“Your Healing magic is quite potent. But you can’t possibly resurrect the dead, can you? Now, get out of the way! Let me go!”
The Cultist leader looked at me triumphantly. I couldn’t make out his face because he wore his hood pulled down low, but I could see his mouth was twisted into a wide smirk.
“Why is that guy looking so smug after saying something so pathetic?”
“Danna-sama, you shouldn’t provoke him too much…”
“I can hear you, you know?! How dare you make such a fool of me! I’ll really kill you!”
“Danna-sama, what will you do?”
Bach asked me in a small, somewhat weakened voice.
What will I do, you ask?
That’s already decided.
“Un-Limited…!”
Instead of answering Bach, I chant it. The words that deceive my own brain. The name of the miracle I obtained at the end of my relentless training.
In that instant, my whole body flared with heat, and I felt my muscles swell.
I poured all my strength into my left leg, kicked off the sewer floor, and surged forward.
With the familiar sensation of my left leg shattering into a comminuted fracture, I bore down on the Cultist leader.
“Wha-!?”
The Cultist leader instinctively tried to use the child’s body as a shield. I cut down the Cultist leader, child and all.
“Im-Impossible…!?”
“Hostages won’t work on us, you know? We’re not acting with the kind of resolve that would be stopped by something of that level.”
The Cultist leader collapsed with a thud, his face contorted in astonishment.
And the child I’d cut down along with the Cultist leader… Looks like they managed to avoid a fatal blow.
“Heal.”
Pale green particles were being absorbed into the child, who was dressed in shabby clothes. Their severed right arm was also completely restored.
“Now then…”
I crouched down and searched around the Cultist Leader’s neck.
“Oh!”
Hanging from the Cultist Leader’s neck was the Cultist’s emblem and another necklace. I snatched the necklace from the Cultist Leader and examined it intently.
“There it is…!”
An unremarkable wooden necklace. This was the very rare item I’d been searching for.
The name of this rare item is the Guts Necklace. Whoever wears this necklace will absolutely never suffer from the Faint, Sleep, or Coma bad statuses.
It’s a necklace that only prevents certain bad statuses, but for Healers, it’s a rare item that’s even considered a candidate for their final equipment.
Bad statuses like Stun, Sleep, and Coma are a real pain; they render you unable to act until you either take damage or receive a 【Heal】.
What’s more, with Sleep, there’s only a 50% chance of waking up even if you’re attacked, and for Coma, that drops to a mere 20% chance of waking up from an attack.
The 【Heal】 ability is necessary to reliably rouse someone. But if the healer who can use 【Heal】 were asleep or comatose, it’d be the worst-case scenario. The party would instantly be plunged into a perilous situation. This Guts Necklace is what prevents that.
“This thing really saved us.”
I look down at the fallen Cultist leader. The Guts Necklace was a drop item from the boss of this sewer area. He must have been the boss.
“So that means, this staff is the Stun Staff, huh?”
I pick up the staff the Cultist Leader had been holding. It’s a staff of twisted wood, giving it a vaguely ominous feel. The Stun Staff is also a rare boss drop item. It has the effect of reliably stunning anyone struck by it.
Well, Faint is a status ailment where attacking the target is guaranteed to wake them up, so it’s not an incredibly useful item, but it’s still a rare item. I’ll make sure to collect this too.
“Are you unharmed, Danna-sama?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“And the child?”
“They’re fine too.”
“Thank goodness… You suddenly dashed out, it startled me… I was afraid you had abandoned the child, Danna-sama…”
“My bad.”
Bach was looking at me with an accusatory gaze, but it’s not like I’m indifferent to the children’s lives. I do at least hope they’ll be saved.
“So only six children were saved, huh…”
At my muttered words, Bach’s expression turned grave.
It’s surprising, but Bach actually likes kids. He’s good at looking after people, too. That’s probably a holdover from his days as the leader of the pack when he was younger. And since getting married and having children, he’s apparently become quite the doting father. Still, I never would have imagined he’d marry Delia, who used to be Cornelia’s personal maid. Rumor has it she’s got him completely under her thumb.
Well, for Bach, the loss of seven children must have been an unbearable truth. He was looking at the deceased children, his face on the verge of tears.
Bach’s condition was also a concern, but there was something else that worried me even more.
The magic circle carved into the sewer floor. What were those Cultists trying to accomplish by sacrificing the lives of as many as thirteen children?
“Bach, we’re taking the children to a safe place. You can wallow in sentimentality after that.”
“Yes…”
“Also, we need to report to the Royal Capital’s garrison. We can’t analyze the magic circle by ourselves. Once we’re done moving the children, I’ll have you go report to the garrison, Bach.”
“Understood…”
Giving orders to Bach, who still looked dejected, we carried the children on our backs and left the sewers.