NOVEL WEB Chapter 15: The Foreigner, Exploring The Dungeon Was Out Of The Question II
Chapter 15: The Foreigner, Exploring The Dungeon Was Out Of The Question II
【12th day】
The next day, we went to the Adventurers' Guild to submit our party application and our marriage license. I thought that the Guild President would say『unheard of』again, but it appeared that this was merely the first official marriage registered between people of different races in fifty years.
When I asked what happened to the previous couple, the Guild President clammed up.
We had intended to hold a modest sham wedding, so we were making preparations to rent Tyutyu’s store. I don’t know how they found out, but the Zavua Night Owl company and the Eruomea West Phoenix company approached me with offers to fund the wedding.
I refused because I didn't want to owe them strange debts, but they insisted that an occasion like this would be great advertising for the new products that they wanted to sell, and pressured me to accept.
In that case, I made them provide new foodstuffs from the left continent for making the food for the wedding, six large casks of liquor, and fifty new steel knives as wedding favors. The names of both merchant companies were clearly written on them.
Being fully armed is the formal wear for adventurers. As luck would have it, we had already bought new clothes for Rana. On the king’s tab too. We weren’t going to do stupid things from a certain country like changing clothes three times or getting off a gondola, so there were no other “necessary preparations” to be made.
【13th day】
The day after that, the sham wedding was held.
Rana and I summoned our main gods and informed them of our betrothal. A god with the appearance of a deer, Ezusu-sama, and a god with the appearance of a cat, Misuranika-sama. After we had each received the blessings and grace from each of the gods, the ceremony was over.
The time taken was 30 minutes.
By the way, almost all of that was taken up by Ezusu-sama’s speech, and Misuranika-sama, who had sensed the mood, capped the ceremony with a word, 『Congratulations』.
After that was the banquet of the hungry beasts.
It was something of a zoo.
Evetta-san was heartily finishing off super large servings of food while beside her, Shuna and Bel weren’t falling behind and were eating voraciously too. The beastkin child who had previously carried Misuranika-sama had also stuffed her cheeks with food. The Guild President, Otou-san, the barkeeper and Barfuru-sama apparently knew one another, and were getting along happily while drinking liquor together. Geto-san and the Eruomea’s young Chairman were together with his common-law wife, the mermaid Banbia. The three of them were eating quietly along the river. Zavua's young Chairman was on the verge of collapsing after being offered drink after drink by Tyutyu’s extremely beautiful friends. Lanseal, who was clinging to me, got into a scuffle with Rana, which become a sideshow. And, as if nothing was happening, Tyutyu was sitting on my lap and taking notes as she asked me about the recipes for the food that I had prepared.
The various races that I had met here were present, but there were no elves other than the bride. Ea had wanted to come until this morning, but her condition deteriorated and was back at the camp.
It was the way of the world that there would be those who would want to join in when they saw that there was a commotion.
I didn’t know how the news had spread, but the friends of my friends gathered, and together with the friends of those friends, they joined in the banquet, ate the food and drank the liquor.
Naturally, there wasn’t enough.
However, there were two young Chairmen of merchant companies here. It appeared that, in this world, this was just the right time to promote the name of their merchant company.
But the Zavua’s young Chairman, who was dead drunk, and the Eruomea’s young Chairman, who wanted to show off his good side in front of his wife and her grandfather, sort of put in too much effort. The total costs of the banquet became equal to a decent adventurer’s annual income.
As we drank, ate, sang, danced, and rioted, the banquet reached its climax around the time the sun set.
I had tried to be considerate at first, but I became stupid half-way through, and was acting the fool together with the rest. Rana beat Barfuru-sama in a drinking contest. A woman in a black dress danced on top of a table with a liquor bottle in her hand. Was she someone’s acquaintance? I felt like I had seen her before. Tyutyu’s friends stripped. The middle-aged men all cheered loudly. Bel and Shuna were acting spoiled to Evetta-san. Some of the faces I knew disappeared, but ten times the number of unfamiliar faces replaced them.
The scale of the banquet grew far too large, and complaints started coming in from the neighborhood. The military policeman came. After offering him some liquor, he didn’t even finish half a cup before he was bad-mouthing the Popes of the center continent incessantly.
Screams and yells; cheers and rapturous voices of women.
It was an enthralling, chaotic banquet of various races.
When I had arrived here, I had felt only a sense of alienation, but I would have never dreamed that I would be hosting such a banquet myself. Moreover, I was slowly falling asleep due to the fatigue and alcohol in the middle of such a banquet.
Oh, I’ve truly become an adventurer.
When that realization sunk in, just like how the festival of those far-off days ended when I closed my eyes, the hustle and bustle grew distant from my consciousness.
Needless to say, I was speechless when I saw the wreckage and the disastrous condition of the banquet in the morning.
