Chapter 118
Chapter 118
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 118
Chapter Title: Short Drift
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It was a terrifying level of pain.
The agony felt like my skin had been peeled off, and then saltwater touched it, bringing a contradictory burn that was both scorching hot and icy cold.
In the dead of winter, plunging into the heart-stopping chill of the sea.
I had learned survival swimming, but jumping in with my entire body on fire left no room for such thoughts.
“Puh-haa…”
By the time I barely regained my senses and surfaced, sensation had already fled my entire body.
Falling into cold water makes it hard to think straight.
I learned that the hard way.
Almost on instinct, I flailed my arms toward the shore.
“Cough, hack!”
My body twisted like a loofah being wrung out as I vomited up the water.
My heavy, sinking body sucked in air to survive, and each breath tore at my chest and throat like they were being ripped apart.
It hurt so much I wanted to just calm down and stop, but that wasn’t something I could control.
“Ugh, urk!”
Spitting out water and seawater at the same time, I writhed all over.
Once I’d finally expelled all the seawater, the burns on my body started to throb.
‘Damn… my breath…’
My robes had caught fire, and I must have inhaled the smoke.
I’d thought my throat was just scorched from swallowing so much seawater, but it was clearly actually burned.
‘Infection—no, that’s not something to worry about right now.’
I didn’t even think to wipe the drool and seawater dripping from my chin as I looked around.
The real problem came next.
Jumping in boldly with my clothes ablaze had been fine, but I had no idea where I was.
This had to be near the academy, yet no matter where I looked in the sky, there was no glow from the flames.
They must have hurried to put out the fire after the incident.
‘Sepsis… I hope I’m okay.’
I desperately tried to redirect my thoughts.
But my efforts were all for nothing.
As the adrenaline surge faded, pain began flooding my entire body.
“Anyone—anyone there?”
It hurt, and I was freezing.
Just moments ago, I’d been Saint Johanna, adorned in fine gold and silver threads. Now, I was nothing but a barefoot, injured patient, exhausted and bleeding.
“Help—anyone there? Servants!”
Someone, please hear me.
But my voice was swallowed by the waves, and my strength was draining fast.
‘Where am I?’
I thought I’d only closed and opened my eyes for a moment, but maybe not.
Looking around, this definitely wasn’t a familiar sight.
‘Drifted by the currents… then how did I crawl out without drowning?’
I’d already swallowed a ton of water.
The winter wind froze my hands and feet numb, and my half-burnt robes offered no protection from the cold.
Just like Machina a few days ago, I needed to strip them all off.
I knew that in my head, but I didn’t have the strength left to untie the cursed waist ties designed to be impossible to remove alone.
So first, I needed to find shelter from the wind.
“Anyone—here—”
My mind was starting to numb.
My mouth was freezing, and I couldn’t enunciate properly.
All around was silence, broken only by the occasional waves, dark conifers, and distant cliffs like folding screens.
At some point, I was just making weird noises: “Nu, nu, he, hehe.”
But something was off.
‘Am I… feeling warm right now?’
A cozy heat, unlike anything before, started spreading from my fingertips and toes.
I wanted to rip off my clothes and dry myself right then, but it felt dry and fluffy instead.
In the dead of this winter night, a warm spring breeze swept in, and my tension eased. My jaw had ached from all the shivering, but now it even felt hot.
‘No, wait… am I actually getting hotter?’
My face was flushing, my hands and feet burning up with fever.
Suddenly, sweat poured out in the sweltering heat, and I tried to tear off my clothes.
*Whoooosh…*
What snapped me out of it was the skin-cutting wind and the briny sea breeze, devoid of any freshness.
This was clearly a hallucination from chemicals my brain released in this extreme situation.
In a state where death could come any second, I somehow clung to life, drifting through this winter prison.
‘Why…’
If I’d died falling from the cliff, this should be heaven or hell.
But what heaven was this desolate and lonely? What hell inflicted only this bearable agony endlessly?
As I crossed my arms to hug myself and retain body heat, something touched my fingertips.
‘Oh. The magic tool.’
I was wearing a bracelet woven from silver and black threads.
I usually pulled it up high inside my arm where it was invisible, so even I hadn’t noticed it until it brushed inside my sleeve.
Pulling it down to check, the change was obvious—something had happened.
It had transformed into two crimson threads, twisted together like they were soaked in blood.
