Ch. 38

"Haha... I called you several times, but it seemed you couldn't hear me."

"Do you know that if I so much as tap one of the needles stuck in your body right now, you'll be crippled for life?"

"...Ah, so those were extremely dangerous needles?"

"That's right. So shut up and stay still, got it? Unless you want to be forced into half-body paralysis?"

"...Yes."

"But why did you call me?"

"Because those dangerous needles you just mentioned keep coming out."

"What?"

"The needles keep coming out, I said."

While she'd been muttering over her reagent bottles, the needles that had been stuck in my body were slowly working their way out as though something were pushing them.

I'd called her because I was afraid that if they came out and fell to the floor she'd get irritated, but judging by her startled reaction to the needles coming out, this didn't seem to be an ordinary phenomenon.

"You..."

She looked at the needles as if observing them, then suddenly began wearing an expression full of delight.

"What are you?"

"Pardon?"

"What on earth are you?"

"So... what do you mean, what am I?"

"What did you do to your body to make it like this!"

"You'll have to explain in more detail before I can answer anything."

I wondered what in the world this was all about.

In my frustration, I raised my voice and asked her.

At my question, she answered while tapping the needles that were working their way out.

Uh... but didn't she say those were dangerous?

Isn't it wrong to hit them like that?!

"Hey, if I explained these needles to you, could you even understand?"

Oh, that was the first sharp thing she'd said.

At her careless tone, I closed my mouth tightly and simply looked at her.

"A body that rejects mana itself... judging by the reaction, it doesn't seem like you did this. Who on earth made you like this?"

Who could have made me like this?

A woman called a mother whose face I'd never even seen, and a man who wasn't my father, some stranger, I suppose.

"I was just born that way, you could say."

"Are you joking? Do you want to die?"

Hmm, so it really was Aria's reaction that was unusual.

From now on, I should only use this kind of dodge on her.

More to the point, seeing how intensely she was asking, it seemed the information about my body was more valuable to her than I'd expected.

Wait, doesn't this make me Party A?

"If you grant me just one favor, I'll tell you the reason my body ended up like this from A to Z."

"From A to Z...? Then you'll tell me who did it too?!"

As if she had a hole punched in her chin, Winter came up to me and asked while drooling in streams.

When the drool soaked my sleeve, I subtly moved my hand and stepped away from her.

But the one who'd experimented on me by injecting strange chemicals into my body was her, and I had no knowledge whatsoever of such things.

Which meant, in a word, that I had nothing to tell her.

"Yes. I'll tell you everything as a package deal."

But that was something I could manage by making various excuses and dragging out the time.

I didn't know where this place was, but at least Gary would.

I glanced over and looked toward the place where I'd left my uniform, to be precise, at the brooch attached to the uniform.

[Tracking Active]

The brooch, which had still shown the words "Tracking Inactive" when I left the academy, had been showing "Tracking Active" for quite a while now.

It had to be the Tower Master or Gary, who'd realized I was gone, tracking my location.

Thanks to the brooch, it seemed I wouldn't die here, at least.

"What's the favor? Is it the enchantment thing you mentioned earlier?"

"Yes. I need to confirm whether I can be enchanted."

"Fine, I'll do it right now! Hold out your arm!"

As if impatient, she hurriedly pulled a dagger from inside her clothes and began slicing the skin off my forearm just like that.

"Aah! What the... aah! Aaaaagh!"

"Ah, stay still, will you! I need a skin sample to do the enchantment."

"You crazy bitch! Aren't you a quack?! Not even giving a patient anesthesia!"

While I screamed and writhed in pain, she tore off a patch of skin about five centimeters by five and created a blue flame at her fingertip.

Then, without hesitation, she began writing something on the torn-off skin.

If anyone else had done this, I'd have slit their throat first and thought later, but as a great mage, she was different.

Even when she acted this violently, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and endure it.

That was because I'd been hoping that if anyone were to carve an enchantment into my body, it would be her.

Back at the tavern, before coming here, when I'd asked if she knew about enchanting and handed her the research journal, she'd read through hundreds of pages of the research journal in just a few seconds and said she had already tried similar experiments.

Setting aside whether the experiment would succeed here, I liked the fact that she was an experienced hire.

And that wasn't the only thing I liked about her.

I didn't know the exact name of the technique, but her Talent was specialized in repairing collapsing bodies.

If the enchantment caused problems in my body, I figured she'd be able to clean it up most efficiently.

"Hey, I think this will work?"

True to a specialist in human experimentation, Winter seemed to have worked out an estimate from just a small scrap of hide.

"That's good news to hear. But after carving the enchantment, how do I activate it?"

"I don't know."

"...Excuse me?"

"Your body rejects mana, so you'll have to figure it out yourself; why ask me? But what magic should I carve for you? Is there any particular magic you want?"

The magic I wanted...

I'd never really thought about such a thing, but I answered her right away as if I'd already had something in mind.

"Please give me the most flashy, cool, and powerful magic in the world!"

"...Is that really all you want?"

"Yes!"

The problem of whether I'd be able to use it still remained, but just as I'd learned about enchanting, I might find another way someday, so for now the important thing was to borrow the hand of the expert in front of me and have the best possible formula carved in.

"Then try sleeping for a bit."

"...Excuse me?"

