Chapter 102………………………………..
Liena said she had nowhere to stay.
Seeing her expression and attire, I could tell how hard her life had been, so I didn’t ask for details.
“Come in! Stay as long as you want, and think of this as your home.”
“Thank you… truly, thank you…”
I took Liena’s hand hesitantly lingering at the doorway and led her inside.
While I served her warm tea and tidied an empty room, the doorbell rang—another visitor had come.
“Who is it?”
Liena asked as she watched me read a letter delivered by a messenger.
“Someone I know invited me to a family dinner. Tomorrow evening.”
“If you’re invited to a family dinner, that means you must be really close to them, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I see what kind of people they are.”
As she said that, I wondered what expression was on her face—it strangely appeared blurred in my memory.
“Is it Duke Cassius?”
I opened my eyes. Half-asleep, I recalled the scene from just before.
‘What…? Was that a dream?’
More importantly, where was I? It didn’t seem to be Ambassador Leoc’s mansion.
My thoughts were scattered at first, but as my consciousness cleared, the events just before I fell asleep came back vividly.
Terence! He had been on the verge of death after overexerting himself while fighting the Divine Beast.
Thanks to the divine power I had infused, there was some improvement, but since I had collapsed afterward, I didn’t know exactly what had happened to him.
“Te…”
I tried to call his name while sitting up.
“Ugh.”
For some reason, my body was incredibly stiff, and my voice barely came out.
As I managed to lift my upper body, I saw black hair in my line of sight—it was Terence.
He was sitting in the chair beside the bed where I had been lying, dozing off in an uncomfortable position.
I brushed his hair out of his face. Only the sound of his steady breathing filled the quiet room.
He was safe. Though the shadows under his eyes made him look tired, Terence appeared fine.
Finally, I could fully relax.
If he hadn’t recovered even partially, I would have regretted my lifelong choice to try to claim the magic stone mine.
“Master, you’re awake!”
At that moment, some kind of furry bundle jumped onto my lap.
“Divine Beast?”
The loud noise made Terence open his eyes.
“Idel!”
He saw me and shouted just like the Divine Beast had, with an oddly intense reaction.
“How do you feel?”
“I’m… okay…”
Once again, my voice barely came out.
“Ah.”
Terence looked as if he’d realized something, then headed toward the nearby nightstand, which held a kettle and cups.
“Drink slowly.”
He poured water into a cup and handed it to me. I noticed a subtle tension in his movements.
“Th…thank you…”
As I reached to take it, Terence moved my hand aside and brought the cup to my lips.
I could have held it myself, but his insistence made me drink without thinking.
He said in a worried tone,
“You have been asleep for three days.”
What? Three days?!
“The doctor who came to check said nothing was wrong, fortunately, but we were worried because you wouldn’t open your eyes at all.”
The Divine Beast interjected.
“I told you repeatedly that you would wake when the time came, yet you wouldn’t listen. Stubborn human.”
Terence shot a glance at the Divine Beast, then continued.
“My apologies. I would have liked to take you somewhere with more comfortable facilities, but there is none nearby.”
I shook my head. Drinking some water made speaking easier.
“It’s fine. This place is nice.”
This was the traveler’s inn where we had spent the night after arriving in the village.
Honestly, it wasn’t luxurious, but travelers occasionally ventured this far into the mountains, so it wasn’t entirely bad.
“Where is Vineta?”
After three days of sleep, she should have appeared by now, but she wasn’t here.
“She received my orders and went to the capital.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. I am here with Idel…”
Terence glanced at the Divine Beast still sitting on my lap.
“Although I don’t trust it much, since it is here, I judged Vineta could act independently.”
“What? That thing? How arrogant!”
The Divine Beast glared, but it didn’t concern me much.
“Vineta went to the palace, then?”
“Yes. She even took one of the magic stones from the mine with her.”
Even while I lay unconscious, our plan was proceeding smoothly.
“Then until Vineta returns with others from the palace, we…”
My growling stomach interrupted me—it was the loudest rumble I’d ever heard from myself.
Embarrassed, my face flushed. Terence smiled unfazed.
“Wait a bit. I’ll bring clear soup. It should be easy to handle.”
“Soup? From the neighbors?”
