Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Five: Reason for Challenging the Dungeon
“Karen, are you truly all right?”
Karen was washing the alchemical cauldron with snow when she hesitated for just a moment before answering Julius’s question.
“It’s hard just being here. More than just the cold… It’s a feeling like simply existing is painful.”
She was honest about it. This was probably what this world felt like for people without magical power—the pain was enough to make Karen think that as she let out a white breath.
Julius frowned at her answer.
“Karen, we haven’t made a formal announcement yet, but we are as good as engaged. Please stop hiding things and tell me honestly.”
“What?! Mr. Julius, do you think I’m saying it hurts when it doesn’t?!”
Karen looked up at him with an expression of genuine disbelief. Julius’s own eyes went wide at that.
“Of course not! That’s not what I meant at all, Karen. I meant that the level of discomfort you described seemed far too mild.”
Hearing Karen’s answer, Julius apparently thought she was understating her suffering.
“The fact that I caused such a misunderstanding… could it be that you are enduring something to keep me from worrying?”
“Even if I tried to hide something in front of someone as experienced with dungeons as you, Mr. Julius, there’s a high chance you’d figure it out eventually, right? So I thought I was already being honest enough about how bad it feels…”
She said it with a dejected look on her face, but her hands kept moving without hesitation—washing the cauldron, tending to the ladle. Karen spoke of her weakness, yet her movements showed reserves of energy, and Julius regarded her with an unsatisfied look, touching his chin.
“What you made just now was a panacea, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Fail, and it would be just a curry. Succeed, and it would be a panacea. Either way, it should have made for a fine dinner.
“Licht ate it without realizing, but I was recovering from magical power intoxication, so when it settled, I was able to tell. After making a panacea with a body that had just used up all its magical power— are you certain your body has no problems beyond merely ‘feeling painful’ after creating something like that?”
“…Now that you mention it, I really had used up all my magical power, hadn’t I? Maybe it recovered while I was asleep.”
“You were only asleep for about an hour.”
That was far too short a time for a fully depleted magical power to recover completely. She had been too keyed up facing the black dragon to pay much attention at the time, but after draining her power to suppress her presence, her body had felt heavy—heavy enough that she had doubted whether she could do it again and escape if she needed to.
That was why she had negotiated with the black dragon before the fight and gotten it to leave her alone.
“…Thinking about it now, that is strange. It does hurt, but I think I might actually be feeling rather well.”
More than well, even—she felt more energetic than when she had woken up. Using magical power to make potions with a body that should have been exhausted from draining its power, and feeling better for it—now that it was pointed out to her, it was odd.
“Karen, you may be in the process of ascending a step, as a reward for the black dragon’s defeat.”
“But I didn’t even participate in the fight!”
Karen had done nothing but faint from the black dragon’s very first roar. Julius shook his head, however.
“Perhaps the goddess recognized you. Or perhaps the black dragon did.”
Karen looked down at her own hands with a strange feeling. They were very cold and stiff with the chill. But even washing the cauldron in the snow, the feeling hadn’t left her fingertips the way it had when they had first entered this dungeon.
“Your body must be filled with magical power.”
“But I don’t feel like I have magical power intoxication…”
“Which also means your body was that depleted to begin with.”
Karen had finished washing the cauldron and ladle and was reaching for the dishes when Julius took them from her hands.
“Mr. Julius?”
“I won’t interfere with the care of your alchemical tools, but for everything else, please leave it to me and rest.”
“No, no, this sort of chore is my job—oh, I can’t reach!”
Julius had held the dishes up high after taking them from Karen, well out of reach even when she stretched up on her toes.
“You should finish preparing yourself and get into bed before I finish washing these dishes. If you cannot finish in time, I can help wipe your back.”
“No, thank you!”
Because of the cold environment, dirt and odor were not much of an issue, but in conditions where all they could do was quickly wipe themselves with hot, wet cloths, having Julius wipe her body was utterly out of the question.
Licht had gone to the ninth floor to gather firewood, and when he returned and witnessed the standoff between Julius and Karen, he set the firewood down and headed straight back to the gate leading to the ninth floor.
“I’ll be sleeping on the ninth floor with Lumi. You two take all the time you need.”
“We are not taking any time; your consideration is unnecessary!”
