NOVPUBThe Morning of the Second Week After My Return from the Battlefield
The funeral for the fallen soldiers began.
A procession of bereaved families, dressed in black, made its way across the battlefield. The sound of priests chanting filled the air, echoing across the cemetery.
The weather remained clear as ever.
Most of the dead could not be recovered, their bodies left in the mud. Some soldiers, intentionally, did not retrieve their comrades’ bodies. It was far better to leave a son whose arms and legs had melted off and been replaced with pig limbs where he fell than to bring him back like that.
For those whose bodies were intact, they were laid to rest in a small pit about two meters wide, their families giving them a final farewell. The rest had their names engraved on a large monument at the center of the cemetery.
The monument for the fallen was thirty meters tall, made from a special type of stone found only in ‘Melasthus,’ a place revered by the Estella Church. This stone had the property of ensuring the names inscribed on it would never fade, no matter how harsh the winds or rains were. It was often referred to as the "Eternal Memory" in the Empire.
With the sound of dwarven hammers and nails, the soldiers’ names were engraved one by one. As black fragments fell, transparent tears dripped down.
I stood closest to the monument, feeling the cold wind. The breeze signaled the beginning of winter.
Grisha, the Saint, wearing black, offered a prayer toward the monument. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, perhaps from lack of sleep.
Rex, wrapped in bandages, had forced himself to come to the cemetery. He held a bouquet of flowers in his hands.
Alter Heindel sat far away on a bench, silently observing the procession of mourners dressed in black.
Lir and I stood there, looking up at the monument in silence.
Many people mourned in silence, showing their respects.
The weather was still clear.
Rex, with his fearsome stamina and recovery, woke up a week after the battle and was discharged. He quickly returned to his hometown to prepare for his officer exam.
Alter, as stubborn as ever, continued with his rigorous rehabilitation. On days when it seemed too hard, Lir and I expressed our concerns that he might never walk again, but he refused to heed such warnings.
Meanwhile, every night, Lir practiced her staff skills in the training hall of the castle. The sound of lightning tearing through the air echoed down the hall, and I didn’t mind the sound at all.
As for me?
I did nothing.
...
Well, I guess I deserved to take a break.
Anyway, the war in Vallerand ended in victory.
Four Great Lords were killed, and the Demon Army lost half its forces. The cries that had echoed across the continent had quieted, and most of the soldiers easily dealt with the unconscious demons and mutants.
The demons, left with only a small portion of their forces, had hidden themselves in the northern lands and showed no signs of coming out, while the grand general of the Allied Forces, the Sword Saint, kept them under surveillance.
For now, the continent was quiet.
The unease and fear in my chest, which I had been suppressing with tea and conversations with Lir, had finally dissipated. I was ready to truly enjoy my rest.
If not now, then when would I waste time being lazy?
"...Ah, it's gone."
I muttered, staring blankly at the wallpaper on the ceiling.
Lately, my hobby had been pressing my eyelids with my fingers and then rolling my eyes to follow the strange afterimages left in the corners of my vision.
That was all I could do with this pathetic body of mine, unable to drink alcohol or coffee.
If my hands were intact, I’d be playing the guitar or pressing piano keys to pass the time.
‘Guess I should fix my hand soon.’
When I first broke my right hand, I thought, "Well, it's fine."
Manipulating bioelectric currents is risky, as I’ve mentioned before. After fighting the Great Lords, I got away with only losing my right hand. It felt like a bargain.
Had I messed up, I could have lost my life instead of just a hand.
‘...It’s only been a few days, but I’ve started to comfort myself.’
As the tension and bloodshed of the battlefield faded and the warmth and leisure of everyday life fully settled in, my broken right hand began to bother me more and more.
First of all, I couldn’t focus on studying.
Normally, it wouldn’t take a second to jot something down, but using my left hand took over five seconds, and even after that, most of the writing was unreadable.
What about changing clothes? The horrific and frustrating feeling of trying to button up a cardigan was indescribable.
And meals were a literal agony.
The food served in the castle was meant to be eaten with a fork and knife, but the problem was, I couldn’t hold both at the same time.
When steak was served for dinner, it was a scene from hell. Imagine a scrawny boy lifting a whole steak and tearing into it with his teeth and hands.
The reflection in the mirror reminded me of a character straight out of a Goya painting.
Don’t look up "Saturn devouring his son," you’ll regret it.
“Methods, huh, there are a few...”
Fortunately, since I had ended up in a medieval fantasy world, there were various tools here that could regenerate damaged nerves.
If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight.net or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.
