Epilogue: Awakening to a Promise

Epilogue:
Awakening to a Promise

 

“OH, YOU’RE AWAKE, Mr. Loren. Good for you.”

When Loren opened his eyes, there was Lapis, peering straight back at him. He felt a strange weight on his chest. After slapping his forehead a few times to clear his mind, he held his hand there.

At his back was a soft bed. A clean blanket lay over him. The weight on his chest evidently came from Lapis straddling him.

Loren lifted his hand from his brow and delivered a flick to her rather close forehead.

“That smarts!”

“Don’t sit on people,” he said as she lurched backward.

She teared up and rubbed her forehead, a dissatisfied look on her face as she gestured around the room. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”

Loren turned his head to take in their surroundings. To put it simply, this was a sickroom. Sterile and bleak, the only furnishings apart from the bed were a table and shelf. Lapis was right. For some reason, there really was no chair.

Sunlight and a breeze filtered through the window, and the curtain draped over it swayed gently.

“Is this a hospital?”

“That’s right. Do you want to hear what happened after you fell unconscious?”

Loren nodded without hesitation.

“Incidentally, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I remember throwing my sword.” He’d seen it hit its target. As for whether that had actually done anything, he didn’t know. Well, I’m not in the world beyond, and I’m not in the ruins, so I probably broke it at least.

He still wanted the full story.

“Well then, it seems you really were both conscious and aware. People who let themselves run berserk are prone to memory lapses and other cognitive damage. I’m glad to hear your rampage was a benign one.”

“Benign? You mean there are good ones and bad ones?”

“Is that not obvious? More importantly, ah, after you lobbed your sword, was it?”

Lapis confirmed that the enchanted necklace and Loren’s half-a-sword had successfully destroyed the control module. With that, the orders Lapis had keyed into the system finally took effect. The goblin horde fell totally unconscious and the ruins themselves ceased all operations.

“But between you and me, those ruins can never be used again.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I mean, the control module was completely destroyed. The necklace also erased the spells that ran its interior circuitry. It’s beyond repair now.”

Lapis declared that a good thing, considering the modern era. The people of the ancient kingdom had lived in an entirely different sort of world. A facility that bred goblins for experimentation was far too much to handle for modern magic.

Even if some country had wanted to put the facility to military use, the orders imprinted in the goblins’ heads didn’t work beyond the confines of the ruins. At most, they might have produced an army of goblins and mock-goblins, then abandoned them somewhere to instigate chaos. But if that was the case, the facility was far better off as a true ruin, as far as Lapis saw it.

“Mr. Ritz and the others were pretty bitter about it, though.”

“Well, we rendered their investigation useless. I don’t blame them.”

Their party had been at least half-joking, of course. Though they had ended up saying some hurtful things, in Lapis’s opinion. The truth of the matter was that they bore no grudge toward Loren.

But why should I go out of my way to tell him that? she thought.

Certainly, Ritz’s party had found enough information about the ruins to pin down its true purpose beyond a shadow of a doubt. However, as the ruins were dead, that information was all purely academic; it had no practical value.

Lapis also told Loren that they had found hardly any treasures or artifacts on their way out. This meant that Ritz’s party had not received payment in accordance with their expectations. Between the money they’d spent preparing for the search and the costs of treating their injured members, they were now quite a bit in the red.

But as they say, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” Every member of Ritz’s party held Loren in the utmost esteem.

Lapis said not a word on the matter, however. Loren didn’t ask either; from his point of view, he wouldn’t blame the adventurers for resenting him, as he had ruined any chance of properly completing their job. To be clear, Lapis never said anyone resented him, but neither did she say anything to correct his clear misunderstanding.

“I wouldn’t want you to get too attached,” Lapis murmured. If Loren happened to grow close to a party that not only boasted a rather high rank, but also demonstrated few genuine personality problems, well, that could prove to be quite the troublesome development for her.

For that reason, Lapis intended to let their dust settle a moderate distance away.

“Did you just say something?” Loren asked.

Her whisper, luckily, hadn’t reached his ears. Knowing careless words would be her downfall, Lapis powered on. “While the exploration itself was a failure, it’s not as if there were no results to speak of. They still made some findings. They’ll be paid once their efforts are validated, so they should come out all right in the end.”

“Still, I did wrong by them.”

Loren sounded truly sorry. Lapis concluded she shouldn’t pursue the matter further. She cleared her throat. “Moving on, the ruins are practically harmless now. A proper investigation team will be sent in a few days, but after they finish up, they’re apparently going to seal it up again. If you ask me, the whole facility is essentially rocks now, so they might as well just leave it be. But I suppose you can never be too sure.”

Once an official investigation was dispatched, they would most likely survey the surrounding area as well. Maybe, just maybe, the two women from Saerfé’s party would be found and rescued. Lapis was aware of the possibility, but she wasn’t the least bit invested either way. She found it a waste of time to think about people she most likely would never meet again.

“Who carried me here?” Loren asked abruptly. “Where am I, anyway?”

“I carried you, naturally. How could I leave that to anyone else? And we are in a hospital in Kaffa. Those adventurers offered to help, don’t get me wrong, but they had injuries of their own to take care of.”

They had all worked together by chance, but in the end, they were separate parties. It was just common sense for an adventurer to tend to their own party members first. And after all, Chuck had been injured, so of course Ritz had prioritized him.

