Determination
The sharp, medicinal scent of herbs drifted into his nostrils.
A faint smile touched Jun’s lips at the familiar smell as he slowly opened his eyes and studied the ceiling.
It was a ceiling he knew, yet it still felt a little strange.
The church infirmary, huh.
Once he confirmed where he was, Jun did not check his own condition first. He looked for Fortuna instead.
To him she was far more precious than one arm or even two.
“...You’re awake?”
Before he could find her, her deliberately curt voice reached him.
Relief, worry, and quiet satisfaction flowed through the soul-bond, but Jun pretended not to notice and asked,
“Why is Mom so grumpy again?”
“Hmph! I’m not grumpy.”
Jun chuckled and lowered his gaze to his stomach.
A tiny fairy sat cross-legged on his belly, arms folded and cheeks puffed out in a full sulk.
The sight alone filled him with a deep, unexpected sense of safety.
He let the smile that rose unbidden stay on his face and gently cupped her in both hands.
Fortunately, both hands were still attached and working.
“You hurt anywhere?”
“...Aside from getting electrocuted all over thanks to a certain someone, I’m fine. My body’s a lot tougher than you think, so stop fretting. What about you? Are you okay?”
His genuine concern must have gotten through; Fortuna’s voice softened. By the end she seemed to have forgotten her attempt at gruffness, eyes glistening as she asked after him.
“I’m fine. Haven’t checked thoroughly yet, but nothing really hurts. More importantly—electrocuted? Did the electric eel save us?”
“What, you don’t remember what happened?”
“I vaguely remember going into the catfish’s belly, but after that it’s a blank.”
Jun pressed his fingers against his forehead, trying to dredge up the memories, yet even with his thought superpower the events stayed hazy—he had been half out of his mind at the time.
Ah. The superpower still works. Thank god.
“...Huh? Wait—wait a second?”
While he was still relieved that his power was intact, Jun finally noticed how drastically different his insides felt.
“Why are the cores so huge?! No—more than that!”
His trembling hand stroked his lower abdomen.
The warm, heavy presence there had grown unmistakably stronger.
“C-Could it be—I’m pregnant?!”
“As if.”
“Right, of course. Just kidding, so could you drop that ice-cold stare? Pretty please?”
“Haaah… You really must be fine if you’re cracking jokes that lame.”
“Told you. But seriously, what is this?”
Jun pointed at his lower belly—more precisely at the Aura Core nestled inside it—wearing a bizarre mix of joy, shock, and outright disbelief.
Just in case he was imagining things, he focused his will and gently circulated it. The core responded without the slightest hitch.
“Heh-heh. Surprised? Impressed? Then praise me! Praise Fortune herself! And the one who commands that fortune—me!”
Fortuna planted both hands on her hips and puffed herself up with pride.
Normally he would have clapped along and played the straight man, but right now Jun was too stunned to play along.
The birth of a third core was that astonishing.
Humans could possess up to three cores, yet each additional core raised the difficulty of creating the next by an exponential leap. As a result, those who achieved three cores—Triple Cores—were vanishingly few.
And every last one of them had been either a hero blessed by a god or a reincarnator bearing a Stigma.
“I’ll heap on the praise later—just explain already.”
“Nothing special. The lightning energy that came out of the dragon pearl still had plenty left, yet it was trying to leave your body, so I just poured three years’ worth of accumulated luck into you. That’s all.”
“...That’s really all? You didn’t deliberately try to make a third core?”
“I wasn’t completely without that sort of intention, but I never expected it to go that far. Even I never imagined a third core would actually form.”
With that, Fortuna rose and walked down to his lower abdomen. When he moved his stroking hand aside she plopped down on the spot and began caressing it in his place.
“The luck I gathered over three years wasn’t nearly enough to create a third core. At best it might let someone stumble across a rare herb in the mountains or turn a potentially fatal wound into a minor one.”
“...Even that sounds insanely powerful to me.”
“Compared to my prime it’s nothing. Back then I threw around luck far greater than that without a second thought.”
“Is that even possible?”
“With my Halo, yes. Whatever else, when it came to Halo performance I was the best among all my brothers and sisters.”
According to Fortuna’s explanation, the Halo every angel carried above their head was essentially an angelic version of a core. For an angel, nothing was more important than the Halo.
The reason her angel form consumed so much mana was not simply because she grew larger, but because she had to manifest the Halo itself.
“I already knew, but you really were incredible back then.”
