Night falls on the Ruined City.
The clinic, a stark contrast to its daytime bustle, was enveloped in a deep, forest-like silence.
“Can’t sleep, Zenos?”
As I was spacing out at the dining table, an elven girl holding a pillow stood behind me.
“You’re still up, Lily?”
“Lily was sleeping. But when I woke up, it was bright over here.”
“Ah, sorry. I’ll be going to bed soon.”
“Do you want some tea?”
“Sure, I’ll have some.”
Drinking the tea Lily brewed warmed me from the pit of my stomach.
“…How is it?”
“It’s delicious as always, thank you.”
When I answered, placing the cup down, Lily came around behind me.
A small hand gently rested on my head, and she started patting me comfortingly.
“…What’s up?”
“When Lily can’t sleep, Zenos pats me, so I’m returning the favor.”
Zenos smiled faintly.
“That helps. Thanks to you, I think I can sleep well.”
“Mufu.”
Lily hummed contentedly, but soon she began to breathe softly, asleep while leaning against Zenos.
Smiling wryly, Zenos shrugged and carried Lily to her bedroom.
Not wanting to waste it, I returned to the dining table to finish the leftover tea, and found Wraith sitting there with her legs crossed.
“Can’t sleep, Zenos?”
“What are you doing up, Camilla?”
“There were three cups prepared. I had no choice but to drink.”
“Lily is a thoughtful one.”
As Zenos took a seat, Camilla lifted her teacup and said,
“Are you unable to sleep because you were thinking about your former party?”
“What, are you worried about me?”
“N-No, it’s not like that! It’s just that I’m bored at night, so I just happened to feel like I could keep you company for a bit.”
“You’re a good person after all, Camilla.”
“D-Don’t tease a Wraith. If that’s the case, then this conversation is over.”
“Sorry. I can’t finish it all by myself, so keep me company.”
“W-Well, if you insist that much, I don’t mind keeping you company.”
Camilla, who had half-risen, sat back down.
Zenos poured the remaining tea from the pot.
“I wasn’t thinking about my former party. I’ve been busy since opening the clinic, and honestly, I’d completely forgotten about Aston.”
So, when I saw him again, I was genuinely surprised, to be honest.
However, Zenos added.
“Now, I’m remembering all the awful things he did to me, and I regret not punching him at least once.”
“Kukuku, a frank opinion.”
Shoulders shaking slightly, Camilla brought the tea to her lips.
“A human’s life is short and fleeting. It’s best to repay debts while you can.”
“…You’re right.”
Zenos nodded and looked at his own hands.
There are also debts that can no longer be repaid.
Slowly, Zenos raised his head.
“Maybe it’s because I saw Aston after so long, but I was remembering the old days, before I even joined a party.”
“You mean when you were in the slums?”
“Yeah.”
Camilla stopped drinking her tea.
“Zenos, I heard you learned healing magic when you were in the slums. How did you do it?”
“How, you ask…”
Zenos folded his arms and looked up at the ceiling.
“I was in an orphanage in the slums, and looking back, it was a pretty terrible place.”
In the slums, many people collapsed and died every day.
The orphanage instructed the children to steal anything of value from those corpses.
“I hated that, so I would bury the bodies without stealing anything and return, and I was often beaten for it.”
“Leaving corpses unattended can cause infectious diseases. Your actions were correct.”
“I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I just thought it was cruel to be robbed on top of dying, so I buried them so no one else could steal from them.”
The sight of the collapsed people was like looking at my own future.
But even then, the bodies were often dug up.
“So, as a child, I thought innocently, ‘Then can’t I bring them back to life?’”
“…!”
Camilla’s eyes widened, and she spilled her tea.
“T-That’s forbidden magic!”
“Apparently. I didn’t know that back then, so I desperately tried to revive them every day.”
I would hold my hand over the body and imagine regeneration.
Of course, nothing would happen.
So, I observed the bodies carefully.
The structure of the skin.
The way the muscles attached.
The paths of the blood vessels and nerves.
The arrangement of the internal organs.
Meticulously, one by one, until I could clearly reproduce the body’s structure in my mind.
“…”
Camilla thought she heard the sound of her own throat gulping.
In the slums, many races lived and died.
In other words, Zenos had learned the body structure of every race through firsthand experience.
How many healers in the world could claim to have had such experience?
“…That’s incredible.”
“Did you say something?”
“It’s nothing.”
Zenos tilted his head slightly and continued.
“At first, there was no reaction, but as I continued every day, for years, a white light began to surround the body.”
I gradually felt a response and thought I might succeed this time.
“But on that day, while I was working on resuscitation, I was hit hard on the head from behind.”
When I looked back, a man with an unkempt beard, wearing a black cloak, was glaring at me with a terrifying expression.
The man said this:
“Never use that power on the dead. You should use it on the living.”
“…Is that the healer you met in the slums?”
“Yeah. But I only saw him use healing magic once.”
In the end, I never even knew his real name.
“But he taught me a lot of things I wouldn’t have known in the narrow world of the slums. He was shady, but he was an amazing person.”
When I asked him what to call him, he laughed and said, “You can call me ‘Master’.”
“Master had a lot of catchphrases. One I often heard was, ‘A healer who heals injuries is third-rate, one who heals people is second-rate, and one who corrects the world is first-rate.’”
Zenos put down his cup and picked up the pot.
This seemed to be the last cup.
“I wonder if I’ve at least become third-rate. I sometimes think of my Master.”
Because I’ll never be able to see him again.
As I muttered that, I thought I saw the image of my Master reflected for a moment on the surface of the swaying cup.
“Sorry for boring you with my story.”
“No, it was a good way to kill time.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Zenos smiled lightly, and Camilla held the cup with both hands and said reflectively.
“Although it’s different from resuscitation magic, in my time, there was magic to create artificial life, golems.”
“300 years ago. When the Demon King was still alive.”
In the past, the continent to the south across the great sea was territory ruled by the Demon King.
For a long time, humans and demons were mutually inviolable, but about 400 years ago, the demons invaded human territory. The battle between the two sides was fierce, and by the time the Demon King was destroyed, nearly 100 years had passed since the start of the war.
“It’s now a lost dark magic used by the demons. Golems are made by gathering materials such as carbon and sulfur around a special magic stone core.”
“Oh.”
“Feeling no pain and simply carrying out orders silently, golems were truly troublesome opponents.”
“What were you doing 300 years ago, Camilla?”
“I’ve long forgotten about something so long ago.”
“You listen to my story, but you don’t talk about yourself.”
Just as I was thinking of ending the conversation, I heard a sound in the distance.
Carried on the wind, sounds like something was being destroyed echoed in succession, and I could hear voices like screams.
“…What was that?”
“It seemed to come from the direction of the slums.”
Camilla’s body floated up and passed through the ceiling boards.
She must be going up to the roof to check.
Camilla soon returned, with the most surprised expression I had ever seen her make, and said,
“I can’t believe it… The golems we just talked about are rampaging in the slums!”