Ch. 120: Resting in the Hospital
“Just because you couldn’t get through the defense barrier of an Elder, wasn’t it too brutal to let my student get rid of it, and cut her along with Stoos?”
Loren looked at the smiling face of the owner of the cold voice bitterly.
Straight platinum hair and white skin.
And with looks that anyone who saw her would say that she was beautiful, although there was a slight hard impression to Loren, she had a stretched smile that covered it.
She was wearing normal civilian clothing that wasn’t strange in any way, but it threw Loren off since she had a noble air about her.
And such woman was sitting on the chair next to his bed.
“Maybe you should put your hand on your chest and think really hard about why that happened.”
With the weariness that was attacking his body, even talking was bothersome to him, but he felt that if he didn’t say something he would be hearing complaint after complaint, so when he said so with sarcasm in his voice, the woman brushed her hair and replied without the slightest annoyance.
“I had to. It was all out of love.”
“What a bothersome love.”
Although Loren said so with a sigh, the woman’s smile didn’t disappear.
They were currently inside a room int the hospital within Kauffa.
Loren was lying on the bed with his upper body raised.
“If you had persuaded Dia to give up, you wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble.”
“She herself didn’t want that. Be happy at your student’s growth, stupid master.”
Loren felt a slight chill as the word stupid unintentionally left his mouth, but Dia’s master, Sierra, didn’t seem to mind it at all.
He was talking with a being who could decimate the city, and even the whole nation, but the word still slipped out of his mouth.
“And how is that student of yours doing right now?”
“She’s feeling quite inconvenient since she’s just a head, but she’s preparing to be on her own at the ruins.”
The final obstacle of the exam was facing another Elder named Stoos.
She tried to make Dia fail, and they had to constantly move about while battling her, but in the end, Loren cut off Dia’s head, and her body rammed into Stoos’, disabling her defenses, and immediately after, Loren’s great sword, greatly enhanced with all his strength, managed to cut off Stoos’ head as well.
Since they were Elders, both Dia and Stoos didn’t die, but Stoos gave up and Dia successfully passed the exam and seemed to be setting up preparations at the land that she was given to make it her home.
They had won and their job was successful as well, but the aftermath wasn’t clean either.
After all, both Elders were just heads, and Dia had burned both their bodies.
Loren had lost consciousness, seemingly have poured too much of his strength into his sword.
The only one who could move properly was Lapis, and with Dia’s instructions, she had opened the entrance to the space where the base was located, carrying Loren, throwing away Stoos’ head somewhere in the area, and many other things, and seeing that Loren hadn’t recovered even after all that, she tied him to the donkey that everyone had completely forgotten about and returned to Kauffa.
The diagnosis was prostration to the extreme.*
He was in such a state since he all his strength into his sword, thinking that there was no way he could hold back against an Elder, spending almost all his mana and life energy.
Therefore, he was at the hospital he frequently ended up in and was in the middle of recovering, but in that meantime, Sierra, Dia’s master, had paid him a visit.
“She said that if I listen to what she says for a while, she’ll let this whole thing slide. And she said that she’ll hate me forever if I don’t, so of course I have to listen.”
“An Elder’s ‘forever’ seems pretty long.”
Sierra sighed, going from a smile to a depressed frown.
Loren thought she reaped what she sowed, but he also knew that with all the time that Elders had on their hands, being hated by someone you love would be hard.
As Loren thought that if doing errands would get Dia’s forgiveness Sierra should do them, she asked him in a strengthless voice.
“Do you think about a hundred years will be enough?”
“Damn, that’s pretty long. Well, I have no idea. I won’t be alive anyway, so I don’t care, either.”
“Loren, you’re so cold.”
“Shut up! Don’t touch me! Stop shaking me!”
14
Loren wailed as Sierra grabbed his shoulder and started shaking him back and forth.
Sierra shook him for a while, but she noticed the light dizziness in his eyes and finally pulled away from him.
“So…did you come all the way here just to complain?”
As Loren looked up at the ceiling, feeling fed up, Sierra clapped her hand together, as if she just remembered.
“Oh, right. I came because Dia told me to.”
“Then hurry up and take care of it and go back to your grave.”
“You’re really cold. You’re probably the only human that an Elder visited on his hospital bed, you know?”
Sierra opened the traveling bag at her feet.
What came out was something unexpectedly large compared to the size of the bag.
Sierra tossed the folded leather onto Loren’s knees.
“What is…Ugh!?”
Loren cried out in surprise, as it was way heavier than Sierra made it seem and picked the object up.
It was an orange-brown colored leather jacket.
It was large as well as heavy, as if it was meant for Loren.
“Your armor was ruined during the job, right? Dia wanted me to get you something of the sort, so I brought some things.”
“This is armor?”
“Pegasus leather, triple tailored. There’s complex chain mail and impact absorbing padding in between them as well, specially made by an Elder. With anti-magic treatment on the surface, it’s a fine piece of work.”
Sierra then threw gloves and boots on his knees as well.
“These are made from the same material, just slightly tougher. The surface treatment is the same as well.”
“Why did you throw them on my knees?”
“I wasn’t trying to break them. That’s just the only place I could put them.”
Luckily, human legs weren’t made to break so easily.
Loren was worried that the boots would soil the blanket and sheets but since they were brand new, they made no such marks.
“Dia already gave you the money, beforehand right? So, this concludes your payment.”
“If you’re willing to give some extra, I’ll take it.”
