Chapter 25: A Bad Dream

The fellspawn bit Fabian’s left arm, tearing a chunk out. With gritted teeth, the champion retaliated by beheading the monster. “Haah, haah…” He gasped for breath after killing what seemed to be the last creature in the dungeon.

“Fa-Fabian, are you alright? How’s your arm?” asked the corps members as they rushed toward their leader. His childhood friend April frantically worried about his injury.

“Your arm was nearly torn off,” she said. “The injury will linger if we don’t treat it right away, but I still haven’t recovered my holy power…”

“Don’t worry, April, I’m fine.” Fabian grinned at the worried members surrounding him and shook his left arm at them.

Seeing that he was indeed fine, April was moved to tears. “Oh, Saint Marianne…!”

As for me, however, everyone else’s relief felt like a distant dream, something separate from my reality. My mouth felt parched—no, I had been gaping without even noticing, dripping saliva. My vision had long been blurred by tears and blood ran down my left arm, consumed by a scorching pain, and fell to the ground along with my tears and spit.

“This is all thanks to Jun’s support magic,” Fabian said.

“What… Jun’s?”

“Jun, thank you… Jun?” Fabian sounded puzzled. Had he finally realized my condition? He quickly approached my hunched, kneeling body. “Jun! Jun…! Are you okay? Get a hold of yourself!”

“Why’s she behaving like this? Why is her arm suddenly in tatters…!” Only when they realized the state of my arm did shock color the eyes of the other corps members. Fabian’s face turned grave; he must have realized that I had transferred his wound to myself. He urgently turned to April. “If we treat her after exiting the dungeon… will she fully heal?”

“An injury of this degree…” The healer hesitated. “It’ll be impossible to fully recover even after we leave the dungeon. We’ll have to amputate it.”

“Good Lord…”

The festive atmosphere created by the defeat of the fellspawn instantly plummeted into that of a funeral. Feeling their sympathetic gazes, I gasped for breath and forced myself to rationalize amidst the pain, pretending to be fine. It was worth it investing an arm; both Fabian and I lived thanks to that, didn’t we? It would be restored once the second playthrough began, anyway, so it was okay…

* * *

It was a dream of when I lost my arm.

What happened after that was an obvious story. My arm was gone, I became a cripple, and I was still a useless support mage within the expedition corps. Nobody acknowledged how I had saved everyone thanks to my ability; instead, I got a mocking moniker for casting a spell of sacrifice for Fabian: Loyal Dog Jun.

“Did she even do anything to be proud of?”

“It’s a relief that Fabian’s arm is intact thanks to her sacrificial magic.”

“True. Support Mage Jun’s arm is useless, but Champion Fabian’s arm is a treasure to humankind, after all.”

Of course, Fabian had stood up to me whenever I was showered with insults… But in retrospect, that was only a pretense. Had he confessed that it was thanks to my spell that he had been able to defeat those monsters, no one would’ve belittled my contributions. I learned a lesson from that incident—self-sacrifice brought nothing but self-satisfaction and nobody would give any recognition for it.

The first thing I did after waking up was to check if my left arm was moving properly; I still couldn’t get enough of seeing it move. After staring at my well-functioning limb for a moment, I got out of bed. Mary, who had come to attend to me since morning, remarked, “You seem to be in a good mood today, Vice-captain. Did you have a good dream?”

“Oh, is that how it seems?” I smiled brightly as I received a towel from her. “I didn’t have a good dream, no. I’m just so satisfied with life right now.”

I felt like I wouldn’t be losing an arm while I was with the Dark Knights, not like I did back then, at least. Not counting the booming supply of holy water, in the first place, they wouldn’t barge into dungeons I advised as dangerous. My work and life balance were now incomparably better than in the first playthrough. Perhaps this was what it felt like to work in a company with good welfare? Not like I knew what being employed was like—I had transmigrated while I was doing nothing but preparing for employment. This was probably why people were so hell-bent on time traveling.

I hummed and asked Mary, “Could I have something to write with?”

“I’ll prepare it right away,” she said and immediately brought me the tools. I rubbed my hands together, staring at the quill, ink, and paper that had appeared in front of me in the blink of an eye. To properly utilize the information I had, I needed to categorize them and make a comparison between the danger levels and the current capabilities of the expedition members. No one would make sense of it anyway since I would write everything in Korean.