I Was Reincarnated as a Mob Noble, and I Swear I'll Protect the Villainess Who Got Married Off to Me No Matter What ~To Dodge Our Total Downfall, I Went All Out Training My Trash Skill [Super Recovery] Through Crazy Hard Work, and Before I Knew It, I Could Totally Wreck the Game Protagonist Who Condemned My Wife Easily - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: I Used Heal to Save the Villainess and Dealt Massive Damage to the Saintess’s Minion

“Wha…”

Her sudden confession caught me totally off guard.

W-wait, what does that even mean?

My whole body heated up, and I couldn’t get any words out.

I just kept staring at Valeria like an idiot, and then…

“…Huh? Your magic power’s already overflowing out of your body?”

Valeria dropped the hand that was covering her face and stared wide-eyed.

“Zenon, isn’t your max 【Magic Power】MP way too low no matter how you look at it?”

Hey, hey, come on—calling me out like that right away!?

I was literally just thinking how cute she is, y’know.

“I-It’s not like I had a choice… I lived my whole life with zero connection to magic, and when I got the 【Super Recovery】 skill, my max MP was literally zero.”

“Huh…?”

Valeria looked completely floored.

“Wait a sec—that was just the day before yesterday, right? You’re telling me you raised your MP by 10 whole points in less than two days?”

“Yeah. Now you get why I’m in such a rush, right? I got stuck with a magic-type skill, but I can still only use Heal once… ugh, it’s honestly pathetic.”

I just laid it all out without trying to sugarcoat anything.

In the game, the protagonist Saintess Alicia started with a crazy amount of MP and could spam Heal like it was nothing.

Well, yeah, I guess there’s a huge gap in magical talent between a saintess and a background noble like me.

“T-that’s… impossible growth speed.”

“Impossible?”

I tilted my head.

“Between that swordsmanship where you beat Gawain earlier and now this, you’re basically cheating at both sword and magic, aren’t you?”

“Huh?”

Coming from Valeria—the magic genius—that compliment was so unexpected it threw me.

In the otome game ‘KimiKoi,’ there wasn’t a single character who started with 0 MP.

Even the sword-user types had around 30 MP at the start. The mage types grew their MP at about the same speed I was doing now.

Wait… but all those guys were main characters—total prodigies—so maybe they’re not a fair comparison.

“Exactly. Just like how a bow becomes useless once you run out of arrows, how much MP you have is the biggest factor in deciding a mage’s rank.”

Same logic as the game guides. Once a magic-user runs out of MP, they’re basically just a regular person.

“…So by that logic, right now I’m total trash, huh?”

“Pretty much. But who knows what things’ll look like a few years from now?”

Valeria’s expression was dead serious. Her eyes were full of expectation.

Hearing that didn’t feel bad at all. It actually gave me some hope.

“Then we gotta make sure I actually live long enough to see those few years. My MP’s recovered now—can you start training me right away?”

“Are you serious? I told you—one full day of doing absolutely nothing but sleeping, remember?”

Valeria puffed out her cheeks and scolded me.

“I know, but the enemy isn’t gonna wait around…”

More than anything, I really wanted to heal Valeria as soon as possible.

Her complexion looked—maybe just a little, but noticeably—worse than before.

That didn’t make sense. She hadn’t used any of her 【Necromancer】 skill magic at all.

Gawain—who’d been both her bodyguard and coachman—had already been sent back to the otherworld where the dead rest, the Netherworld, and released from service.

A 【Necromancer】 can summon and control undead whenever they need to.

The 80 Schwarz Ritter who’d been turned into undead were just quietly waiting for their master’s call right now. Valeria wasn’t having her life force drained by them at the moment.

She’d eaten, too—her condition should’ve been improving…

“I’ll keep holding your hand like this, so just go to sleep already.”

Her gentle tone actually surprised me a bit.

But since Valeria’s death was already set in the game scenario, I couldn’t afford to just relax and let things happen.

She dies in this war, here in this territory.

I didn’t know exactly when or how, though.

Maybe the price of being a 【Necromancer】 was eating away at her body even deeper than I’d thought.

“But…”

Even though I didn’t want to, my eyelids suddenly got super heavy.

Oh crap, is this…?

“It’s my 【Sleep】 spell. Good night, Zenon.”

Valeria gave me this sad, shadowy smile.

