Chapter 85
Chapter 85
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: An Unexpected Cure
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We joined up with the surviving cadets.
As expected, they were a mess. They looked like they’d been rummaging through a garbage heap for three days and nights.
Though instead of stench, they reeked of blood and sweat.
“…Karon.”
“So you were here, Jeros.”
Jeros Silver.
He was the one who always stuck close to Karon.
The cadet who had been central to Karon's point-gathering scheme, selling smuggled goods from the outside to the other cadets.
“Where's Shinba?”
“I don't know. But he's probably not dead. He's a tough one.”
“Is that so.”
While those two were talking, Evan was examining Karis's wounds.
“…Evan?”
“Yeah. It's me.”
“…Damn hallucinations. If I was about to die, shouldn't I be seeing a stunning beauty…?”
From the way he was talking, the wound wasn't fatal, but leaving it alone would be dangerous.
Evan seemed to realize this too and looked up at me.
I gave a slight nod and handed him the potion I had received from Charl.
“Thanks.”
Hector was talking with one of the cadets.
He seemed to be one of the nobles who belonged to Hector's faction.
When I glanced over, he approached with the other cadet and made an introduction.
“This is Edi. The legitimate heir of the Fiscol family.”
“I've heard a lot about you, Lord Ruan.”
“Just Ruan is fine. And I'd appreciate it if you'd drop the greasy honorifics.”
At my words, Edi looked at Hector.
And after seeing Hector nod, he said.
“Got it.”
“How's Seren?”
“She's unconscious right now.”
Two cadets were looking after the limp form of Seren.
Hector said.
“She has such immense power. Why didn't she use it sooner?”
“Well... perhaps her Blessing has certain conditions, or maybe a significant risk.”
I looked around and spoke up.
“Should we talk later? This place doesn't seem safe either.”
“Right. For now, let's go to the shelter my squad found.”
We took the unconscious Seren and the injured Karis and left the area.
* * *
The shelter Edi's squad had found was behind a large boulder.
They had dug out the terrain a bit for camouflage, and covering it with nearby bushes made it reasonably well-hidden.
There, Edi's squad shared their rations for a simple meal.
“You have a lot of food.”
“We invested a lot of points into it.”
It was only jerky and water, but in a situation like this, even that was precious.
“…Hoo. We somehow survived.”
Edi muttered with a grim expression.
It seemed that with a full stomach, the reality of the situation was finally sinking in.
“Lord Hector, what in the world is going on?”
“We're still trying to figure that out. But one thing is certain: this is no time to be leisurely taking a test.”
“……”
I cut in before the atmosphere could get any heavier.
“How did you all end up in this state? Seeing as there are seven of you, it looks like you were already grouped up before the attack.”
“…That's right. Jeros over there was the only one who joined us midway. There were originally twelve of us.”
“Three squads were moving together?”
This wasn't a typical situation.
Hector also looked like he was hearing this for the first time.
Edi spoke with an apologetic expression.
“My apologies, Lord Hector. But it was the squad leader's order, so we had no choice...”
“It's fine. I was the one who said we shouldn't interfere with each other during the special test in the first place. More importantly, the squad leader?”
Edi's gaze turned to the unconscious Seren.
“Seren Goodspring?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she devise such a plan?”
“She said she knew the Butterfly Forest well. She claimed there was a monster in this forest called the [Queen Butterfly], and that we needed to gather our strength to hunt it.”
“Queen Butterfly? Butterflies have those too? Like ants?”
“It's a monster.”
I glanced at Hector, and he explained.
“I heard such an entity exists somewhere in the forest. They say most of the butterflies in the forest are born from the Queen Butterfly. The family knows of its existence, but not its exact habitat.”
“…That's right. It sounded absurd, but after hearing from you, Lord Hector, that it was true, we believed Lady Seren's words.”
“And you gathered three whole squads based on that?”
Edi sighed.
“Many cadets were hoping to turn things around in this special test. We were skeptical of Lady Seren's words, it's true, but she's a Goodspring, right? We didn't think she would be talking complete nonsense. Of course... a lot of strange things happened after that.”
“Strange things?”
“Before that, I have something to ask the two of you from the Bednicker family. This is Seren Goodspring's first time in this forest, isn't it?”
Hector nodded.
“Of course. If not for the Blessing Ceremony, a Goodspring scion would have had no reason to come to the main family estate. Even when she and Ruan were discussing marriage, it was all done verbally.”
“But why do you ask?”
“Lady Seren was clearly here for the first time, yet she seemed somehow familiar with the place.”
The others agreed with him.
“She knew a lot about the monsters that appeared, too.”
“Lady Seren was the one who first discovered the stream.”
“And she found a strange, hidden altar.”
The last comment particularly caught my attention.
“An altar?”
“She muttered something there in a language I'd never heard before, then said it was done. And...”
“What else?”
“…Before the test began, it was Lady Seren who told us to buy as many rations as possible. I was secretly dissatisfied, thinking it was too inefficient, but.”
“In this situation, it turned out to be a stroke of genius.”
So Seren knew this incident was going to happen.
But how?
