Chapter 368 Volume VI – Chapter 1: A Crippled Body

As my eyes slowly twitched, the first sound that whispered in my ear… was the sound of machines beeping incessantly.

Strange, I thought. Usually, I would wake up to the non-existent chirping of non-existent birds, the sensation of the gentle movement of the fake soft grass beneath my body. Then there would be the fake sun on my face, a brief moment of silence… and then two people reminding me that I was not alone.

But now, it was different.

There was no grass, just… a comfortable bed. No sun, just the LED lamp on the ceiling. The silence was replaced by the sounds of machinery. The two people who reminded me that I was not alone… were simply absent.

Normally, I would have sighed in such a situation, but I didn’t. I just… watched the ceiling, not moving a muscle.

There were too many things going through my head.

Three months. Three months since the end of the war. So… I’ve been in a coma for three months, too. But the time I spent on that dream… is four days at most. Maybe not even that.

But in those four days alone, I learned so much. About myself, about caora, about my next step.

But the problem is… in these four days, I also learned almost nothing I actually wanted to know.

Aiden has kept so much from me, telling me that there are things I shouldn’t know and that it’s for my own good… but I don’t know. Even though I’ve chosen to trust only myself, there are still so many things I’m not sure about.

~knock ~knock ~knock!

I sighed lightly, straightening my posture as I slowly sat up in my bed, trying not to put too much weight on my right arm. Then I turned to the door of my room, which was quite spacious and had a very relaxing atmosphere.

“You may come in.”

The door opened slowly as an elderly dwarf in a lab coat walked in.

“Good mornin’, Mr. Tenebra.”

I put a slight smile on my face, bowed my head slightly, and replied in kind.

“Good morning, doctor.”

The doctor approached me, but instead of looking at my body, he focused on the machine right next to my bed. He clicked on something on the screens that suddenly appeared on it, checking different values one by one, and asked in a soft voice.

“How be ya feelin’?”

“Fine, just a little numb in my right arm and right foot. Other than those two… I’m literally as good as new.”

The doctor nodded his head. Then he pressed one last button on the screen and all the lights on the machine in front of him went out at once.

As soon as the lights went out, the temperature in the room changed a little, and it became a little quieter as well. Up until now, everything felt extremely comfortable… breathing, moving my body, basically everything. But as soon as the machine turned off, everything went back to normal as if I had been thrown out of heaven.

The doctor took a few steps back. He looked straight at me with a serious expression on his face.

“I’ll be truthful, Mr. Tenebra.”

That’s exactly what I wanted, so I nodded without saying anything.

There was really a lot I didn’t know about the general condition of my body, which I would eventually find out.

“Thanks to the potion Mr. Caleo brought, yer body’s in better shape than it could ever be. But… not so much, at the same time.”

My eyebrows raised slightly as I focused even more on the doctor’s words. He finally sighed, as if it was difficult for him to talk like that in front of me.

“Ye swung Durandal without a shred o’ protective armor. In truth, the sensible outcome would be that ye shouldn’t even be breathin’, yet here ye stand. And now… even that potion has failed t’ fully mend yer body.”

Oh, so I’m not fully healed…

Well, it’s not something I can’t predict with the feeling in my right arm and leg.

“Yer right arm ‘n leg will be feeble compared t’ normal. Ye can’t stroll properly without a cane. And… yer whole body’s gone hypersensitive to mana, so ye best be restrictin’ yer mana usage.”

There was a brief moment of silence between us. I felt myself getting tense with each passing second, because this conversation… was not going anywhere good.

I asked in an involuntarily shaky voice, afraid of how it would continue.

“H- how much do I have to limit my mana…?”

“As much as ye can no longer partake in any fight or battle. Livin’ yer life as a regular human bein’ would be the most beneficial choice. ‘Tis best that ye utilize almost no mana.”

Silence, truly absolute silence.

I couldn’t say anything as the Absolute Mind spontaneously activated, quickly sweeping away all my tension, fears, and anxiety. I just… stared blankly at the doctor in front of me.

It was funny, because.

I can’t fight again, huh?

It’s best if I don’t use any mana, is that it…?

He’s telling me I’m a cripple. With the fate of literally all of Lunerra in my hands…

“I… I understand.”

But I didn’t say anything to him, I couldn’t. He wasn’t guilty, after all. On the contrary, he had probably done more for me than I could have imagined.

“Now, please lay yerself down on the bed ‘n wait for me t’ remove yer restraint.”

I did as he said, while stretching out my left arm in his direction.

The doctor took my arm in his hands and ran them over it. There was a tiny glow, and then it receded.

The first thing I felt when my mana flow, which had been restricted for my own good, was suddenly free… was how strange it felt.

I didn’t even need the doctor’s words. The mana in my body was in a real mess. Before, it had a flow that didn’t bother me, even though I never spent any effort on it. Now… it was the opposite.

But I didn’t care about that. I did what any human in my position would do, since this was the first time since I woke up that I had access to my mana. I opened my status window.

