I gave a cough to calm down before reaching out to take the bowl and spoon from Veronica.
As I did that, I said, "I can eat on my own, there's no need for you to feed me."
But before I could take the bowl and spoon from her, Veronica moved them away from my grasp.
She then said in a calm and stern voice, "You've just woken up and you're still weak. You shouldn't push yourself in this condition and just learn to accept help from others."
I revealed a bitter smile when I heard this, but I said in a firm voice as well, "I'm fine, I can do this on my own."
Seeing that I wasn't backing down, Veronica revealed a displeased look.
Then it was replaced with an unwilling look, but when she peeked at Shaka, she still handed the bowl and spoon over with a sigh.
If it was before where we were still alone, she wouldn't have been as willing to back down. But since Shaka was here as a witness, she had her own reputation to care about and couldn't act as strong.
But when I took it, she did give my hand a strange touch that made me shiver.
I took the bowl and held it in front of myself. As I did this, the smell of the oatmeal entered my nose and my stomach couldn't help grumbling.
I wasn't embarrassed by this since it was a natural thing.
I had been in a coma for three days, so it wasn't strange that I was hungry.
In fact, I was curious how they had even taken care of me during these three days that I had been unconscious. However, after thinking about it, I decided that it was better not to ask since it would most likely result in some embarrassing answers.
As I ate, I talked to Shaka about a few more things.
Naturally, the first thing that he asked me was, "Why did you faint? Do you know anything about that?"
Since he had asked, I had no reason to hide it. I just calmly said, "That orb is powered with mana and I had to use my mana to use it. However, it takes a large amount of mana to power it in the first place. I overdrew my mana and that was why I fell into a coma in the first place."
Shaka slowly said, "Then you're saying that if we had given you a mana potion, you would have woken up earlier."
I didn't say anything in response to this since I really didn't have an answer to this.
After all, I really couldn't confirm or deny this.
In the game, you could refill your mana with potions even if you completely ran out of mana. However, there wasn't a case of fainting when running out of mana in the game since that wouldn't be something that would be fun for the player.
So I had no idea if it was because I had 0 MP that I fainted or if it was because I had negative MP that I fainted.
So I honestly couldn't say if a mana potion would have worked or not.
In the end, I just silently ate my oatmeal until I was finished.
After taking a moment to calm myself, I started to stand up.
When Shaka and Veronica saw this, both of them came forward as if they wanted to help me, but I waved my hand to stop them. There wasn't a problem with my body anymore, I had already rested for three days, so I was completely recovered.
I stood up and then said, "Let's go see the duke, I'm sure that he's already waiting for us."
Shaka looked at me for a bit before giving a nod.
However, Veronica said, "Wait, you still need your rest."
I just looked at her with a smile before saying, "I'm fine." Then without even looking back, I walked out of the room with Shaka.
Veronica just looked at me while biting her lower lip as I walked off, but in the end, she still followed me out.
Though I was leading when we came out of the room, I let Shaka take the lead since I didn't actually know where I was going.
Though I knew that we were in the duke's manor, that didn't mean that I knew the layout of the manor.
Shaka didn't have a problem with this and led us through with ease, as if he had been through this manor many times already. It seemed that quite a bit had happened while I was out…
When we got closer to the duke's office, I started recognizing the way because we had been here before when we had gathered to discuss what to do about the undead.
Shaka just went into the office without any hesitation and there was the duke who was sitting there talking to a few knights.
When the duke and knights saw the door opening like this, they couldn't help knitting their brows at first. But they quickly relaxed their expressions when they saw who it was coming in.
All of them looked at me with looks of admiration and concern when they saw me which surprised me since I didn't feel like I had done anything to earn their respect like this. At the same time, I could also see that there was a bit of fear in their eyes which confused me more.
Was I that terrifying of a person that they needed to look at me like this?
After a moment of silence, the duke asked, "Are you feeling better now?"
I gave a simple nod in response to this and said, "Thank you for taking care of me over the past few days."
The duke revealed a bitter smile and said, "How could I not when you saved our Bright Water City?"
I just gave another simple nod before asking, "Where's the demon?"