A glowing trail of orange followed in the rocket’s wake. It sailed through the sandworm’s open mouth and exploded. Chunks of flesh rained from the sky, spattering across Brise’s windshield.
“Bleh... Shea, cover Myu’s eyes, please.”
“Already on it~ Ah...! Myu-chan I know it hurts, but don’t pinch me there.” Shea had buried Myu’s head inside her ample bosom to shield her from the horrors Hajime was inflicting on the monsters. However, Myu had found it too suffocating, and pinched Shea in a rather sensitive spot. Hajime did his best to ignore the moaning coming from the back. Dealing with his own comrades was more mentally draining than fighting monsters.
It didn’t help that Kaori was still clinging to his waist either. After a herculean effort, Yue finally pulled Kaori off and strapped her into her seat belt, locking her in place. She was blushing bright red, surprised at her own boldness.
“U-Umm, Hajime-kun. Sorry about that. I just acted on instinct... I wasn’t purposely trying to do something dirty. I just wanted to know what it would feel like to hug you once...”
“And if you saw your chance, you’d push him down then and there?”
“Exact... No! Yue, please don’t say such strange things. I’m not as lewd a woman as you.”
“You’re calling me lewd? Well, I suppose I can’t really deny it, considering the things we do at night.”
“Could you two shut up for a second? Also Yue, quit talking about our sex life.”
Hajime blasted the remaining sandworms to bits with his rocket launcher. Hearing the explosions, the other sandworms atop the dune turned to look at Brise. He steeled himself for another fight, but Kaori and Yue’s arguing distracted him. Their constant bickering was wearing away at his mental fortitude. And now he’d finally hit his limit and snapped at Yue.
Though nothing she’d said had actually been false. Hajime doubted anyone could beat Yue when it came to sexiness. Kaori could tell what he was thinking about, and tears welled up in her eyes.
Yue smiled victoriously and licked her lips. Kaori groaned, lamenting her defeat. Hajime’s annoyed outburst had only fanned the flames of their feud.
Shea leaned forward and sympathetically patted Kaori’s shoulder.
“I know how you feel, Kaori-san.”
Hajime ignored the lot of them and gunned Brise toward the sand dune. He could tell there were more sandworms moving around underground. The ground bulged slightly at their position, so it was clear they weren’t trying to be stealthy anymore. Right now, speed would avail them more than stealth.
Hajime retracted his rocket launcher and activated a new weapon. This time, a long rectangular box came out of the hood. Metal grated against metal, and the box transformed into a long-range rifle. It looked strikingly similar to Schlagen.
Red sparks ran down the length of the gun barrel. The robotic arm it was attached to adjusted its aim and fired. A dazzling streak of red cut through the muddy brown air.
A plume of sand rose into the sky as it slammed into the ground. Chunks of flesh and droplets of blood rose up with it. Hajime’s bullet had found its mark.
Hajime reloaded and fired again, then again. Each bullet created another eruption of sand and blood. The sandworms were obliterated without even a chance to surface.
“Hajime-kun, look over there!”
“Is that... a person?”
As Hajime retracted his rifle, Kaori suddenly shouted and pointed to a spot in front of them.
Yue’s guess was correct. Some distance away lay a humanoid figure clad in all white. It was likely they were the person the sandworms had been trying to eat. However, from this distance, they couldn’t make out anything out of the ordinary. Nothing to indicate why the sandworms had hesitated, anyway.
“Please, Hajime-kun. I’m a Priestess... I have to at least try and help him.”
“Might as well, I guess. I’m kinda curious, honestly.”
Kaori looked pleadingly up at Hajime. As he was interested in why the sandworms hadn’t attacked the man himself, he saw no reason to refuse.
It was possible he had some unique item that warded off monsters, or knew some unknown form of magic. After all, if things like verdren crystals existed in the sea of trees, who knew what other strange wonders existed in this world. It might even be that whatever this man had been using possessed more potent effects than those verdren crystals.
