The Pregnant Widow and the Elixir of Revelation
Signatio took Primor with her to examine her, just as she had when she cleared me of black magic suspicions. Why did it have to be Signatio who showed up? Probably to say her goodbyes or something. Thankfully, the nun followed her out for a few minutes, so there was no chance of her claiming she “wasn’t sure.”
In the meantime, I waited like a country mutt staring at a boiling pot, wondering whether the water would become miso soup or my own bathwater. Every damn second felt like ten minutes.
If my hunch is wrong and they try to beat me again, I’m fighting back this time. Fuck that.
I made that resolution, but fortunately for both me and Cornelius, we never reached the point of a life-or-death brawl.
⟨She appears to be roughly six to seven weeks pregnant.⟩
That explanation from Signatio, who had returned with Primor, was what saved us.
The old man Cornelius clutched Signatio’s hand and burst into tears. It could almost be considered sexual harassment, but that was partly Signatio’s fault for walking around dressed as a man.
But I’m the one who told them she was pregnant, and I’m the one who got beaten for it. So why is Signatio getting all the thanks?
Signatio seemed to share the same thought; she stood there with a slightly awkward expression while dealing with the sobbing old noble.
The world is always unfair to men. When the hell is the age of machismo coming back?
“Ughhh…”
I forced my aching body upright. As expected of this bloodline-obsessed other world, they apparently had ways to determine human genetic traits here. It was probably magic, though I didn’t know the exact principles. That wasn’t my area of expertise.
No need to go as far as a DNA test anyway.
After all, the Descensus ritual had succeeded. Primor’s child would be one hundred percent of the Armaals bloodline.
They probably slept together a few times before he was killed by the black mage.
Newlyweds not having sex? That was as ridiculous as a Pororo movie getting an R-rating.
Primor absentmindedly stroked her belly, as if something had occurred to her. She stammered in a daze.
I answered with the explanation I had prepared in advance. Primor’s body must have been in terrible shape for days, but she had probably chalked up the fatigue to the shock of losing her husband. Of course, the fact that the fetus endured the subsequent forced march was thanks to her stamina and sheer luck. If she hadn’t been a fairly skilled archer capable of handling mana…
Hmm. I’d rather not imagine that.
Or maybe if that had been the case, she wouldn’t have set out for revenge in the first place, so there would have been no problem? Whatever.
That night, after Dana chewed me out and I collapsed into bed, the possibility had occurred to me in my half-asleep state. For a single terrifying moment, my drowsiness vanished completely.
Why? Because I suddenly remembered our first meeting.
…Didn’t I hit Primor in the stomach?
It was right around the time I was mistaken for a black mage. Before clearing up the misunderstanding, I had used the cardiopulmonary resuscitation technique I had just learned and slammed a mana strike into her belly to subdue her.
Of course, I had controlled my strength. Even though I was a dropout vet student, I had still studied medicine. I knew how dangerous it was to damage a person’s internal organs. One wrong move and they could die without even reaching a hospital or receiving healing magic. So the strike I used back then—as I had said at the time—was little more than a light caress. The location wasn’t even near the uterus.
When you think about a guy getting hit in the balls, even a light tap is enough to subdue them on its own.
When I hit internal organs, I always used testicular pain as my standard of measurement. So at the time, I figured something like a slightly hard flick to the forehead would be sufficient.
But I really was lucky.
Thanks to controlling my power, I avoided a catastrophe, but if the location or force had been even slightly different…
…Holy fucking shit.
Even now, cold sweat ran down my back. I had come so close to being completely screwed. If I had messed up even a little, instead of becoming the Kitai hero who avenged her husband, I could have become the enemy who killed her son.
They say you should never hit another man’s woman.
I shuddered, recalling that macho proverb. Father, you were right about everything. If I ever went to see him later and confessed that I had beaten up a pregnant woman, that would probably be the day the eldest son of the Kang family met his end. Another secret I’d have to take to the grave. Oh well. They say secrets make a man a man.
Primor clutched her belly with trembling hands. I felt bad about intruding on such a deeply moving scene, so I tried to slip away quietly, but our eyes met.
Only then did she seem to remember the sorry state of the dog—me—who had been beaten for the sake of the pregnant woman’s health. She gestured to her escort.
—Clack.
The female knight brought an Elixir.
Primor uncorked it without hesitation.
