Ch. 26 - The Price

After I invoked the Word of Death to cleanse the Hydra’s curse, chaos erupted at the dungeon’s entrance.

A storm of voices—shouting, arguing, spreading like wildfire.

The adventurers’ clamor fell into two major topics.

First: Alex. She had barely escaped with her life, dragging back a powerful curse from the dungeon. Many had already given her up for dead, but through sheer rotten luck, she survived.

Second: the brat who purified the undead Hydra’s curse.

…In other words, me.

Regrettably, my curse-reversal had failed. And the divine power I had spent would never return. The price owed to Mother remained unchanged.

It had looked impressive enough, smashing Eva’s tail in front of that muscle-head, but the sudden drain of divine energy left me in tatters.

I was about to collapse when Enzo swept me up and carried me away.

“Doc, you alright?”

I had no strength left to reply. Sweat poured down my jaw, dripping to the ground. My vision swam and twisted. Healing anyone else was out of the question.

That spell was never one I should have been able to cast. Only with the memories of Dietrich Becker fused into this body, and the capricious help of Mother, had it worked at all.

My prayers and divine reserves were utterly insufficient. For daring to wield power far beyond me, what would Asclepia’s serpent demand?

No regrets.

I knew what I was doing.

Without resolve and without sacrifice, great power cannot be wielded.

The inescapable dark crept close, closing around me.

Mother had come, greedy as ever, to collect her due.

◇◆

At some point, I found myself in pitch-blackness, unable to see even a step ahead. Yet I felt no fear, standing firm against the darkness before me.

—Foolish, wasn’t it?

The figure there looked like Dietrich Becker, and yet not. The real one was long gone. What I faced now was nothing but a fading afterimage.

—You’ve lost twenty years of life.

A fair enough price for power beyond your station.

But so what?

—Are you stupid? What do you take Mother Asclepia for?

Dangerous. A miser. Frightening.

Excuses were endless. But anyone who hides behind them, who flees from trials—do they really think Mother’ll recognize them, by the god Asclepia?

Mother Asclepia is a being beyond nature. If you must name her, then yes, she is a god.

And the thoughts of a god are beyond us, crawling insects. She isn’t some tender thing who will comfort you just because you whimper for help.

But she watches. Always. She watches what I do.

And this time, she did not take my life, though I had faced the trial.

“Twenty years, huh? She really gouged deep this time.”

Curse another, and you dig two graves.

Mother is always watching. Always staring at my choices. This time, she went easy. I won’t pretend to be happy about it. Losing years of life is a waste.

And yet—

“What meaning is there in simply living long?”

The people dearest to me left me behind long ago. I love no one. I have no lingering attachments. Then why not burn this life brightly and run it to the end?

“Dietrich Becker. Stay buried. Stop brooding. Rest.”

I will walk this road alone.

“When I join you, I’ll listen to your sermons all you want.”

But let it be…

The silver star above me points to a new road.

◇◆

The result was simple.

Alex’s party, which had faced the Hydra variant deep in the Trembling Dead dungeon, was annihilated.

Not for lack of caution. She had no healer, true, but she had stocked more than enough potions and gathered Olympus’s strongest frontliners. Even so, it wasn’t enough. They were crushed.

All dead. Only Alex survived.

For Olympus, its fighting strength plummeted. Their guild rank fell from A to C.

Considering Alex’s own condition—both arms badly mangled and showing no sign of recovery—this judgment was generous.

Now, Olympus had no true frontline warrior.

Enzo, a rogue, was versatile—bow, sword, knives, hidden weapons, martial arts. But he wasn’t a warrior fit to anchor the front in a dungeon’s depths. His true worth lay in scouting and disarming traps.

Annette, the sub-leader, was a ranger. Her skills overlapped with Enzo’s. She was a capable scout, a jack-of-all-trades with blades, bows, and trick weapons, but her real distinction was alchemy.

She was half human, half elf. Beautiful, like Marielle, but unlike Marielle, she wasn’t pure. The two barely spoke, and likely didn’t get along.

Though my curse-reversal had failed, I had purified the undead Hydra’s curse. That alone made me famous overnight.

And then I spent nearly a month bedridden.

My reward: six hundred fifty-five silver coins—6,550,000 sheep. Enough, Abby said, to buy a house in the Upper Quarter. But having never seen such a place, the value meant nothing to me.

As for the price I had paid… Abby saw my weakened body and erupted.

“Di! Di, you idiot child! How many times did I tell you not to overdo it!?”

Simply put, I was weaker. Easier to kill.

My once-brown hair was streaked with white now. My body thinned.

Enzo called it “Level Drain.” With dungeon exposure and monster essence, recovery might be possible, but by law, people under fifteen were barred from dungeon assaults.

Abby’s rage was merciless.

“Ashita! Zoë! How many times have I told you!? Why do you think I set you two at his side, huh!?”

Ashita escaped without her horn broken, but Abby whipped her over a hundred times. She was stripped of duties and demoted to “kitchen servant.”

“You useless glutton!”

Zoë fared worse. Not only stripped of her role as my attendant, but beaten more than twice as much as Ashita and nearly sold to slavers.

Only my intervention stopped Abby from selling her. Even so, Zoë too was sent to the kitchen.

“You worthless trash!” Abby roared.

◇◆

Abby’s fury toward Olympus was volcanic.

“You bastards! How dare you do this to my Di!”

She stormed their clan, raging. And Annette, for reasons I cannot fathom, tried something outrageous… pressing five silver coins into Abby’s hands, attempting to drive her away.

Had Alex herself negotiated, things might have gone differently. But she was at the temple, arms being treated. Her absence let chaos spiral.

Marielle and Enzo scrambled to intervene, but the outcome was grim.

I had wrung Alex dry for payment, but Annette’s paltry five silvers ignited Abby’s wrath to new heights.

“You bastards! You dare mock me? Mock me!?”

Abby went berserk.

In the end, Olympus had to renegotiate our contract, surrender the deed to a slum lodging in Palma, and pay Abby another three hundred silvers. Most of it went directly to Alex’s ongoing treatment.

It was Enzo, not Marielle, who smoothed the negotiations. Marielle was too cold, too aloof for diplomacy, and Alex was a muscle-brain. Abby’s fury would have only escalated the threats.

Abby, though, had a virtue beyond price.

Queen Bee would not sell me.

Even faced with mountains of silver, she didn’t budge. Even with Annette’s menace, she stood her ground, furious.

And when a stray child had nowhere to go, she always reached a hand.

She could be ruthless to survive. Cruel. Sometimes even deadly.

But she was kind.

Before silver, before top-ranked adventurers, she did not yield. For her brood, Abby fought to the very end.

And that, more than anything, changed the orphans she led.

They followed Queen Bee blindly. They devoted themselves to her.

She had always been soft on me, but after this, she was gentler.

I hated it.

The brats looked at me with envy. They aspired to be like me. They served Abby with desire in their eyes. It disgusted me.

I had only done what I could. Nothing more.

And now, I was weakened. Easier to die. But that meant nothing.

Mother Asclepia had told me:

When you overcome hardship, the rest will follow.

And the dungeon was calling me.

This chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.

Notes

As promised, I'll update one chapter every day this week.

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Ch. 26 - The Price

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