Jake and Klad traveled while avoiding villages and cities as much as possible. As a result, they had to spend most of their time in forests or mountains, and Jake grew more exhausted with each passing day.
No matter how much Klad boosted his energy and helped him recover from fatigue with support magic, it was only momentary. His mental fatigue wasn’t relieved at all.
“Uugh…”
Eventually, Jake, exhausted to the limit, collapsed with a high fever.
“Haa… Isn’t there magic that can cure sickness, Klad?”
“The limit of healing magic is treating external wounds. If you want proper treatment, you need to visit a temple.”
“That won’t do…. The temples are… in Father’s hands….”
Jake lay resting in a temporary shelter made by leveling a flat path. He felt a warm warmth, as if Klad had used magic.
Even in his dazed state, thoughts like ‘Using magic is dangerous because pursuers might come’ and ‘Can’t I overcome the illness with magic and keep going?’ kept flashing through his mind.
“Klad, cast support magic on me. I can endure the pain.”
“No. Just because I cast magic doesn’t mean your weak body becomes sturdy. Even if magic makes you faster and doubles your strength, your body can’t handle it.”
“We just need to go a little further, but I can’t just sit here in a place like this. Just a little more… if we move for just a few more days, we can use magic to go to Audrit…”
“You can’t even endure a few hours, let alone a few days. You’ll die at this rate.”
Klad answered with a voice full of worry and placed his hand on Jake’s forehead. A cool energy seeped in and calmed his boiling body.
“Haah…”
As the fever subsided and his spinning head cleared, thinking became much easier. Jake lay there blankly staring at the sky and muttered.
“Klad…”
“What.”
“There’s a village near here.”
Jake tried to raise his hand to point in the direction of the village, but his body wouldn’t obey.
After struggling to barely move his arm, Klad somehow interpreted it and held Jake’s hand with a face full of complaints.
‘That’s not what I meant…’
Jake, who didn’t have the energy to explain that it wasn’t what he meant, continued his explanation instead of questioning Klad for holding his hand without permission.
“When I visited Audrit before, I stopped by this village…. That place has advanced herbal medicine.”
Temples couldn’t be built in villages. So when village residents were sick enough to need to see a priest, they had to visit a nearby city. However, instead of going to a city that took several days on foot whenever they were sick, the residents of that village gathered and researched herbs from the mountains. They had been researching various herbal preparation methods for decades. Now their herbal medicine had developed to the point where they could easily overcome most wounds or illnesses with just herbs.
It was an explanation he had heard when visiting the village in his capacity as the Hero.
In the current situation where he could neither visit a temple nor have his illness cured by Klad’s magic, it was the best option.
“Huuu…”
Klad, noticing that Jake intended to forcibly suppress his fever and move, let out a deep sigh.
How long would his body last even if he recovered using herbs? If he acted recklessly without rest just because he felt better, his condition would worsen. Right now, it was better to help his body naturally recover and get used to this level of forced march, even if it was a bit more painful.
He understood feeling rushed because a huge enemy was chasing them, but if he gave in to the stubbornness of this guy who was struggling to breathe, he would obviously die a tragic death before even meeting the duke. He absolutely shouldn’t give in to this request.
“…Klad.”
“……”
He shouldn’t give in… but when he met those teary blue eyes looking at him, the words of refusal didn’t come out easily.
Changing only the hair color to reduce magic use had been a mistake.
‘Next time I should change the eye color too…’
Klad grumbled inwardly and helped the limp Jake to his feet.
“We’ll rest in the village for three days before moving.”
“But…”
“After resting for three days, we’ll use a movement scroll to go straight to Audrit. It’ll be a bit close, but if we’ve come this far, we can escape the duke’s surveillance.”
That way, they could actually save more time than originally planned. After deliberating, Jake judged that Klad’s proposal was reasonable, nodded, and let his body go completely limp.
“Understood, so let’s go quickly, Klad…. I feel like I’m dying….”
Klad picked up the groaning Jake and set out on the road.
As Jake had said, before long a village came into view. When the presence of outsiders was felt, the villagers poked their heads out windows and observed the visitors.
The sight of one man carrying a person with two horses following behind was extremely suspicious. Yet as if no wariness arose, an old man spotted Klad and came running.
“Welcome to our village! Are you travelers? Oh my, this person looks very sick. It would be best to lay him down. Please follow me this way.”
Before anyone could say a word, the old man poured out words and guided Klad inside the village.
‘Is this the village chief?’
Klad, judging there were no dangerous elements in the village, silently followed the old man.