This was the story Lapis told, at least. In truth, Chuck had been able to walk on his own well enough, and there had been no need to carry him. Ritz had offered to transport Loren, but Lapis had politely declined, carried Loren to the village of Ain herself, and hitched a cart back to Kaffa from there.

“Sorry to trouble you.”

“Oh no, it’s no trouble at all. They’re not the only ones who lost out. Our goblin hunt was also deemed a failure. It’s understandable, really. Three of our members didn’t return, we emphatically did not wipe out the nest, and we have no evidence of the goblins we did kill.”

The bag of goblin ears had gone missing in the midst of the chaos. I must have swung around too violently and dropped it, thought Loren. With how fiercely he fought, he hadn’t even considered the sack hanging from his belt. And so long as it was lost, the adventurers’ guild couldn’t pay their reward.

That’s on me, Loren sighed. “Looks like I need to apologize to you again, Lapis.”

Loren really had lost the sack, but if she felt like it, Lapis could have easily collected as many goblin ears as she wanted from the immobile bodies littering the ruins. Even if she limited her harvest to the ones Loren defeated in that control room, that would still have been more than enough to equal their expected payday.

But she hadn’t. Though the ruins were inactive, the danger wasn’t necessarily gone, or so Ritz’s party had seemed to believe, and they had proposed a swift retreat. More importantly, those missing goblin ears had just been in the way of Lapis achieving her objective.

“Don’t let it bother you,” she said. “Oh, I paid the wagon fee from your wallet, but you didn’t have enough for the treatment and hospitalization.”

Loren abruptly lost all motivation to leave the bed. He slumped down. He could feel the power draining out of his body.

He’d only ever accepted the first quest on account of his profoundly empty pockets. Yet not only had he dropped what would have earned his reward, his debts had increased. Even the wagon fee hadn’t originally been his. It was, essentially, still Lapis’s money.

He cautiously peeked at her face.

“I’ll pay, don’t worry,” she said, having accurately inferred the meaning in his eyes.

“How long have I been out?”

“About three days. Travel took one day, so if you want a breakdown, that’s one night and two days of hospitalization on top of treatment. That puts you at about five silver.”

He sighed. This was a sum he couldn’t possibly pay quickly, but Lapis was all smiles as she closed in on his face again and whispered. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over it. Think of it as a loan, and I won’t even be taking interest.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back.”

“I won’t rush you. I’ll accept installments too.”

What Lapis didn’t say was that she was the only person of either party who had come out of the ruins making a profit. As she had rummaged through the residential area searching for the manual, she had secretly stuffed anything valuable into her pockets, just as she had promised to do. Her sleight of hand had been so masterful even Chuck the thief hadn’t noticed.

Thus, Lapis alone had made off with treasure. Most of the things she’d found were accessories enchanted with some magic. From that, she deduced the manager had been a woman. She also suspected the Disjunction necklace had come from those rooms. The rooms hadn’t been locked, and therefore it had only ever been a matter of time before a particularly shrewd goblin made it to them. The item had perhaps been randomly passed around between the monsters until it fell into the hands of a goblin who escaped and learned how to use it upon evolving into a magician.

She had no means to test the validity of her theories now that the facility was destroyed, alas.

“Aren’t you being a bit generous?” Loren asked.

“In exchange, I’d like you to travel with me for a while,” Lapis declared.

She had finally reached the main subject. Her goal wasn’t profit or knowledge: it was Loren himself. A skilled and trustworthy individual who hadn’t flinched, glowered, or been otherwise objectionable upon learning that she was one of those vile demons. That in itself made him more valuable than most people.

In order to experience the world, Lapis had snuck into it as a priest. But although she was a demon with superior abilities, there was a limit to what she could do alone. Traveling with a swordsman would mean that between them, they covered all the basic roles of an adventuring party. If she were to offer their services to other parties, it would save a lot of trouble if they came as a set.

The point was, moving around alone as a female priest was more troublesome than she had expected. All sorts of people tried to reel her into their spheres with ulterior motives, and when she had finally found a halfway decent party, they hadn’t let her leave as she pleased.

“I don’t think it’s a bad offer,” she said. “What do you say?”

It did feel a bit, well, dubious to bind him with debt. But Lapis considered Loren such a valuable opportunity she was willing to put aside her doubts. Even when she tried thinking about it from Loren’s perspective, she saw quite a few advantages for him in traveling with a priest.

Yes, a priest who could treat even major injuries in an instant—they would be rather indispensable to a swordsman, wouldn’t they?

“Um, how about it?” she timidly asked again. For Loren gave no answer. She was beginning to grow anxious, and she wondered if she had made him angry.

His face weary, Loren looked beyond Lapis to the ceiling, then opened his mouth. “Doesn’t sound like I’ve got much of a choice.”

“Can I take that as a yes?”

“Yes. I promise. But only until I pay off my debt.”

“That works out just fine. It’s a pleasure doing business with you again, Mr. Loren.”

Lapis’s face lit up like a lantern. Gazing up at her smile, Loren wished she’d get off of him before he began to feel weird about it. How exactly would he pay her back, anyway?

Of course, Loren had no idea that underneath her beaming smile, the girl was considering all sorts ways in which to increase his debt in order to keep him around as long as possible.

And like that, a single broke mercenary began to walk a new path as an adventurer.