Chapter 123: Is A Core Worth More Than Kindness?

The three of them got to him at the same time and none of them touched him.

That was the thing Theo noticed first, sitting in the ash with his helm off and his cheekbone in four pieces. Yura came in with the spear still in her fist. Sivvy came in crying and did not stop. Bethe came in last and slowest and got down on her knees at his side.

And all three of them stopped a foot short and put their hands behind their backs.

’Ah. They think I’m going to hit them.’

He put both palms flat on his own knees where they could see them, and left them there, and did not move.

"I’m not going to do anything."

Nobody answered him.

"As you can see... given my condition, hitting you would be... dissatisfying."

He tipped his head at the pile of ash where the Warden had been.

"Also I’m going to be sick in about a minute and I’d rather have witnesses."

Sivvy laughed, which came out of her as a horrible wet noise, and after that they came the rest of the way.

With a murky voice, she bowed her head.

"Thank you! Thank you!"

She was the only one that did. The other two kept looking from the ash to Theo and back again, the way people look when they are waiting to be told the thing has not actually happened.

The panel had been sitting there since he sat down.

[Cinderfall Warden — defeated]

[You can harvest Warden Core]

[Dungeon Reset Time will start after Warden Core has been harvested]

Theo made Yura tell him what that meant. It was his first time in a Dungeon, and she had been doing this a good while longer than he had.

"You put your hand in the pile."

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

She had crouched at the edge of the ash and she would not put her own hand anywhere near it.

"It knows whose kill it was. It won’t come to me and it won’t come to her, and if you’re wondering whether anyone’s ever tried, Donzo tried on his fourth."

’...Right.’

Theo got up on the second attempt and walked over and put his hand into the pile up to the wrist.

Something came into it that was warm and smooth and heavier than a thing that size had any right to be, and when he pulled it out it was a smoky orange stone about the size of a fist, and there was a slow white light going round inside it in no particular hurry.

[Warden Core — Cinderfall]

[Tier: C]

Bethe made a sound.

Theo turned it over in his fingers.

"What’s it worth?"

"...You don’t know."

"No, I don’t."

Yura wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and told him, carefully.

"Eight hundred gold at the Hall counter. On a bad week."

Theo’s hand stopped.

’Eight hundred. That’s eight hundred thousand dollars for one stone.’

He turned it once more in the light and could not make his face do anything sensible.

’Odette redid the whole kitchen at the lake house for four.’

Behind him, the Cinderfall changed.

The dusk went up half a shade, and somewhere out past the standing timber a wolf that had not existed four seconds ago put its foot in the ash and started walking, and Yura had them all moving before Theo had finished putting the core in the Coffer.

"Reset. Now. It’s slow for the first hour and then it isn’t."

They went out through four levels with Theo doing none of the carrying, which he hated.

Yura hauled the last of the Dires out on a line and kept to the left of the group. Sivvy had the rest of them packaged and roped and went on ahead of everyone, pulling her weight and a good deal more of it than her size promised.

Bethe came behind with Donzo on a drag-sled Yura had built in nine minutes out of two shortbows, a coil of climbing line and the man’s own coat.

"I can easily carry these things..."

They refused.

Bethe kept her eyes on the sled rope.

"He makes us do this all the time, it’s fine. We owe this to you."

Sivvy nodded at that, hard, her face still wet.

"Bethe is right, you saved us. And we don’t deserve it."

"We are sorry."

They soon came out of the ring of grey stone at half past four with the sun still up over the field.

Theo stood in it for a while.

’A sun. I’ve almost forgotten what one of those looks like.’

Then he sat down on the grass at the foot of the gate, and Bethe sat down about four feet away from him with her back against the stone, and neither of them said anything for a bit.

Eventually he put his hand out, palm up.

"Give it here."

Bethe put her left hand in his without asking what for, which he thought about later.

He turned it over twice in the daylight.

It was bad. The two middle knuckles had gone back together at an angle a hand does not go, and there was a lump on the back of it where the bone had built up round the break and kept building, and the little finger did not come in with the others when she made a fist. She could hold a thing. She could not pull anything.

’Attendant’s Hands is going to tell me exactly what’s wrong with this and it is not going to be able to do one thing about it.’

He opened the eyes anyway.

[Condition: Fracture of the second and third metacarpal, healed in malunion]

[Age of injury: three months]

[Note: Cannot be corrected without re-fracture]

Theo shut them.

"Bethe."

She looked up at him, pale.

He gave her the hand back, carefully, the way you give somebody back something breakable.

"You should go see a physician."

Bethe looked at the grass and let out a dry chuckle.

"How would I be able to afford that? Getting healed in the Tower is freaking expensive, I have a family outside, I need to earn enough gold to take to them, I can’t spend it all on a physician."

Theo filed that away. Bethe was a Climber, the same as him.

’Shouldn’t there be a way to tell a Climber from a Towerian...’

He sighed, brought the core back out and held it out to the three of them.

They moved back before he had it all the way out of the Coffer, all three at once.

Yura exclaimed.

"What?!"

"Are you insane? You can’t do that?!"

Sivvy pushed Theo’s hands back at him, and Bethe kept blinking at him like he had shaken a few bolts loose in his head.

"Even though we are in a desperate situation, we will not rob you of your hard earned reward. You deserve that."

Theo sighed.

"Are you saying that eight hundred thousand dollars isn’t going to do you more good? You don’t deserve it?"

Yura frowned at him, straight on.

"Listen, if you go around giving things worth eight hundred thousand dollars like that to people, just because you feel bad for them, you would be taken advantage of."

She threw a glance at the silent Donzo, propped behind a tree.

"There are people in this place who are even worse than him, their deeds would make him seem righteous. So, don’t do that again."

She then knelt down and properly bowed towards Theo.

"Thank you for helping us, that’s enough."

Before Theo could say anything, she gave the other girls some look, and they bowed as well, and got up, and hauled Donzo away across the field while Theo went on staring after them, blinking.

’I am doing it because, I don’t min... I have a lot of money already, fools.’

He sighed.