Proofreader: Xemul
The regular sound coming from the table bedside lulled Loren into a sleepy stupor.
In fact, there was nothing to do but sleep. If you were not careful, you would soon be caught in the hands of drowsiness. Loren, lying on a bed in the clinic, called out to the person who was sitting on a chair beside him, peeling some kind of fruit with a small knife.
“Why you?”
The person who looked up was Klaus, dressed in plainclothes.
The way he was lightly crossing his legs, turning the fruit in his hands, and peeling the skin without breaking it, for some reason, looked as refined as a painting, which made Loren feel even more uncomfortable.
“Why… I’m here to pay you a visit.”
Unsure of the cause of Loren’s unhappy expression, Klaus deftly cut the fruit into small pieces in his hands and arranged them neatly on a plate prepared atop a low table next to the bed,
“Normally, isn’t it Lapis’ job to do that kind of thing?”
“I’m sure that’s true, but there’s no law saying that I’m not allowed to do it either.”
Understanding that this was the reason for Loren’s grumpy voice, Klaus, with a grin on his face, took out another fruit from the basket he had brought and began to peel it expertly.
Loren had not actually witnessed the battle with Rage, the Evil God of Wrath, and he was told the details on his bed in the clinic after he regained consciousness.
Loren had lost consciousness after he tried to use the power of his greatsword to fight against Rage, who had activated her authority over the pain of her wounds, and it seemed that he had succeeded to some extent. As a result, Rage gave up the battle and fled the scene.
Gula had suffered extensive damage from being burned by Rage’s authority, and Luxuria was burned to a crisp by the double damage from the Evil God’s authority and the power of Loren’s greatsword. And then there was Loren, who had poured too much power into his greatsword and lost consciousness.
‘To be honest, I was thinking of dumping everyone except you on the spot’, said Lapis, who had been left in charge of the clean-up.
Loren thought that it was quite understandable for her to say so.
Gula was not much of a problem, but in order to leave the place, she would have had to also carry Loren, who was quite large, and Luxuria, who was even larger than Loren and was still buried underground. Even if Lapis was a demon, whose abilities were considerably higher than those of humans, it would still have been hard work for her to carry all three of them. Not to mention that one of the people who had to be carried was the lustful Luxuria. Apparently, it was quite a strain on Lapis, both physically and mentally.
Even so, Lapis carried Loren on his back, grabbed Luxuria’s and Gula’s legs, and dragged them to the town where they had been before they left for the front, all alone.
She then took the three of them to a clinic, and after completing the procedures for their treatment, she went to the Empire’s army without a moment to rest and reported to them what had happened.
Lapis was not by Loren’s side at the moment because of the hearing, and Loren felt heavy at the thought of how she might have explained this incident to the Empire’s authorities. He knew that Lapis would never have foolishly told the true story, but he could not think of how to explain the situation in which more than a hundred troops, both friendly and enemy, had been wiped out in an instant.
“I guess we were lucky that we arrived here later than you.”
If they had arrived at the same time as Loren’s group, it was highly likely that they would have been assigned to the same unit. In that case, Loren thought that Klaus was probably right in thinking that they would not have been able to survive on their own. After all, the unit to which Loren had been assigned had been wiped out.
To be precise, all but four, including Loren, were said to have died.
No matter how promising and capable Klaus and the others were, it was highly unlikely that they could have survived in that situation.
Loren himself would likely have been killed in the first attack if not for Lapis and Gula, and he considered himself lucky to have survived.
“But Loren, you were lucky to get a private room.”
While Loren was lying in bed, fighting was still going on at the front line, even if it was only petty squabbles.
Naturally, wounded and sick soldiers continued to be sent from the front lines to the rear of the city, and all of the treatment centres and other facilities were packed to capacity. It was simply not possible to place just one person in a private room like the one in which Loren was currently staying. The only reason he was still able to stay in a private room was because Lapis had forced it.
Originally, he and Luxuria were supposed to be placed in a large room somewhere, but Lapis was adamant in her protest to this. Loren heard that she had even told the authorities that she would not say a word about what had happened unless they agreed to her request, and after much wrangling, her request was finally granted, and Loren was now in a private room.
Loren felt that he should be deeply grateful to Lapis for this. Being in the same room with Luxuria while unconscious was not a joke at all.
Someone else unlucky enough had been in the same room with Luxuria in his place, but Loren tried not to think about what was going on in the room.
While Loren was suffering from minor burns and debilitating weakness, Luxuria was suffering from burns so severe that everyone wondered if he was really alive when he was brought into the hospital. His condition was so bad that even the medical practitioners working at the clinic were tempted to give up on the treatment, but he recovered enough to be able to move around the next day after only a token treatment, and could be discharged in two days or so.
The opposite was the case with Gula, who, although did not appear to have any serious injuries on the outside, seemed to have suffered deep damage to her internal organs and was still undergoing rest and treatment.
Like Luxuria, Gula was in such a serious condition that the healers wanted to throw up their hands, but she was showing signs of recovery day by day from a condition that would normally have killed someone else.
The clinic was curious about the vitality of these two patients and asked Lapis to let them examine both in detail. However, Lapis dismissed the proposal without a second thought, and firmly told them that they would not get away with it if they did anything out of line.
Loren was grateful to Lapis for preventing this from happening in advance, as it would have surely caused a commotion if the two of them had been examined in detail and determined to be non-human.
“Maybe they’re trying to make up for the bad luck I’ve had while doing my job.”