<<——————————

–Personal Information–

Name: Aiden (Ethan)

Last Name: Tenebra (Subter)

Race: Human/Wiera

Age: 19

–???–

???: %8,3

–Statistics–

General Level: F (C)

Strength: F (C-)

Agility: F- (C)

Vitality: F+ (C+)

Endurance: F (C)

Luck: E+

Magic Power: F- (C+)

Mana Efficiency: F- (C+)

Charm: D-

–Status Effects–

Abnormal Status Effect: [Divided Soul] — [Body Dissonance] — [Mana Flow Imbalance] — [Crippled Body] — [???]

–Chaos–

Devotion: Greed

Status: Representative Candidate

Grade: B-

Control Tolerance: B-

Limit: C+

Authority: [Chains of Sin(C-)] — [Mind Confusion(C+)]

–Lineage–

Ancestor: Lumignis

Type: Phoenix

Sub-Type: Soul

Grade: B- (Downgraded)

Lineage Abilities: [Blue Flames of Lumignis(C)] — [Phoenix’s Ascension(C+)] — [Phoenix’s Regeneration(B-)] — [A New Beginning(S)]

–Masteries–

[Swordsmanship(D)] — [Mana Expert(C)] — [Spirit Magic: Wind Elementalist(C)] — [Sword Style: Ambiguous Flow(D+)]

–Active Skills–

[Mana Barrier(D)] — [Ice Spikes(D)] — [Spiritual Ascension(C+)] — [Durandal’s Aura(S-)]

–Passive Skills–

[The One Who is Close to Spirits(A+)] — [Absolute Mind(A)] — [Poison Immunity(C+)] — [Saturated with Mana(A+)]

——————————>>

And… it looked exactly as I expected it to look.

There were a few things I didn’t expect, of course. Like having two new skills, for example.

But there was something else that caught my attention.

And it was… the very tab that I hated to see on this screen, the one that had previously disgusted me every time I looked at it.

“Doctor…”

“Yes, Mr. Tenebra.”

His eyes were on me, truly ready to fulfill whatever I asked.

“I want to try something, can you watch me and my body?”

The doctor’s expression suddenly went dark. It was such a sudden change that I quickly raised my hands in the air and shook my head from side to side.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing dangerous. I mean… maybe a little, but it won’t make my condition worse. I’m not even going to do anything with the mana.”

The doctor seemed to relax a little with my last sentence. But he was still alert, as if… he didn’t like it.

“It’s best not t’ be meddlin’ in anythin’…”Formun üstü

“I know, and I understand your concern, but as I said, I won’t even use my mana. It’s just… a little test.”

The doctor still didn’t look satisfied. He was almost… afraid.

Ah, if anything happens to me, they’ll know from him… won’t they?

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure nothing will happen to you, just… don’t be afraid of what I’m going to do now, and then check my body again.”

Before the doctor opened his mouth again and said anything, I took a deep breath in, closed my eyes to focus better, and… concentrated on all the negative emotions inside me. One by one, every single one. And more and more of them.

As a purple glow appeared behind my left eyelid, I felt the caora, the energy other than mana, coursing through my body. When I finally opened my eyes, the left side of my vision was completely purple… just like always.

The terror in the doctor’s eyes was the second thing I noticed. The ominous sensation of the caora was confusing his mind. I actually felt a little sorry for him, but there was nothing I could do.

I tried to pull the caora to me so that he would be at least less affected, keeping it inside my body rather than letting it spread outside. Then… I focused on something I had never tried before, something I had only fully grasped the basics of thanks to a few things I had learned from Alaric.

One by one, Caora spread throughout my body, into every part of it… especially my right arm and leg. It replaced what was missing, temporarily fixing what was damaged. Quickly, yet perfectly, it literally patched me up.

The next second… although it wasn’t exactly what I expected, what I had in mind had worked.

The flow of mana through my body was back to the way it should be. At least a little bit…

The numbness in my right arm and leg was considerably reduced. With a little more effort, they would disappear completely.

But instead of trying to verify this myself, I just turned toward the doctor and spoke in a calm voice.

“My body… can you check it again?”

The doctor suddenly came to his senses, his eyes widening slightly.

“S- sorry!”

He quickly approached the machine he had just turned off, then turned it back on by pressing the buttons on the screen in front of him.

His eyes widened even more with each passing second as he looked at each of the values that appeared in front of him, one by one. He kept bringing up new values, checking them and getting more and more shocked.

Finally, when I realized that he wasn’t changing anything for a few seconds, I pulled the caora back. The uncomfortable feeling in my body instantly returned and the purple in my vision lessened and lessened. The readings in front of the doctor changed just as abruptly as it had happened.

The doctor’s eyes widened again. He turned to me so fast that he almost broke his neck.

“H- how did ye… do this…?”

I just smiled.

“Secret, let’s say.”

*(A/N: I don’t know if anyone will come, but I had a few readers asking me for a Discord server recently. And, well… I decided to open one. If you have any questions for me, or if you want to see future character arts, or if you want to discuss with a few more readers, you are welcome to come. You can find the link here, on my profile, on the synopsis page as well as on this paragraph’s comment. https://discord.gg/eRZTrv6Y49)*

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