Though after the brutal days this child had already experienced as prenatal education, I wasn’t sure how much difference it would make.
Like a true macho man, I pushed the Elixir back without showing any sign of pain. A widow who had lost her husband and a troubleshooter. Come to think of it, it was a combination straight out of a Western or pulp fiction.
Primor looked back and forth between the Elixir I had pushed toward her and me. Deciding it was trust, she gave a firm nod and drank it down.
An Elixir was far too strong a potion for a pregnant woman to drink. The potions of this world were like HP potions in games—if you chugged them recklessly, you’d be in big trouble. Cornelius looked like he was about to faint, clearly aware of that fact, but I ignored him.
If we were the cast of a B-grade macho movie, then the ending had to be a B-grade happy ending, didn’t it?
Kiiiiiing—!
I activated Odin’s Eye. I lifted Primor’s hand and drew lines along her forearm using the principles of rune characters. The green lines connected like circuits, and the medicinal effect flowed along them. I carefully adjusted the direction so the powerful effect of the Elixir would not reach the fetus.
This kind of thing wasn’t difficult at all. For someone like me who had already stepped into the realm of mastery in mana control, it was easier than operating an RC car.
Hwaaaaaah—!!
The Elixir’s effect showed a peculiar movement. It had clearly gone down her throat, yet the way the medicinal energy flowed had nothing to do with the body’s actual anatomy.
Is it traveling through the capillaries or something?
Even so, it was strange. Normally, nutrients absorbed by the human body wouldn’t move in such a completely arbitrary way. I was starting to get curious about what the ingredients were.
Of course, that didn’t make controlling it difficult—but that was precisely why it captured my attention even more.
This… could it be?
While manipulating the abundant recovery energy by adjusting the direction of the medicinal effect with magic, a sudden realization struck me. The path this medicinal energy was flowing through—wasn’t it what I called the mana catheter? The organ through which mana moved?
Shushushushushu!
A change occurred where the effect was concentrated. Light wove itself together like threads, and Primor’s left ring finger began to regrow.
I watched with wide eyes. No, what I was observing wasn’t the result of the healing, but the process itself. It was an instantaneous enlightenment brought about by the unique nature of the potion called Elixir and the magic that controlled its effect.
Thanks to my mana flowing along with the medicinal energy, I had gained the chance to visually observe the mana moving inside the body. This might be an opportunity that couldn’t be bought with a thousand gold.
A miraculous chance that could only be obtained by pouring a powerful medicinal potion onto someone whose body was in as terrible a state as Primor’s!
I opened my eyes so wide that the veins bulged and spread the medicinal energy throughout every damaged part of her body.
…It’s completely different from when Diabolo used aura.
That bastard’s swordsmanship was far more powerful and precise than this. But the principle was the same. Just like Primor, he too must have had mana pathways that both existed and didn’t exist, and his aura flowed from there.
The gap between a natural state and an unnatural one—that must be the secret to aura!
What’s the difference? What is the difference?
I gritted my teeth and racked my brain. If the medicinal energy and mana spread through Primor’s overworked body like leaf veins, then that guy’s flowed like a water cannon without hesitation.
Like a water cannon… Is it a difference in mana output?
It felt like lightning had struck inside my head. A thrilling shiver ran down my spine, as if I had found a way to scale a wall whose height I couldn’t even see.
You amplify the flow of mana inside the body to be faster and stronger, then punch through a pathway for mana to travel all the way to the weapon!
All at once, like blasting open a water-pressure-blocked tunnel!
That’s why no matter whose mana is used, aura always looks like it’s radiating light!
This made sense. It was perfectly plausible. Under these conditions, one would need mana control ability on that level, and the mana catheter would also need to be sturdy enough to withstand that much pressure. Both were essential conditions for an outstanding warrior.
It had been a full six months since I started swinging a sword in this other world. At last, I had figured out the minimum requirements for using aura.
Paaaaaat—!!
At that moment, Primor’s treatment was complete. Forgetting my joy and the unexpected harvest for a moment, I withdrew my hand. A few sips of top-grade Elixir were more than enough to restore a missing finger and soothe an exhausted body.
Primor murmured as if in a trance. Just as she said, her finger had returned to its natural count. Five fingers—the ordinary number of happiness that most people enjoyed.