“I see. That makes sense.”
Klaus said with a bright smile on his face.
Looking at his handsome smiling face, Loren picked up one of the pieces of fruit that he had cut up from the plate on the side table and put it in his mouth, feeling somewhat dissatisfied. The taste of the fruit should not change no matter who cut it, but just the thought of Klaus cutting it makes Loren feel that the taste was somewhat diminished.
“You should have a bit of misfortune, too. For example, you should visit the room of the big guy who was carried in with me.”
“Loren, I definitely don’t want to do that. Not sure why, but there’s a warning ringing in the back of my head that I must not go near that hospital room.”
“Why not? You might get along better than you expect.”
“I don’t know what you mean, but when you tell me to suffer some misfortune, it’s a sure sign that something terrible is lurking in there.”
Looking at Klaus, who had a look of deep dislike on his face, Loren noted down in a corner of his mind that one day he would try to get Luxuria to do something to Klaus.
He could hear Shayna’s helpless laughter in his mind.
“But Loren, is that really, okay?”
Loren looked in the direction of Klaus’ gaze to see Nig, who had appeared on the table where the plate was placed and was in the process of grabbing one of the cut slices of fruit. Feeling the two pairs of eyes on him, the spider raised his front leg as if asking ‘What?’. Loren chuckled at his action and shifted his eyes to his arms.
The minor burns he had received were in places not protected by his gear, such as his face, neck, and hands. And there were some white fabrics, not bandages, stuck all over his legs where he had been burned through his trousers. The white fabric was in fact spider silk threads that Nig had spit out.
The spider, who had survived the battle with Rage, had placed his own thread on the wounds to use as a substitute for a bandage. The threads had been removed by the healers once during the treatment, but the healers who examined him thought they would be much more effective than bandages, so Nigg rewrapped them after the treatment.
As for the armor that protected most of Loren’s body, although its surface was scorched, it had returned to its original state before long after being left alone for a while.
“I can’t help but think it looks like it’s nesting on your body.”
Nig’s act of stretching threads over burns and the like was apparently seen as such in Klaus’s eyes.
“It’s no problem. He’s a smart kid. He won’t do anything bad.”
The mere sight of a giant spider was enough to make some people feel disturbed or disgusted. Klaus, too, seemed to be feeling a little uneasy, if not disgusted. But when Loren said those words and patted Nig’s back while the spider was still holding the fruit, he seemed to understand that it was really alright, and his eyes on the spider softened somewhat.
“But you know, it’s been a long time since I started taking Nig along with me. I guess it’s a little late for you to be worried.”
“I didn’t pay much attention before.”
“Well, because he’s a male.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Loren had mentioned Nig’s gender as a joke, but seeing how easily Klaus agreed, he wondered if the story would have been different if Nig had been a female. But he felt that if he asked Klaus about it, he would receive some horrifying answer, so he forced the doubts that had begun to well up out of his mind.
As if to ventilate the strange atmosphere, Lapis opened the door of the hospital room and entered.
As soon as she saw Klaus’ face, the first thing she said was:
“Loren, are you awake? Huh? Klaus? Have your tastes changed?”
“What are you talking about?”
Even though he didn’t know what she meant, Loren immediately interrupted her because it sounded like it was going to be something ridiculous.
“Klaus visiting a man in his hospital room… There will be disaster coming…”
“I ain’t listening, I ain’t listening.”
“Let me at least joke about it please. Trouble is brewing.”
The only chair in the hospital room was occupied by Klaus, so Lapis let out a deep sigh as she sat on the edge of the bed where Loren was lying and let out such words.
“Trouble?”
“Yes. Well, it can’t be helped, can it? After all, we are the survivors of a unit that was completely destroyed. From the Empire army’s point of view, we are one of the few sources of information that came back from fighting against the unidentified forces of the Kingdom.”
It seemed that the Empire had some idea of the existence of Rage the Evil God. However, because no soldier had ever returned alive after fighting with her, her identity remained unknown. This was the first time some information had been brought back.
If the Empire was satisfied with Lapis’ report alone, it would not be so troublesome. But they would almost certainly try to obtain information from people other than her, and that was why she said trouble was brewing.
“I don’t think I can give a good report about this.”
“You will have to figure it out somehow. If they decide that we have arranged our stories beforehand, the credibility of the information will be diminished.”
Saying this, Lapis leaned down slightly from her position on the edge of the bed to move closer to Loren, who was lying on the bed, and waved her hand at Klaus, who was still peeling fruits, as if she was chasing away a dog.
Klaus smiled wryly when he noticed that. ‘Take your time’, he muttered in a low voice, then put the fruit and knife down on the plate and walked out of the room.
“Well, if we don’t work things out to some extent, we’re going to have even more trouble.”
“I can understand that, but why did you chase him away?”
“We don’t know where the information might leak, and if worse comes to worst and someone steps in, I’ll slip under the covers and scream, and we’ll say we were right in the middle of it.”
“I think that would be more trouble than it is worth, or am I just imagining things?”
While Loren said this with a disstressed look and tone of voice, Lapis had a big smile on her face.
To Lapis, things must have worked out just as she wished, and she must have had no concerns. But to Loren, it was hard to decide if this was a good thing or not.
“For now, let’s start with a coordination of what we should say and what we should not say.”
Loren, feeling the weight of Lapis’ body as she began her explanation, and with a resigned look on his face listened to her explanation.