Epilogue: Waking to Rest

The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary — LNCrawler · All chapters

Epilogue:
Waking to Rest

“CAN’T SAY I didn’t see this coming.”

Loren heard Lapis’s somewhat sullen voice as he lay on the bed. However, he did his best not to look at her. His eyes remained locked on the ceiling.

They were back in Kaffa. Loren was once again bedridden in one of its numerous hospitals.

“How much trouble do you think I went through after that? Your body is already too heavy for my delicate little arms. And there’s quite a height difference between us. Your legs drag even when I carry you on my back.”

“Right, my boots are ruined now. I might have to replace them.”

His expenses did pile up, and given that, one pair of boots wasn’t too significant an addendum. He embraced something close to resignation as he decided he would consult Chuck. That was a man who looked like he knew where to find cheap boots.

But Lapis’s scolding went on. “You’re already heavy, and I had to carry the sword too. I’ve worked so hard, it would be

downright criminal for me to go without compensation. Do you have anything you’d like to say?”

Loren’s sword was so heavy even a warrior would have trouble lifting it with two hands. Seeing how Lapis had apparently been able to drag it along, he was starting to get a clearer idea of just how strong she was.

“Let’s put that aside for a moment. Hey, Lapis.”

“Yes, what is it?”

She had been complaining for so long, yet it took only a few words for her to give up altogether. She just wanted to whine—she wasn’t particularly angry. Or perhaps she was just quick to shift gears. Loren didn’t know for sure, but there was something he had to make sure of regardless.

“What happened after I passed out?”

He knew Scena had become a Lifeless King and that he had defeated her by destroying the Orb of Undeath in her chest. Knowing that a normal Lifeless King didn’t have that weak point, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to fight one of them—but whatever the case, Scena was defeated, her body fell apart, and at the very end, her mind returned to her.

He remembered reaching to grab her hand and gripping its crumbling remnants. Then he got the feeling Scena whispered a few words… But he had fallen unconscious right after. He still couldn’t recall.

“That’s the part I don’t really understand.” Lapis pulled up a chair, took a seat, and cocked her head. “You got close to her when she was breaking down, and that was terribly careless of you. A Lifeless King isn’t necessarily destroyed just because its body falls apart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you aware that all entities are comprised of both a material and an astral body?”

Loren shook his head.

“The material is the physical body. The astral is, perhaps, what I would call the spiritual body. Life exists in the overlap between them. It’s a pain to get into the details, but suffice to say, damage to the material side of things does not guarantee damage to the astral.”

Do you get it? she seemed to imply as she stared into his face. She had summed it up so even he could understand, and he nodded to urge her on.

“There are hardly any creatures out there with a proper grasp of the distinction. It’s the fundamental theorem that permits high-level blessings to regenerate missing body parts, but to the point—with two bodies per individual, death only comes after the collapse of both.”

To those who could not meaningfully grasp or manipulate the distinction between the two bodies, death was generally defined with the death of the material. In the cases where the astral body persisted, the highest possible rank of blessing—called Resurrection—could bring back the deceased. That said, the astral body gradually degenerated when the material body died. It would eventually face its own death, which put a window on how long Resurrection could work.

“How are these astral bodies different from ghosts?”

“Ghosts are the mere shadow of an astral body given form for whatever reason. It’s impossible to revive a ghost, though there are necromancers out there researching the possibility.”

“Okay, I kinda understand. But if the material body dies, the astral one’s toast without intervention, right?”

“As I said, those with proper awareness of the distinction can persist a while as an astral body even if their material form is destroyed. And a Lifeless King is one of the few entities known to do so.”

Meaning, while the recoil of the Orb of Undeath had destroyed Scena’s body, that was only the material side, and the state of her astral form was still unknown. As long as its astral body persisted, it was hard to say a Lifeless King was truly dead, and approaching it in that state had been quite careless.

“How’s a mercenary supposed to know that? Well, I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking.”

“My thoughts exactly. That said, the Lifeless King’s body continued to crumble, and all that happened was you lost consciousness. So I guess the orb’s recoil was strong enough to drag the astral body into its own destruction.”

A bit of relief seeped into Lapis’s words. She was angry at Loren but also glad he was safe.

Loren cleared his throat, a tad embarrassed. But…

He glanced toward the very edge of his field of vision. There was nothing but ceiling wherever he looked, but just in the corner—always the corner—a girl in a white dress floated, flapping a pair of wings. She had been there since he opened his eyes, and not only did she somewhat resemble Scena, it was now clear that Lapis couldn’t see her.

“Did I really…just fall unconscious?” he asked.