This bracelet, sent from the Spencer family as thanks for saving Shirley’s life, had the effect of sharing and bearing fatal wounds that could lead to death. And this change meant—
‘In other words… I just survived a brush with death.’
Jumping into the winter sea with full-body burns really was something you did expecting to die.
I forced strength into my knees to avoid collapsing on the cold sand beach and staggered forward step by step.
I walked for what felt like forever. Strangely, the exact same landscape repeated endlessly, and I lost my way. I couldn’t go back or forward, yet somehow I didn’t die.
‘Is this what sharing the pain means?’
Ever since I regained my senses, the pain graph had spiked to the max and stayed there.
The sense of crisis that I might die here hit me every minute, every second, but for some reason, I didn’t.
It was like feeling the vivid agony right up to the brink of death.
The funny part was how all my past ordeals had turned me into a pro at enduring pain.
‘Damn… but this is the end.’
No matter how much I suppressed my screams and moved, I couldn’t surpass my physical limits.
My vision blurred.
The bone-deep cold was physically paralyzing my body bit by bit.
In the end, I dropped to my knees and collapsed onto the beach sand.
*Crunch, crinch.*
That’s when it happened.
Definitely the sound of living footsteps.
I strained to refocus my fading vision.
But my body, beyond my control, pitched forward.
In that brief moment, I didn’t see clearly, but it was definitely a person.
Black clothes covering their whole body, black cloth over the face.
‘Servant…’
It had to be one of those nameless servants from Aegis Academy.
On this island, only the mainland dispatch ones wandered around masked.
I’m saved.
Now I can soak in warm water and lie in a soft, fluffy bed.
That’s what I thought as relief washed over me.
*Thud!*
Out of nowhere, the servant kicked my prone body, flipping it over.
“Gah!”
My hazy mind cleared for a moment.
I’d definitely just been kicked by the servant.
Did they think I was dead?
No way.
The servant bent down to peer at me like checking a corpse’s face.
*Thwack!*
Then they kicked me back the other way, returning me to my face-down position.
Only then, seeing the sand turned black in the moonlight, did I realize blood was flowing from my head.
“Over here!”
That’s when a familiar voice called from afar.
I heard the clamor of a crowd.
When someone lifted me up, the servant who’d kicked me to check my face was gone.
***
“Ugh—cough!”
It was so cold.
My body shook uncontrollably, curling up, but someone forced it straight and laid me flat.
After repeating that a few times, my arms were tied down and fixed in place.
“Ah—so cold.”
“The patient keeps saying they’re cold. Shouldn’t we do something?”
Judith’s voice came through.
The voice I’d heard while losing consciousness must have been hers.
As I lay there groaning with eyes closed, a belated nurse checked me and said my fever was dangerously high.
“We’re taking care of it, of course. We need to keep changing the dressings too. The burns are deeper than expected, so it’ll hurt. Are you staying here? It’ll be tough to watch.”
“I’m staying. Please do something. I beg you.”
Judith gripped my twisting body tightly against the cold and kept demanding things from the nurses, doctors, or professors sitting nearby.
‘Mainland… dispatched priest… not holy power, other methods too…’
In my half-delirious state, I pieced together Judith’s words.
My condition was still critical, and holy power still wasn’t working well.
Of course—if it had, I wouldn’t be like this now that the magic ban was lifted.
“We’ve called the dispatched priest as per procedure, but even with a priest—”
“We have to try everything possible, right? This happened at the academy.”
“This is the best we can do right now.”
“Drugging them up to make them loopy?!”
“This is a painkiller. Please calm down, Spencer cadet. The patient seems out of it, but they can hear everything.”
No wonder—aside from the cold, I didn’t feel much pain. They must have given me an insanely strong painkiller.
Tied down like this, I looked pathetic, but at least I was alive. That was a relief.
‘That servant… why…?’
Grateful to be alive, but questions lingered.
‘First off, where was that place surrounded by cliffs?’
I didn’t know every inch of Hazard Island, but I’d never even imagined such a remote spot.
I might never have made it out alive from there.
Alone in that vast, desolate expanse…
They say death is more peaceful than expected, and I’d been consumed by pain too.
‘Ridiculous. This body has two souls fused into it.’
I closed my eyes and felt the pulse.
My chaotic emotions settled calmly.
Setting aside where I’d fallen, why had that servant—who acted hostile toward me, burned and plunged into the winter sea—done that? The question arose.