【14th day】
We had been so busy the past two days that exploring the dungeon was out of the question.
All the same, it had been fun. I would probably be able to remember and laugh about it even if I was in the depths of hell.
「Was it fun? Hey, was it fun?」
「So-so」
I answered Ea vaguely. If I said that it was really fun, she would probably grumble about it. By the way, the bride was tuckered out in my tent because she had a hangover.
「Ah~ah, to think that I would be unable to go to Onee-chan’s wedding」
I was performing a pale imitation of a medical examination in her tent right now. Her pulse had become weaker than yesterday. She had a terrible fever two hours ago, but she was dangerously cold now.
「Well, you can look forward to your own wedding, right?」
「I can't possibly live until then, can I?」
She said it jokingly, but it appeared that she understood her own body very well.
Inside the tent, I saw Ea’s regeneration point, which had been left lying around carelessly. There was no color in the container.
I had been healed by the regeneration point, which shouldn't have worked outside of city to begin with. According to Rana, there used to be ruins a short distance from the camp, and it appeared that the regeneration point had worked because of their influence.
This camp was exactly on the border.
Drawing a line at the kitchen, the tent that the sisters lived in was just barely outside the area where the regeneration point would work. I had tried to move Ea into the regeneration point’s area of effect, but the person in question had refused.
It would only extend her suffering, she said.
The regeneration point could not eliminate foreign matter. Neither could it purify poison. It could repair damage to the body that had been caused by poison, but if there was a foreign matter emitting poison inside the body, it would only be buying time.
The scan had revealed that the bullet had entered from her abdomen and was buried in the interior of her hip bone. It would be quite difficult to push through her intestines and extract the bullet. The progress of restoration on the medical program was 16%.
Izora had proposed putting her on a drip and using a chelating agent to try to drain the lead in her blood, but Makina opposed, saying that the wound would get inflamed by that stop-gap measure at this stage so doing that was almost meaningless.
After getting shot in the war, Ea had been prolonging her life through the regeneration point and Rana’s magic. On top of that was her determination to not leave her elder sister all alone.
Because I had appeared, something that had been wound up tightly inside her had probably let go.
「You know, my injury, it isn’t getting better」
She touched her own feet.
「They’ve finally stopped working」
「Listen, if you wear this, you might still manage one way or another」
I showed her the hand protector. It contained a curse that appeared to protect them. I still couldn’t remove it, but if there was any method……
「It’s vexing, but Heures’ blessing is yours. I wasn't chosen. Besides, I don't need something that has been soiled by Hemu hands」
There was no strength in her insult. She drew close and leaned her limp body on me.
「You can sell that hand protector if it becomes too heavy and gets in your way. Also, an elf’s body can be sold for a high price to researchers, even if it’s a corpse, so sell this body too. I don’t need stuff like funerals, it’s good enough if you simply return a lock of my hair to the forest. If my Otou-san or Onii-san tries to say anything to you, just tell them,『Drop dead!』. Something along those lines」
「………………………」
I was at a loss for words. There was nothing to say to a person who had resolved herself to this degree.
「That’s why, please take care of Onee-chan. Onii-chan」
She held my hand. I grabbed hers back with both hands.
I responded with absolute confidence.
「I’ll take care of her」
「Okay, then I have no regrets」
Ea had a refreshing smile on her face,
「Really?」
But I pressed her.
「Yes, really」
To her, whose smile looked like it was about to disappear,
「Then, give me your life」
I said.
「Huh?」
「I came to this world for my younger sister’s sake. In that case, I can’t possibly not save you, right?」
I left the tent and began the preparations.
She had probably heard it already, but I walked up to the Makina unit and gave an order.
「Makina. Suspend all work and dismantle the medical program. Extract the information and integrate it into Makina. Get ready for open surgery」
『Understood. Makina is already ready because Makina had thought that this might happen. Will complete the extraction in 5 minutes. Because it’s an emergency, surgery is scheduled one hour from now』
「Isn’t that too fast?」
『Souya-san didn’t order Makina to be stingy with allocating the resources, so Makina has done whatever Makina pleased with the surplus supplies』
The sloppy orders given by an amateur had turned out well. Then, there was something that I had to know.
「Tell me the probability of success for the surgery」
『You said to do it, and Makina said that Makina will do it. So it’s 100%』
They were reassuring words.
『Izora would like to say something』
I picked up Izora, which had rolled over.
『Learning from Makina’s example, Izora also searched through the memories of the older generation. The techniques are forty years old, but please make use of these memories of emergency medical procedures that Izora found. This will increase the probability of success by 20%』
It became a “true grit”-like value of 120%.
This is what my best partners are telling me. They won’t make any mistakes.
「You guys, I’m counting on both of you」
『Please don’t worry. We’ll definitely meet your expectations』