A Warrior Tougher Than Expected
"You okay? Does it hurt?"
Levan fussed over me, looking me up and down. Elian's strength had been startling enough, but this guy was overdoing it.
"I'm fine. Don't waste your worry on something like this."
"Sparring or not, for a second there I really thought you were going to die."
Was it that bad? It hadn't felt that way to me.
I looked down at my hands. They were still trembling faintly, but no real pain lingered. Whatever it had looked like in the middle of the fight, he must have pulled his strength considerably when he actually struck me.
"You were that worried?"
"What? I—ahem. Well... if you die, that's the end of it."
"Then buy me dinner. To celebrate my survival."
"You've got plenty of money. You really going to mooch off me?"
With that, Levan gave my arm a light smack.
"Agh..."
Maybe he'd hit a little harder than he meant to. It hurt, and not in any simple way. Mana, probably. I had pushed myself pretty hard.
A short groan slipped out of me as I clutched my arm, and Levan startled. He stepped in front of me and peered into my face.
"You okay? I knew something was off. What did I tell you? That guy is not normal."
Internal damage, maybe. I hadn't noticed before, but my body felt worse than I'd thought.
"Ha... ugh. Don't touch me."
"O-okay. So if I don't touch you, you're fine?"
That seemed to be the case, so I nodded. Levan took a step back.
"Recovery comes first. No way we're taking a job like this."
"Yeah."
I let out a short breath. We walked slowly for a while, and the pain that had flared eased almost at once. Prod the wrong spot again, though, and it would come right back.
A skill wasn't something you could simply use and be done with. Here, running short on mana didn't lock the skill away. It wrung the cost out of your body instead, and use one carelessly and you could die doing it.
Learning that only now was probably just another testament to the glory of the Warrior class.
That night we ate the dinner Levan had paid for, and I got a little drunk.
I'd told Runesa to prepare for departure the next day. She had gone out alone and returned right around the time we were well into emptying a bottle of wine.
"Levan. You know you have to get her something too, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
"Ah—I'm sorry!"
Runesa sat down across from me.
"Preparations are finished, just as you instructed."
"You worked hard."
She drew a slip of paper from her pocket, then looked at me and grinned.
"Here. I bought five stamina potions and five mana potions, and only a day's worth of food. With what was left I also bought a magic scroll. We can use it in an emergency."
"A magic scroll?"
Even before she explained, her face was bright with anticipation. Until now, neither of us had so much as considered buying a magic scroll. Levan and I both had classes with Intelligence near the bottom of the barrel.
"What'd you buy?"
Levan eyed her with the suspicion of an old man confronted with some newfangled contraption.
"A return spell. Not inside the castle—it's anchored to the village just outside the gates, they said."
A return scroll. I'd used plenty of those in the game, but it had never even occurred to me here.
"Is it even all right for us to use something like that?"
Levan looked to me as if asking for agreement, and I only shrugged. It shouldn't matter. Runesa was the sort who could more or less manage magic, so long as she was casting it through an item.
"Should be fine. Whatever."
"Yes. If things get dangerous, we can just come back with this."
Runesa smiled as if she had every confidence in it. In more ways than one, she was a comfort to have around.
I stood.
"I'm going to see Airika for a bit. You two eat slowly and head in."
"Miss Airika? You're going over there like this?"
"I know."
Show up after drinking and I'd catch an earful. Still, we were leaving tomorrow, and heading out while I felt this uneasy didn't sit right either.
"I'm off."
With that, I headed straight for the infirmary. Aside from having overused my mana, my body was fine. And yet a strange chill kept running through me, making me shiver.
It was a little late, but Airika was still at her post. When I walked in, she looked up and smiled brightly.
"You've been rather free lately, I see."
"I'm heading out again tomorrow."
At that, Airika tilted her head slightly.
"Drinking heavily, even before you leave on a commission."
"I didn't drink that much."
"Yes, of course. I must have been mistaken. So what brings you here?"
She regarded me with a cool expression.
"I used some mana recently, and my body's been feeling heavy."
"Mana? You, Miss Selen?"
"Yeah. Somehow or other, I can use a little now."
Airika stared at me without a word.
"So yesterday I trained while chugging mana potions. And now I'm kind of..."
"I'm sorry—what did you say?"
"Huh?"
Startled, Airika grabbed my arm.
"You trained while drinking mana potions?"
"Y-yeah. Why?"
"How many did you drink...?"
