The Price of Restoration
“Th-th-th-that… is that really true? Can you… can you really fix Gid’s legs?”
At my words, the Hero Eve’s eyes lit up and she shot to her feet in an instant.
Her speech, which had been a constant stutter ever since her spirit broke, straightened out for a moment—that was how deeply my offer shook her.
It was only natural.
The injuries of her party members were one of the roots of Eve’s trauma.
“Big Sis, don’t get your hopes up for nothing. We’ve heard empty talk like that more than once or twice.”
“Ah…”
Unlike the Hero Eve, the warrior Gid did not accept my words so easily.
He was the warrior Gid—the shield of the Hero Eve, who still believed the world was full of goodness.
Of course, the Gid of now had lost his legs and could no longer block the attacks of monsters.
But protecting his big sister from the malice of humans? That much he could still do.
“Offen, big bro, you shouldn’t go around saying things like that so lightly. Sticking a severed limb back on might be possible, but attaching a limb that’s completely gone? Even our Saintess can’t do that.”
The warrior Gid had been a member of the Hero’s party and a comrade of the Saintess.
So when some nobody from a baronial house suddenly claimed he could do what even the greatest healer in the world had failed at, his disbelief was only natural.
“Since we’re friends now, I’ll let it slide this once. But if you spout that nonsense again… then…”
Clang!
The warrior Gid crushed the wine glass in his hand with pure grip strength, crumpling it like paper.
“Your head… will end up like this wine glass.”
The untouched wine inside dripped down like blood.
Gid’s hand, soaked in wine, looked for a moment as if it were drenched in blood, and a chill ran through me.
Even with his legs gone, Gid’s upper body was still intact.
Just as he said, crushing my head like that wine glass would be nothing to him.
But even under his warning, I did not close my mouth.
“No. Our Termin family truly can restore Sir Gid’s legs.”
Instead, I said it again—that we could fix Gid’s legs.
“This guy’s really…!”
“Rina, restore that wine glass to its original state.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
Woooom— Flash!
Because I had Rina.
“……Wh-what is this?”
The shattered wine glass glowed the moment Rina’s fingertips touched it and was restored.
Gid stared in shock at the glass, now perfectly returned to its unbroken form.
“H-how… how did you do that?”
Eve asked me instead of the gaping Gid, her eyes round as saucers.
I answered with a gentle smile.
“Our head maid is extremely talented.”
“Can it… be used on people too?”
“Of course. I brought this up because Rina can fix him.”
“Good heavens…”
This was exactly why the Blessing of Restoration was one of the most broken blessings in Crack Kingdom.
Anyone who possessed it could restore anything—so long as the proper materials were present.
Living beings and non-living things alike.
Of course, using it on living beings came with all sorts of restrictions, but that didn’t matter.
The gains from using the Blessing of Restoration far outweighed any losses from those restrictions.
“However… unfortunately, I cannot heal him for free. Restoring a warrior of Sir Gid’s caliber requires a great many things. So I will have to charge the two of you a fee—and it will be truly expensive.”
I shook my head as if it pained me and brought up the treatment cost.
That was no lie.
Restoring the body of a powerhouse on Gid’s level truly demanded an enormous price.
Which was why I could demand the fee with a clear conscience.
“M-money! I have money! I’ve saved everything from my work as a Hero! I can give you all of it, so please… please heal my little brother’s legs!”
The Hero Eve declared she would pay any price if it meant restoring her brother’s legs.
She would hand over every coin she had saved.
Music to my ears.
“B-Big Sis! How many times have I told you not to just blurt out that you’ll give them all your money! All they showed us was fixing a wine glass! Even our mage can do that much!”
But once again, Gid stopped Eve’s impulsive outburst.
The words he used to rein her in were perfectly reasonable.
Fixing a single wine glass was hardly enough to inspire trust.
“Ugh… B-but Gid. If there’s even a one-percent chance of healing you, I’ll offer up my entire fortune. You ended up like this because… b-because I… because I was weak.”
This time, however, Eve shook her head and refused to listen to Gid.
She felt guilty over his injury.
Her little brother’s legs being severed, her comrades in the Hero’s party being gravely wounded—all of it, she believed, was because she herself was weak.
The Hero Eve took every bit of it as her own responsibility.
“So I… I will give Baron Offen everything I own. I’ll give it all, and I’ll make your legs better.”
The Hero Eve did not even pretend to hear her little brother Gid’s rational judgment.
She plugged her ears and flatly declared she would offer me her entire fortune.
The reason she was racing ahead so desperately was simple.
She needed to do something—anything—for her injured brother, just so her heart could feel a little lighter.
“Big Sis…”
Gid knew full well why his sister was acting this way.
So he could no longer say anything more to her.
“Damn it. Listen here, Offen, big bro. This involves my big sister’s entire fortune. If this is a scam, you’d better be ready. I won’t just sit still.”
Instead, he glared at me and piled warning upon warning.
I met Gid’s sharp gaze, scratched my cheek, and answered.
“Well… I’m sorry, but what I want from the two of you isn’t money. Even if you offered your entire fortune, you still wouldn’t be able to pay the price of the treatment.”
