Hillfront

After the lesson ended, Shmuel went to a friend’s house, Melanie. She had helped him time and time again when they were still fighting for their lives to clear the surrounding monsters. Right now, he was lying on a natural shallow pool made of rocks in the beautiful private garden of her house. It was full of colorful plants blended in the vibrant green.

“How did you break your ribs in the middle of the town?” She approached by the back door and sat behind him, dipping her legs on the water as she positioned his head between her legs.

“Underestimated a new kid that came to my class.” Shmuel relaxed as she began massaging his trapezius.

Melanie smirked. “Thought you had learned better by now.” She eyed his sides once again. “Why didn’t you come immediately? This injury looks unattended for at least half an hour.”

“You know how kids are. It takes time to create some sort of respect between them.” He gave her a light smile. Being in this pool always relaxed him somehow. The pain was slowly forgotten.

She laughed. “And if they discovered you had your ass beaten in class, the tough guy image would crumble instantly?”

“Exactly.” He laughed but soon stopped because it triggered the pain once again.

“That’s enough relaxing.” She tucked her bangs, and a dull light started surrounding her hands, which soon took an ethereal form.

“That’s always the worst part.” Shmuel prepared himself for the pain. “Why can’t we just keep only with the massage?”

“The worst but the only one that has any effect.” Melanie laughed. “Don’t worry; broken bones are a piece of cake.” She entered the pool and kneeled in front of him, dipping her arms inside of his torso. Her ethereal arms were intangible for the most part. Still, weirdly, people could feel all of her movements when she was fumbling inside of them. Shmuel began screaming as if his life was being sucked out of him, but she only rolled her eyes. Drama queen, at least you stay still while I’m treating you.

Melanie found the ribs she was feeling for and applied force to bring them to the right place; Shmuel resumed his screamings. “A man who came earlier had it much worse. His arms were almost goners, black crisps of death.” She fixed Shmuel’s ribs one by one, the cracking moves audible as she sometimes had to break a dangling piece completely to get them into the proper place. “I couldn’t do it by myself, so I had to ask for some help. It was all good in the end; good training, that was.” Melanie was mostly talking to herself as Shmuel was lost in his pain. He was once again reconsidering his life choices and why he thought his image was worth so much. “I had never seen anything like that. I don’t even know how his arms were still alive... or how they worked fine in the end.” Talking about it made her become bothered by the situation once again. Being a medic in this new world was full of exciting new possibilities but also of mind-boggling ones.

Melanie kept draining the extra blood and increasing the healing with a more general blessing. She later patched everything together, mended the bones, and gave an extra-service boost on the area’s self-regeneration. She took her hand out of Shmuel as he gasped for air, pale and soft as a palm heart, which made her hungry. His wound was fine now, but maybe his spirit was broken. It had been a long time since he last got her treatment. Whatever... She left him there in the pool and went to find some food for herself; Shmuel’s spirit was still trying to find its way back to its body, in a figurative manner.

Back on the town’s outskirts, Hamon got back to their room to see Theo squatting over a chair, hands on his temples, frowning. As he closed the door, Theo looked up to him and smiled. “Hamon, hello! You are back so early, how was your day?”

“Fine, I guess. Nothing much.” Hamon shrugged.

“Nice.” Theo got up from the chair and started waving his arms. “Check it out, brand as new.”

“Woah.” Hamon started touching his arms in excitement. “I forgot about that.”

“I told you it would be fine.” Theo wriggled his fingers.

“It’s just like real.” Hamon pulled on the skin.

“It is real. I went to a healer this morning.” Theo looked at his arms. “I think it was only possible because of my bottom-low physique. Lucky me, right?” Theo gave Hamon a thumbs up. “Now, let me go back to thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Stuff. How to stop an invasion mostly.” Theo squatted back on his chair. It helped him think.

“Cool, when does it happen? Where?” Hamon perked up.

“It will still take some time. You are staying out of that one.” Theo shook his head. “It will be too dangerous. Just stay in town, ok? Try to make some friends with those at the training.”

Hamon was about to disagree, but when Theo said, ‘try to make some friends’, Hamon remembered Sally. If he just stayed quiet right now, he would have more time to spend with her, so that’s what he just did.

Theo had actually prepared a myriad of reasons. The main one was to not associate Hamon with him that much, the enchantress was joining the field, and that made him paranoid. He would need some standing inside the Lion clan before moving as he wanted. Hamon agreeing so quickly left him surprised. However, he didn’t press much. There was a lot to do.

Theo had been thinking about anything related to the town, the dungeon, and the scarlet gang assault. ‘Prompt recollection’ worked almost like a search bar in a computer. Theo needed to have some base information or memory to expand on that. Starting from Hillfront town, he remembered the more fresh memories, the scarlet gang, the serial killing, the mass murder event, and the surrounding dungeons. From that, he expanded into the scarlet gang’s leadership, when and how the assault happened. Then, Theo went into who committed the murders around the town, with which blessing and at which locations. At last, he thought about what were the contents of the surrounding events, how and where they were triggered. Bit by bit, he clung onto one memory to unlock information of another and dived deeper and deeper into his past.

Time flew while he was doing that. There was so much to do, blessings to test, targets to kill, people to meet. Thinking, however, was a priority right now.