‘Did she overhear the plan?’
My intuition told me that wasn't it.
And this was just a baseless guess, but…
I had a feeling that the secret Seren was hiding was in a realm unreachable by mere deduction.
“……”
I asked the female cadet who was tending to the unconscious Seren.
“How is she?”
“Her body is as cold as ice. It's like…”
...a corpse.
That's probably what she was about to say.
It's a common metaphor for times like this, but for the cadets who had actually seen corpses, the word itself would now evoke a sense of repulsion.
I looked at Seren as well.
She already had fair skin, but now she was deathly pale.
“Let me see.”
I gently took Seren's wrist.
A chill, like dipping my hand into a winter stream, seeped into me.
‘Her yin energy is running rampant.’
She didn't look too critical on the outside.
But she was in a much more serious condition than Karis, who had just lost a bowlful of blood.
If left like this, Seren would die within a few hours.
I looked back at where Hector was.
He seemed to be exchanging information with Edi and Jeros.
“What will you do now? We're heading for the training camp.”
“The camp…”
Edi gave a bitter smile.
“We'd like to help... but honestly, I don't think we'd be of much use.”
“I see. Then I'll tell you the location of our shelter. Go there and join the other cadets. It'll be better to stick together.”
“Understood.”
Karis looked at Evan and said.
“Evan, don't push yourself too hard.”
“Worry about yourself.”
“I'm fine now. That potion worked wonders. If you need me, should I join you?”
I spoke to the group just as they were about to leave.
“Can we take care of Seren?”
“Huh?”
“I think I can treat her.”
It was fortunate that what was wrecking Seren's body was cold energy.
I should be able to neutralize it to some extent with my fire energy.
Besides, if she could be healed, Seren would be a formidable asset.
Having fought alongside her against Hariba, I knew that better than anyone.
“Alright. There's nothing we can do for her anyway…”
“Please take good care of her.”
“Oh. You should have this.”
Just before leaving, Edi's group handed us their rations and potions.
A few bags of jerky and a water skin.
And five bottles of potions.
“Oh. We'll put these to good use.”
“Be careful.”
After Edi's group left.
I said to the others around me.
“I need to concentrate for a bit, so keep watch on our surroundings.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hmm... at least thirty minutes, an hour to be safe?”
“Got it.”
Then, I placed my hand on Seren's upper dantian—her forehead—and closed my eyes.
A biting cold seeped into my hand.
Its purity was higher than I expected, and for a moment, I almost flinched, but... of course, I couldn't do that.
I forced my fire energy in, driving out the cold.
Normally, exploring another person's meridians was a difficult task, but since Seren was completely unconscious, there was no resistance.
‘I need to find the source.’
A healthy human body shouldn't be like this, so there must be a source spewing out this cold energy.
If it were the middle dantian, she would have died long ago, so it's probably near the lower dantian…
It would be a long journey starting from her head, but I had to accept it, since I wouldn't have been able to enter so smoothly if it weren't the weakest point of the cold energy.
In any case, I steadily moved downward while infusing my fire energy, but I inevitably hit a wall midway.
From that point on, the intensity of the cold energy grew several times stronger.
What lay ahead was a veritable blizzard, and with my current fire energy, I couldn't even think of proceeding.
‘What should I do?’
If I had more time, I could find another way, but I didn't have that luxury.
The moment I considered pushing myself…
*Fwoosh…!*
I suddenly felt a burst of heat from within my clothes.
‘The Spirit Jade?’
This spiritual medicine, which I hadn't let leave my side for a moment since the training retreat began, suddenly made its presence known.
It was the first time this had happened, and in my momentary confusion, the heat from the Spirit Jade surged into my body and mixed rather violently with my fire energy.
‘Did it react to Seren's cold energy?’
Amidst my surprise, I controlled my internal energy.
It was an unexpected development, but not a bad one.
Thanks to it, the intensity of my fire energy had grown much stronger.
With my strengthened firepower, I pushed straight through the brutal cold and soon came face to face with the source of the cold energy.
But there, I discovered something else that was strange.
‘Huh…’
Coiled in the deepest part of Seren's body wasn't yin energy, but yang energy.
‘……’
To think that her true power was yang energy, even after creating such a storm of cold.
How strange.
*Fwoosh!*
In any case, I finally melted the core of the cold energy.
‘…That's it, for now.’
I also reaped an unexpected harvest.
The Spirit Jade had melted quite a bit from what just happened.
It seemed to have shrunk by about ten percent, and the melted jade became my internal energy.
Perhaps because it had mixed with Seren's cold energy, it felt like about twice the internal energy I would normally gain…
With that alone, I gained several times the internal energy of a spirit herb.
This too must be a stroke of fortune.
‘I guess doing good deeds really does pay off.’
Seren's life was saved, too.
When she would wake up depended entirely on her own abilities…
“Ugh…”
At that moment, Seren let out a pained sound and stirred.
Soon, her eyebrows, like fallen snowflakes, twitched, revealing the glass-like eyes beneath them.
“You…”
“Hey. Still alive?”
“…Seems so.”
Seren shook her head and sat up.