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Chapter 264: From Conclusion To Sleep

“Hey…”

“Are the trials and tribulations that stand before him a curse? Blessed be the God of Knowledge upon him!”

“God’s blessing is the last thing I need… Listen to people, will you? But well, if you don’t want to listen then it can’t be helped. Hey, Gula, give me that jug over there.”

“Wait a minute… There’s not much in it, is there?”

“I don’t care. I’m going to throw it at her head anyway.”

After lightly shaking the ceramic jug to check its contents, Gula offered it to Loren, who had half-raised himself from the bed with a blank expression on his face.

Accepting the jug, Loren shook it lightly himself, and after confirming that there was not much in it as Gula said, he slowly raised it up.

Perhaps noticing that Loren was serious, Lapis, who was standing by the window of the hospital room looking out and humming the lines of a local minstrel, hurriedly turned around and thrust her hands forward, stopping Loren as he got into a throwing stance.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s my bad, but please don’t do that to my face.”

“Then keep looking out. You’ll get hit in the back of the head that way.”

“Please forgive me, it won’t happen again.”

Seeing that Lapis had begun to bow her head, Loren finally lowered the jug he was swinging and handed it back to Gula, who deftly held out her hand to accept it. Lapis’ cheeks puffed out in slight dissatisfaction as she lifted her head and watched Gula returning the jug to its original position.

“I think it’s about time we had a heroic tale or two starring you, Loren. Don’t you think so?”

“It’s ridiculous. And the story is all wrong. Who do you think they are talking about, this beautiful priestess girl?”

“Me, of course?”

Looking straight back at Loren, who was glaring at her, Lapis said this without doubt or hesitation. With her being so unequivocally sure, Loren found no room for rebuttal.

“You say it’s wrong, but don’t you think you did a good job this time?”

“Are you joking? I didn’t do anything to be praised like that.”

Loren muttered as if he was spitting the words out. Lying back down on the bed, he thought back to the events leading up to the current situation.

It was just how a job usually was, Loren thought.

The number of opponents was indeed staggering, but there was no real fight; they were just a crowd of people rushing in and grabbing. If Loren had been told to deal with them without killing them, he would have had a very hard time, but he knew that even if he didn’t do it, sooner or later they would die by Shayna’s Energy Drain. Knowing that they would die anyway, he had swung his greatsword with no constraint. Against the blade that consisted of Loren’s strength and skill and the power of the greatsword itself, those who had been infected by the parasites and deprived of their freewill were no more than a slightly thick wall of flesh. This allowed Loren to devote himself to the task of clearing away the swarms of people who were pouring in until Lapis and Ivy were ready, while Shayna exercised her Energy Drains in between.

Feeling the power being snatched away and channeled into him continued to increase, Loren waited for the girls to finish their preparations. The moment Lapis told him that it was time, he thrust the blade of his bloodstained greatsword into the ground and jumped into the protective barrier that Lapis had deployed while pouring all the power that had accumulated inside him into the sword.

He felt his strength being drained from his body at a furious pace, and his consciousness was fading away with it. As he tried to watch what was about to happen, his entire field of vision was dyed red, and he thought he heard a tremendous sound. That was Loren’s last memory.

Loren did not experience what happened after that, but according to Lapis, the flames of the Fiamma Unguia he had released while being unconscious had a strength that surpassed that of the protective barrier. It fully engulfed Suest in an instant, destroying the entire ground level of the city and nearly burned their party to death in the process.

With flames raging in such a wide area, the fire was expected to spread to the surrounding grasslands and forests, yet it did not spread at all. Perhaps the heat was so instantaneous and unimaginably high that any affected materials were either immediately turned into ashes and blown away by the wind, or skipped the melting process and turned into some kind of gas, which was also blown away by the wind and scattered.

And thus, the town called Suest disappeared from the map. All that remained were remnants of things that had been burned and melted into glass; there were no traces of its inhabitants or anything else.

After making sure of this, their party got on their wagon, which had stayed intact being protected by the same barrier. After checking the luggage and horses for parasitic effects, they headed for that blue desert where Lapis’ base was located.

After entering Lapis’ base, the group used the equipment there to check themselves for parasites, and after concluding that everyone was fine, they returned to Kapha.

After returning to Kapha, Loren, who had never regained consciousness, was taken directly to the hospital and admitted.

This was the part Loren didn’t want to think of.

After losing consciousness in Suest, he was nursed by Lapis, Gula, and Ivy for several days before returning to Kapha without ever waking up. When he started thinking about all the things that had happened during that time, he couldn’t stop tearing his hair out and wanting to hang himself.

“We’ve seen and done a lot of things. You don’t need to worry about it. You know how Ivy and I are, and Lapis-chan was… rather happy?”