Primor, as if in a daze, removed the wedding ring from her necklace. It was an enviable ring no matter how many times I saw it. It must have cost incomparably more than the one I had obtained. But the value of a wedding ring lay not in its price, but in the heart it contained.
—Slide.
The wedding ring slipped onto the previously empty left ring finger. She turned it back and forth as if it felt unfamiliar. Clear sunlight reflected off the clean ring. Perhaps the sight reminded her of the days when she had dreamed of ordinary happiness.
With a suppressed sob, teardrops fell onto the ring. There were no clouds in the sky, so raindrops were impossible. Still, everyone present looked up at the sky or turned their eyes away, as if checking its condition.
Among them, I was the only one watching Primor as she sat on the floor, clutching her slightly swollen belly and crying.
Signatio, who had been drawing the holy sign of the Janus Church, changed her words as if recalling what Diabolo had said before.
I remembered it too and looked up. Diabolo had said that the gods of Romania were false idols created by humans.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but when you think about it that way, it does make sense.
The goddess of abundance and healing, Pomona. The god of gates and protection, Janus. Just these two alone.
To be blunt, they’re way too convenient for humans.
Weren’t they? Just think about it. The chief god of Germania, Odin, was the god of magic and death. Even though this one-eyed German god was the chief deity of an entire mythological system, the domains he mainly oversaw were like that. Storms? Death? Magic? Weren’t those powers that were completely useless to ordinary people?
Was Odin the only one? The other gods were all similar. Narmer-Nile was a country that suffered from drought and heat under the sun’s rays, yet the chief god they worshipped, ‘Ra,’ was the sun god.
The gods from Greek mythology that don’t exist in this world are the same.
The god of lightning, Zeus. The god of the underworld, Hades. The god of the sea, Poseidon. Calling those crazy rapists gods? Weren’t they closer to disasters?
As such, ‘gods’ were never originally beings who were only kind and beneficial to humans. The personification of the sun, lightning, storms, and death. Idols that are feared, worshipped, and revered—that too was the essence of gods.
Even in this other world where real gods existed, gods were both great beings and symbols of terror.
In comparison, what about the gods of Romania? Pomona’s blessing was simply too beneficial to humans. A god who granted bountiful harvests across that vast territory and healed the injured. Farmers would have no choice but to believe.
The same went for Janus. A god who repelled evil, protected the good, and even dispelled curses? He was a capable apostle of justice whose slightly lacking healing ability could be overlooked as a cute flaw.
I finally understood why Romania had added “Holy Empire” to its name. Perhaps because they had deified ‘people with the ability to be worshipped as gods,’ only gods who were so gentle and friendly to humans existed in Romania.
It all fit together perfectly.
But… is there really a problem with that?
I snorted, recalling Diabolo who had been spouting off so arrogantly. Created gods? So what?
The fact that humans created gods was nothing surprising to Kang Bukho, a former atheist from Earth. To me, gods had always been fictional beings based on human belief from the very beginning.
Just like the caterpillar-shaped stone statues that the bugs of this world used to worship, it was an empty faith that would vanish like foam. Therefore, I thought it was fine for Primor to shed tears over a single ring.
I turned my back on her as she cried without any dignity and wiped my nose. I didn’t know how much her husband had loved her. If the situation had been reversed, he might have simply taken a new wife instead of stepping forward to avenge her.
That was how it was. There was no way to know the heart of a dead person. But even so, wasn’t that fine?
Human belief was used more soundly when directed toward positive places rather than negative ones. Since we couldn’t know a dead person’s heart anyway, it was enough to simply believe that he had truly loved Primor and would have loved her child just the same.
Conveying the proud image of the child’s father to the baby about to be born—that too would become the task of Primor, who would soon become a mother.
“…But dear wives. Why were you all just watching while your husband was getting beaten half to death?”
“…We were discussing what to do if Nord had really laid hands on a married woman.”
“Now even my wives don’t trust my dick. Can I just bite my tongue and die?”
“Ahaha♡! See! I told you Senior only touches virgins, so it must be a misunderstanding♡!”
Shut your mouth, you bitch. That’s not something the girl who stole someone else’s virgin on our first night and then jumped him should be saying.
Anyway, even though I did a good deed, I got the shit beaten out of me, so I needed to at least get some compensation. I, Kang Bukho, would now demonstrate 21st-century self-harm extortion.