Chapter 61: Reunion

Chapter 61: Chapter 61: Reunion

Allan’s fingers sank into the cold, wet mud. He locked his arms and tried to push his chest off the ground.

"That... fucking hurts," he grunted.

The arrow in his back grated against bone. He could feel it deep inside, and the pain was so fierce that white heat flooded his vision. He tried to push up anyway, but his left arm folded under him and he went down again, cheek pressed to the dirt, tasting his own blood and mud.

"Come on, Allan, get up. You don’t want to die here," he told himself. He tried again, but his hands skidded out from under him on the slick ground and he slumped back into the mud.

Around him, the den was coming apart. A guard’s body crashed through a wooden partition in a spray of splinters, Diva’s handiwork. Another man was crushed under a falling beam, his scream cut short. Smoke rolled low across the floor. Through the haze, Allan saw the silver-marked child being carried toward the wider exit, small limbs dangling, the bright line along the boy’s jaw glowing like a brand.

He couldn’t tell whether the person carrying the boy was a cultist or a guard. Everything kept swimming.

"Wait!" he called. "He’s just a child."

He clawed forward. Half a meter. Then a few more hand-spans. His side wound reopened, blood soaking through, and then his body simply stopped obeying him. The last of his strength drained out of his shoulders. He sank, forehead against the mud, breath coming in shallow, useless pulls.

"Shit... SHIT!"

The failure hurt worse than any of his wounds. He’d had the boy. He’d had the chance, and his own body had refused him. Bitter self-blame sank into his chest as the child disappeared into the dark.

Boots stopped beside his head. A gloved hand slid under his good shoulder. Through his fading sight, Allan caught the edge of a dark cloak and, stitched near the collar, a small, precise insignia. The Duke’s. Recognition flickered. Someone had been watching him longer than he’d realized.

That son of a gun, Allan thought, a breath away from blacking out.

Diva burst out of the smoke. Her sword was at the man’s throat before he could even get Allan off the ground. The steel didn’t tremble. Her eyes were still wild from the berserk state, pupils blown wide, breath ragged. The agent froze, both hands in plain sight, and kept his voice low and careful.

"Hey, hey, slow down," he said. "I’m with him."

Allan’s voice was barely more than breath. "Diva."

She didn’t move.

He forced out the next words through clenched teeth. "If he wanted me dead, he’d have just waited."

For three long seconds, the blade stayed where it was. Then, slowly, it dropped. Diva’s gaze flicked to Allan’s blood-soaked back, then to the agent, and she stepped aside.

"Make sure he’s safe. If he isn’t, I’ll come for you."

The man gulped, nodded, and hoisted Allan up. Every step sent fresh agony through the arrow wound. Behind them, the den and everything in it kept burning and collapsing. Ahead, the night air smelled of smoke and carried the sound of distant shouting.

Allan looked back at the burning den. A part of him couldn’t shake the thought that if this could have been stopped, so many people would still be alive.

That child.

He didn’t know whether he’d done the right thing tonight. The one thing he was sure of was that Diva’s place in the cult was secure now. Still, what she’d told him wouldn’t stop echoing in his head.

The cult was divided. Kael, an S-rank, was literally on the run. Allan had wanted to smile the whole time she was telling him.

If the dragon’s right, everything else gets easy. And if I get my hands on that drug they’ve been using to hurt the nobles, it gets easier still. He smiled at the thought, and then he finally passed out.

The agent carrying him couldn’t help being creeped out. A man half dead, and smiling.

Four hours later

Allan came to with the carriage rocking beneath him and the wood creaking in a steady rhythm. He cracked his eyes open and winced as the morning sun blasted straight into them.

The sharp pain had dulled when he reached back to feel his wound. The arrow was gone, and clean bandages wrapped his torso, but the deep ache underneath hadn’t eased at all.

The Duke’s agent sat across from him, his face tight. "Finally, Lord Oakwood. I was afraid you’d never open your eyes."

Allan started to push himself upright and looked out the window. They were already close to the capital.

"Me... too," he rasped, his mouth dry. His back gave out halfway up, and the grunt he couldn’t hold in gave him away.

"Please, Lord Oakwood, don’t move. You’re still badly injured."

The agent uncorked a high-grade healing potion and poured it over the wound. It hissed against the skin, then did almost nothing. A soft healing light followed, standard adventurer magic, but the flesh barely responded.

The agent’s expression shifted from professional concern to open unease. Allan watched him through half-closed eyes. "You’ve seen wounds like this before?"

The man hesitated, eyes sliding away. "Not like this." He wouldn’t say more. His orders wouldn’t let him.

Allan let out a dry, humorless breath. "Apparently my body’s decided it doesn’t want to work properly anymore."

