“…!!”
“…! …!!”
I hear voices.
I listen closely, and a light shines on my thoughts that are sinking into darkness. Slowly, I can see who’s talking.
“…Aah, darling!”
“Shouta! Thank goodness you’re awake…”
“…?”
What happened? Why are they crying?
And… I can’t move very well. I want to comfort Ayane and Maki who are crying on my chest, but I can’t move my limbs. I’m struggling to breathe too, and it’s like there’s a haze in my head… I can’t focus, it feels weird.
“I…”
‘Gogo!’
“Enki…?”
Enki looks like it’s in tatters, and my heart rustles even more. It looks a lot smaller too, so what happened…
“Shouta, can you drink this?”
I see a small bottle. Is this the potion I got from that treasure chest? I thought I wasn’t going to get to use it, so does that mean this situation is bad enough that I have to drink it?
“Aki…”
I look at the hand holding the potion, and see Aki. She’s not crying, but seeing her acting tough like this shakes my heart again. I’m sure I was the one who made her make that face. I hate being useless like this, but first I need to get back on my feet.
But my body can’t even sit up, so it’s hard to even drink the potion properly.
“Can you help me drink it?”
“Geez, okay then… Hn.”
“Hn… Gulp.”
She feeds me the potion with her mouth, and my thoughts start to clear.
I…
“What about that rare monster, Lamia?”
“We took it down.”
“You did?”
I thought I was attacked by it and lost consciousness for a moment, but I was wrong.
It sounds like I didn’t wake up even after the fight was over.
“I… Wait, where’s Aira?”
“…Here.”
I look to the side, and see Aira lying down, exhausted. Thankfully, I don’t see any wounds, but I’ve never seen her this tired. She didn’t have this much trouble against the Emperor Goblin either.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Master… You will need to be scolded when we get home.”
“…I know, I wasn’t careful enough. But what happened to me?”
My consciousness is clear, but I can’t put strength into my body. Even moving my neck is tough, so is my body really okay?
“Aira’s tired, so I’ll tell you. You got hit by Lamia’s Evil Eye.”
“I remember that much, but what kind of Evil Eye?”
“Petrification.”
“Petrification!? Then I…”
“Yep, you got turned to stone. Thankfully, it wears off when the caster dies, or maybe it wears off with time. Or you’d be stone forever.”
Petrification… First there was Orochi’s Paralysis, now this. These things really are rookie killers. Snakes are scary…
Aki hands me a mirror, and I see that I’m okay from the neck up, but gray-brown from the neck down. That means my skin, clothes, armor…
I can see Maki and Ayane sobbing through the mirror, and despite them being on my chest, I don’t feel any weight and warmth… This is pretty bad.
“Don’t worry, Shouta. Ayane’s Healing Magic worked, so you’re slowly getting better.”
Aki says as she points to the border between my skin and stone. Slowly… It really is changing slowly. At this rate, it should take about thirty minutes until I’m fully healed. But at least I’m recovering.
I can’t thank Ayane enough.
“What if we couldn’t heal the Petrification?”
“We’d have to carry you out of the dungeon, and call a high rank mage who could heal you completely. Or we could scrape together some Healing Magic orbs and have Ayane use them… That one sounds more realistic for us.”
That… Means I could’ve been petrified for months. I really was in danger there.
“…I understand. Please tell me what happened after I was petrified.”
“Yes. Right after you went down, Enki moved in to protect you. That’s why we were able to pull ourselves together. Enki moving out meant you weren’t dead. And since it’s made of stone to begin with, the Evil Eye didn’t work on it. But it couldn’t get close to the Lamia because it kept using magic, so Aira stepped in and managed to take it down.”
Aira sits up, seemingly having recovered a little.
“It was a very fierce battle without you, master. Since that monster could also use an Evil Eye, there were several points where our eyes almost met. I had to fight without it in my sights in order to avoid that, but I could not dodge magic without seeing it. But that was where the ladies’ skills helped.”
“I have Presence Detection, and Maki has Bio Detection. We can tell where friends and foes are with our eyes closed, and read the energy movement of magic.”
“Ooh.”
“There were a few close calls, but we got through it somehow. Ahh…”
Aira is so tired, that she can’t even speak properly. She normally hides it when she’s tired, but she can’t afford to now.
“I see, good job… It sounds like it would’ve been a tough fight even if I wasn’t petrified. What can we do to prepare for it next time?”
“First, since Charm only works on the opposite sex, our team can ignore it. But now that we know it can use Petrification, we should have a way to heal it on the spot. If we’re talking about potions from the dungeon, it needs to be a level four or higher red potion. As for magic, it needs to be at least Healing Magic Lv4.”
“Ayane’s is two, so the skill isn’t good enough… And Healing Magic doesn’t come around too often, right? I’ve been checking out the things put up for auction lately, but I haven’t seen it once.”
“Yes. It is very rare, so you need to provide it, master.”
“…So the high rank dungeon?”
“No, there is a monster who drops it on the fourth floor of this dungeon, but it is said to be a special monster.”
“Really? So we should head straight to the fourth floor.”
“And this floor’s treasure chests can have level four red potions.”
“Eh, that sounds good too, Ayane.”
“…Well then, that settles it. Do you understand, master?”
“Yes. We’ll go back, and I’ll take a break tomorrow too.”
I can’t afford to look any more disgraceful, or worry them more.
Still… Ah, this was my first failure. I was too excited to really pay enough attention, but it’s still frustrating.
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Thanks for the treat.
Oh yay plot armor to the rescue. I’ve decided they couldn’t miraculously reverse the petrification and the mc died. Off to a different and hopefully better story I go!!