Hajime made a beeline for the collapsed man.
He was wearing something resembling a jellabiya, a traditional Egyptian dress back on earth, and a big hooded overcoat on top of it. The hood was covering his face and he was lying face-down, making it difficult to discern his features.
Kaori hopped off Brise, dashed over to the man, and rolled him onto his back.
“What on...” Upon taking off his hood, Kaori discovered that he was young, probably in his early twenties. However, what had surprised her wasn’t that. It was the state he was in.
His face was locked in a painful grimace, sweat beaded down his forehead, and his breath came in short, shallow gasps. He was so feverish that steam was rising off his body. His blood vessels were all straining against his skin, as if they were being pushed out from the inside. Furthermore, blood was dripping from his eyes and nose. There was obviously something wrong with him. And it wasn’t just heatstroke.
Hajime was worried Kaori might get infected with whatever this guy was suffering with, but as she was the healer, he left handling the situation to her.
Kaori cast Magical Diagnostics on the man. The spell used her mana to investigate the condition of her target, and displayed its findings on her Status Plate.
The results that came back were unexpected.
“Mana overload? The poison in his body is causing his mana to go berserk?”
“What’d you find, Kaori?”
“L-Look. This is what it says...”
Kaori showed her Status Plate to the rest of the party.
Status: The target’s mana has overloaded and he is incapable of releasing the excess.
Symptoms: Fever, fainting, body pains, and ruptures of the capillary vessels.
Cause: A foreign liquid in the target’s body.
“My guess is he drank something poisonous and that’s what’s causing his mana to go berserk. And because he can’t get rid of any of it, it’s destroying his body from the inside. At this rate all his blood vessels will rupture and he’ll die. Even if that doesn’t kill him instantly, the blood loss will... Heaven’s providence, grant succor to the doomed— Renewal!”
Kaori cast the healing spell Renewal. It was an intermediate-rank healing spell that dispelled status debuffs.
However...
“Oh no, it barely had any effect. How come? This spell can cure almost all status effects... Does that mean the poison is too deeply ingrained into him now?”
Though it had succeeded in preventing the poison’s spread, Kaori’s Renewal had been unable to actually cure him. The man groaned feebly in pain. His bleeding hadn’t stopped either. Kaori ground her teeth in frustration. She couldn’t think of a way to cure him, so for now she began to perform emergency treatment measures to keep his condition from worsening.
“May the grace of light bless you in this holy sanctuary. No evil shall pass so long as I hold the gates— Sanctorum!”
The high-level light spell Sanctorum allowed everyone within a set area to transfer their mana to one another. Normally, Kaori used it to transfer her mana to her allies and support them if they didn’t have enough left to continue casting large-scale spells.
However, there was no restriction on who could transfer mana to whom. Furthermore, the caster could forcibly transfer mana from one target to another, if they so wished. In other words, it could function as a mana drain. But it took more time to drain mana from a target than it did to transfer mana to them. Because of that restriction, it wasn’t suited to be used as a drain spell in combat.
Thanks to Kaori’s extensive training, though, she’d s
hortened the incantation to the point where it was fast enough to be practical even in combat. Hajime could tell just how hard she’d worked to reach that point.
With Sanctorum in place, Kaori could begin siphoning mana from the young man. Though the Status Plate had said it was impossible to release his excess mana, Kaori hoped a powerful light spell would be able to forcibly drain it out of him anyway.
Purplish-white light enveloped the young man, making him look ethereal.
It made for a wondrous sight. Kaori closed her eyes and placed her hands over the man’s chest. After a few seconds of furious concentration, Kaori too began to be enveloped in the same lavender light.
Yue and Tio murmured in exclamation at Kaori’s impressive display of skill. As fellow mages, they were even more appreciative of her abilities than Hajime.
“So pretty...” Myu muttered in Shea’s arms.
