Ch.119Chapter 119

Red energy floating above the White Mask’s face.

How much mental suffering must she have endured to reach this state?

Even a saint suffering from a herniated disc, said to be the most malicious human ailment, didn’t seem this bad.

I prepared myself mentally for the ominous energy that already looked concerning.

Right.

I was someone who had absorbed the pain of a person on the verge of death.

What couldn’t I handle?

After taking a deep breath, I immediately ran my hand through the energy in front of the White Mask’s face, and it clung to my fingers.

I didn’t absorb it right away.

There needed to be some change through this for the absorption to have meaning.

My body was still too weak to recklessly do something with a “whatever” attitude.

“…!”

But contrary to my concerns, something seemed to happen to the White Mask immediately.

Her eyes widened.

“Has something changed?” I asked the White Mask.

The way she was already rubbing her face with her hands proved something had changed.

“The pain… it’s gone.”

“That’s good news.”

When the White Mask was bitten by the Dragonslayer, she had reportedly experienced extreme pain.

Perhaps it had remained until now, and she had just been stoically enduring it.

With her mental strength at the level of Meditatio.

But that alone wasn’t enough.

Just removing the pain couldn’t be a fundamental solution.

“Would you like to look in a mirror, Master?”

“How does it look to you?”

“…To me, you always appear beautiful, so I can’t tell the difference.”

“Are you flattering me even in this situation?”

The White Mask hit her forehead as if I was hopeless, but I couldn’t help it.

I had no way of knowing if her face had changed.

Because of my coward mode, I could only see her original face, not the one horribly transformed by the dragon’s molecules.

So she needed to check and judge for herself.

The White Mask brought a mirror from the table and looked at her face.

As I nervously swallowed dry saliva…

“…Ah.”

An exclamation escaped from the White Mask’s lips.

At the same time, I saw tears forming in her eyes.

Such a reaction meant she had returned to her original face.

The experiment was a success.

“…Haha.”

This actually works.

To think it could even solve what seemed like an incurable disease.

It was showing an absurd level of performance.

Of course, there were clear limitations due to my weak body.

Now then.

Since I knew it was effective, I needed to absorb this pain.

Otherwise, her face would revert back to its previous state.

Absorbing this pain wasn’t entirely bad.

The more pain I absorbed, the stronger I definitely became.

My physical abilities had already improved significantly.

The Advisor must have been able to grow strong enough to reach the Ideatic Realm thanks to this ability.

After taking a deep breath, I clenched my fist to absorb the red energy.

Immediately, the energy traveled up my arm and struck directly into my brain.

“…Ugh!”

And then.

A headache and depression so severe I nearly lost consciousness washed over me.

Human cells that couldn’t accept the dragon’s molecules would overload, and when cells were destroyed, that area would rot.

I understood why the White Mask had screamed when bitten by the Dragonslayer.

It was pain like having your skin torn off raw.

That wasn’t all.

The ruined appearance naturally caused a drop in self-esteem for the person affected.

The resulting depression brought about lethargy, and I fell into a sensation of not wanting to do anything.

Because of that, strength left my entire body, and I became one with the floor.

“Pull yourself together!”

The White Mask approached me with a surprised expression.

Ah, I think I’ll be fine if I just endure a little longer.

Even as I tried to endure with mental strength, my brain was forcibly causing a blackout to escape the unbearable pain.

It couldn’t be helped.

This seemed to be a symptom I couldn’t refuse.

What was certain was that the pain of being on the verge of death would have been better.

This was pain worse than death.

#

So if you asked whether I ended up fainting, the answer is no.

It was very painful, but there wasn’t actual damage to my body.

My vision just blurred once and then returned to normal?

I say it like that, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Thanks to the White Mask laying something down for me to lie on, I was resting.

After lying down for a while, the painful energy had mostly subsided.

Just a moment ago, I really thought I might die.

The White Mask was quietly looking down at me.

Her eyes were filled with concern.

“…Did you know it would be so painful?”

“Well… I did. Though it was more painful than I expected.”

I looked at the white mask hanging on the coat rack.

It was different from the usual white mask she always wore.

It surely meant her face had returned to normal.

That was definitely good news.

“I didn’t want your face to return at the cost of your suffering like this.”

“But it’s not bad that it’s back, right?”

“Really, you…”

Hmm.

She didn’t need to look at me with such a wistful expression.

On the contrary, I was glad to be certain that I could restore the Knight Commander to normal as well.

If I could just figure out how much stronger I needed to become to withstand the power of an Outer God, I could return the Knight Commander to normal.

There would be more difficult challenges ahead.

“…Thank you. Rest now.”

I smiled back as the White Mask gave a faint smile.

#

After my body had fully recovered, I returned to the Knights’ headquarters with the White Mask.

The Vice Commander’s expression upon seeing the White Mask was so comical I wished I could have saved it as a photo, but unfortunately, there were no cameras in this world.

The Vice Commander nodded with a bright expression.

“…So, it was successful.”

“Yes, Vice Commander.”

“I’m amazed. I never thought I’d see that face again.”

The Vice Commander said, looking at the White Mask beside me.

Indeed.

Even I didn’t expect to succeed in one go.

But for some reason, she had been keeping her head down since earlier. I wondered why.

Perhaps she felt shy suddenly revealing a face she had been hiding for so long.

With such a pretty face, she could be more confident.

“Well, I understand now. Thanks to you, we’re getting closer to finding a way to cure the Commander’s condition.”

“That’s right.”

“Truly, Tanthyn, I’ve now incurred a debt to you that I can never repay.”

“Come on, isn’t helping each other what being human is all about?”

The Vice Commander gave a pleased smile at my words.

After finishing the interim report, I headed straight to the library.

Gathering information was now the most important thing.

The one with the most knowledge would lead this game to victory.

After arriving at the branch, changing into comfortable clothes, and lying down on the bed for a moment, someone knocked on my door.

There was only one person who would knock on my door at this hour.

“Asti?”

“Raedan.”

Asti opened the door and came in.

Looking at the clock, I realized it was almost lunchtime.

Hmm.

After eating, I might not want to go to the library because of food coma.

But I didn’t want to refuse Asti’s meal and see her disappointed expression, so I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Asti, shall we go to the library together?”

“The library?”

“Yes. There’s something I need to look up.”

Asti seemed to understand what I was implying.

She nodded with a slight smile and got up from her seat.

“Yes, I’ll prepare to go out then.”

“Okay, let’s eat out today.”

It would be an outing with just Asti and me after a long time.

#

…or so I thought.

“…How did it end up like this?”

“Like what?”

It was definitely a restaurant I came to with just Asti.

How did we end up as three people?

“Um, Huntsman? What brings you here…?”

“I was about to visit the library.”

“What?”

“I heard there’s a profession called hunter in each territory. I felt the need to investigate this to learn about my father’s past.”

Well, I understand that.

But that wasn’t the issue.

The Huntsman’s appearance was shockingly different.

Unlike her usual wrapped-up look, she wore extremely short pants, a tight-fitting t-shirt, and short-cut hair.

Gone was the masculine impression, replaced by a cold beauty with a decadent charm.

And I couldn’t help but notice that this outfit was blatantly trying to appeal something.

“Um, those clothes…”

“What? I dressed like this in that era you saw too.”

Subtly bringing up the dream to instill a bit of guilt, while naturally pretending not to know.

Asti seemed to have roughly figured out what the Huntsman was aiming for.

Even the usually expressionless Asti was looking at the Huntsman with somewhat vigilant eyes.

Sigh.

My relaxing outing that I had been looking forward to…

Had evaporated once again.