Karen raised her voice at the awkwardly speaking Licht, but he quickly retreated to the ninth floor anyway. Left alone with Julius, Karen hurriedly began preparing hot water as she watched him rapidly finish the dishes.
She just barely managed to finish getting ready before Julius was done. Karen settled into her makeshift bed by the campfire—and lying down, she realized she was still wearing Julius’s coat. She looked up at him.
“Mr. Julius, you gave me your coat—aren’t you cold?”
“I’m perfectly fine with this much, Karen. The twentieth floor of the Ehlertt territorial capital’s dungeon was far colder.”
“…Even so, it’s still cold here, isn’t it?”
Julius’s coat was specially made to withstand conditions on the dungeon’s twentieth floor. Curled up inside it, she had been wonderfully warm. So Karen opened it toward him.
“We’d be even warmer if we wrapped up together, Mr. Julius.”
Julius blinked lightly at her words, then smiled.
“Are you sure?”
“I wiped myself down more thoroughly than ever since we came into the dungeon.”
In doing so, she had discovered that she had no real frostbite anywhere on her body. No cracking, no splitting, no discoloration. Her body really did seem to be in the process of ascending a step.
Karen waited, rolling around contentedly, until Julius finished tidying up, got himself ready, and lay down beside her. Karen flung the coat over him with a swoosh and snuggled up against his shoulder.
Julius laughed softly and drew her close beneath the coat. Just as Karen had thought, being wrapped up together made it even warmer. She pressed her cheek against Julius’s chest without the slightest flutter of nerves, and the tension drained out of her body as a sense of comfort settled in. Julius spoke to her in a voice tinged with amusement:
“Even this close, your brain no longer melts. That’s somewhat lonely, I must say.”
Karen glanced up at his faint smile, then pressed her forehead to his chest.
“When I’m with someone, I get completely swept up in them right away. Like my brain has melted, and I can’t think about anything else. Everything I am starts to revolve around the other person. I used to call it being love-brained—but I think love actually had nothing to do with it.”
“Karen?”
“I hated living for my family, but I didn’t know how to live for myself, so I lived for whoever I was with instead. I was just running away from a life that wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.”
“…When in your life are you talking about?”
The Ehlertt Earldom had investigated Karen’s life history. Julius was well acquainted with the circumstances of her upbringing. That was why he could not understand when in her life Karen could have repeated such acts of escapism.
“My previous life.”
Karen murmured it with her eyes still closed.
“I have memories of a previous life.”
“…I see.”
Julius breathed the words as though something had clicked into place. He didn’t press her with questions or try to draw more out of her, and Karen was grateful for his quiet—without noticing, the breath she had been holding released itself.
Julius said nothing about her confession and spoke of something else instead:
“When I was small, I lived hidden away with my mother in a little house deep in a forest far from any town. But my father found us, and I was taken and left somewhere around here.”
Instead of answering, Karen reached beneath the coat for Julius’s shoulder, then traced down his arm until she found his hand—and gripped his long, cold fingers tight.
“I had no way to fight back then. I scraped together every ounce of strength I had and made it out of the dungeon, and that was where I was found and taken in. I went straight home, but my mother was gone—and in her place, my father had come to collect me, having heard that I had escaped the dungeon on my own. He intended to acknowledge me formally as his son, having seen the power I had shown.”
“…So something like that happened to you.”
“There may have been brothers and sisters of mine left in this same dungeon before me.”
Karen’s grip tightened on his fingers. Julius continued in a calm voice, undisturbed by her reaction:
“I never asked my father about it. But the way he abandoned me here felt practiced, so I thought that if I ever returned to this dungeon one day, I should make graves for them. Perhaps no one rests here at all, and this is merely my needless anxiety. Still, if you wouldn’t mind, would you pray for the souls of the brothers and sisters I may once have had?”
“…Leave it to me.”
The fact that Julius said it this way meant he almost certainly believed, deep down, that they had existed. For the children whose very existence was uncertain, for the young Julius who could easily have become one of them, Karen suppressed the sob threatening to escape.
Seeing Karen respond in a trembling voice, Julius held her gently with a soft smile.
“Now that I know previous lives and next lives truly exist, there is real meaning in praying to the goddess that their next lives be happy ones.”
Saying that, Julius gently stroked Karen’s hair as she began to cry in muffled, broken sounds. Eventually, after watching Karen drift to sleep with tears still falling, Julius wiped them away and quietly closed his own eyes as well.
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