Chapter 109 Respite

This was I with an old man.

"Sure, I'll help."

"You will?"

"Yeah. …But, what? You don't want me to?"

"No, young lad. I simply mean what I already told you: this old flesh and bones of mine can handle this task. Just finely. Young lad, you wouldn't happen to think your old uncle so weak, would you now?"

"No, no. It's nothing like this." To the old man's concerns, I scoffed and told him he was strong enough. "You are. Just want to handle it by myself. Let me carry her a little."

"Oh, hm."

"The elven princess is my home, after all. Not yours, mine. Let me do the carrying, for once."

At last, the old man let me carry the oh-so-sickly and feverish member of our team. When my hand gently brushed the girl's forehead, I felt how boiling she was. And when my heart ached, too, I noticed it wasn't my hand alone that could feel her pain.

Around a week from today, I first met with her, but after everything that happened, I held her as dearly as someone I had known for years. The monster had at least one person he truly held dear. All the time I unconsciously spent with the elf, either running away from two of her fellows or teaming up with them, and everything else mattered to both of us. From the elf's perspective, I was the boy who taught her to be strong, stand up for herself, and eventually saved her. Boy with whom she shared so many similarities.

As for what I, the monster, felt was acceptance from the elf. And acceptance brought about other feelings that I couldn't quite pin down and understand clearly… but basically, in a world where every person rejected me and wished I died, that poor elf girl was the one who came to me and confessed she understood, respected, and liked me. In a world where everyone rejected me, the poor, helpless girl who also was rejected by the elf people of the forest, after I shared a body and soul with her, called me her "soulmate."

So she spoke, and so she was precious to me. After she asked me to save her, I did as I was asked, and even the last elf, his name was White-haired, entrusted me with the protection of the late elf king's daughter. White-haired died, and I was charged with protecting Cetha the elf, the monster's home.

The "monster's home," right. It was a charmingly kind older lady in the village I appeared who told me about my home. According to her, someone's home wasn't so much a four-walled place and shelter, but your home was more about where you belonged with the people you loved.

That's how I knew, at the time. That's how I could tell Cetha the elf was my home, that's how I decided to shelter her as she sheltered me. She was my home.

But that was it. For some reason, ever since that gray, rainy day in the giant forest, she didn't wake up. The old man asserted the elf was ill, so it was normal, but she didn't wake up. All I could ask her was whether she despised the monster or not, to which she responded she absolutely didn't, and then, as it turned out after I nonchalantly expressed that I loved her (I didn't really understand the meaning of "to love" for sure but I said it anyway), she passed out due to her immensely strong fever.

It had been approximately a day since the elf fainted. My old advisor knew she was sick and let me know we'd have to wait before she came to, but it had been a day and she showed no sign of recovery yet. Damn that fever and whatever got her sick. Well, as for now I didn't know yet, but I'd soon know I was the one who got her so feverish and weak. Explanations from the old advisor wouldn't reach me immediately, but soon.

In any case, as Cetha still didn't wake up and we were getting ready to depart to the Capital, me and the old man arguing about who should carry the fainted elf maiden before we set off to the third princess, daughter of the Lord, of the Roerden Kingdom, was about the situation here.

When the old man agreed to let me carry the fainted elf, we got off. (Unlike last time, we didn't feel like burning down our little shelter today, so we just abandoned it.) Traveling with the sick wasn't doing them any good, but the old advisor said it was all right for us to do so: For the knowledgeable old man, who also happened to be a doctor and healer, to take care of Cetha, he said he needed about ingredients of alchemy and medicinal herbs he didn't have on hand. He had planned to get to the nearest town taking the team alongside him in order to obtain the material he needed, so we would have been traveling anyway.

Also, if all of which I said was the truth—the old man had a hard time believing me when I recounted to him every bit of my surprising escapade to the Guild Bureau—a noble's carriage wasn't equal to a commoner's chariot. While the commoner's vehicle made his joints ache, a noble's car was way better, so it should be able to accommodate the sick for a quick journey.

"Gimme, gimme," I insisted. With all my STR stat points, I was relatively okay walking the long way to Princess Elina, the human female who "adopted" me as some kind of secret pet soldier weapon.

On the way, I and the old man didn't chat so much, and when we did, we made sure to keep our voices down so as not to disturb Cetha's respite.

My old traveling companion let me know he had an idea about what caused the elf's sudden illness. I asked him whether she would be okay, and the old man replied by reminding me I shouldn't be so worried if I didn't want to be balding before his healthy scalp.

Cetha was my home, and she absolutely couldn't be gone. Dramatically, without really meaning it, I said that the day she died part of me would die, too. Urging me to chase the tense expression off my face, the old doctor assured me he had already made sure the girl would be all right, and after I received an old wrinkled smile, I gave my youthful and bright smile as a fair trade.

Despite the fact the old man said he didn't believe my story, he wasn't being so comically shocked when we arrived at the rendezvous spot. We were awaited and we arrived.

The battle of Greenfield against one last remaining stronghold that was held by the Ladafarian Reddarkskin Orc Tribe (and demons) was brought to an end. Unfortunately, as the old man had complained, this battle wasn't the last one. Against the orc's threat, the humans had fought more than one battle already, so even after today's dancing blades and the spilling of blood, other battles were to come.

But that wasn't important. The fact was just that—the nth battle for Ladafar had come to an end, the orcs had retreated further down the border, and the playground I fought at was gone. What that meant was that the third princess' (voluntary) duty was completed here. And so, she was to go back to the capital where her father awaited his brave daughter, a military woman now, so that she could give her report.