The first thing that came to mind was the [Wax Cell] artifact. This artifact could heal any wound—whether it was a severed arm or a leg, or even a head. The sight of new white cells growing in place was disturbingly game-like.
‘But this has a huge drawback.’
As with most artifacts, the [Wax Cell] had a major flaw.
If the user’s body was exposed to a temperature above a certain threshold, the wax would start to melt—like an ice cream on a hot summer day.
It would melt terribly.
...This world really does have some crazy artifacts.
Typically, the [Wax Cell] is used in conjunction with special armor that grants flame immunity, but considering my physical state, there was no way I could wear heavy metal armor, so that option was off the table.
Next, I thought of a special holy book commonly referred to as ‘Gege-Daum’ in community shorthand.
[So, you shall rise again.]
Abbreviated as Gege-Daum.
When I first heard that abbreviation, I thought it sounded like a spell used by the IT tribe to raise zombies.
‘But it really was a book that could bring the dead back to life.’
To be precise, it was a powerful healing prayer that could heal the wounds of the dead.
Priests' usual prayers couldn’t do much for wounds that were "naturally impossible to heal," like a severed arm or damaged nerve circuits.
But the verses from the special holy book [So, you shall rise again] could completely restore a person’s wounds.
A severed arm? A leg? They would regenerate when accompanied by this prayer!
...And yes, even a head!
‘This place is full of crazy stuff.’
Unlike the [Wax Cell], this holy book had no significant drawback.
It was just limited to two uses.
You might think that two uses wouldn’t be a big deal for a book that could revive the dead, but of course, things are never as simple as they seem.
[So, you shall rise again] could only be obtained in an ancient church deep within a special area called the "Fog of Military Isles."
The monsters infesting that area?
No problem.
Their levels weren’t that high—around mid-40s to high 50s at best.
After fighting and defeating Great Lords, I wouldn’t hesitate to take on a few monsters around level 40-50.
The real problem wasn’t the monsters—it was finding the Fog of Military Isles.
The Fog appeared randomly anywhere across the continent.
It might appear above a battlefield in the northern part of the continent, where the Demon King and the Sword Saint were locked in combat, or in some warehouse in the southern part of the continent, where Milesne, a fishing family, had been working for eight generations.
It appeared everywhere, unpredictably, without any rules or patterns.
Its size varied, and the amount of time it lingered was just as unpredictable.
It wasn’t unusual for the fog to appear simultaneously in different places, and it could even move across the continent at speeds of dozens of kilometers an hour.
So most players didn’t bother looking for it.
The Fog of Military Isles... Well, how should I put it? It was more like a random event than a location.
If you were lucky enough for it to pass near you, you could enter it. Otherwise, you’d never see it during your entire playthrough.
In my 4,000 hours of gameplay, I’d barely entered the Fog myself.
‘It’s like searching for a needle in a desert.’
That’s how rare and unpredictable the Fog was.
But... I had no other options.
It was either that or become a Wax Human.
‘The rumors have probably spread by now.’
Of course, I wasn’t planning to go around digging through sand.
I had plenty of "money" in this world, which could solve most of my problems, and I had more than enough "time" to use it.
And when you have money and time?
There’s no problem in the world you can’t solve.
I had already planted the rumors about a wealthy, suspiciously rich person showing interest in the Fog of Military Isles among black-market operators, brokers, and other shady figures.
In the underworld, information is a direct route to profit.
To find good jobs, you need high-quality information. Without it, no matter how skilled a problem-solver is, they’ll miss out on the good jobs and end up with nothing.
By now, people with information and the right skills should have started making contact with me.
Freelancers living without pensions or steady income? They couldn’t afford to ignore information that could lead to big money.
Just then, a sound interrupted my thoughts.
Knock, knock.
I put my hand down from my tired eyes and looked toward the window.
A girl with striking red eyes was pressing her forehead against the window, looking around inside the room.
“Oh, there!”
Our eyes met.
“Could you open the window for a moment? I have a question for you.”
She smiled brightly as if she had just found a four-leaf clover. Her sharp fangs peeked through her grin.
A girl who looked like she belonged to a Dracula or vampire race.
If such a race existed, I would’ve immediately run out and grabbed some garlic and a cross.
“Is this General Bin’s room? Could you just confirm that?”
She pressed her cheek to the transparent window and asked casually, like calling out to a friend.
“...This is the 3rd floor?”
I had no choice but to speak like something out of a cheap horror comic.
Because my room was actually on the 3rd floor.
It was the 3rd floor, so I said 3rd floor.
Then, what?
Who are you?