The agent didn’t smile. Couldn’t. Allan, though, just smiled at that grim face, and the silence that followed was heavier than any lecture.

He turned toward the window, his mind already running the numbers with cold clarity. He couldn’t survive another fight in this condition. He knew it, and so did the man across from him.

I need to up my vitality.

He thought through the missions he knew: saving the fairy caged on the dragon’s mountain, finding the golden apple in the Garden of Eden. There were plenty of options, but he didn’t want to go himself. Back in the game, he’d let one of the villainesses he’d trained fetch the golden apple, and it had paid off tenfold.

Now he’d do the same, only this time he knew how to get 100x. Last time he’d sent someone similar to Diva. He should have sent someone closer to that class.

...Bela.

It was her time to shine. Whatever was wrong with him had to be fixed, and he had to climb higher, fast, before the next blade found him. The mystery of the wound that wouldn’t heal had stopped being academic. It was personal now, and urgent.

The carriage rolled through the early-morning streets of the capital. Allan’s fingers found the three folded letters still tucked in his inner pocket, their edges gone soft from being carried.

He unfolded them one at a time in the thin light. Amelia’s handwriting was precise and unmistakably possessive. Lira’s lines were short and uneven, the way they always were when she struggled to say what she felt. Seris wrote in a clean, practical hand. The words themselves were ordinary: worry, waiting, the small details of home. Even so, they took the edge off the cold that had settled in his bones.

For the first time since the den, he smiled and meant it. It was a small, tired thing. He pictured blankets, quiet voices, the simple fact of not being alone.

The carriage stopped.

Allan climbed down carefully, grunting with every step and refusing the agent’s hand.

"My lord, the Duke awaits your—"

Allan cut him off with a wave and limped away toward what he was supposed to call home.

In time, the temporary house came into view. Servants and maids were drifting back from the holiday he’d ordered, their voices low, their faces relieved to see him on his feet. He reached for the door, expecting the girls to be waiting on the other side. His girls.

But it was the Countess who opened it.

She studied him in silence for a moment, then the corner of her mouth curved. "You look horrible."

She snapped her fingers once. Ten priests and ten healers filed in as though they’d been waiting in the next room, and rare potions appeared on the table in neat rows. No explanation was offered, and none was needed.

"Lovely to see you here, my lady," Allan said, lowering himself onto the sofa near her. "A widow showing up at a man’s house unannounced. Surely you’ve thought about what people will say."

She nodded. "We nobles have too much free time. The ones who want to talk will talk no matter what, so why bother?"

Allan took a bottle of wine from the table and pulled the cork. "Cheers to that," he said, and gulped it down like water.

The Countess gestured toward the healers and priests, and they set to work.

The first potion went on. Nothing. A coordinated healing spell washed over him next, and still nothing. A second attempt barely did more. Even the Countess’s composed face tightened, just slightly.

Then one of the senior healers changed tack. The flesh around the arrow wound darkened and shifted, almost writhing, and then, slowly, it began to close. Allan felt the difference at once: the constant, grinding pain eased. He met the Countess’s eyes. She had known he was coming. That meant her network wasn’t just wide. It could be faster and deeper than the Duke’s.

"So, my lady, if I may ask, why are you here, taking such good care of me?"

She answered with a soft, dangerous smile. "Because the Duke would prefer you indebted to him." She let that hang for a moment. "I’m no different. Just better informed."

With that, she stood. On her way past, she couldn’t resist patting his head once, a gesture both affectionate and proprietary, and announced that the entire medical team now belonged to him. Then she turned to leave.

"Bye-bye, Lord Oakwood. Do get well soon."

Allan lifted the bottle in a lazy salute and went back to drinking while the healers worked.

Outside, a second carriage rolled into the courtyard. Lira stepped down first, her expression tightly controlled.

Amelia spotted the Countess on her way out and froze for half a heartbeat before bowing deeply. Seris and Bela followed her lead an instant later, the politics of the moment pressing down on all three of them.

The Countess’s earlier warmth had vanished. She stopped, glanced over the four women, said nothing, and walked off a moment later. Amelia let out a hard breath that was almost a laugh, pure relief.

"What was she even doing here?"

Seris turned to her. "Who is she?"

"Nobody. She’s just bad news."

"Then why was she in the house?"

Amelia didn’t answer.

They went inside. The room was still crowded with healers. The four women took him in at once: hurt, surrounded, but alive. Lira’s eyes went straight to the blood on his bandages. For a moment, the knot in Allan’s chest loosened.

Then a senior priest stepped quietly to his side and spoke low enough that only Allan could hear. "Baron, may I ask where you got this injury?"

Allan told him.

The priest went pale. "That’s impossible," he whispered. "That wound shouldn’t have responded to healing at all."

"Allan!" Lira shouted. "What the hell happened to you this time?"