Surviving as a Broken Hero

Plink!

Most of his arrows were bouncing off of the dragon’s scales harmlessly, but he had managed to nail it in the eye once, which had somewhat renewed his hope that they might be able to get a lucky shot in.

Hope wasn’t worth giving up until you had no choice, after all.

Plink!

And it looked like he would have no choice.

Aizen had succeeded in stopping the dragon’s fire breath the first time, but after seeing his limp body fall from the dragon’s head as another heatwave surged through the thing’s body, he’d lost all hope.

…Even in what he thought were his last moments, Koise launched another arrow at the dragon that disintegrated into thin air in the face of the dragon fire.

Lein flinched and ducked back under the desk he was behind as if it would somehow block the fire, and Koise stared his death in the face.

Then…

Kieeeeeeee!

The dragon fire somehow curved around when it was heading for him and Lein and funneled straight through the hole that Koise’s first arrow had made.

The dragon’s high-pitched whine sounded almost like something a begging dog would make, and then its body started twitching sporadically.

Flames, left with nowhere to go, shot from the other side of the dragon’s head and died out.

The smell of burnt meat wafted through the air, causing Koise to unconsciously lick his lips.

Lein peeked his head up over the desk.

The dragon’s body finally went limp, and it thudded dully into its nest, its head thumping down dangerously close to Aizen’s body.

Like that, they had killed the dragon.

Pain.

“Ugh…”

Upon waking from a dreamless sleep, the first sensation I noticed was pain.

From my head, which felt like someone was slamming the inside of my skull with a hammer at a rhythmic pace, to my arm, which I found shot searing pain through my entire right side whenever I tried to move it.

Then there was the parched stickiness of my throat…

“Water…” I barely managed to croak out a request.

Not long after, the rim of a cool flask was pressed against my lips, and I greedily slurped down the liquid that came pouring down my throat…

Which was, very decidedly, NOT water.

“Ack!”

It was too late, I had already drunk most of it.

“Tastes like shit, right?”

I forced my eyes open to see Koise holding the container of foul-tasting liquid in the air over my mouth.

Next to him, Lein was looking at my arm, frowning.

‘That’s not good…’

To have the first thing someone does when you wake up be staring at your injury in moody silence? Yeah, I could take the hint that it was going to be a bitch to heal, even with my System-enhanced natural toughness and healing.

“Yeah… What the hell is in that thing?”

Koise waggled the container in the air, liquid sloshing against its metal sides.

“It’s a healing remedy. You already took up all the healing potions, greedy bastard.”

Apparently, the two of them had used any healing potions they had left to treat me while I was unconscious.

Rather than being some miracle of magic that caused you to instantly heal from any injury like they could do in the video games I had played back on Earth, the healing potions that Awakeners usually used just greatly enhanced natural healing processes, which were already enhanced by System stats and abilities in the first place.

Of course, I had heard that there were healing potions that could, in fact, heal any injury, but they would be just as hard to get as legendary equipment.

After all, who wouldn’t want the ability to instantly heal from mortal wounds?

“What about the dragon?”

My last memory was of handling the dragon’s fire, so I wasn’t sure what had happened after that—and even that was hazy. The feeling of diving into my mind to manipulate the fire had taken its toll on my mental state, and it also probably had something to do with my pounding headache.

“Dead, you killed it. Why didn’t you just do that from the start? If you could control fire all along, why do you keep using earth-based abilities that are more suited to defense for attacking?”

Lein, upon seeing that I wasn’t in any immediate danger of suddenly passing away anytime soon, launched into some questions that it was clear he had been harboring.

I could see from the interested glint in Koise’s eyes that he was interested in the same questions.

Rather than try to come up with a story then and there, I paid more attention to where I was instead.

A soft, cushy bed, smooth silken blankets, a fluffy feather pillow…

If I were to guess, I’d say that I had woken up in a noble’s room. It was certainly no back alley inn or haystack.

“Where are we?”

“We’re still in the castle. You’ve been out for a couple of days.”

We were probably in one of the royal bedrooms on the floor just below the tower, judging by the fine decoration and lavish bedsheets.

