Chapter 70: Tear of the Dead and the Blind Saint
I came to Deidros to embed the Tear of the Dead into my body.
The question was where to place the jewel. But Deidros already had an answer.
“So… It has to be near the heart?”
“It’s better if it’s in the form of a piece of jewelry, so the wearer can be recognized. If you choose to wear it on your body, it must be ‘imprinted’ with you. In the case of the Tear of the Dead, I would suggest the heart, since it is the source of life.”
“…”
I leaned back on the couch and tilted my head as Deidros explained.
‘I guess this is a fantasy world…’
I’ve never had jewelry embedded in my body, even in the game. But the Tear of the Dead was sealed like a Spectral Sword, and I couldn’t hide the energy that leaked out.
I chewed on the Dius antler for a while, remaining silent. Then Deidros asked me a question.
“What are you chewing on?”
“The antler of Dius. I got it as a reward for catching the Lich.”
Deidros is horrified at the mention of Dius’ antler.
“Is your tongue all right…?”
“My tongue?”
“From what I’ve heard, Dius antlers have a terrible taste…”
“Ah.”
Come to think of it, I haven’t been able to taste the richness of any food lately.
I wonder if my tongue is getting weird because I’ve been eating weird things but if ‘superior senses’ included the sense of taste…it was understandable.
[Disciple, are you okay…? I think taste is a pretty important aspect of life…]
“It’s fine, Master. If I’m going to eat something like this in the future, I might as well not be able to taste it.”
[Still, I think it’s important to be able to taste…]
As Sierra and I are having this conversation, Deidros shakes his head.
“No matter how many times I look at it, it’s mysterious.”
With that, he took a drink from the glass on the table.
He was a dragon, so he had no concept of drunkenness; to get drunk, he would have to consume liquids that would be near poisonous to humans.
Deidros stood up abruptly and said, “Let’s get this over with.”
I followed his lead and was soon stripped of my robes and laid down on a long table.
Potions of unknown use lay on my bedside table and as the cold table touched my warm flesh, I realized what I was about to do.
Deidros held out a potion to me.
“What is this? Is it some kind of anesthetic?”
“…I thought you said you were expecting to get sick. It’s an elixir. I’ll be sorry if you die on the way, so drink it beforehand.”
Deidros’s blunt reply left me speechless.
‘An elixir…’
It was one of the rarest potions in the game. Far from being a normal healing potion, it was a divine magic ‘heal’ level potion.
At this point, I wondered if he was giving away his status as a Gold Dragon but I immediately gulped down the elixir since there was no point in dying before I could get my one resurrection.
“…Here we go. I suggest you try to stay as still as possible.”
And with that, dragon scales grew from his outstretched index finger, turning into sharp dragon nails… or claws but either way, they were sharp.
It hurt as his claws got near my heart.
His hand slides down and blood gushes out through my tender skin.
“If you think you’re going to die, let me know, and I’ll pour you an elixir.”
“Ugh… that’s so…… Thanks…”
Having my chest opened and closed while I was still awake was both painful and ethereal.
Soon enough, Deidros slips a jewel into my chest cavity. Then he mumbles something like an incantation.
I couldn’t make out the language but something about ancient runes or dragon language flashes through my mind.
[Hmph… The gem is slowly taking root in your heart, it’s a mysterious sight.]
Sierra, who has been watching the ‘surgery’ intuitively, lets out an exclamation.
Soon Deidros stops chanting and withdraws his hand that was covered in blood.
He closes my open chest wound and pours the elixir into it.
“……I think we’re done here.”
Deidros said after pouring the entire bottle of elixir.
I would have thought it would have been a simple task, but this is Deidros, not anyone else.
I lay there, barely able to move my arm, groping for my chest wound to see if it had healed.
‘Closed already.’
New flesh seemed to have sprouted in the gap so I pushed myself up from the table and smiled at Deidros.
Sierra walked over to me and hugged me tightly. Her bouncing breasts block my face and her voice echoes in my head as she strokes my hair.
[That must have been painful… but you’ve endured it well, and now not even death can separate us.]
“Only once, haha…”
Sierra seemed inwardly pleased to hear the effect of the Tear of the Dead, as it meant that my contract with her could somehow be extended.
It was then that a wide-eyed Deidros held out the elixir to me.
“…I don’t know what you’re talking about, but your mouth is dripping with blood.”
[Really, it’s on me, too.]
Sierra added after Deidros.
After hearing his words, I wiped my mouth and found a lot of blood. There was also blood on Sierra’s chest, which was blocking my face.
I wondered if I could touch her because it was my blood but I couldn’t tell from the details.
Deidros doesn’t mention it, so the blood on Sierra is invisible.
As Sierra contemplates what to do with the blood, she wipes it off her chest with her hand and licks it off.
“…Master?”
[I am in the process of cleaning up…]
Sierra stammered, turning her head away from me.
It was probably the first time she’d put something in her mouth since she’d been dead, and even though it couldn’t possibly have tasted good, she licked it clean, leaving no trace of blood behind.
I slid off the table and immediately opened the status window to see if it was working.
To my delight, I saw “Tear of the Dead [Engraved]” in the list of equipped items.
I finally had one extra life.
‘I guess I can start pushing myself a bit now.’
I don’t plan to use my extra life for nothing but I’m confident that I’ll be able to make it just barely to the end of the game.
