Part Eighty-Three

I honestly had no idea how I managed to get to the infirmary. One moment I was meandering through the alleys, the next I was in a bed with Kalia hovering over me. My best guess was that the blood loss had caught up to me, causing me to partially blackout, but had I really been bleeding that much?

“We need to stop meeting like this.”

“Ha, sure, if you stop getting yourself hurt all the time.”

“It’s not like I’m aiming for this. I just seem to run into situations which inevitably end with me getting injured. Maybe I’m cursed?”

“Nonsense. At least two of those situations were of your own design. You didn’t have to challenge the Orc General either time you fought it. I’d say you brought those fights on yourself.”

“Aha, maybe. By the way, where’s Alicia? I know she was here earlier, but I don’t see or hear her now.”

I tried to sit up so I could take a better look around, but an intense bout of vertigo struck me before I could, alongside the fact that my arms still weren’t responding to me. Heck, it caused the pain that I’d been ignoring to flare right back up again.

“Aaah, don’t do that! I haven’t finished healing you! The nerves in both your arms are still damaged, and you might leave them useless if you’re not careful!”

“W-wait, what!?”

“This is why you need to be more careful! Not only is your shoulder mangled, but your left arm was cut almost to the bone. Honestly, this is gonna be a lot of work. Even with me, the NPCs, and [Soothing Aura], you’re going to have to stay in bed for a time while you recover.”

“WHAAAAAAAT!?”

***

[Alicia’s POV]

Alicia was hurrying back to the infirmary with the supply room key in hand. The head healer had stayed back to provide emergency aid to those injured in the Void Wolf’s attack, so he’d entrusted her to bring it to Kalia so that the infirmary would be prepared for the surge of patients coming in.

That wolf must have been what hurt Michael. Kalia’s going to be very busy now.

The Void Wolf must’ve forged a path of destruction through the fort, as she could see multiple mercenaries and NPCs limping out of the alleys. Whatever had happened before she came across it must’ve been disastrous. There was no way they’d be able to handle this many patients.

I’ve gotta hurry back. Kalia may be a good healer, but Michael was in really bad shape when he came in. I, I could see the bones of his arm, and the way his shoulder was all mangled. He’ll need all the help he can get to recover from that.

She finally reached the infirmary, though it looked like no one else had arrived yet either. It wouldn’t remain like this for long. She’d seen at least twenty people who were wounded on the way back.

“Kalia, I’ve got the suppl-! What the?”

She’d burst through the door expecting to see Kalia and the NPCs frantically working on keeping Michael alive, but what was actually waiting for her was far more surreal. Michael was frantically trying to wriggle away from Kalia, who was insistent on keeping him in place.

“No! You can’t make me!”

“Yes, I, Can! If your shoulder doesn’t heal right, you could permanently lose all use of your arm! Your rotator cuff is completely destroyed, and the bones in both locations are severely cracked. If you keep struggling, you’ll end up worsening the fractures until they snap! So, Stay, Still!”

“Grrr, fine!”

Uh, should I go? That was really awkward to walk in on. No! I need to give Kalia the key. And it looks like Michael needs to be set straight again.

“Kalia, I’ve got the key and there’s more people on the way, so let me deal with him.”

“More people? Ah, okay! I’ll get right on it.”

It wasn’t even a minute after Kalia left the room that the first casualty of the fight was brought in. Two NPCs brought in a mercenary who looked even worse than Michael. His armor was torn down the middle, exposing the deep claw marks on his chest, and both of his kneecaps had been shattered. That man was lucky though, as the next looked like his arm had been chewed on, it was so mangled.

Yep, that’s enough of that. Just focus on Michael, not the horribly injured coming in.

She took the stool Kalia had just vacated, keeping care to ensure she was facing away from the rest of the room. She wasn’t bad with blood or anything, but something about exposed bone just freaked her out. At least Michael was all bandaged up.

“Tch, did the wolf do all this?”

Michael had spoken so softly that she almost didn’t hear him. She’d figured that his injuries had something to do with the Mid-boss, but she hadn’t been certain until now.

“The Void Wolf? Yeah, it went on a rampage in the fort. And I kind of nearly killed it.”

“WHAT!?”

Ahahaha, I knew he’d react like that. He told me last night that he thought that the Void Wolf would be the strongest Monster we’d fight until the Dungeon Boss appears. So for me to just say that I nearly killed it, well. Hehehehe, he’s probably a bit confused right now.

She filled him in on the details of the fight, including the assistance from Michael’s weirdo stalker and that she’d finally unlocked Razor’s Edge. She also finally told him the full extent of the Hidden-Shot Bracers, something she’d neglected to do for a while.

“Damn. I was hoping that that Wolf was finally dead. Damn thing’s attacked me twice now. I’m starting to think it has a vendetta against me.”

“You did kill one of the other monster leaders. I don’t think that would’ve endeared you to the others.”

Michael snorted at that, and went back to examining the room. Kalia and the NPCs were already frantically trying to heal all the injured coming in, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t succeed this time. Too many people had been too horribly maimed to make a full recovery. Even Healing Magic had its limits.

Michael had actually been lucky. If he hadn’t been wearing his coat, the Void Wolf would’ve easily ripped his arm out of the socket, if not done worse after. Though it should also be noted that the injures he sustained would’ve been extremely difficult to heal without Magic, requiring months or years of recovery time, if it worked at all. Injures like that could’ve seen him losing an arm or more.

