of that information may have spread to neighboring countries. But Dark Plate covered my face. And, considering I’d only actually used it in front of Xhag’duul—who was now dead, and assumedly not in good standing with the Demons anymore—they almost certainly hadn’t spread any depiction of that armor. Light Plate showed my face, but Dark Plate didn’t. The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.

So, as long as I didn’t lose the armor in front of anyone, I could probably appear in public as long as I had it on. And people like Erani and Ainash would probably have been spread around much less than me, since I was really the only one they were actually looking for. Plus, Ainash had also recently gone through an evolution that changed her appearance. Erani was really the only one who might have been recognized, but I doubted she’d be remembered as much as I was.

After a moment of the three guards talking among themselves, they turned back to us. “Listen! You are in the presence of three high-Level, trained guards of the Barinruth Empire. Do not try to attack, do not try to fight.”

High-Level, huh? Yeah, I probably didn’t want to get on these guys’ bad side. I furrowed my eyebrows at their sudden combativeness, calling back, “Uh...are we under arrest? What’s going on here?”

“We just want you to know, you should not try anything.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to,” I said, trying to both convince them we were safe and come up with some sort of story about our identities. “We’re hurt. We can’t fight anyway. Listen, just please get us some help. We were attacked earlier by a, uh, Demon.”

“Yes,” Erani cut in, “we’ve been fleeing from the Koinkar Kingdom because of the Demon invasion. Please, we’re desperate. We only barely fought off the Demon that chased us, but it’s dead now. Please let us pass.”

“Then what in flamin’ hell do you have a monster with you for?”

The Paladin—Jannin—stepped forward. “I’m not going to be able to fix a flamin’ broken limb. Much less two. But I can at least top out your Health.”

“Good enough for me,” I nodded.

“Okay. Let’s get inside.”

We walked through the creaky wooden front door. Inside was a small common room with little in it to decorate the bleak stone walls.

“Make yourselves at home,” Bon said. “Uh, armor guy, take a seat in one of these chairs. Woman, monster...I don’t know. We’ve got some food rations you can munch on if you’re hungry. Don’t expect anything fancy, though. Just check those cabinets in the kitchen. Oh, and don’t touch that book.”

In the room containing a few chairs and a small kitchen, the man gestured to a full notebook of what I recognized to be Message Paper sitting on a table. Seemed like the entire budget of this outpost went toward that single Enchanted item. Or, rather, tome of dozens of Enchanted items. It certainly looked out of place, that was for sure.

“Those two doors lead to the bedrooms and the toilet. If you need to go, feel free.”

And that concluded the tour. Ainash helped me sit down in a creaky wooden chair—though “collapse” would probably be a better word for what I did—and then she wandered off, apparently deciding to explore this new, man-made environment she’d never seen before. Erani grabbed a chair of her own, one that was up against a wall. Yeah, we may have been hungry, but I wasn’t eating their food. At least if the Paladin tried to cast a damaging Spell on me, I could react quickly and fight back. Eating poison wouldn’t leave me nearly as much wiggle room.

Once I sat, the Paladin—Jannin—sat down next to me and reached out to grab my leg. “Oh, you may want to remove the armor. I need direct touch.”

“You’ll be able to grab right through it,” I grunted. The soreness and pain seemed to flood into my body the moment I sat down.

With a curious look on his face, he did so, and looked surprised when, as I’d said, he reached right through the plate armor and touched my leg. We’d been aware of this property of Ethereal Armor ever since I’d taken it and had that unfortunate run-in with the Ghouls, but since then, with some experimentation from Erani, we’d found that an outside being could effectively choose whether they wanted to touch the armor, or touch me. From how Erani had described it, it wasn’t as much of a conscious choice and more of a measurement of subconscious intent. If someone actively wanted to touch the armor, their hands would stop on its exterior. Otherwise, they’d pass through as though it were an illusion.

With his hand on my leg, Jannin closed his eyes and muttered what sounded like a prayer. After he was done, he kept his eyes shut, and after about thirty seconds, I got a notification.

You have been blessed by the mercy of god. 10 Health restored.

Your Health is 119.

Seemed like it worked. But not much healing. This would probably take a while. Still, it was certainly better than my natural Health/Minute, which was still less than 0.2.

Now that I saw that the guards didn’t seem to mean us any harm—yet—I relaxed a little. “So, how far are we from the nearest settlement?”

“Nearest?” Bon asked. “Not too far. In fact, you should just barely be able to see it from here if it’s bright enough.”

He turned and walked over to a slice of the stone wall that I realized was actually on a metal track, so it could slide away to reveal a window inlaid in the wall. He slid it open, and a ray of sunlight blinded me in the dim room, where my sight had already adjusted to the darkness. I squinted as I got used to the sudden light, before fully opening them to gaze out. Ainash walked over to the window, and Erani stood to look through, as well.

Through the hole in the wall, we could, indeed, see it from here. Out across the rolling hills, opposite the direction of the mountains, there were the tiny protrusions in the ground that I recognized as buildings. And not just one or two, but a whole swarm of them. It was farmhouses and barns on green fields. And further out than that, I could just barely make out the sight of walls. Walls! Society was there. In our sight. Not guarded by Demons, or destroyed by an invasion, or swarming with hostiles. Just plain old people.

Good food, a warm bed, Spell Crystals, a fucking break from the constant fear of monsters. We were here. The promised land.

You have been blessed by the mercy of god. 10 Health restored.

Your Health is 129.

Another trigger of healing went off from Jannin, who was still casting his Spells. Blessed by the mercy of god, huh? Yeah, sure felt like we were.

The Demons would be plotting to start a war, but we still had the first move here. And with the innate safety and resources given to us by society, the ability to work and purchase some gear of our own, the ability to make allies—maybe even work alongside the Barinruth Empire to repel the Demons? It seemed like we may just be able to shift our strategy from reactive to proactive. Defensive to offensive.

We were safe now, so we could finally focus on procuring the power to end these Demons, and maybe give them a taste of what it was like to live in fear. With that, plus two more Level-ups waiting on me to make my Talent and Time Loop Upgrade choices, there was a chance here that we may be able to do more than just survive.

We finally had the tools to get stronger, and eventually take the fight to them.