Kaori didn’t even notice her new comrades praising her. She was focused fully on her task. She diverted the mana she drained from the man into the mana-absorbing bracelet Hajime had gifted her with. It appeared Kaori’s magic was able to overcome whatever symptoms were preventing him from venting mana normally.
As an aside, Hajime had given her a bracelet and not a ring because he didn’t want to be misunderstood again.
The man’s breathing began to sound less labored. The swelling of his blood vessels stopped, and he stopped bleeding from his eyes and nose. Once she’d siphoned off most of his mana, Kaori dispelled her Sanctorum and cast Heaven’s Blessing on the man to heal his internal injuries.
“He should be good for a little while, but I’ve only alleviated the symptoms. I still don’t know how to cure him. If I took too much of his mana he would’ve died from exhaustion, so I could only drain a little bit. It’s possible his mana might surge up and go berserk again... Or he might start leaking mana until he dies. I’ve never seen these symptoms before, so I’m not sure, but... Yue, Tio, do you two have any idea what this could be?”
Kaori turned to Yue and Tio for help. A temporary fix like this was pointless if they couldn’t cure the underlying cause of his symptoms.
The two girls searched their vast memories, but nothing came to mind. In the end, they still didn’t understand what was wrong with him.
“Kaori, could you check us too, just in case? It’s possible whatever he’s sick with is infectious. Well, if it’s something that just makes your mana go berserk, at least Myu’s safe.”
“Yes, that should be the case.”
Kaori nodded and began diagnosing the rest of the party. Fortunately, it seemed none of them were infected. Whatever the disease was, they were certain it didn’t travel through the air. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Around the same time, the young man groaned and opened his eyes. It seemed he’d recovered enough to regain consciousness. He looked around slowly, his gaze stopping on Kaori.
“A goddess? I see, you’ve come to take me...” he mumbled to himself.
He reached out a shaky hand toward Kaori. Annoyed, Hajime kicked him in the stomach. The heat and sand had made him even more irritable than usual.
“Urgh!”
“H-Hajime-kun!?” Hajime ignored Kaori’s outburst and asked the man what had happened to him.
From what Hajime remembered, the man’s clothes were the traditional garb of the Ankajians. Ankaji sat at the largest oasis in the desert. All that knowledge he’d amassed when he’d still been “useless” was starting to come in handy now. If Ankaji had been struck by some unknown disease, that made Hajime’s crossing much more perilous. He was a lot more interested in the man’s circumstances now.
Hajime’s kick brought the man back to his senses, and he took a closer look at his surroundings. Seeing Brise almost sent him into shock again, and he didn’t calm down until Kaori explained what was going on.
“I thought both me and the dukedom were doomed, but it seems god hasn’t abandoned me yet.” The man muttered quietly.
I wonder what he’d think if he learned that god of his was actually a heartless monster? Hajime looked up at the sky. If anything, that disease of his was probably a “present” from his god.
“Hajime-kun. Let’s move him to the car for now.” The poor man was having difficulty even standing. The heat of the desert had left him dehydrated. Hajime still had questions he had to ask the man, so he couldn’t have him dying just yet.
Sighing, Hajime nodded. He tossed the young man over his shoulder and carried him to Brise. When he laid him down in the air-conditioned backseat, the man exclaimed in surprise, “Is this the land of the gods!?”
Looks like he’s still got some life left in him.
After chugging down a few bottles of water, the man had finally recovered enough to speak coherently. His expression grew grim as he began to talk.
“First, let me thank you for saving my life. Had I died back there... Ankaji would have been finished. My name is Bize Feuward Zengen. I’m the son of Ankaji’s duke, Lanzwi Feuward Zengen.”
Well that’s a surprise. Didn’t think he’d be royalty.
The Dukedom of Ankaji was responsible for transporting all of the marine goods that came out of Erisen. And Erisen was where 80% of the northern continent’s marine products came from.
In other words, Ankaji had a near monopoly on humanity’s supply of seafood. Their nobles were highly respected even within the Heiligh Kingdom.