“Get the wording right. I’m still incredible.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that.”
Jun readily acknowledged her self-praise.
Without her power today he would already be fish food, dissolving inside some creature’s stomach. How could he not admit it?
“Good, as long as you know. Hmm, we wandered off topic. This wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.”
“Oh? So you weren’t trying to brag about how amazing you are?”
“I was not!”
Fortuna flushed and thumped his stomach with both tiny fists.
Apparently she felt embarrassed about having boasted so much and then abruptly changing the subject. Well, it was the sort of thing worth being embarrassed about.
“I told you earlier. The luck I poured into you wasn’t that great an amount. Even I never expected a third core to form.”
Having calmed her embarrassment somewhat, Fortuna spoke with a serious face.
Jun tilted his head, puzzled, and nodded.
“You did. So what? We just got luckier than usual, right?”
“No. Remember how the electric eel had been sleeping for days with the dragon pearl in its mouth?”
“Of course. It wasn’t even that long ago—I saw it again this afternoon. How could I forget? Why?”
“It wasn’t sleeping. I think it was refining the lightning energy inside the pearl into pure form so you could absorb it more easily.”
Jun, who had been puzzled by the sudden mention of the electric eel, finally realized what Fortuna was driving at.
A mixture of gratitude and sorrow colored his expression as he slowly stroked his lower abdomen together with her.
“So it’s thanks to that guy that I got the third core.”
“Right. Though I played an important part too.”
“You don’t have to keep advertising yourself.”
Thwack!
“Gah!”
Jun flicked her lightly on the forehead for the constant self-promotion. He had a good idea why she kept clowning around, so he did not scold her further.
So it really is dead.
He forced his expression into the bright one she wanted, then quietly murmured while thinking of the electric eel.
“So that’s what it was doing. Trying to repay a debt of gratitude, huh?”
There was no other reason it would refine the lightning energy for easier absorption. Creatures that created mana reservoirs inside or outside their bodies—dragons included—normally returned every last drop of mana to nature before they died.
“You’re probably right.”
Whoosh!
A voice of agreement accompanied the sudden yanking aside of the privacy curtain around the bed.
At the abrupt intrusion, both Jun’s and Fortuna’s faces twisted in open displeasure.
“Boss, you can’t just pull the curtain open whenever you feel like it.”
“Don’t you know eavesdropping is rude? And you call yourself Father’s servant? Hmm?”
“...Haaah.”
Leonard pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed as though fed up with their complaints, yet the corners of his mouth were faintly smiling.
“How’s the body?”
“So good it almost feels wrong.”
“The cores? Harry said you coughed up a lot of blood.”
“Both of them—no, all three—are perfectly fine.”
Jun deliberately activated all three cores.
Feeling the fierce vortex of power radiating from him, Leonard’s expression grew complicated.
“The electric eel truly did a great deal for you out of gratitude. Not only did it revive your cores, it even created a new one, and then spent its own life to save yours.”
Better than most humans.
Leonard added the quiet remark, then let sorrow color his face and simply stared up at the ceiling in silence.
Was he thinking of the three children who had repaid kindness with betrayal, unlike the eel?
Having roughly guessed the reason, Jun turned not to Leonard but to Fortuna.
“Fortuna, what does he mean the eel spent its life to save mine? Did it pull us out of the catfish’s belly after all?”
“No. It carried us—already out of the belly—to the water’s edge. That was the last of its strength, and it died. I’ll tell you how we got out later.”
“Okay. So what happened to its body? You didn’t just leave it there, right?”
Animal or not, debt of gratitude or not, the creature was still his life’s savior. Jun wanted to give it at least a modest funeral.
At his question Fortuna turned her head toward Leonard. Jun followed her gaze. Noticing their stares, Leonard rummaged inside his coat and handed Jun a small urn.
“...Its ashes?”
“It must have poured out every last scrap of life force to save you; the corpse rotted at an alarming rate. Even the bones crumbled to powder and started scattering on the wind, so I had to gather them in this in a hurry. I’m sorry. I wanted to preserve it as best I could, but it was impossible.”
“No. Thank you for saving even this much.”
Jun carefully accepted the urn of remains and tucked it gently into his subspace.
Then, watching Leonard’s expression, he asked cautiously,
“How long has it been since I was rescued?”
“About five hours, I believe.”
“Then...”
“Did we catch the culprits?”
Jun nodded.
The eyes that fixed on Leonard now glowed a vivid blue, as though lightning itself had taken residence inside them.