Chapter 10: A Bloody Profit
The moment Steven returned to his room, the smile on his lips froze.
Not because of some sudden accident, but because he'd casually picked up the black bread the village chief had brought him and taken a bite—nearly chipping a tooth in the process.
Calling this thing a brick would actually be an insult to bricks. In all his life, he had never encountered bread this hard—well, aside from the French baguette, that legendary "military weapon" forever the butt of jokes.
Drawing his sharp Netherite Sword from his waist, he carefully shaved a corner piece off the loaf. Only then did he truly realize just how poor this village was.
From the cut edge, it was painfully obvious that this wasn't just flour mixed with wheat bran. No—this was practically wood shavings with a sprinkle of bran molded into bread form.
Hard to imagine the villagers survived day after day eating something like this.
He popped the jagged corner into his mouth, tasting the very first "specialty dish" of this new world.
Aside from the way it scraped at his mouth, it wasn't actually that bad. At the very least, it was leagues better than rotten flesh.
Steven never wasted food. That was both habit and principle—respect for whatever could sustain life.
But as for the rest of the loaf… no, he didn't plan on eating more. Maybe he'd hand it off to the villagers outside; they would probably be thrilled to have a meal like this.
Giving it to Gladiia, though? Absolutely not.
Bullying the naïve was a surefire way to invite divine retribution.
And just as Steven's thoughts drifted to her, the girl who had been lying quietly on the bed suddenly sat up.
Their eyes met. For a moment, Steven thought she had remembered something. But the vacant, dull gaze staring back at him quickly dispelled that notion.
'So then… what was she—'
Before he could finish the thought, the girl sitting upright on the bed suddenly spewed a mouthful of blood straight at him.
Caught completely off guard, Steven glanced down at the crimson-stained clothes clinging to his body and sighed helplessly.
Well, so much for this outfit. Consider it honorably discharged from service.
But far more concerning than his ruined clothes was the girl herself—her pale face now tinted with a sickly white, made worse after vomiting so much blood.
This shouldn't be from the collision earlier, right?
He remembered it clearly: he had slammed into her head, not her chest or stomach.
Which meant… she must have already been injured long before their encounter.
That would also explain why those weakling monsters had dared to chase her in the first place.
Of course, whether his later antics had worsened her condition… well, that part he wasn't sure about.
Steven reached up to wipe the blood from his face, only to find it absorbing straight into his skin like some kind of miracle face cream.
Strange. But since no weird debuff appeared on his status screen, he decided not to worry about it.
Supporting the frail girl—who, upon awakening, stretched her arms toward him like a child yearning for her father's embrace—Steven quickly judged from her complexion that her condition was far from good.
"Well… considering you did call me 'Dad,' I'll let you off the hook. Meeting me… guess you really hit the jackpot, huh?"
Digging around his inventory, Steven actually managed to find something useful at this critical moment. He turned back to the girl with a grin.
"Dad?"
It seemed her mind had regressed to the point where all she could manage was that single word. Clutching tightly onto Steven's arm, Gladiia's frail voice continued to call for him, weak yet soft—like a sickly child relying on her parent.
"Yeah, yeah, Dad's here. Be good, open your mouth and take your medicine."
Resigned to his "daddy" role, Steven pulled a shimmering golden apple from his inventory, his tone coaxing as if he were soothing a child nestled in his arms.
If not for the fact that he was the one who'd caused this mess, he would never have taken it out so readily. Golden apples were practically half a life in themselves. Even the non-enchanted kind weren't cheap.
Since he doesn't really know his current situation all that well, he couldn't even bear to eat one himself.
The amnesiac girl blinked at him, then at the gleaming fruit in his hand. Her crimson eyes shimmered with confusion.
"…Alright, I guess I overestimated your brainpower right now."
Shaking his head, Steven pressed the apple gently to her soft, jelly-like lips, then exaggeratedly mimed a biting motion himself.
At last, the girl understood his intent. Her delicate lips parted, pearly teeth grazing the apple's surface.
Crunch!
A sharp sound rang out. The girl immediately clutched her mouth, her eyes still carrying that instinctive closeness to Steven, but now tinged with the faintest resentment—as though she knew she'd been tricked.
Steven, meanwhile, stared at the golden apple in his hand, now bearing a neat little tooth mark, and was at a complete loss for words.
Wait… this thing was really solid gold? Why did the realism have to extend this far?!
Thinking back to how many of these he'd eaten over time, he suddenly felt that if he ever dropped dead one day, it'd probably be from heavy metal poisoning.
Still, he now faced a bigger problem: the girl in his arms looked ready to keel over, yet the medicine in his hand couldn't be consumed by her the normal way.
If he tried to make her eat the whole apple, never mind whether the healing effect kicked in—she'd probably lose half her life just from the act of swallowing.
After all, in ancient times, wasn't "swallowing gold" considered a method of suicide?
"Haah… guess it can only be that way, huh?"
Sighing, Steven gently lifted the weak girl's chin, propping her small face against his chest. He carefully studied her features.
The more he looked, the prettier she seemed.
"…From a certain angle, I guess this makes me the lucky one. But let's be clear: I'm only doing this to save you. Pure motives here. So when you eventually remember all this, I expect you to be a little reasonable about it, alright?"
Muttering words she couldn't possibly understand in her current state, Steven bit into the golden apple himself.
With just a few crunches, he chewed the fruit down, feeling the fragments melt into a stream of warmth that coursed rapidly through his body.
Before that warmth could completely fade, Steven bent down, pressing his lips firmly against the girl's soft ones—transferring the lingering golden energy from his mouth into hers.
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Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M