"To enchant a body, the skin needs to be softened to some extent, you see. Hmm... ah, you can just go in that tank over there."

When I turned my head, I saw the glass reagent tank I'd been locked in before the regression.

Ah, PTSD hit me in an instant.

"Why aren't you getting in already? Do you want to die?"

"Ah, yes, going. I'm going."

It felt like I was becoming a stuffed doll, so I really didn't want to get in, but with Winter looking ready to kick my backside any moment if I didn't, I had no choice but to grudgingly climb into the reagent tank and close the door.

"Ugh, my head..."

How much time had passed?

I'd lost consciousness after getting into the reagent tank, yet the place where I opened my eyes was on a cold lab table.

Thinking it was so cold, maybe because the table was cold, I turned my head to look for my clothes, and an entire wall had been torn off.

So it wasn't because of the table, it was the cold wind blowing in?

But what on earth was this situation?

Thud! Thud!

I put on the clothes I'd taken off and forced my body, which oddly refused to put any strength into its movements, toward the place where the sound was coming from.

Thanks to the wall that had been torn off entirely, I could see the outside situation at a glance, and as if fierce fighting had taken place while I slept, every tree in the forest within view had been knocked down or set on fire.

I wondered who had done this, but at the same time, I wondered where on earth this place was.

The place we'd teleported to together had been a building lobby, so I'd had no chance to see outside, but if it was surrounded by trees this large, it was definitely not the north, where the academy was.

That was because the north, in the war against the Northern continent, had had everything that could be called mountains, rivers, grass, and trees burned once, and even now, over seventy years later, such a lush forest couldn't have been restored.

So where was this?

That tree was definitely one that grew only in the cold regions of the Northern continent...

That tree was one you'd only see in the south, wasn't it?

A strange forest where trees with entirely different habitats grew all together.

There were a great many varieties of trees, but their one commonality was that they were all herbs mainly used in healing medicines.

"Don't tell me this is... Lazda Garden?"

There were rumors that the Order modified several islands in a special way to grow various plants to supply the medicinal herbs needed for healing.

Outsiders were strictly forbidden from entering, and when I'd visited the Lazda Order before the regression, it had already crumbled so completely that I couldn't verify whether the rumor was true, but seeing it with my own eyes, it was larger in scale than I'd expected.

Then I suddenly became curious who the people were who had smashed this enormous scale to pieces.

If Gary had come, it was more likely he'd have resolved things through talking rather than fighting.

Dragging my heavy body, I barely managed to climb up the tallest of the fallen trees and look around, and found that this was a fairly large island.

And I could see a few groups gathered at the edge of the island.

The moment I thought I wanted to see who they were.

"Ugh!"

A sudden stabbing pain hit my eyes, and my field of vision abruptly narrowed as though I'd put on a telescope.

"What... is this?"

The pain was stronger than I'd expected and I almost closed my eyes without meaning to, but at the faces that came into view, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and keep them open.

The first one I saw was Winter, who had brought me here.

Her being there wasn't strange at all.

But the Tower Master standing on the opposite side from her, as she scowled in fury, was a bit of a surprise.

Gilliam was aiming a long, extended staff at Winter with a calm expression.

I'd noticed that Gary had been tracking my location, but I'd never imagined the Tower Master would come in person for me.

The state of her residence and the forest had probably come from the shock of those two clashing.

But those two weren't the only ones there.

Standing between them as though mediating, there was a woman.

The Saintess of the Lazda Order, Lea Lazda.

She was the only woman on the continent permitted to use "Lazda" as a family name, and it was said the Order revered her like a god.

And yet she was standing alone between those dangerous bombs.

Perhaps because of that, dozens of Order knights standing together in a group a little way from her were stomping the ground, thud! thud!, as if sending a warning to them.

That sound was probably what had woken me.

While I was unconscious, I could roughly guess how the situation had unfolded.

The Tower Master, who'd thought Winter had kidnapped me, had started wreaking havoc here using the location-tracking spell, and since this happened to be Lazda Garden, the Order's territory, the Saintess and the knights had rushed over.

I had no idea how Winter had managed to make her residence inside the Order's territory, but what mattered now was that if this went wrong it could spread into something like a war.

While I pressed down on my eyes, thinking about what to do about this, I suddenly became curious what condition my body was in.

"Status."

[Status] Name: Benjamin 

Age: 18 

Talent: Reader, Editor 

Body: 87(21), Synchronizing... 

Mana: 14 

Status Ailments: Muscle pain, headache, eye transplant side effects, weakened skin, bleeding (ongoing), fatigue (extreme), exhaustion, overload, temporary physical imbalance, drug poisoning...

The status ailments section, cluttered with all sorts of things, caught my eye first, but I decided to think about that in a moment.

First, I could confirm that my Body score had risen greatly.

The increase was smaller compared with before, when a Body score in the 10s had risen to the 100s, but unlike before the regression, when I'd been held and experimented on for nearly a month, it had already gone up by 30 points in no time.

That alone showed how remarkable her reagents were.

Although my body was currently suffering from all sorts of status ailments and the Body score had been docked down to 21, that was a score that would be restored once my body recovered over time, so it didn't matter.

If worse came to worst, I could just receive the Order's divine healing.

But the real problem was the item written among the status ailments, "eye transplant side effects."