Demi left only briefly to go to the bathroom to wash her hands and face. Then she returned to her bedside.
At this point, her bed was a little worse for wear. It had received a trauma victim without complaint, but the sheet that remained on the bed through everything was now rumpled and discolored, and this was obvious even with the comforter that was now over her peacefully slumbering patient.
He was clean now. She had seen to that herself, and the comforter she had spread over him was also perfectly serviceable, even if it had spent a little time piled in the corner.
It was the sheet underneath him that was really in the worst condition.
As she looked at it, she wondered about something.
Curious, she flipped back a corner of the comforter and laid her hand lightly on the sheet.
And then she quickly dropped it into her inventory, and then immediately put it back where it had been.
(The sheet conveniently snapped to the mattress whenever she indicated that she wanted to drop it onto the bed.)
And miraculously, the sheet came out beautiful and clean, fresh smelling, soft, and yet also crisp.
And she had managed to do this without disturbing her sleeping patient. She felt as if she had just successfully yanked a tablecloth out from under a stack of champagne glasses without bringing the tableau crashing down upon her in a sea of embarrassment and shattered glass.
Well, hopefully he’ll be a little more comfortable now, she decided.
Demi gathered Lacey-tan into her arms and moved to the opposite side of the room to lean against the bare wall. Then, she simply watched the man sleeping in her bed.
Now that his face was relaxed and he wasn’t so agonizingly near death, she could see that he was an older man, perhaps in his very late thirties or early forties. He had sharp features, pronounced cheekbones, and a strong nose. He was, quite unequivocally, handsome, and objectively so.
And even beyond his physical appearance, there was something about his presence, even while sleeping, that made him seem much older than he looked. Somehow, Demi understood that even if the man in front of her had looked to be no older than his teens, she would have still understood the secret. She would have still recognized that he had the presence of an older man.
A handsome old man, she thought to herself. He absolutely had the presence of a handsome old man. From that moment onward, the label “handsome old man” would be forever attached to him in her own mind.
(For this reason, and another, which would soon become abundantly clear.)
Quite embarrassingly, the label “handsome old man” shortly began appearing as the man’s abbreviated descriptive tag when she looked at him, rather than a personal name.
Even after she discovered his personal name and more information about him, the designation stuck. It was as if the system simply refused to update the tag.
Perhaps the label was understandable, even if it was a little embarrassing. In terms of her own personal taste, he was the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life. Maybe due to the nature of their initial meeting, or because of their recent harrowing experience, Demi found that she wasn’t shy or embarrassed to realize that this was true.
His soot dark hair had an opaline sheen to it, like oil across water, or the hazy glimmer of a raven’s wing. A lock of silvery white hair fell into his face.
And it was at this point, in contemplation of his hair and his face, that she at last realized that he had pointed ears. He had beautiful pointed ears, just as if he were a character from The Story of The Ring.
He’s an elf! she realized belatedly, then the realization itself gave her pause. How did I not notice that he was an elf until now? she wondered in confusion. Those ears are really hard to miss. I guess—I guess I just couldn’t process it until now. There was just too much going on.
She had been much more focused on attempting to save his life than she had been on musing about the wonders of his physiology.
Still.
Somehow, the sight of his long, slender ears was one of the most inescapable indications that she was undeniably in a fantasy world.
She had met talking fox and beaver people, made friends with dryads, regularly gotten advice from a magic chicken and material assistance from a candy-colored slime, spent days brewing potions in a cauldron, cut a weird monster in two with a stick, and had completely transformed more than one building with only a handful of nails.
She’d even used some kind of magic to unmake a strange parasitic monster.
But still, the exhausted, sleeping elf topped her list of fantasy elements by a substantial margin.
As she thought about it, a correction in information popped up in her view.
Half elf. He was half elven.
That didn’t really matter. Any percentage elven was a huge check mark for fantasy world in her book.
Ah, I should check his status screen to make sure there isn’t anything else wrong with him, she thought. I think he’s okay now, and I can’t see anything, but he did have that horrible black thing on him.
It certainly wasn’t an excuse to take a peek at the status screen of a very handsome elf who was currently lying asleep in her bed.
The Council of Demi was in agreement. This was a hundred percent absolutely normal and appropriate thing to do to confirm someone’s health and well-being.
Being a goddess and system administrator meant that she had privileges to look at anyone’s status at any time through direct use of the system. She just generally didn’t look at other people’s status without their consent because she understood it to be rude. Although it was a relatively rare skill to be able to appraise another person, the skill did exist outside of the direct system access that she employed. And of course, there were ways that people could reveal their status screens to one another. Still, asking for such a thing, except in very particular circumstances, was considered domineering and rude. And it could be dangerous to reveal your status screen to another person, particularly if you had unique skills or titles, as Duncan Oakroot had taught her.
It was one of the reasons she was thankful for the Very Ordinary Farm Girl’s Hairpin, despite its ridiculous name.
Well, it wasn’t rude to peek at his status screen in this case. She was just being sensible!
Probably.
When she did call up the menu and began to read it, she would have fallen back on her behind a second time if she hadn’t already been leaning against the wall.
Name: Aelfric Pwyll Farrant
Assumed Names: Alt Irondale, Salem Dusk, Fiach Hengist, Dougal Cheirnu, Dunstan Vasco
Titles: The Shadowstep Alchemist, The Shadow Councillor, The Shadow of Prystir, The Grandmaster of Fluid Alchemy
Age: 362
Aggregate Level: 97
Tagged as: Critically Important Person
Don’t Reveal His True Identity
Beloved of the God of Death
Beloved of the God of Night
Beloved of the Goddess of Time
Blessed by the Goddess of Magic
Archmage
Great Sage
Hero
Handsome Old Man
The Shadowstep Alchemist.
The Shadowstep Alchemist!
The man she had rescued was the Shadowstep Alchemist, the legendary alchemist, nation builder, light novel protagonist, and handsome old man that she had been daydreaming about from the moment she had picked up that first novel in Hollyhope’s cottage.
The greatest alchemist in the world was asleep in her bed.
He’s even more handsome than I imagined, she thought to herself, feeling dazed. She absently put her hand in the pocket of her skirt and laid it flat against the book.
She felt lightheaded from the revelation.
And what was with that arresting list of tags on his status screen?!
Demi wasn’t sure exactly what being the beloved of three gods actually meant, but she had the sneaking suspicion that these were not romantic associations, but some kind of boon even greater than being blessed.
Then there was the pairing of Archmage and Great Sage. Those were both tier-five classes, weren’t they? Had he mastered both of them?
Demi had been prepared for him to have some sort of magical aptitude by the light novels, at least to some degree. In the novels, Grey had already attained a level of proficiency to qualify as a High Wizard at ten years old, but at least some of that was historical fiction, right? Right?!
Was the actual Shadowstep Alchemist even more incredible than the history books and even the light novels imagined?!
“Apparently so,” Demi commented to herself, her eyes still round.
(Around their table, the Council of Demi held up their own signs, as if they were judges at an international sporting event: 10.0, 10.0, 10.0, 10.0, 10.0, 362. This last number had been held up by the Demi who still had the flag with the little pink sheep on it. Once the other Demis saw her astonishing number, they immediately conferred and corrected all of the signs to produce a sweep of perfect 362s.)
“After all, he’s also a Great Sage. Archmage and Great Sage dual class, aggregate level ninety-seven,” she murmured quietly.
Just how long has this guy been grinding experience? she wondered.
But the Council of Demi had an answer for that: 362.