Chapter 21: The First Visitor

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Translator: Soafp

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“I have something to discuss.”

One day, Erius unusually came to Nonoa with a matter to consult her about.

Erius normally made decisions as if he never hesitated about anything.

Even in labyrinths he was visiting for the first time, he advanced without the slightest doubt, as though he already knew everything.

Because of that, there had only been a handful of times he ever asked for advice, and most of those were about similar matters.

Nonoa immediately sensed what it would be about and answered without hesitation.

“What do you want to buy?”

“That's quick, thank you. A bottle. More precisely, an investment in a magic tool craftsman who's designing that bottle.”

“A bottle?”

“Yeah. An ‘automatic medicine bottle.'”

“I've never heard of it…”

“It's still in the prototype stage. Development's stalled because they can't secure funding. At this rate, not only will it never be commercialized, they won't even finish the prototype in time.”

“In time?”

“Well, that's our problem. Anyway, I want to speed things up. At the very least… I want the prototype finished within a year. For that, we need money.”

For adventurers, gathering information is crucial.

In that regard as well, Erius was first-rate.

No one knew where he heard things from, but he always brought back new information faster than anyone else.

“What kind of effect does it have?”

“If the owner takes a fatal blow, the contents of the bottle are automatically administered. That's the effect. Of course, it hasn't been tested yet. It's not guaranteed, but in situations where death would normally be unavoidable, there's a chance it could save a life.”

“Huh… that does sound useful. So, how much do you need?”

“It's just an estimate, but… I think around twenty thousand should be enough.”

“T-twenty thousand!? Even if we poured in the party's entire funds, it wouldn't be enough! We'd have to take advances against several quests…”

“If you think of it as the price of a life, it's cheap.”

“Haa… honestly. And even if I say no, you're going to do it anyway, right?”

“That's quick, thank you. Also, make sure it doesn't affect the other members' shares… especially Lena's and Phalan's, and the donations to the church. Somehow manage it within those limits.”

“Geez! You're always asking the impossible! At least promise you'll show it to me once it's finished.”

“…Yeah. I promise. I'll definitely show you.”

──Later, when Nonoa heard that the bottle would not only be expensive but also disposable, shattering after a single use, she ended up holding her head in even deeper frustration.

Prick.

“Huh… what… was I…”

Feeling pain at her fingertip, Nonoa opened her eyes.

She scolded her fading consciousness, forcing herself to stay awake, and tried to recall what had happened.

“Ah, right… I was… fighting the Demon King…”

That much she remembered.

And though fragmented, bits of memory slowly returned.

After a fierce battle, the moment Nonoa struck the finishing blow, the Demon King took an unbelievable action.

As if abandoning all defense, he clasped his hands before himself.

No one knew where he found the strength, but he unleashed a spell far surpassing anything he had used before.

A self-destruct spell.

He converted his own life into magical power, trying to take Nonoa down with him.

In that instant, Nonoa used “Master of Numbers” to calculate her survival probability.

Her remaining vitality, the spell's power, every visible factor—she extracted and quantified them all, ran the calculation, and arrived at the result.

“0%.”

──Unless there was some element beyond her understanding, survival was impossible.

Her memory cut off there.

Recalling that far, Nonoa tilted her head.

“Did I… see it wrong?”

In that split-second situation, maybe she had mistaken it for 10%.

“Or maybe I'm some kind of hero destined to defy death… yeah, right.”

She joked to herself, but her consciousness threatened to fade again.

Even though she had survived, she was covered in wounds.

She was at her limit.

She hurried back.

“It's strange… it's not here, it's not… why, why!”

After being expelled from the party, there had been something Nonoa relied on emotionally.

Mementos from her time in “Dragon Fang's Bite”──items tied to Erius.

Whenever she felt like breaking down, she would look at them together with the ring she had been given, calming her heart.

After learning of Erius's death, she tried to look at them again, but one item was missing no matter how hard she searched.

It wasn't something she ever intended to use.

Something that shouldn't have gone missing.

Was it stolen? Something so cheap?

To her, it was an item whose value couldn't possibly be quantified.

But to others, it should have been worth next to nothing.

No matter how much she searched, she couldn't find it.

──The wound medicine she had been given as a parting gift on the day she was expelled from the party was nowhere to be found.

She had planned to go the next day.

But after finishing the letter, Nonoa couldn't sit still.

Giving in to impulse, she ran straight for Erius's grave.

She thought she had been alone.

At the very least, she believed that ever since being expelled, she had been fighting on her own.

But she was wrong.

She had been wrong.

“You were fighting together with me… the whole time!”

She ran out of the house, muttering to herself.

No, that wasn't even the main point.

Her current strength.

The honor she now enjoyed.

Her position.

All of it had been given to her by Erius.

She had merely walked the path he laid out, without even realizing it.

Erius must have known.

That Nonoa defeating the Demon King was equivalent to his own horrific death.

And yet, in order to defeat the Demon King and drive away those black clouds, he sacrificed himself.

For Nonoa──and for the people of this country.

And that wasn't all.

Did Erius hesitate?

Or did he not hesitate even once?

The automatic medicine bottle.

A product that had only recently been commercialized by an unknown craftsman.

At the time of the battle with the Demon King, it shouldn't even have existed as a prototype.

Most likely, through his repeated lives, Erius heard rumors of its development, invested money into it, and pulled that future closer.

Then hadn't he ever thought this?

“If I had this, maybe I could survive.”

Didn't he ever consider using it himself to escape his powerful death-bound fate?

To give it to Nonoa, he probably filled it with a low-grade healing medicine, taking Lena's personality into account.

If Erius had intended to use it himself, he surely could have used a far more expensive potion.

Maybe he thought about it.

Maybe he never did.

That, she couldn't know.

What she did know was this──he entrusted everything he had to Nonoa.

That was all.

The words she heard at the Sword Saint's funeral resurfaced in her mind.

“To do your very best for someone other than yourself.”

Erius had inherited that perfectly from his father.

Even knowing that, there was one thing she couldn't quite forgive.

“What do you mean, ‘I'll definitely accept it'!? You never planned to, did you!”

Anger at her own inadequacy, at always being the one who only received, mixed into her voice.

“I thought I could finally start paying you back, little by little, once I defeated the Demon King!”

She wanted to complain to him directly, just once.

That feeling drove her to run toward Erius's grave.

And when she arrived at the cemetery his mother had told her about──there was already someone there.