"All day. About thirty bottles."
"Have you lost your mind?"
The rough words left her mouth without a moment's hesitation.
"Thirty bottles in a short span... that's enough that it wouldn't be strange if you died."
"I-is it really that much?"
Darkland had been a game without potion addiction or side effects. You could shower yourself in potions and nothing went wrong, so I had never once worried about it.
"Anyway, my mana pool grew a little, and during a spar this afternoon I used mana twice in a row."
"Good heavens..."
"You are listening to me, right?"
Airika furrowed her brows and nodded.
"After that I had no strength left in me at all. And we have to leave tomorrow."
"Yes. Lie down here, for now."
"Huh?"
I lay on the bed as she told me, and she drew a blanket over me.
"I think you just need to sleep."
"That's it?"
"You drank thirty mana potions back to back, sparred, and then came to see me after wine. In that state, sleeping well ought to be enough."
Is that so. The coolness left Airika's face, replaced by a gentle smile. Seeing her smile like that put me a little at ease, and I was able to close my eyes.
As I lay there, the sweet scent that clung to her settled both body and mind.
"Now that I think of it, you're no frail little mage. Perhaps you'll be all right."
"...Guess so."
"Sleep well."
The next day, we left the castle.
A good night's sleep, and my body was as clean as ever.
"Miss Selen, after you left yesterday I looked into a few things."
"What'd you find?"
"The road to the Holy Kingdom runs northeast, and there's a small band of gnolls somewhere in the north."
"A lot of people die to those things on the eastern road, I heard. And if they can't even find the bodies, the messenger was probably killed and dragged off too."
We had to find the letter the messenger had been carrying. Tracking down a man when we didn't even know where he had died was no easy task.
"Works out, actually. All we have to do is find the gnolls' den. No need to wander around making it complicated."
"That's true, but... is that really working out?"
Finding a den, raiding it, and bringing back what we wanted was hardly a simple job for us. Even fighting them one at a time was already a struggle.
"We sneak in, grab it, and get out. Simple."
"Hmm..."
Levan seemed to think for a moment, then nodded as if he understood, and smiled.
"You mean I should do it."
Quick on the uptake.
"Ops like this are better done alone."
A rogue's specialties existed to be used at times like these. As a warrior, this was exactly when I had no choice but to lean on a rogue or a mage.
"We go together as far as the area. You infiltrate alone. Make it out alive, and we escape with the scroll Runesa's carrying."
The plan was perfect. It leaned a little on Levan's personal skill, but for the three of us, this was the best we could do.
"If it comes to it, I'll take down whoever comes at us. Up to two of them, easy."
"Oh, that sounds perfect."
"Ha. Thievery isn't exactly my specialty, but... nothing for it."
Both of them agreed with me. In our current situation, there was no other way.
"Let's go."
And so we passed through Belmor's north gate and followed the road.
The north was dangerous, with gnolls appearing often. Soldiers from the castle were sent out to thin their numbers to some degree, but the more they did, the more the packs fragmented. The danger dropped, and yet the gnolls only became an even more irritating nuisance.
The ones we were looking for were part of that—creatures that had split off from a gnoll pack to prey on humans bound for Belmor. Since that was how they made their living, finding them shouldn't be difficult.
"Follow that road and we might run into them. If they don't show, we wait until they do."
"Think it'll be that easy?"
The gnolls would show. No question. Maybe even sooner than we expected.
We walked the somewhat barren road that stretched north.
"When those things show up, we fight."
"And chase down the ones that run?"
"Yeah. Still, we have to be careful about that."
"Obviously."
Levan let out a long breath, as if the tension were getting to him. I looked at his face. He seemed a good deal more serious than usual.
"Hey, Levan."
"Yeah?"
"...Thanks."
"For what? We're doing this together. We each do our part."
Levan shrugged.
Even so, a lot was riding on him, and he was taking it on without trying to weasel out. I was genuinely grateful for that.
"This doesn't even rank as dangerous. Compared to the undead..."
"They must've been pretty scary, huh."
"Of course they were. Skeletons are in a class of their own."
While we were talking, Runesa, who had been glancing around, flinched and tugged at my arm.
"M-Miss Selen. I think there's something out there."
Gnolls. Where she pointed, wolf-headed monsters were closing in on us.
"Looks like quite a few of them."
Five appeared, coming from both sides of the road.
"We each take two."
"And the last one?"
"We keep it alive, idiot."