Of course, the Tear of the Dead might have some side effects since it contains the souls of hundreds of people but I don’t know what they are because I haven’t experienced them.
Deidros, who had been observing me, spoke up.
“I have a good feeling, and the energy is well hidden… It’s hard to feel it unless someone touches your chest.”
“Thank you, but how do I pay you for this job? What do you suggest?”
I asked him, glancing at the three neatly emptied bottles of elixir.
“Compensation… Remuneration…”
Deidros trailed off, hesitantly.
He didn’t seem to want to be paid this time, since he hadn’t created anything like a Spectral Sword.
‘You want me to work for you?’
In the game, this is also the time when you’re sent on miscellaneous quests like running errands.
At one point, Deidros interrupts the conversation.
“…We have a visitor.”
It’s as if he’s sensed someone entering the settlement.
A knock on the door of the mansion immediately follows Deidros’ words and Deidros roughly wipes the blood off with a cloth and approaches the door.
“Chief… My child……”
The door opened and a villager carrying a child appeared.
From a distance, I could see a scar on her ankle.
“This is… He must have been attacked by a poisonous creature…… We’ll have to call a cleric.”
As he spoke, Deidros’ tone and voice quickly changed to that of the young chief.
“Yes, thank you… I’m very grateful… but I don’t know if he can make it through the night… The child is in so much pain…”
I eavesdropped on their conversation from a distance and made a decision.
There are many ways Deidros could have cured the child. But from the way he talks about calling a cleric, it sounds like he doesn’t want to use his money or power as a dragon to solve all of the town’s problems since it wouldn’t feel natural.
However, if it was a simple case of detoxification, acupuncture could do the trick and I always kept a kit in my backpack.
I approached Deidros slowly.
Deidros hears my approach and shuts the door behind him, saying, “Excuse me,” to the resident.
He looked at me.
“I think I can handle this.”
I pull a needle out of my backpack, hold it up to him.
“… You know how to do acupuncture, don’t you?”
“As far as detoxification goes, yes, but would it be better if I didn’t?”
“Hmm… It looks like the poison has already spread through the body, so waiting for the cleric will be too late… Good.”
And that was the end of my conversation with Deidros.
Deidros reopened the closed door and looked at the villager waiting at the door.
“This is an old friend of mine, and he says he knows how to do acupuncture. Could you please trust me with this?”
The villager looked at the bandages around my eyes and shuddered, but I could see the trust that Deidros had built up as the village chief.
Detoxification was fairly straightforward. It took a while because the poison was spread out, but it wasn’t hard work.
“…I think that’s it.”
I said to the boy’s mother, who had her back turned to me as I retrieved the needles from his body.
It wasn’t long before the unconscious boy opened his eyes and called out for his mother, and she approached him with tears in her eyes.
I give them some space and approach Deidros, who is watching with his arms crossed.
“I never thought you could do acupuncture…There was a very famous blind acupuncturist once upon a time. He was Eastern, too, and there seems to be a lot of overlap with you.”
I wondered if he was referring to the man who had created acupuncture that Priscilla had told me about when I was trying to learn it.
“You asked how I wanted to be paid…How about going around town since there are a lot of ill here.”
“…That’s fine with me, but acupuncture has its limits, I can’t cure everything. Will it be enough?”
“It is enough.”
Deidros replied, and went back to walking around the village late at night, treating people for small and large ailments and injuries.
Deidros had memorized who was injured, how, and what they were suffering from. This made it easy for me to recognize what I could and couldn’t treat.
When I ran out of the needles I was carrying as we made our rounds through the village, Deidros hurried back to his mansion and handed me a bundle of needles he had made in the meantime.
It was late, but at some point the villagers began to gather, and I was eventually forced to place the needles in front of most of the villagers.
The last one was a young girl who was suffering from a slight headache. She was terrified of the idea of sticking needles in her body, so I had to gently coax her to calm down.
“There, that doesn’t hurt at all, does it?”
“Ouch…”
The girl’s eyes widened as she looked at the needle in her arm. The girl’s eyes widened as she looked at the needle in her arm. Then she started jumping up and down on the spot, insisting that her head didn’t hurt.
“I heard you’re a friend of the village chief…”
“A saint…”
“A blind saint…”
“A saint has come to this little village…”
The townspeople who were watching can be heard murmuring.
…Most of the villagers felt the same way.
When I was done, I turned to Deidros.
“Why does it sound like they think I’m a saint…?”
I asked, simply curious because it wasn’t just this town, but the Academy as well.
Deidros took a sip of his drink and spoke up.
“Hahaha, come to think of it, since you can’t read, you don’t know the ‘fairy tale book’.”
“A fairy tale book?”
“Yes, there is such a thing. I guess they felt that what you were doing and saying was similar to the saint in that fairy tale.”
“Aha…”
I hadn’t really heard anything about storybooks while playing the game, so I didn’t know what to say.
[I’m not sure which children’s books he’s referring to, since I’m not that interested in books either.]
Sierra was no different but it’s not a big deal.
I changed the subject and chatted a bit more with Deidros. He seemed to like me in a lot of ways, probably because I’d done so well on our first meeting.
“…I should probably get back.”
It was getting late and it would be morning before I could say goodbye and leave Deidros’s mansion.
“Where are you going now?” asked the villagers I met on my way to the carriage…
“Wherever my feet take me.”
…and with that, I turned away from them and boarded the carriage.
The destination was, of course, the Innocence Academy.