episode_0162

“Ugh, gurgling! Gasp, blub blub!!”

As soon as the auxiliary sleepwalking spell ended, my body sank into the lake as if it were being pulled under.

In my past life and in this life, my body, which had never learned how to swim, quietly began to sink towards the bottom of the lake.

“Oh no! Damn it! Shit!!”

Desperately flailing my arms and legs in an attempt to survive, but my limbs only weakly moved through the water as if waving them in the air.

A chilling sensation crept up my spine as my body slowly sank downwards.

Just moments ago, I had already given up on life.

The sense of relief at having survived made me even more desperate for life, strangely enough.

“Sa-save me….”

But despite my wishes, the beam of light from below the water was narrowing, indicating that there was no way for me to reach the surface after using up all my mana in a blast just now.

With my meaningless hand reaching out into the air, my consciousness began to fade.

-Splash!

Along with a dark shadow obscuring my vision, a familiar hand somehow grabbed my wrist.

And that was the last memory I had from beneath the lake.

***

Island of Knowledge. Somewhere along the lakeside promenade.

-Agh!

“Ugh, cough, gulp, cough…!”

A man who had barely emerged from the deep waters of the Lake of Knowledge coughed up water in agony.

His completely soaked head covered his eyes and part of his face, his clothes clinging tightly to his body as if he were a soaked rat.

On his shoulders, a black-haired woman in a red dress was being carried.

The man, who had lifted the woman onto the shore before collapsing on the ground, desperately called out her name as she lay unconscious.

“Lilith! Wake up! Lilith!!”

“….”

Shaking her shoulders and slapping her cheeks did not rouse Lilith from her daze.

The Blackwood Master’s mind grew increasingly desperate as he called out only her name.

Not long after a pair of men and women emerged from the water, a group of people began to approach their location.

“Here! Over here!”

“There, we found them!”

“Ethan Master! Lady Lilith! Are you both okay?!”

From the Saintess of Aurelia to the warrior and the third princess of the Empire, a group of notable figures from the Academy hurriedly approached Ethan and Lilith.

Among them, Ethan’s expression softened slightly as he confirmed the Saintess’s face.

‘Thank goodness….’

Although he couldn’t understand why the warrior and the Saintess had appeared at their location, Ethan had no desire to question such matters at the moment.

As the two approached the fallen Lilith, Ethan pleaded with the Saintess Cerista as if begging for something.

“Are you okay?! Both of you have been injured by the Kraken….”

“Saintess!”

“Yes, yes!”

“Lilith won’t wake up! Please, save her somehow!”

“Oh, I understand! I will treat her right away!”

Although she had been appointed as a ‘fake Saintess’ by the church, the position she held as a fake Saintess was based on her competence as the most capable priestess among her peers.

Unless a person’s heart had stopped beating, Cerista’s divine ability could essentially save anyone.

…On the other hand, even her ability couldn’t revive a stopped heart.

“W-what…?”

“Why are you hesitating, Saintess! Hurry and help Lilith….”

“No….”

“Yes?”

“M-My heart… it’s not beating anymore….”

At Serista’s despairing response, Edan was momentarily engulfed in a sensation that felt like his own heart stopping.

Why did this only happen to him?

He thought he could finally shake off the despair of losing his mother in his childhood.

Why was it that even now, Lirlys was leaving his side like this?

Edan, feeling despair for the first time at the tragic fate that seemed to only befall him, was filled with guilt and despair, his mind reeling in a terrible agony.

“If only I hadn’t suggested a date to Lirlys today.”

“If we hadn’t gone on a date, or if we hadn’t walked near the lake.”

“If I hadn’t created an atmosphere to confess to her and make her flustered.”

Perhaps, if these things hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have lost Lirlys so tragically.

Edan’s mind, filled with guilt and despair, was consumed by a terrible pain as if his brain was being stabbed with a fork.

…However, in the midst of this, he caught sight of a man’s hand reaching towards Lirlys’ body.

-Swish.

“….!!!”

“Don’t just stand there! We need to act quickly….”

-Thud!

“What are you doing right now?”

“…What?”

“…Do you dare defile Lirlys’ body in front of me with that hand.”

“What are you talking about! I said we need to do CPR! We can still save her!”

“…CPR?”

Yes, hero.

Come to think of it, the person with mysterious powers in this place wasn’t just the saintess.

The hero, too, having received the divine power of the goddess Aurelia, must have had some mysterious powers.

Among them, even if there was a power to revive the dead, it wasn’t that surprising.

“How do we save her? Is it the power of the hero?”

“It’s not the hero’s power, it’s CPR… Ah, damn. These people don’t seem to know what CPR is….”

“…It’s not the hero’s power?”

“You apply pressure with your palm near the heart to make it beat again. Once you do that, we can treat her with Serista’s divine power.”

“….”

In the end, did he reach out to Lirlys’ chest to save her?

Although the content seemed understandable just by listening, Edan still couldn’t shake off his doubts about another man’s hand touching Lirlys’ chest.

Looking into his eyes as he was about to perform CPR on Lirlys, he said,

“Hurry! The longer we wait, the more dangerous it gets….”

“I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“If what you just explained means that even someone other than the hero can perform CPR.”

