Tutorial (9) — A Kept Promise
The ogre’s strength was nothing short of overwhelming.
From a frame of such gargantuan mass, even a glancing blow carried enough force to prove fatal. Calt could only watch in terror as the tree swung like a club, sending Danas hurtling through the air; a second later, the monster swung its brutal gaze in his direction, and he gritted his teeth, scrambling backward in a desperate bid to buy distance.
While Calt drew the beast's focus, Melina bolted toward the wreckage where Danas had landed to inspect his condition.
"…!!"
Her breath hitched. He was a complete ruin.
Only the heavy plate armor he wore had kept him alive this long; by all rights, his shattered body was in such a state that dying on the spot wouldn't have been out of the question.
"Cough… hack…!"
"H-Hey, Danas…! Hold on, can you hear me?!"
If he's left like this, he's going to die.
Making her split-second decision, Melina reached into her pouch and pulled out the low-grade potion she had used earlier on the apprentice nun. Adventuring supplies of that caliber were far too expensive for them to carry in abundance. Even an entire vial wouldn't have been enough to mend damage this severe, and the meager half-dose remaining could do little more than prolong his breathing by a few fleeting seconds.
"Danas, you idiot… you never make blunders like this! What in the world happened?!"
"Whew… My apologies… My concentration lapsed for an instant…"
What could possibly have broken the concentration of a veteran vanguard in the middle of battle? Melina felt like she was losing her mind from sheer helplessness.
"More importantly… is the kid… all right?"
"What? You mean the nun?"
"Yeah…"
"…"
Has he completely lost his mind?
His own guts were practically spilling out, yet here he was, asking after a child who had already been stabilized with medicine. Melina’s face contorted in sheer anguish and rage.
"Worry about your own damn wounds, you moron! If this keeps up, you're really going to die!"
He was clinging to consciousness solely because of the potion's faint magical effect, but without at least a mid-grade potion, he was as good as dead. Even now, his life was slipping away drop by drop.
To make matters worse, the ogre was still thrashing wild and rampant. Even if Melina’s small hunting arrows penetrated that thick, leathery hide, dealing a truly decisive wound was near impossible. She had managed to blind one of its eyes, but given the monstrous regenerative vitality of an ogre, even that wound would knit shut before long.
If their party had been at full strength, they might have brought the beast down without casualties, grueling though it would have been. But Mirna had already exhausted her reserves casting that wide-area bombardment spell, and now Danas was incapacitated. There were simply no viable options remaining.
Their only choice was to run.
"Cough… Leave me behind… and run, the three of you… Take that nun with you, too…"
"Y-You… what kind of insane nonsense are you spouting…!"
Melina screamed back as Danas vomited another clot of dark blood.
She knew it. She knew better than anyone that fleeing was their sole chance of survival.
Yet how could she ever turn her back on him? They had bled and fought alongside one another for years.
"Hurry… there isn't time. Calt won't hold out much longer either."
"…"
Wiping away the tears that spilled past her lashes, Melina glanced over her shoulder toward Calt. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, channeling mana into every yell just to keep the ogre’s furious attention pinned on him. But his stamina was waning fast; he wouldn't last another minute.
"You stay alive. Do you hear me? I am coming back to save you, no matter what. If you die before I get back, I swear I'll drag you back from the afterlife just to kill you myself!"
"Heh… that does sound rather terrifying…"
There was no time to hesitate. Melina quickly weighed what little she could do to change the tide. In the end, she decided there was only one choice: blind the beast's other eye and rob it of its sight completely.
Because the monster was so thoroughly transfixed on Calt, its charges were blunt and linear. Predicting its movements was simple enough.
She did not need long to aim.
Thwip—!
—GROOOOAAARGH!
True to her mark, the arrow buried itself deep into the ogre's remaining eye.
Smash! Crash!
Blind in both eyes, the monster raised its massive hands to clutch at its ruined face, thrashing in a blind, violent frenzy.
"Now's our chance…!"
While it was flailing around in darkness, this was their golden opportunity to retreat. Just as Melina glanced back toward Danas and moved to grab Calt—
A desperate, shrill shriek echoed from the distance.
Melina snapped her head toward the sound.
Crackle—bzzzzzt!
Blood dripped from Mirna's lips as she stood swaying on trembling legs, visibly racked by mana exhaustion. Yet despite her crumbling focus, she had somehow completed an advanced-tier lance of thunderous lightning. Beside her boots rolled an empty mana potion bottle.
"You guys…! You'd better pay me back double for this…!!"
With that fiery parting curse, the spear of pure thunder erupted forward, hurtling straight toward the thrashing, blinded head of the ogre.
KABOOOOM!
An earth-shattering detonation shook the clearing, throwing up a dense curtain of smoke and debris. The flailing behemoth froze instantly in its tracks. As the choking fumes parted, the sight that emerged was chilling: everything above the monster’s thick neck had been completely vaporized.
THUD!
Deprived of its master, the colossal carcass pitched backward, hitting the ground with the force of a localized earthquake.
"Pant… pant…"
For an existence that had radiated such suffocating despair moments before, it was a remarkably sudden demise.