Perhaps he had hit his head somewhere. He worried he had come down with some mental illness, and he tried to ask Lapis, who had medical knowledge. He wasn’t just going to say he was seeing floating hand-sized girls now. That was the sort of statement that would get him tossed in an asylum of some sort.

“I could get you checked up if you’re that concerned, but you’re healthy as can be. However, your recoil this time around was incomparably worse than the last. I won’t beat around the bush—you were one step from dead.”

Lapis had dragged him back to the Hansa hospital in a flurry, forcing Claes, who was dead tired, to load the patients into the wagon as she shoved Loren in. Once again, she’d fastened the boy to their horse and forced him to speed their journey straight from Hansa to Kaffa.

Thanks to that, Brosse, Ange, Laure, and Leila had survived. Overuse of Boost had left Claes out cold by the time they reached Kaffa, and he was currently sentenced to complete bed rest as his party looked after him. The kid wasn’t too bad—once Loren was honest with himself—and he hoped that the incident didn’t leave Claes traumatized. Not that he could do anything about it.

Of course, Loren had been in such a state that he might have died had Lapis not pushed Claes so hard, so he was thankful. Once he got better, he would at least pay the kid a visit.

Oh, crap. Almost dead, huh? “How much did the treatment cost this time?”

“This is your seventh day in the hospital, Mr. Loren. The hospitalization only cost seventeen silver, but…we came up with a bit of a separate expense.”

“What happened?”

“As I said, you were right at death’s door. It was a race against time, and no normal medical procedures would have rescued you in time. You weren’t even visibly injured. Frankly, it’s a mystery how you even pushed yourself to that point.” Lapis folded her arms.

Loren sighed; he could already see where this was going. Normal methods hadn’t worked, so she had resorted to something abnormal. The abnormal always cost money.

“How much?”

“I used an elixir, one gold a piece. And I had to use five of them.”

“By that point, you should’ve just let me die.”

Five gold was a small fortune—though a reasonable price for the finest elixir. Still, hearing the sum after all was said and done made him feel like dying all over again. He didn’t know whether he should celebrate his survival or bemoan the fact that he hadn’t croaked.

Loren’s eyes snapped toward Lapis, who hadn’t seemed to hear those words. She stared back, somewhat startled.

<I’m sorry. I do feel guilty, but it just kind of happened when you touched my hand, and I thought: I don’t want to die yet.>

“What’s with that?” he found himself saying.

Lapis continued staring at him, trying to figure out what he meant. The girl floating in Loren’s vision frantically waved her hands.

What about my private life? he replied in a huff.

The girl despondently lowered her head. <I’ll try my best not to dig into the deeper parts. But…if it’s too much of a bother, I’ll leave.>

Then what happens?

Then how am I supposed to kick you out?

Loren wasn’t cold enough to evict someone knowing they would die. It was with a heavy heart that he had to accept he was keeping a little girl in his head. But that just meant he would have to take his time looking into the matter. There was no need to make a rash decision. Or so he forcibly convinced himself.

“Ah… Mr. Loren? Is something wrong? Are you feeling ill?” Lapis seemed to be imagining something else given his silence.

He told her it was nothing, then reached for that resigned state of mind he’d had before. “You paid for the treatment again.”

“Oh, yes, I did. And, well… I’ll just add it to your debt. Hospitalization, medicine, and miscellaneous fees add up to six gold and twenty-one silver.”

“Which means exactly thirty gold in total… These debts just keep piling up.”

“The quest was designated a failure, but they did concede some reparations. I couldn’t convince them a Lifeless King showed up, but we were paid for the zombies and revenants.”

“It’s gonna be a ruckus. Sure, it was a small city-state, but a whole nation just fell.”

Not that anyone had confirmed this with him. He just guessed this was the case based on Lapis’s supposition and Stehr’s reaction. Who knew what sort of impact Hansa’s fall would have?

However, the face Lapis made was quite suspect.

“What?”

“About that… It seems the undead roaming the greater Hansa region disappeared altogether.”

For some strange reason, the girl floating in the corner of Loren’s vision looked awfully proud of herself. Actually, she resembled some kind of fairy now, even though she was the astral body of the highest form of undead.

Perhaps she had done something on the road back.

“Whatever it is, we should be glad the threat’s gone,” said Loren.

“Well, thanks to all that, they didn’t believe us about the bone dragon either.”

“Nothing we can do about that. Just means the day I repay my debt is pretty far off.”

“You know, I don’t really care if you pay it off or not.”

Having heard her say it didn’t matter so many times, Loren realized he was beginning to find it inconsequential as well. Also Scena was now, for some reason, kowtowing in the corner of his eye. He decided he needed a little more sleep.