“…Yes.”

“If all I have to do is apply pressure near Lirlys’ chest to make it beat again, then I’ll do it.”

Doubt, possessiveness, jealousy.

In a short amount of time, the hero could read many emotions in Edan’s eyes.

Deciding that it was better to teach Edan rather than convince him to hand over Lirlys, the hero, Blackwood, brought his hands together and demonstrated the proper technique for CPR.

“…Place your palm in this shape in the center of Lirlys’ chest. Make sure the hard part of your palm is directly on the center of her chest.”

“…Got it.”

“Apply pressure with your body weight and compress the chest. Do it firmly, multiple times.”

“….”

-Squish, squish, squish.

“Harder! You can fix a broken rib, but you can’t restart a stopped heart!”

“Heugh, heugh, heugh!”

Thump! Thump! Thump!!

Edan’s body shook from top to bottom as he placed his palm on the center of Lillis’s chest.

Despite being almost exhausted from pulling Lillis out from the lake himself, he never stopped his body and continued performing CPR according to Serista’s instructions.

His desire to save Lillis’s life was more fervent than anyone else’s.

If he were to collapse and fall here, the hands of that so-called hero could have entered Lillis’s chest.

Even in this situation, Edan did not want to hand over Lillis’s body to another man.

“Agnes, could you please use a heating spell to prevent the bodies of the two wet individuals from cooling down?”

“I already did.”

And so, after about 5 minutes of tirelessly performing chest compressions to save Lillis, a slightly hopeful news reached Serista, who was carefully monitoring Lillis’s condition.

“Just now! Just now, she momentarily had a heartbeat!”

“What?”

“Is that, is that really true?”

“I, I really…”

“Edan! Don’t stop! It’s not over yet!”

“Sorry!”

Despite being yelled at by a commoner hero, Edan’s heart started beating happily as if he had just seen a glimmer of hope.

And so, even after that moment where there seemed to be hope of saving Lillis, Edan continued with CPR for a few more minutes.

However, the intermittently beating heart seemed to be slightly lacking in accepting Serista’s divine power.

Edan did not miss the hero’s words hinting that the next step was necessary.

“…I guess I have no choice but to do artificial respiration.”

“Cough, ar, artificial, respiration…? What, what is that…?”

“Simply compressing the heart may not be enough to revive her. At times like this, you need to directly blow air into the lungs to make the circulatory system function properly.”

“Blow air directly into the lungs… Who here can manipulate wind magic…?”

“It’s not magic. You have to do it yourself, and I’ll only explain it once, so if you want to save Lillis, do as I say.”

“Alright.”

Having already seen a glimmer of hope through CPR, Edan’s trust in the hero had slightly increased, and there seemed to be no other way besides listening to him.

Despite his fatigue, Edan listened attentively to the hero’s serious explanation about artificial respiration.

“First, hold Lillis’s chin and open her mouth wide.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

“Hold her nose with one hand so that only air can pass through her mouth.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

“In that state, cover Lillis’s lips completely with your lips.”

“Okay, with my lips… What?”

Although Edan looked at the hero with a bewildered expression, thinking he might be joking for a moment, the hero’s expression while explaining artificial respiration was extremely serious.

Seeing Edan’s confused reaction, the hero explained artificial respiration once more, this time with a hint of annoyance.

“Don’t think lightly of it. It’s a way to save a life.”

“Is that really true?”

“If you can’t do it properly, hand it over to me. I’m more likely to save Lillis than you are.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

Thinking that he might lose Lillis’s lips to the serious voice of the hero, Edan quietly apologized to Lillis in his heart and gently kissed her, following the hero’s instructions to align their lips perfectly.

He waited for the hero’s next command.

“Sorry, Lillis.”

“Take a deep breath through your nose, and exhale through your mouth to blow air into Lilith’s body. Think of it as inflating a paper bag with air. You don’t need to suck the air back in once you’ve put it in, just keep inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.”

“Hoo, haa. Hoo, haa….”

“Yes, keep going just like that. Without stopping….”

I want to save her.

I couldn’t just let her die in this place.

I didn’t need an answer to my confession, or anything else.

Please. Just stay alive and by my side….

“Hoo, haa. Hoo….”

“Cough, cough, gasp?!”

“…Hoo?!”

Lilith suddenly coughed and moved her body while her lips were still touching mine.

Startled by her reaction, Ethan quickly pulled away from her.

After coughing up the water she had accidentally swallowed a few times, Lilith slowly opened her eyes and glanced around.

“Gasp, cough, gasp…. What, what…?”

The last thing she remembered was the view beneath the deep lake, now nowhere to be seen, with the blue sky above and the gaze of several faces surrounding her.

And only after hearing Serista’s words did Lilith finally realize that she had died and come back to life.

“She, she’s alive! Her heart is beating properly!”

“She’s alive! It’s a miracle by the hero!!”

“Lilith, how is your body feeling? Are you too cold or anything like that…?”

Amidst the commotion surrounding her, it was difficult for Lilith to easily guess what had happened while she was unconscious.

Nevertheless, realizing that she had died and come back to life, Lilith could only mutter a single word to herself in a daze.

“…I’m alive.”