Still…
W-We survived…
Melina released the breath trapped in her chest, collapsing forward in sheer relief.
The ogre was vanquished.
Thanks to Mirna downing an exorbitantly expensive mana potion to forcibly manifest an advanced lightning spell, the monster's skull had been obliterated into ash. However, using high-tier magic on artificially replenished mana had thoroughly ravaged her magical circuits, leaving her in desperate need of bedrest for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately, Calt and Melina had escaped without catastrophic harm.
However…
"Danas…"
Trapped inside his crumpled armor, the single eye Danas had left was steadily losing its light.
It was too late. There was no turning this back.
They had no potions left, and even if they had, nothing short of an intermediate potion could save him now. He wouldn't even survive the journey back to the city's cathedral. He was, for all intents and purposes, a dead man.
"I'm sorry, Danas… If only I had drawn its attention properly, this wouldn't have happened…!"
"It was my own fault for losing focus. You have nothing to apologize for, Calt."
"Danas, please…!"
"More importantly…"
Danas’s dimming gaze seemed to search the clearing. Through the blood welling in his vision, his eye looked past his party members, searching for someone beyond.
"Someone needs to… check on that nun…"
"…!"
Right.
Melina's eyes widened in sudden realization, and she scrambled to her feet to find the girl. With Danas’s horrific injuries consuming all her attention, she had completely forgotten about the apprentice. The girl had thrown herself into the path of an arrow to protect her, yet she had been so consumed by her fallen comrade that she hadn't spared the girl another thought. Or perhaps… Danas had become something more to her than just a comrade.
Biting her lip until it bled to choke back her sobs, Melina turned to search for the girl. But at that very moment—
"…There is no need to look."
"You…"
No one had noticed when she had arrived.
Her pristine white habit was soaked in dark crimson. A snapped arrow shaft remained wedged in her abdomen, hastily broken off to plug the bleeding, and her breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. Her complexion was ghost-pale, and by all appearances she was on the verge of collapsing, yet she was still standing on her own two feet.
[Brother Danas…]
Even with her eyes closed, the girl seemed to perceive everything. She knew unerringly that the battered figure embedded in the twisted metal was the man named Danas.
"I'm glad… to see you're still alive…"
[Please, do not speak. It will only tear your wounds further.]
"Hah… My body is as good as a corpse anyway. I might as well say my piece while I still… cough…"
[…]
Without a word, the pale girl sank to her knees beside him. While her injury might have looked lesser compared to Danas’s pulverized body, being pierced through by an arrow was nonetheless a grievous, agonizing wound—far too much for a frail young girl to endure. Her blood-soaked hands trembled violently as she held them out.
"Don't waste your strength on foolishness… Your healing magic cannot save me… It will only… hasten your own demise…"
Despite his raspy warning, Aria showed no intention of stopping.
A soft luminescence of sacred power began to gather in her palms. Seeing her attempt to channel divine power despite his words, Danas let out a faint, bitter chuckle. He already knew the outcome. No matter how talented a prodigy she might be, an apprentice nun's healing prayer was comparable to a low-grade potion at best. There was no hope of saving him. Or so he believed.
"…What is this?"
Something was wrong.
The way the divine power gathered defied all reason. An apprentice nun’s healing light was considered exceptional if it was faintly visible to the naked eye, as visible brilliance was the mark of profound sanctity. Yet the light blooming from this girl's hands was entirely different.
It was as if…
It feels as though…
"Stop it, are you insane…?!"
It felt as though she were extracting her very life force to fuel the prayer. She was pouring every drop of her existence into her hands. Danas was no cleric, but he knew enough about the holy arts to recognize something unnatural when he saw it. The sacred power this apprentice was manifesting was entirely abnormal.
Sure enough, the girl’s face turned an even more horrifying shade of white. With trembling hands, she forced every ounce of divine power she possessed to bloom like a miniature star.
[Brother… Danas…]
"Cough…!"
The moment that youthful telepathic resonance echoed in his mind, the girl spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.
Instinct told Danas everything: if she continued, this nun would die right before his eyes. He tried to raise a hand to shove her away, but his crushed, shattered limbs refused to obey.
"Stop… I said stop…! You can't save me…!!"
[I promised you… did I not…?]
Despite Danas’s desperate screams, the nun did not heed him in the slightest. As if proud of the deafness she bore, she listened to nothing, choosing only to speak the words she wished to convey.
Lifting her chin, the bloodied girl offered a gentle, faint smile.
[That I would heal… that eye of yours…]
"I TOLD YOU TO STOP!!"
His voice cracked into a raw, ragged sob. He was losing his mind. In spite of his furious protests, this deaf nun was refusing to hear a single word, steadfastly sacrificing her own life to preserve his.
A warmth so tender and profound—like the embrace of a loving mother, yet something he desperately did not want to accept—began to envelop his mangled frame. In that moment, Danas knew with absolute certainty: he was going to live. His life had been spared.
And then…
[I am sorry.]
Leaving behind a single, enigmatic whisper whose recipient remained unknown, Aria poured forth the remainder of her divine might.
A blinding radiance so vast that every living soul was forced to squeeze their eyes shut surged outward, swallowing the entire clearing in sacred light.