Unwanted Undead Adventurer - Episode 29

My body feels a bit heavy. I feel strange… Wait, what happened to me? When did I fall asleep…?

After thinking all of this, my consciousness gradually awakens. I feel the light behind my eyelids, and then open my eyes.

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“…Rentt, are you awake?”

I’m greeted with the sight of the ceiling of Lorraine’s house, which I entered without permission. Then, I hear her voice… Oh, that’s right, I think to myself as flashbacks of what happened pass through my mind. After grasping the current situation to some extent, I open my mouth.

“Ah… I’m sorry… My head is pretty messed up…”

“No, it’s nothing to be concerned about. But I’ll accept your apology. Your condition is more important. Now… Are you being controlled by something strange? Do you have any strange urges?” Lorraine asks me.

I shake my head. I don’t feel anything in particular. No, the smell of blood in the room is somewhat appetizing, but the intense craving that I had at the time, as if I saw red, is gone now.

Lorraine nods at me, puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “I see… Then it’s fine. And, again, don’t worry about it. It was an unfortunate accident. That’s how I’m going to treat it… And how much do you remember?”

Lorraine holds out her hand to stop me from trying to apologize again. I’m sure she knows that if she doesn’t say that, I’ll keep apologizing. I feel a little embarrassed by the fact that she seems to understand my heart as if we’ve friends for a long time, but at times like this, I’m grateful. There’s no need for me and Lorraine to hold back with each other. So, I decide to take her words at face value and not worry about it too much. Of course, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able completely forget about it right now, but… time will take care of that.

For now, I’ll answer Lorraine’s question. It was ‘how much do I remember,’ right? What does that question mean? I remember that I saw Lorraine, immediately saw red… and then attacked her. And there was… well, what was it…?

It’s no good. I can’t remember much. I’m not sure if it’s because I was obsessed or because I was too worked up, but I felt like I was losing my grip on things. I couldn’t make any kind of rational judgment.

When I tell that to Lorraine, she nods her head in agreement.

“I thought it would be something like that. It’s also something that I expected to happen to some extent in the first place. It wasn’t much of a surprise, so I could handle it.”

When I found myself lying on the couch like this, I had a pretty good idea of what happened, but when I ask Lorraine to explain again, she says, “It’s not that long of a story. It’s just that you came home and suddenly attacked me, so I just blew you away with magic. You were a good target. Though it probably wouldn’t have hit if you were acting normally…”

Is that so? Lorraine is quite capable with magic. I don’t know about in the past, but now, she can easily explore the labyrinth alone. I don’t think I can easily avoid her magic.

I say this, and she responds, “If I was perfect, maybe. I was panicking as it was. Usually, my strategy is to not get too close when facing a monster and make sure to crush it from a long distance. It was difficult to choose the right spell when you were so close. The one I hit you with was painstaking to measure. I decreased the power of the blow by compressing it with a small amount of magical power… Well, it looks like it worked well.”

She seems to be upset. Her face looks calm all the time, so she doesn’t look that upset, but if her acquaintance suddenly rampages, she may not be the same as usual.

“…Come to think of it, are there any problems with your body? I adjusted the power, but I rarely hold back… Do you have any serious wounds?” she says anxiously.

After being asked this, I check my body movements again, but there seems to be no problem. Rather, I feel like I’m in good shape. When I say that, Lorraine seems relieved.

“I’m glad to hear that. But even so, I’m sure you’re still recovering. You should rest for the time being. I have to clean up my room for now…!”

Lorraine looks around at the mess in her room, which is even more cluttered with furniture and books than usual, and tries to stand up. But she stumbles back, holding her shoulder and frowning. I’m not so blind as to not know what it is. I’m sure it’s a wound I gave her. I get up and support her body.

“…Oops, sorry, Rentt,” Lorraine says, immediately pulling away and trying to stand on her own.

“Hey, let me see…” I say, shifting the robe that covers her shoulder.

There’s a bandage carelessly wrapped around her shoulder, and blood is seeping out. It’s obvious that she hasn’t been properly treated. I ask her why she hasn’t been to a clinic.

“If I show them this wound, they’ll ask me how I got it. I’ll make a recovery potion later. Yesterday, the stock was sold to the potion shop, and unfortunately, they’re out of it… I’m sure I can make enough to heal this wound in no time…” she says, trying to give priority to tidying up.

I stop her and say, “Let me do it.”

I mean treatment, of course. I have holy energy. I should be able to take care of a wound like this without a recovery potion.

Lorraine seems to understand this, but hesitantly says, “But, you, your body is…”

She seems to be saying this because she’s worried that I might not be in top form. But that isn’t the point. It’s more important to heal Lorraine’s wounds.

In the first place, she says that she can be healed with a recovery potion, but that is said to be prone to scarring depending on the extent of the wound and how it joins together. There is no doubt that the injury itself will heal, but it is not uncommon for cheap products to subtly change the color of the skin and make it stand out, and female adventurers tend to try to use high-quality products even if they are expensive.

Lorraine doesn’t care about such things, so if she’s going to make her own potion to heal herself, she’s probably going to mix it indifferently with the intention of just letting it heal. As a result, she might end up with a scar. Because of me. I feel guilty about that.

So I put my hand on Lorraine’s shoulder, and she accepts my treatment with a look that says, “It can’t be helped.”

“…I’ve never had a holy treatment before, but… it’s comfortable. It’s warm…”

I’ve never healed my own wounds, so I don’t know what it feels like, but I’m glad it doesn’t hurt. My teeth marks were left on Lorraine’s shoulder along with a violent wound that was probably bitten off, and the recovery potion would still have left a scar. Little by little, due to the fact that I’m emitting quite a bit of holy energy, the wound on her shoulder heals, restored to a pure white and smooth state, just like the skin around it.

Then, when she’s sure that the wound is completely gone, she touches it as if caressing it. I ask if there’s any pain, and Lorraine says, “There’s no pain at all. It seems that divine healing arts are very powerful…”

And then, slightly disappointed, she whispers, “I can’t even call that a scar…”

When I tilt my head, Lorraine shakes her head.

“No, it’s nothing…”

She looks at me as if she noticed something.

Then, Lorraine says, “Hey, Rentt… hasn’t that mask moved a bit?”