‘A couple of days? Wouldn’t the people in the city have come after us for killing the lord by now?’

“What happened afterward?” I asked, afraid that they were going to say we were actually imprisoned there or that we were hiding from a mob of angry Awakeners.

“Nothing, really. We killed the dragon and brought you down here. We’ve explored this floor of the castle a bit, but we’ve mostly been taking this chance to rest,” Koise said.

“Also, this castle has absolutely amazing showers that still function. We even found an entire spa room!” Lein tore his gaze from my arm and tried to speak enthusiastically.

Bracing myself to confront the worst, I looked down at the limb.

Besides the searing pain whenever I tried to move it, the limb was swollen all around and an off-purple color, with little bumps jutting up from the skin all the way from shoulder to hand.

“What about the people in the city? How did they react to their leader being killed?”

“They didn’t.” Koise said, “I don’t think they even know yet. At least, nobody has given any indication of trying to investigate.

That didn’t make sense. The tower’s windows had been blown outward in the battle. Maybe people thought it was just the dragon’s way of renovating?

“What about this?” I said, indicating toward my limp arm with a tilt of my head.

“Oh, ah, I think it’s broken,” Lein helpfully piped up from the end of the bed as he rummaged around through his item bag for something.

“I figured as much. I mean, do we know why it’s like this?”

“It’s a multiple compound fracture. Even with the System’s help and guidance, your body is going to have a tough time healing that correctly on its own. It’s likely that your bones will heal incorrectly and the arm will never be the same way it was before if we just let it be.” Koise was direct and to the point, not trying to sugarcoat the bad news that I could become a cripple again.

At least losing an arm wasn’t as bad as losing a leg, right? People could still fight and move with one arm, whereas having only one leg crippled any sort of ability to engage and disengage from combat.

“Getting it fixed at a healer capable of treating an injury like that would take an astronomical amount of coins, even more so if you want a potion with the same effects.”

Lein finished eating a piece of hard bread from his item bag that he’d begun crunching on, the crumbs falling to the lush, red carpet on the floor.

He clearly hadn’t been raised with very good table manners.

I understood what Koise was getting at.

It may have sounded like he was saying that my situation was hopeless, but he was really saying the opposite. We had just killed a dragon, after all.

And the parts from a dragon could be sold for astronomical amounts of money as well, not to even mention what we might be able to find in the dragon’s nest.

“What was in its nest?” I asked, curious about if they had found any rare trinkets or exotic items.

“We haven’t gone through it yet, we were going to split the gear, remember? It wouldn’t exactly be fair if Lein and I scoured the nest while you were asleep and picked the best things for ourselves.”

It was funny. We had just been enemies not days before, but Koise was suddenly worried about honoring our loot agreement.

“Let’s get going then.”

I couldn’t just sit around and wait for my arm to heal incorrectly on its own.

I may have been in pain, but it wasn’t debilitating me.

Also, I really wanted to see what the rest of the castle had to offer. Not only that, but we also needed to formulate a plan for how we were going to confront the people of the city and tell them that their lord was dead.

We could have just not told them, of course. The thought did cross my mind, but they would find out sooner or later, and there were no other cities nearby.

It was better to face a threat head-on than it was to wait on a ticking time bomb.

On the way back to the elevators that would take us up to the dragon’s corpse, I opened my status windows, which had been blinking in the corner of my vision for a while at that point.

[[Dragon Lord of the City on the Edge Defeated!

Experience Earned: 30,000]]

[[Level Up!

New Level: 6]]

[[STR: 20+4

END: 20

AGI: 13+4

PER: 11

MAG: 10

MANA: 10

Skill Points: 1]]

[[Level: 6

XP: 30,000/32,000]]

[[Ability Options:

《Scaled Skin》

The scaled skin of a dragon. Renders immunity to attacks for 1 second. 30 second cooldown.

《Eye of the Dragon》

The all-seeing eye of a dragon. Perceive the imperceivable and reveal hidden paths.

《Fiery Constitution》

The fiery vengeance of a dragon. Light parts of your body aflame with a fire that grows as you do.]]