"...his mana barrier… isn't working…? Even though he has mana? Is he conscious?"
"No. Out like a light."
The nurses performing a healing on the bleached-blond-haired boy exchanged confused glances while draining healing crystal after healing crystal.
They were performing that duty for four hours already, and without a single break.
"Lila... What you said before… do…? Do you really think that someone tried to murder him…?"
The other nurse asked the peasant one fearfully.
"I might have been too hasty in making assumptions back then… but I don't believe that my opinion will change much even after more evidence were to surface."
The peasant nurse shrugged her shoulders and continued to chant the activation formulas for the healing crystals.
"..."
"Chloe, if you're tired, call in someone else to replace you."
The other nurse bit her lips and looked at the peasant nurse with trembling eyes, but she only got a shrug and a cold comment in response.
—---
"..."
Rotsard opened his eyes and immediately regretted waking up.
His body… there just had to be something wrong with it.
Breathing was so painful that an image of thousands of thin needles poking his lungs at all times was a rather fitting representation.
Remembering the lessons all children in the frontline village received, he first tried to move his toes and fingers. Upon confirming that he could feel and move them, he began shifting around more.
Although he didn't find himself under a landslide in a snowstorm, but on a bed in a hospital wing, those motions were ingrained in his brain.
Funnily enough, they also let him compose his thoughts.
He…
Had no idea what happened.
He was meditating, then suddenly his body felt as if it was torn to shreds, and he was walking through the fog following the faint scent of medicine.
Rotsard was vaguely aware that he got attacked by someone or something at some point, but he couldn't recall when exactly that happened during that time.
"...?"
"Ufhgah…?!"
For some reason, he had a hard time lifting his left hand despite being fairly certain that it was in much better condition than his right one, so he got quite shocked when upon putting some force to raise it, someone let out a confused cry.
The reason why Rotsard didn't notice anyone around him earlier was that the culprit was seated on the floor, sleeping against his bed, and originally had her head pressing down on his left hand.
"You…! You woke up!"
Being startled awake, the nurse with a red imprint of an arm across her cheek wiped off a line of saliva from the corner of her mouth and scrambled herself back to her feet.
"Miss...?"
After a moment of silence and careful examination, Rotsard recognized and acknowledged the woman.
"What… happened to me…?"
"You… you are asking me…?"
The bleached-blond-haired boy asked hesitantly, causing the nurse to flinch and ask back with a bewildered expression.
"..."
Rotsar didn't answer verbally, merely lowering his head and sending the woman a rather obvious look.
"Haaa… Listen."
The nurse shook off the drowsiness and breathed out before changing her tone to a much more confrontational one.
"Someone like you surely doesn't have the decency to end himself, so tell me. Who wanted to kill you?"
"...huh…?"
She declared, causing Rotsard to let out a rather dumb-sounding voice.
"When you dragged yourself over here, you were like a skeleton. Only a week earlier, you were pudgy, but now you looked as if all energy got sucked right out of you. Your internal organs were like mincemeat. It wouldn't even make sense if you jumped off the Academy's rooftop because to do so much damage, you would have to fall more than a dozen times. Who did this to you?"
The nurse crossed her arms under her chest and asked aggressively, but Rotsard was staring at her, completely dumbfounded.
"My weight loss has nothing to do with it. Then… I was slammed against the ground repeatedly...? Is that what you're telling me…?"
The boy corrected the woman and then inquired with a troubled expression that, for once, looked sincere.
"...you… don't remember anything?"
"I remember meditating and circulating my mana in the pattern my father taught me. I remember it being ridiculously easier than ever before. It felt amazing, but then… then pain. It's all pain and nothing more."
The nurse didn't put her arms down, but she did lean in and asked in a slightly shaken voice, to which Rotsard tilted his head and revealed, putting his hand to his chest.
"There was some more pain too… Different kind... I think I was… attacked? Something jumped at me… I think."
The boy added, clenching his right arm close to his body as only the memory of the burning pain was something he could recall clearly.
"...well, let me tell you what I've heard…"
"?"
Seeing him like that made the nurse breathe out and say, making the boy turn all ears.