Surviving as a Broken Hero

The guards, too flustered by the news of the dungeon having collapsed and the mass of Awakeners that kept questioning them, wondering what was going on, didn’t even bother to check peoples’ wrists for the marking tattoos—instead just glancing over people while trying to calm panicked Awakeners who had seemingly bet their entire life on clearing that dungeon.

The city square, which had previously been quiet and surprisingly empty for a city of that size, was comparatively crowded—people gossiping, resting, treating their wounded, and meeting up after returning.

Thanks to that, we were able to slip in unnoticed amongst the chaos and confusion. I didn’t have much in the way of money, but Lein was able to buy rooms in a nearby inn for us that were rather comfortable.

We ended up buying two, a room with two beds and a room with one. Each room was also equipped with a small cubicle that had a toilet and shower. Thanks to magical enchantments, things could be made much more compact without the need for pipes and such.

We decided that I would be the one staying with Koise, so we placed him, still unconscious and tied up, in the bed across from where I would be sleeping.

After that, we went down, starving and eager to eat some real food.

There had been enough food in Lein’s bag, yes, but the bag didn’t preserve things, so we had been left with hard bread and jerky on the way back. The food that Krylla had given me was already long eaten by then.

The dining area of the inn was subdued, and the empty stage in one corner told me that the crowd was either usually livelier or that the inn had been built with unfulfilled hopes by the innkeeper.

Food was standard for everyone. The innkeeper cooked in mass and wasn’t trying to cater to a restaurant, after all, he was just trying to make food that was better than whatever Awakeners could usually stuff into their item bag—which, though this might have been the hunger speaking, I believe he succeeded at.

Because the room came with breakfast as well, we agreed to reconvene for breakfast in the morning before Lein left to his room.

The beds weren’t luxurious by any means. There was a rough, brown blanket over the hard straw mattresses resting atop the wooden frame of each bed. At the head of each bed was also a straw pillow that was somehow just softer than resting your head on a mound of dirt with coverings just smooth enough to not scratch your face when you moved around.

We didn’t care much for Koise’s comfort, we only cared that he didn’t die on us. As such, we’d unceremoniously dropped him onto his bed as he was, bound up in the ropes with dried blood caking his skin and clothes.

My eyes lingered on his hands for a moment as I stood just in front of the door after ensuring it was locked upon Lein’s leaving.

I could only imagine the excruciating pain he must have felt with each waking moment. Wasn’t he worried about losing the ability to use his hands?

Of course, there were various healing classes that existed, but healers were always sought after, and those that could heal injuries that left long-term effects or a severed limb were even rarer. I had only ever heard of two after listening to Awakeners gossip in the Association building back in Karfana, and one of those two resided far away, in what was considered humanity’s primary city.

Still, it was what he had decided to do to himself.

Why was I feeling sorry for someone who had been consistently trying to kill me since Karfana, anyway? It was a bit of a misplaced worry. Even so, knowing that our dispute came from whatever he had been told I had done to the other members of the Lion Guild, I couldn’t help but feel at least partly responsible.

I wanted to collapse into my own bed immediately. As I was then, that brown, rough blanket looked like the softest silk.

However, as I was finally able to take a moment to rest and calm myself, my own stench wafted into my nose, almost making me gag. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had showered.

Upon entering the little bathroom in the hopes of being able to clean myself up a bit, I was met with a new problem…

The shower had a mana activation device.

In big cities that could afford it, inns usually had mana crystals that would power everything inside, but smaller inns found it more cost effective to just have Awakeners supply their own mana for anything that needed it. It made upkeep cheaper for them, but it also put a limit to how long one could enjoy the sensation of a hot shower, as the shower could last only as long as it was constantly supplied with mana.

I stared at the empty wall with the mana circle in it.

“Fuck…”

A curse escaped my mouth. It didn’t look like I was going to be able to shower right then, either.

That didn’t stop me from trying, though.

I placed my hand on the wall and willed my mana into the circle, but just as I thought, nothing happened.

That was bad enough, but just when I was trying to figure out how I was going to ask the innkeeper for a mana crystal so I could take a shower, I saw Koise again.

He was awake. Not only that, but he was also unbound, the ropes around him had been severed by a weapon I apparently had missed on my initial search of his body.

…And he was glaring at me intently.

At least he had waited for me to leave the bathroom, I guess.

I froze, and we stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the bed across from where he was sitting.

I had wanted to avoid getting my bed dirty with everything that was caked on me, but that was the least of my worries at that moment, only a flitting thought as I tentatively sat on the bed.

He leaned forward, ignoring the pain he must have been feeling in his hands as he rested them on his thighs.

No matter how hard I tried, I still didn’t see a weapon on him.

I should have had the advantage—he looked extremely beaten up and specialized in ranged attacks—but his tone of voice made me believe he had something up his sleeve that I would have a hard time facing, even in close quarters.

So I remained sitting, tense and ready to use my abilities at a moment’s notice.

He seemed to notice my tensed muscles and gestured at me vaguely with his hand.

“Relax,” he said with a tired voice, “I’m not going to kill you this second.”

‘That doesn’t leave any promises for the future, though…’

Cautious as I was, I still wanted to know why his bloodlust toward me seemed to have ended, if only for a few moments.

“I’m guessing you want to listen to my explanation now.”

What other reason could he have for suddenly wanting to talk?

“Yes. You killed three Lion members, which would usually be a death warrant, but you also saved my life when I was trying to kill you. I’m not completely unreasonable. Tell me what happened.”

So I told him.

I left the Second System out of it, of course, but I told him how I had found them after saving up money for six years to Awaken, how they had agreed on a discounted price for helping me kill my first monster, how they had ambushed me and had tried to make me choose between my money or death, even though I would be as good as dead without the money anyway.

At that point, I diverged from the truth a bit. Even if I had wanted to be completely honest, who would believe that I had suddenly Awakened to a separate System nobody had ever heard about that had saved me at the last moment? It sounded too much like something from a poorly written story.

Instead, I said a group of monsters had overwhelmed us in the forest and that I had gotten a kill on one of the dying monsters even while I was judged as the least of the threats, allowing me to escape as the Lion members were swarmed and tried to use explosives in a last-ditch effort to escape.

‘It’s a plausible story, if I say so for myself, Awakeners often carry around explosives in case they need to seal a dungeon or break through a part of one, after all.’

As I was mentally patting myself on the back for having come up with something so believable on the spot, Koise spoke.

“Your story is mostly bullshit, but you’re definitely no predator.”

‘Thanks, I think?’

“More importantly, I need something to show for all of this. I lost my entire scout party chasing after you, my favorite bow, got injured, and am in the middle of the snowy wastes. My repayment to you for saving my life is that I’m giving you this chance to tell me why the fuck I shouldn’t finish the job and drag your head back.”

I opted to tell the truth in that moment. After all, it wasn’t something that concerned the Second System anyway, and I figured that he could actually be of help if he could be convinced.

“Have you ever killed a dragon?”