Bize was just as surprised to hear the credentials of the people who’d saved him. Kaori was one of Ehit’s warriors, while Hajime, Yue, Shea, and Tio were all gold-ranked adventurers.
“I see now, God! You sent your messenger down to save me!” The man exclaimed upon learning who Kaori was.
She stared at him blankly. She hadn’t realized he was addressing her.
Hajime activated his Intimidation and once again pressed Bize to explain what was going on. Sweating profusely, Bize cleared his throat and began explaining.
According to him, this was what had happened:
Four days ago, many people in Ankaji succumbed to a fever of unknown cause. It had come out of nowhere and struck 20,000 of the city’s 270,000 people on the first day alone. Of those 20,000, 3,000 had symptoms so severe they’d lost consciousness. Doctors worked around the clock to try and figure out what the cause was, but it eluded them. All they could do was delay the symptoms like Kaori had.
As the days passed, more and more victims appeared. Worse, many of the doctors fell prey to it as well. Soon, there weren’t enough doctors left to look after all the patients. Finally, casualties started appearing. The remaining doctors were unable to siphon all of the patients’ mana, and those who went without treatment for too long died. The city despaired. No one had heard of a disease that killed within two days of symptoms first appearing.
On a hunch, one of the city’s pharmacists cast Appraise Liquid on the city’s water supply.
Upon doing so, he discovered the wells had been tainted with a poison that made its victims’ mana go berserk. Fearing the worst, they quickly assembled an investigation team to examine the oasis. As they’d expected, the oasis too had been poisoned.
For desert cities like Ankaji, oases were their lifeline. They were guarded twenty-four seven, and maintaining them was the city’s highest priority. It would have been nigh impossible for an intruder to sneak past the guards and poison the oasis.
The investigation team couldn’t fathom who’d done such a thing, or why. However, they had bigger problems to worry about. This meant that the only drinkable water in the city was whatever they’d gathered before the oasis had been poisoned. Plus, they still had no idea how to save the people already infected.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. They knew of one way that might save those already infected.
A mineral known as stillstone. It was a special mineral that could silence mana near it. It grew in small quantities inside the Grand Gruen Volcano to the north, and was extremely valuable. Magical researchers often used it
as a safeguard against accidents. By crushing it into a powder, they could feed it to the patients and calm their rampaging mana.
However, the distance between the city and the volcano was great. A round trip would take one month at the least. And all of the adventurers skilled enough to delve the Grand Gruen Volcano had already been knocked out by fever. Most adventurers didn’t even possess the strength to make it past the eternal sandstorm that raged around the volcano.
Besides, even if they had capable adventurers left, they didn’t have enough water to outfit them for the journey there. Their only remaining option was to ask the kingdom for help.
Of course, hoping the kingdom would provide Ankaji with enough water to slake the city’s thirst for a month was a long shot. However, hoping they would dispatch adventurers capable enough to harvest stillstone in the meantime was even more of one. Ankaji may have been a vital outpost for the kingdom, but it would still be normal procedure for them to send an investigation team first. But by then it would be too late.
Hence why it was necessary for someone of the influential Zengen family to personally relay the situation and ask for immediate aid.
“Father, Mother, and even my sister were infected on the first day. We used what little stillstone we had left to cure them, but they still haven’t fully recovered from the ordeal. They’re definitely in no state to travel. Which is why I left Ankaji with my guard yesterday to head to the capital. Since I hadn’t shown any symptoms, I thought I hadn’t been infected... but I guess they were just delayed for me. I guess how long it takes for symptoms to appear varies from person to person. I had been so preoccupied with the events happening in the city that the possibility had never even occurred to me. I should have taken some stillstone too, just in case. Every second wasted is another precious Ankaji life gone... I can’t believe I was so foolish!” He slammed a fist against his knee, lamenting his own helplessness.
Worse, his guards had died protecting him from the sandworms. Nice to see that the next duke of Ankaji is someone who cares about his people.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 5 Page 2