“Greed will ruin you. Live humbly, alright?”
Sierra closed her bag and stood up from her chair.
As Loren looked up at her, she shrugged.
“I’ll be leaving now. I don’t want to meet that scary girl, and there’s a lot more errands that Dia wants me to do, and lots of things needed for her base that I have to gather.”
“Sounds like a lot of work. Good luck.”
As Loren said so blandly, Sierra waved at him and was about to leave, but suddenly stopped, as if she remembered something, and turned back towards him.
“Oh right, I almost forgot I had a message from Dia.”
“What is it?”
Since he had been unconscious until he got to the hospital, as well as Dia being in her head-only state, the two of them hadn’t been able to say their goodbyes.
As Loren thought that was it, Sierra raised her index finger.
“First, Thanks for taking care of me. I have no intention of moving anytime soon, so if something happens, don’t hesitate to ask for help.”
“Tell her thanks as well.”
Loren thought that was it, but Sierra didn’t move, but instead raised her middle finger.
“Second, about the leader of your former mercenary group.”
“Oh right, I totally forgot about that.”
During the job, since Dia was curious, Loren told her the name of his former superior.
After saying that she would tell him if she found out anything, she hadn’t presented anything yet.
“The name Juli Muthschild is still a mystery, and I will continue investigating. But about the resalute that you do, I’ll give you some information, although uncertain.”
“Which is…”
It was something him and Dia had talked about before.
Loren had done a resalute that differed from normal knights.
Dia had mentioned that she had an idea of what it was.
“A knight’s resalute offers his sword to his lord. But there was an order of knights that instead of offering their swords to their lord, they pointed their blades down, offering them to the earth.”
“Hm, what were they called?”
As Loren asked her, quite intrigued, Sierra’s reply made him doubt his ears.
“Noona Magic Kingdom, Knights of the Fourth Order. Commonly known as Planetes Knights. I’ve heard that they had quite a high degree of freedom, as they almost never moved as a proper organization, but instead the members moved on their own jurisdiction.”
“I’ve never heard of that sort of nation.”
Loren wasn’t well versed in geography.
Since he had been moving from battlefield to battlefield when he was a mercenary, he wasn’t interested in the names of the places he was at.
But there were still places and nations that he had heard of, but it was the first time he had heard of the nation that Sierra had just mentioned.
“Of course, you wouldn’t know. I would expect most people to not know this either.”
“Now that I think about it, Dia said something similar as well…So is there such a place?”
Since it was a place not many people knew about, Loren wondered what kind of unexplored region it was in, but Sierra shook her head.
“It doesn’t exist in the current world. That’s why no one knows about it. The only ones who do are beings like us and elves who lived for a very long time.”
“That’s…”
“Remember this. And try not to let it out easily. The Noona Magic Kingdom is an extinct nation and is what you would refer to as the Ancient Kingdom. Which means that leader of yours that taught you swordsmanship is somehow connected to the Ancient Kingdom.”
Loren couldn’t find anything to say.
There was a part of him that thought, ‘so what?’.
It was because even if he knew techniques from the Ancient Kingdom, it didn’t change anything.
But at the same time, he was interested.
He couldn’t help but wonder how in the world did he learn such a thing.
“That’s all I know right now. I’ll give you a notice once I find out more. This is all Dia asked me to tell you.”
“I see…Can you thank her for me?”
“Of course. Oh, and let me thank you as well. Thanks to you, she could be on her own.”
“Thanks, from you? Not sure if I did something for you to say that…”
Sierra waved at him once more, and then this time, she walked out of the room, not looking back.
As he watched her leave, Loren sighed deeply, put the jacket, boots, and gloves on top of the chair Sierra had been sitting on, and leaned back on his bed.
“Loren, how are you? Is anywhere hurting or itching or are you not feeling well in any way?”
Right after Sierra left, Lapis entered the room.
“Hm? Where did you get the jacket and all these things? You didn’t buy them, did you?”
Although he was on the way to recovery, he was still quite weak, so he couldn’t walk around the city on his own.
So, Lapis looked at the gear that Sierra had given Loren, wondering where he had got them.
“Did you pass by anyone on the way here?”
“No. I didn’t see anyone.”
Based on the timing of her coming in, Loren thought that Sierra and Lapis would’ve walked pass each other.
But since it seemed like they didn’t, Loren wondered how that was possible, but immediately stopped thinking about it.
Sierra was an Elder who lived hundreds and thousands of years.
He guessed that there was a way for her to leave without letting Lapis know of her being there.
“Never mind then. Dia sent the extra payment she promised.”
“Who brought it to you?”
“No idea. The person handed it to me and left right after.”
Loren thought that there was no need for him to tell Lapis that Sierra had been there.
He also thought that there was no need for him to tell her the things Sierra had told him.
It wasn’t completely reliable, and even if she knew about it, nothing would be different.
“Loren, you’re hospitalized again. Your bills are increasing as well.”
“I didn’t want to think about it…Take out the amount from this job’s rewards, will you?”
“That would be about half of you rewards gone, then.”
“It’s fine. At least there’s something left.”
Loren lied down on the bed and closed his eyes slowly, thinking that it was better than his debt increasing.
What he had heard from Sierra shocked him quite a bit, but the fatigue that was left in his body easily started to bring sleep to him as soon as he closed his eyes.
Since the information wasn’t certain, he decided he would worry about it when he would have to.
After that thought, he let the sleepiness overtake him, and fell into a deep sleep