That was what Gula had said to Loren the first time he thought of this after regaining consciousness, when he was lying in agony in bed and wanting to die. Her words had stopped him mentally and put him in a stupor for a day or so, but that was all in the past now.

“Ivy is always at the Adventurers’ Guild these days. I hear she’s really busy with reports and paperwork.”

After managing to regain himself by putting certain topics to rest or to oblivion by choosing not to think about them, Loren’s next concern was the cleanup. After all, a town had disappeared; it would be strange if it did not become a big deal.

When Loren asked about this, Gula replied that Ivy was handling the situation at the Adventurers’ Guild. Loren wondered how much trust could be placed in the testimony and reports of Ivy, who was merely an employee of the Guild, but he was unable to obtain any further information.

Gula, however, said that the testimonies of an Adventurers’ Guild official were quite credible, and that their authenticity was guaranteed in some way, but she did not know how.

“It’s not hard to cheat if you know how. From that point of view, I don’t think there is any way that any information that would be detrimental to us could be leaked through Ivy.”

Ivy herself was originally an employee of the Adventurers’ Guild under a false identity. It was Gula’s opinion that she would not make any underhanded move to leak information that would be detrimental to herself at this point.

“What information does she have that can be used against us?”

“The true identity of you, Gula, and Ivy. And I’m practically the one who burned down the town.”

Loren sighed; apparently Lapis did not categorize this information as something that could be used against them if it became known. But still, as Loren laid on his bed, he hoped that Ivy was successful. If she had done well this time, it would have resulted in a certain amount of damage to Magna and Noel, and it would have been safe to say that they had gotten their revenge.

With intel on their appearance and names, those two should be relegated to wanted men of the Adventurers’ Guild. If they were to attract the interest of adventurers of a higher class than Loren and his party, perhaps they could be exterminated for that alone.

‘However…” Loren’s expression grew bitter as he thought about it.

Their party had always lost the initiative, and had never had a pleasant experience when dealing with the two of them. He wondered if it would be alright to just wait for other adventurers to do something about those two.

Even if they were to leave the task of finishing them off to other adventurers, he wondered if they could at least take the lead once and outwit the two. Only then would he feel relief for the first time.

Perhaps reading something from Loren’s face, Lapis asked in a somewhat worried voice.

“Loren, is there anything wrong?”

“It’s not that, but…”

Loren told Lapis what he was thinking, and Lapis, who listened silently, folded her arms and let out a small groan as soon as he finished.

“Making the first move… That’s going to be a little difficult. But… I certainly feel like it’s only after we do that much that we’ll be able to make them regret getting involved with us.”

“I can’t afford to dwell on it, though.”

From Mills, a fellow mercenary of Loren’s who had died in Suest, Loren had received information about the commander of the mercenary company to which he used to belong. The commander had been seen in the Justinian Empire in the northern part of the continent, and from Loren’s point of view, this information was much more important than dealing with Magna.

“If the commander is really there, I would like to meet him once, even though I have no intention of going back to being a mercenary now.”

“I see. Hmm…”

Seeing Lapis lost in thought with arms crossed in front of her chest, Loren felt somewhat uneasy. Perhaps sensing his concern, Lapis smiles while unfolding her arms as if to reassure him.

“You don’t have to look so worried. We’re not doing anything right away, and it’s not like I’m going to do something stupid to the commander, who seems to be your benefactor, at the very least.”

“Can I trust that?”

“Please do. If you don’t, I’ll feel a little sad, won’t I?”

With that said, Lapis walked closer to the bed and bent down to put her hand on Loren’s forehead. He felt the comfort of the cool touch of the hand, and was once again aware that his body had not fully recovered.

Exhausting enough power to burn down an entire city had put a tremendous burden on Loren’s body, no matter how much surplus energy he had received from Energy Drain.

Shayna also had not appeared on the surface of Loren’s consciousness as if to demonstrate how exhausted she was. It was clear to Loren that she had not disappeared, but it seemed that she had become so tired that she did not respond when he called out to her.

And once again, Loren recognized that the greatsword he was now using was formerly the weapon of a demon king.

“You need to take a rest for now, Loren. When you get better, we will have many things to think about. But until then, I’ll take care of anything that seems troublesome, so don’t worry.”

Loren closed his eyes as he felt Lapis’ hand caressing his forehead as if to reassure him. Although he was concerned about Shayna’s condition, he himself understood well that the damage his body had received could not be taken lightly. Leaving Lapis in charge of troublesome matters inevitably left him somewhat uneasy, but he trusted her enough to know that she would never make a move that could be fatal on her own without consulting him. In that case, he should let his body rest and try to recover from the damages.

As Loren began to think about this, he suddenly felt sleepy, and he let himself fall asleep without resisting.