“This village is surrounded entirely by mountains, so there isn’t much coming and going from outside. The roads are inconvenient, so merchants don’t like passing through here, or something like that. But recently, the number of travelers visiting the Temple of the God of Abundance that was built in Audrit has increased. We wanted to build a new inn but didn’t have the means, so we emptied out one house entirely. How comfortable is it to use an entire house all to yourself?”
The old man, who poured out all sorts of information as if prepared, guided Klad to a small house in a corner of the village.
“Here we are. Have you heard that the Hero-nim also visited our village? The Hero-nim stayed in this very house. Thanks to coming to our village, you’ve also become someone who has stayed in the house where the Hero-nim stayed. Hahaha.”
For Klad, who had shared a room with the Hero for the past few weeks, it was unimpressive news.
“We haven’t properly greeted yet, so lay down your companion and come out for a moment to greet the villagers…”
Klad ignored the old man’s words about introducing the new visitor to the entire village, laid Jake down in one corner of the room, then took out and offered several gold coins.
The old man’s face, which had been bright from the start, brightened several times more.
“I want to rest quietly.”
“Oh my, I seem to have disturbed you too much.”
“Please bring herbs good for fatigue recovery and high fever.”
“Yes, yes, just leave it to me.”
The excited old man left, and Klad laid Jake down in one corner of the room. He had been oddly quiet—it seemed he had fallen asleep from the fever in the meantime.
Klad covered Jake with the blanket prepared in the room and placed his hand on his forehead to calm his boiling body temperature. Jake, who had been groaning in pain in his sleep, soon fell into a deep sleep as the fever subsided.
Klad sat there and watched over the sleeping Jake.
Until Jake woke up.
***
The villagers, hearing news that a sick guest had visited, brought water made by boiling various herbs. Perhaps a rumor had spread that if you brought herbs or food you’d be given a few coins or a silver coin, because all sorts of villagers came, to the point where Klad was about to chase them away, telling them not to come anymore.
Despite all that commotion, Jake, who had been sleeping soundly, finally woke up only after half a day had passed since drinking the herb-infused water.
“My body feels refreshed, Klad! We could go to Audrit right now.”
“Stop talking nonsense and lie down.”
Klad laid Jake back down as he tried to get up.
“What are those things piled up over there?”
“The villagers brought various things.”
“The people here are very kind. It was the same when I first visited. When I left the village, they even packed food for me.”
Rather than that, wasn’t it more likely they were trying to increase visitors by promoting themselves as the village the Hero had visited?
“I stayed in this house when I visited last time too. It must have been the village chief’s house… Did he tearfully vacate his house? This time I’ll definitely compensate him for vacating it.”
So it was actually the village chief’s house, despite being told it was a house left empty for guests. The number of visitors passing through on the way to Audrit was increasing, but building an inn cost too much money and time, so they seemed to be temporarily vacating one house and receiving lodging fees. While raising its value by promoting it as the room the Hero stayed in, at that.
“I already paid the lodging fee.”
“Then I can rest easy.”
“Don’t be too at ease. We might suddenly need to run away.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“A village excessively kind to outsiders. Isn’t that too suspicious?”
Jake blinked while staring at the ceiling.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what Klad meant. In his childhood, those who approached him on the duke’s orders were all kinder the more they wanted from him.
However, wanting something didn’t necessarily mean it was bad. As much as they wished for the village’s stability and peace, wouldn’t they be more genuinely happy when he saved the world as the Hero?
“Certainly their behavior is somewhat excessive.”
“Somewhat?”
“They’re not such bad people. You can tell just by seeing that their attitude is the same whether I visited as the Hero or visited lying down sick.”
That probably wasn’t because they were equal to all visitors, but simply because Klad didn’t hesitate to open his purse.
However, Klad didn’t bother mentioning that fact.
“Elijah, a former party member who stopped here with me, also said I trusted them too carelessly. She told me to be careful because they might be hiding their true intentions with kindness and trying to deceive me.”
Klad had never met the human called Elijah, but he agreed with her opinion.
“But these people are just people who are interested in outsiders and working hard for the village’s development, they’re not dangerous.”
If they were trying to use Jake for money or something else, he could generously understand that much.
Of course, that act would constitute a serious crime under noble law, but it was still okay.
Because Jake was a Hero before being a noble.
“What I need to be wary of is only those trying to approach me on Father’s orders. If I suspect even those I should protect, I won’t be able to protect anything.”
That’s why Jake decided to trust them. Because they still needed a Hero.
