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Mister Derg headed to the church to begin preparations for the summoning of the Carbuncles and the lad went off to the guild to fetch Miss Erifell’s collection of evidence. Thus, it was only my lady, Miss Erifell, and I who remained in the room.
Miss Erifell had managed to regain consciousness earlier, but now she was slumped back onto the bed. As she drifted in between sleeping and waking, she let out pained coughs. It was difficult to breathe, and each cough sapped her strength away. Her condition worsened with each passing minute.
My lady considered something for a moment before she lifted me up off Miss Erifell’s head.
“Blue, can you turn red for me? Oh, and you can speak now,” she said.
“Of course. Are you certain?” I replied.
“Considering the state she’s in, I’m sure she’ll just think it’s a dream.”
I split off a section of one of my cores and moved it to the edge of my body. My lady grabbed at that portion of me with no hesitation, pulling away a three-centimeter-wide piece. It (or rather, I) turned red, and if you looked closely, you could see it quivering slightly. Well, the only person in this room to notice was my lady.
In between Miss Erifell’s coughs, my lady thrust that piece of me into her mouth. She forced open her half-closed mouth to make sure it got in.
“Urk...”
“Very good, now swallow! Guuulp!”
“You seem to be enjoying yourself a bit too much, my lady.”
“I’m taking care of her, so I’m allowed to!”
“Ngh?!”
That chunk of me slipped down Miss Erifell’s throat and toward her stomach. It must have been quite painful for her, but a few minutes after some coughing and spluttering, her breathing calmed significantly. There were a few small coughs here and there, but she was probably feeling a lot more comfortable than before.
“How is it?”
“As you estimated, my lady.”
Right now, in simple terms, there was a fungus inside Miss Erifell’s body. The spores from the mosslike fungus spreading through her lungs and stomach were infecting her body, physically preventing her from breathing properly. The small piece of me was working hard inside her to remove this fungus while also hydrating her throat and preventing inflammation.
“Lilberry juice is good for the throat. I’m glad I gave you some of the slime jelly this morning,” my lady said.
Yes, I was capable of modifying my body based on what I ate. Miss Erifell might be saddened that I had used a slime jelly that Miss Cormeca had made for this, but such was the situation, so I would appreciate her understanding.
“I wanted to do this earlier, but...”
Even my lady realized that stuffing a piece of slime in front of Miss Erifell’s mouth while Mister Derg was present would have been a problem. It was slightly ironic that saving him from this scene had instead caused him a bit more pain in seeing Miss Erifell suffer. All the same, what we were doing was a temporary measure, not actually a permanent solution to the curse. Although I (or a part of me) was getting rid of the hyphae inside Miss Erifell, there were many organs that could not be accessed from her airways, so my range of action was limited. This wouldn’t extend her life all too much.
“But, my lady...”
“Hm? Yes?”
“There is something I would like to confirm,” I said as my lady moved to pick me up and place me back onto Miss Erifell’s head to resume my work as an ice pack. “Is it true that you didn’t suspect a witch was behind this affair?”
Suddenly my lady froze. I didn’t need to breathe to survive, but if I could I would probably let out a deep sigh right now.
“So it was out of concern for the lad.”
My lady could only grumble in return. A clear indicator that I had hit the mark.
A localized case of living dead could be brushed aside as an inexplicable natural occurrence, but the destruction of Leston was too well planned. Just like how the lad had assumed there was some nefarious plot under the surface, my lady, the monstermancer, was fully capable of piecing together the strange elements at play. There was only one reason I could think of for her to keep quiet when she expected there was a human hand at play in the disaster.
“The truth is,” my lady said, as she resumed her motion and placed me onto Miss Erifell’s head, “I wanted to secretly sort this all out on my own.”
In a single motion, my lady slid down onto the floor, with her back leaning against the bed. Her mind had been hard at work all day, so I could see traces of exhaustion on her face.
“Hakura looked so disgusted when I asked him his home name, so what do you think would’ve happened if I asked him to help out with a witch hunt? Oh, and did you see his eyes when I said I was a Lingreen?! They were super scary!”
“Yes, you’re not wrong there.”
I wasn’t sure what the lad himself thought, but when we’d first met him, I could sense fear, doubt, and bloodlust. In the end, he was unable to fight back, so my lady was able to successfully negotiate.
“It’s not like I can casually ask him what happened in his past!”
“Wonderful, my lady! I am proud that you’ve finally learned some common courtesy.”
“At the same time, I thought he’d totally suspect me if I showed how much I knew. Then when I decided to be kind and explain things to him, he then goes and says he’ll sort things out on his own! Of course I’d punch him after that! I’ve been working so, so hard to be kind to him and yet that stupid Hakura...!”
Oh no, I’d accidentally caused her to start airing out her grievances.
“Yes, but you yourself were ready to tackle this on your own.”
“Gack...”
“I hope you understand that there is no great difference between what you and the lad were trying to do.”
“I was trying to settle things peacefully! But Hakura was rushing into it in a self-destructive way! We are not the same!”
Oh no, I’d failed at my little lecture.
“N-Now, now, my lady. You know who the witch is, correct?”
At times like these, it was advisable to get her to talk about things she was knowledgeable about. My lady huffed at my question. Who had Miss Erifell touched before suffering from her curse?
“The curse afflicting Erifell, Dini Dura, is one that turns the body into a seedbed, and it requires physical contact.”
We had all witnessed the scene, and so my lady had made her conclusion already. The reason she hadn’t said anything back then was because she wanted to prevent the lad from running off on his own to try and kill the witch. However, the situation had changed. Erifell had regained her consciousness, if only temporarily, and now with the securing of the evidence, the witch’s identity would be revealed. There was no need for my lady to hide it anymore.
“It acts instantaneously, and the curse can be left alone after being activated. In this instance, the only one who could have cursed Erifell was Cormeca. She is the witch.”