“…Y-you…”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want anyone else pushing themselves crazy for my sake anymore.”

I’d heard a little about it earlier—how she was really torn up about Gawain and the others getting killed while trying to protect her.

Gawain had been poisoned, but he still fought to the very end to shield his master before he died.

I squeezed the hand I still had linked with hers.

Just in case—just in case—she disappeared somewhere while I was asleep.

“Don’t worry. I promised, didn’t I? I’m staying right by your side.”

“…It’s a promise.”

We renewed the promise together, and right then my consciousness melted into darkness.

※※※※※※

Next morning when I woke up, strength was surging through my whole body and I felt shockingly refreshed.

Guess I really passed out hard. Haven’t had a morning this comfortable in forever.

Wait… huh? Why’s the blanket so heavy?

Then I realized something warm and soft was draped all over me, making it kinda hard to breathe. I pushed it off with some force and—

“V-Valeria…!?”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

The one sleeping on top of me was Valeria.

Her fairy-beautiful face was right there, super close.

“H-hey, you—!”

Was I seriously sleeping while hugging her!?

My brain almost short-circuited from the rush, but then I immediately noticed something was seriously wrong with her.

“Hey, what’s wrong!?”

All the color had drained from Valeria’s face—her condition looked several times worse than yesterday.

No… this was straight-up a deathly look.

I’d seen way too many comrades die, so I could tell right away—she was on the verge of death.

Even though I’d made her rest without using any 【Necromancer】 skill magic, how was this happening?

“Damn it, if I’d just…!”

I should’ve forced a Heal on her yesterday no matter what.

I grit my teeth in frustration—and that’s when I noticed a faint trickle of magic power was still flowing into me through our joined hands.

“…No way. Were you pouring magic into me the whole night?”

Valeria had said sleeping with your magic fully topped up was the absolute best treatment for Magic Power Deficiency Syndrome.

My crazy-good condition right now was probably thanks to that.

“You idiot… put yourself first for once…!”

I unleashed 【Miracle of Healing】 with everything I had.

“Heal!”

A blinding light burst from my hand and gently wrapped around Valeria.

“You’re gonna clear your name and go back home, right!? Come back, Valeria!”

Heal was the most basic recovery magic there was.

It had worked on Felix’s injuries, but I was honestly worried whether one shot could pull someone back from the brink like this.

And then…

Color slowly came back to Valeria’s deathly-pale face.

“Zenon…?”

Her amethyst eyes fluttered open wide.

“No way… ah, it’s warm…”

“I promised, didn’t I? I said I’d definitely heal your body.”

I couldn’t help it—my eyes got hot.

For a second I’d seriously panicked, thinking it was already too late.

“This is the saintess’s 【Miracle of Healing】…? Ah, you really are…”

Valeria’s face gradually filled with joy and deep emotion.

“…You’re exactly the person I thought you were.”

Right when our eyes locked—

A pitch-black shadow rose up from her body.

It spread this sinister, noxious miasma as it took solid form, then let out an agonized scream.

“Ughoooohhh!?”

“What the…!?”

We both stared up in shock at the monster.

What appeared was a translucent ghost-type monster with a skull for a face.

I remembered it from the game. No doubt about it.

“…Th-that’s… a 【Soul Eater】!?”

No way—this thing was an S-rank undead monster.

Its combat power was equal to about 5,000 regular soldiers. A single one could take down a small fortress.

Worst of all, it had complete resistance to physical attacks—so with no mages left in this castle, the remaining troops had zero way to fight it.

If this thing rampaged, the main castle would get wiped out. The Greivan border territory would be finished before the Imperial army even launched their full attack…

For a second I thought maybe it was one of Valeria’s controlled undead, but no—her face was frozen in pure horror.

“…Th-this… from back then. It was possessing me this whole time!?”

“Back then?”

“The minion of the saintess that even all the undead Schwarz Ritter together couldn’t defeat!”

What…!?

“You… just a little more and I could’ve snuffed out that little girl’s life… What did you do to me, brat!?”

The Soul Eater glared at me with eyes like burning coals.

Its translucent body was scorched and sizzling from the holy light of the Heal.

Right—【Miracle of Healing】, the kind the saintess uses, also had a purifying effect on undead. Basically their natural enemy.

“N-no way… that just now… it can’t be!”