Alicia came to this realization rather fast, and another quickly followed it. Despite what she said, she knew Michael didn’t act the way he did without reason. Most of the time, he weighed the risks of a plan against the reward. He wasn’t actually as reckless as he first seemed, he just tended to prioritize reward over risk, especially if there was no easy way out of a situation. He’d rather fight at a disadvantage, than run into a worse one.

But this led to one massive fact: Michael was going to continue to get hurt, a lot. If he intended on leading this lifestyle, and he seemed quite fixated on it, he was going to need a reliable source of healing. In other words, they needed a healer. The only issue was actually finding one.

Kalia had told them that having an affinity for Healing Magic wasn’t exactly rare, but it wasn’t common either. Though she hadn’t explained this to them, the odds of a mortal being born with a Life Magic affinity was 1:100, which was still better than the 1:1000 odds of Dark Magic.

This essentially meant that without a surefire way to determine someone's affinity early, they’d have to help dozens of people Awaken if they wanted to raise a healer on their own. While they might get lucky, the odds stated that they’d be trying for a while before succeeding.

The other option would be to recruit someone who had already Awakened. The problem with that was that there were very few people who had done so. In fact, most (ninety percent, actually) were located in this Dungeon. And only one person had displayed an affinity for Life Magic so far.

Hm, but how? How would we go about recruiting her?

***

Ugh, it’s starting to smell horrible in here. As more mercenaries were brought in, the smell of blood became ever more pungent. I wasn’t a big fan of hospitals (who is?), but this was just adding insult to injury. It was bad enough that I was essentially confined to bed, but now I had to lay here and smell this?

Tch, just one more reason to kill that damn wolf. I’m gonna rip it to shreds for this. Now, what the hell can I do to pass the time? Looking around here is just going to become nightmare fuel, and I’ve got plenty of that.

“Hey, have you seen Cameron lately?”

“Huh!? Uh, no actually. I haven’t seen him all day. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him since the operation yesterday. And he didn’t stick around for long then either.”

“Hm, you don’t think, no, I’m crazy.”

He wouldn’t, would he? I mean, he has been acting odd here and there, but I don’t think he’d ever do that, not without telling us at least.

“Hey Alicia, do yo-?”

“Okay, sorry I’m late with this!! Drink up!”

Just as I was about to ask Alicia a certain question, Kalia returned with all the force of a hurricane, and practically shoved a bottle of this vile brownish liquid down my throat. And by vile, I mean vile. The stuff tasted horrible, like someone distilled the copper tang of blood into a drink, and then added alcohol to the mix.

“Gah! So, gross. What, what the hell did you just make me drink!?”

“Oh, don’t give me that! It’s a Blood Tonic. Medicine to help boost your production of red blood cells. Healing Magic isn’t the best at doing that for you, and you lost a lot of blood, so you definitely needed one.”

“Blegh, couldn’t you have just warned me before doing that? Just forcing me to drink it seems like cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Don’t be so dramatic Michael. I’ve got to get back to work, but I’ll be by later to check on you.”

And then she was off again. Considering the current state of the infirmary, it seemed Kalia had decided to let [Soothing Aura] slowly heal me, while she and the NPCs treated those in serious condition. I could completely understand that, but since it meant I’d be here longer, I didn’t like it. I hated being bedbound.

“Well there you have it. I’m stuck here for a bit. Yay.”

“You know Michael, you could stand to let some of Kalia’s positivity rub off on you. It would help smooth out some of the more irritating parts of your personality.”

“Nein. If I did that, then I’d no longer be myself. To people like me, positivity is like a virus. It infects us, slowly whittling down our individuality, until we’re just carbon copies of each other. No, I must maintain my pessimism and cynicism as if my life depends on it. Because it does.”

“…..I don’t know what answer I was expecting from you, but I’m somehow not surprised that that’s what I got. I’d smack you if you weren’t hospitalized.”

“Haha, victory!”

“What did you even win?”

“A righteous and moral victory, one that shall echo through the halls of time itself.”

*Smack!*

“OW!”

***

[Ouka’s POV]

Greater Gluttonists? It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?

Knowledge of the Gluttonists was considered highly classified, but as both a Fort Captain, and one of those responsible for discovering the threat, she had been kept in the know. The discovery of an Evolved form had only ramped up worries within the Japanese Diet, and now, a proposal to detonate all the connecting bridges and tunnels between Honshu and Kyushu had begun to gather momentum. The only reason it hadn’t already been done was because there was still a vague hope of recovering the island from the monsters.

Idiotic. They have no idea what they’re doing. Destroying the bridges over the Kanmon Strait will only prevent us from supplying the one way we can monitor the beasts. But I’m not sure Director Walters' and Saito's plan is any better.

As a counter to the opposition party's plan, the duo had proposed an extensive military campaign. The Director hypothesized that since the Gluttonists ate every living thing they encountered, they would inevitably exterminate the monsters for them. They would then enact a massive military campaign to exterminate the remaining Gluttonists, thereby saving resources in the long run, since maintaining the Defensive Line was more draining than a single operation, no matter how large.

Though some would liken this plan to bringing in exotic species to act as predators for pests, only for the invasive species to become an even bigger problem than what they were supposed to predate.

And even more concerning was the fact that the Director's plan was created before the discovery of the Greater Gluttonists. If these new monsters were too strong, letting them propagate would lead to an even bigger disaster.

In all honesty, there were more than a few who thought the situation was already untenable, and wanted to just wash their hands of it.

Hm, the mercenaries’ report wasn’t very specific on what they’re capable of. Hmmm.

In a nutshell, Kyushu Island was now the center of a terrible storm. A storm that would soon make landfall.