“H-huh?”
“Wha…?”
I had never intended to take the Hero’s wealth in the first place.
Hearing her offer her entire fortune was certainly pleasant.
But that was all. I knew the state of the Hero’s purse all too well.
The Hero Eve was not wealthy.
She refused most of the rewards offered by nobles, the royal family, and the imperial house, and whatever money she did receive she spent helping people in need.
The savings she had managed to put aside were barely enough to keep an old woman from starving in her final years.
And that amount wouldn’t cover even one-hundredth of the price required to treat Gid.
“This treatment is truly, extremely expensive. Converted into money, it would probably cost about one-twentieth of the Benos Kingdom’s annual budget. Does the Hero possess that kind of fortune?”
“A-ah, ahah, ahahah… n-no.”
“Right? That’s why I never planned to accept money as payment from the start.”
Money? There were as many ways to earn it as stars in the night sky.
But there was only one Hero’s party in this world.
“What I want from the two of you is a deep bond with you both. I want to become friends with everyone in the Hero’s party. The pure kind of bond where we help each other whenever we’re needed.”
What I would take from them was not money—it was manpower.
Settling the Hero’s party in the Termin Territory, healing them, and then putting them to work.
That was my true goal.
“That is the price of treatment I ask of you both. Will you accept my proposal?”
I smiled gently and asked the two of them.
“A-all right. If that will make my little brother’s legs better again… I’ll do whatever Baron Offen asks of me.”
“Haa… fine. Working under someone else doesn’t really suit me, but if I have to live the rest of my life without legs, all I’ll get to see is my big sister’s sad face.”
As veterans of the Hero’s party who had weathered every storm, the two of them instantly grasped the true meaning behind my words.
They realized what I wanted was not money, but them.
Yet even knowing that, they had no choice but to accept my proposal.
Because restoring the warrior Gid’s severed legs was the Hero Eve’s dearest wish.
“Excellent! Then let’s go heal those legs right away.”
Truly delighted that the deal was sealed, I smiled and led the two of them out of the mansion together with Rina.
Our destination was outside the walls.
Healing Gid required a truly vast open space.
“H-hey, Offen, big bro. Didn’t you say earlier that healing my legs would take a whole lot of stuff? But this is just an empty lot. There’s nothing here.”
“Ah, no need to worry about that. I’m carrying all the necessary materials myself.”
“What do you mean by…?”
I stretched my hand toward the empty lot so Eve and Gid could see clearly, then spoke the activation word.
“Summon.”
User’s will confirmed. Summoning 25,000 corpses of the monster army.
Woooom— Rumble-rumble-rumble!!!
“Whaaaat?!”
“E-eeek?!”
The moment I pulled out the 25,000 still-undismantled monster corpses from my inventory, Gid and Eve screamed in horror.
“M-monsters! Monsters! Monsters have appeared…! W-we have to… we have to kill them right now…!”
Especially the Hero Eve, half-panicked, was about to summon her holy sword.
“H-Hero! Stop! They’re only materials! They’re all corpses! And if you swing that holy sword, we won’t be able to treat Sir Gid!”
If she truly summoned and swung the holy sword, the treatment—and everything else—would be ruined, so I urgently stopped her.
“Hup?! A-ah… i-it’s true… I-I’m sorry.”
At the words that swinging the holy sword would make treating Gid impossible, Eve quickly calmed down.
“Whew.”
Having weathered one crisis, I let out a sigh of relief, then looked at Rina and spoke.
“Rina, I’m transferring ownership of every monster corpse over there to you.”
“Yes. Transfer confirmed, Young Master.”
The covenant of transfer that Rina and I had practiced before the two of them arrived.
Ordinarily, such a covenant would hold no power or binding force for people who could not handle mana—but my case was different.
User’s will confirmed. Ownership of 25,000 corpses of the monster army is transferred to Head Maid Rina.
I had a status window that would notarize the covenant for me.
And so I successfully transferred ownership of the monster corpses to Rina.
“All right, preparations complete. Rina, just do it the way we practiced. Sorry for putting you through this. I’m counting on you.”
“Not at all, Young Master. I am your maid. Obeying your orders is only natural.”
Having received ownership of the 25,000 monster army corpses, Rina approached Gid, knelt, and placed her hands upon his knees.
She spoke softly toward the empty space below Gid’s knees.
“Return to your original form.”
Fwaaaaaash—!!!!!
With those words, an orange radiance erupted with tremendous light and swallowed the world.
And when the light that had covered everything finally faded…
Beneath Gid’s once-empty knees, his original sturdy legs had returned.
“Ah…”
Confirming that his severed legs had been restored, Gid did not know what to do with himself.
“G-Gid…”
Seeing her little brother’s legs returned, Eve’s eyes brimmed with tears, on the verge of overflowing.
It truly was a moving moment.
I nodded several times, fully savoring this beautiful scene, then turned to the two of them and spoke.
“Well then… now that we’ve become true friends, I’d like to ask the two of you for a small favor… heh-heh-heh-heh.”
The treatment was finished.
Time to settle the bill.