The neighbor was the girl who had guided us to the mine.
“She didn’t give it to us—she taught us how to make it.”
“You mean Terence made it himself?”
“Yes. And it’s not bad.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I’ve traveled as a mercenary or wanderer. I can handle basic cooking.”
This was the first time I learned this side of Terence.
“Oh, there’s no need to bring it. I can just eat at the table.”
But he firmly stopped me from leaving the bed.
“No. You’ve been lying down for three days. You must be careful. What if you hurt yourself trying to move too soon?”
What? Moving to the table isn’t exactly overexertion!
Though I had survived near death, he treated me like a fragile patient. His overprotectiveness didn’t end there.
Soon after, he brought a tray with clear soup and tried to feed me himself.
I insisted on taking the spoon myself, successfully refusing his excessive help.
‘Still, his concern wasn’t baseless.’
Feeling my entire aching body, I thought about how sore a person feels after such illness.
“Consider yourself fortunate that your human body withstood my power with no serious consequences.”
The Divine Beast commented on my condition.
“The great god surely assisted. Even with weak divine power, a blessed one is still a blessed one, apparently.”
Terence murmured quietly beside me.
“Blessed…”
He probably couldn’t understand what the Divine Beast and I meant.
‘At this point, I can’t hide it.’
When Terence collapsed, I had asked the Divine Beast how to save him, talked about the goddess’s blessing, and divine power in great detail.
Although the situation was urgent, Terence and Vineta had plenty of reason to be suspicious of our conversation.
“Um… Terence.”
I cautiously glanced at him; he smiled gently while holding an empty bowl.
“Would you like another bowl of soup?”
Terence didn’t ask how I had healed a royal’s divine-power-related side effects, or what the blessing really meant.
‘He’s just considering my comfort.’
My heart warmed, but I also felt a faint shame for hesitating to tell him the truth.
I had planned to reveal everything in the mine, yet here I was acting spoiled in response to his kindness.
‘Later… a little later.’
I would tell him later, after figuring out the best way to explain this unbelievable truth.
For now, like a student putting off an unwanted task, I simply answered Terence’s question.
“No, I’m full now. Thank you. It was really delicious.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Next time, I’d like to serve you something else.”
“You can’t really make the prince your personal chef.”
“For someone who saved my life, this is nothing. Are you bored? Shall I bring some books from the village?”
That was too much consideration.
“No, it’s fine. You rest, Terence. I’m going to wash up. After rolling around in the mine, I haven’t bathed for three days, and I’ve been worrying about it…”
Then I realized something significant.
“Huh? My clothes… they’ve been changed.”
My gaze fell on the only other person here besides me.
“Did… you, Terence?”
He panicked and frantically waved his hands.
“Absolutely not! Vineta did it before she left for the capital!”
“Ah, I see.”
“Well, I’ll go. I’ll bring hot water to the bathroom.”
“No, that’s fine! Really, I’m sorry…”
Before I even finished speaking, he had disappeared. I must have asked a terribly rude question.
After a warm bath, I asked the Divine Beast about the memory from just before while Terence prepared dinner.
“What? You had a strange dream while sleeping?”
“Yes. It was really weird.”
In the dream, Liena and I were friends—very close friends, in fact.
What was stranger was that while I seemed to have a close relationship with the Cassius family, Liena had none.
“From the sound of it, it was just a meaningless dream.”
“Then it must have been a meaningless dream.”
“It didn’t feel meaningless. It was unusually vivid for a dream….”
For some reason, it felt strangely nostalgic.
The Divine Beast, now shrunk to the size of a newborn puppy after transferring its power to me, wagged its tail thoughtfully.
“Could it have actually happened? Maybe some memory returned while converting my power into your divine power.”
“Is that possible?”
“Your body underwent a transformation comparable to being reborn. It’s not impossible.”
Then… could it have been the real Idel’s memory?
‘No way.’
I had never heard that Idel and Liena were friends, nor had there been any sign of it.
Moreover, in the dream, Liena appeared in tattered clothes, was an adult, and had no connection with the Cassius family…
‘Wait a minute.’
There was a single premise that could resolve all these contradictions.
If the memory I saw was from Liena’s previous life, the first life in which she had lived unhappily and died, everything would make sense
