“Do you have a knife, Crumb?”
“I have kitchen knives.”
A kitchen knife... I was hoping for something smaller, but that’d have to do. “Can you bring me one?”
“Yeah... On it.” It was clear she didn’t quite follow, but she left to bring me a knife anyway. “Here.”
“Thanks. Can you hand it over?”
“S-Sure...”
I took the knife from Crumb and cut open Sylvie’s (likely) old injury. Then, I slowly extracted the foreign object from inside. I was a novice, so it wasn’t a clean job, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Finally, I closed Sylvie’s wound with healing magic and took the object into my hand.
“A red magic stone?” The stone I recovered from Sylvie glowed crimson. I could feel it emitting mana as well. There was no doubt about it—this was a magic stone. But I had never heard of a red one before. It was incredibly strange.
“What the heck is that?” asked Crumb as she gazed at the crystal in my hand.
“It looks like a red magic stone, but...I’m not really sure.” The only thing I did know was that this was definitely the source of her mana’s rampage, especially considering it had subsided as soon as I had removed it.
“Ngh...” I turned my eyes toward this voice to discover Sylvie, her eyes slightly open. That was probably thanks to the fact this stone had been removed, and that I had cast an abnormal amount of Heal spells on her.
“Huh? Sylvie?!” Crumb’s eyes flew open as she stared at the bed.
“Huh? Cr...umb?” Sylvie blinked her eyes and stared at her sister. She was conscious, and her mana seemed to have stabilized. It appeared safe to assume that I had succeeded at calming her mana’s rampage.
“Crumb, I...” Sylvie slowly sat up in her bed. Once I took a good look at her, I could see she was slightly shaking. Her crystallization had concealed her current state, but she was terribly gaunt. Her legs were still hidden beneath the blanket, but they were likely similarly worse for wear. Still, that was expected considering what she had been through.
“Sylvie! Are you okay?!” asked Crumb, watching her sister with worried eyes.
“Yeah. I don’t have much strength, but I think...I’m fine...” Sylvie tried moving her hand. She had a decent range of motion and could probably manage to eat on her own.
Plus, while she was thin, she wasn’t as thin as Claire had been when we’d rescued her. This was probably thanks to Crumb’s watchful care. If she underwent some physical therapy with the help of Crumb’s buffs, she’d recover her strength and senses in no time.
Since Sylvie was staring at me, I decided to offer a short introduction. As we chatted, Sylvie turned her attention to the red magic stone in my hand. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at the stone.
“This? I recovered it from inside your body. Do you recognize it?” I asked, just in case she had anything to share. Though she almost certainly didn’t. Nobody’d purposefully bury a magic stone inside their body.
“Huh?! Th-That was inside me?!”
“Yeah, right about there...”
“N-No way,” said Sylvie as she brought her hands to where I was pointing. I had cast enough healing magic that it likely wouldn’t leave a scar, but yeah, hearing a magic stone was found inside your body would definitely be quite a shock. Even I’d be pretty surprised.
Sylvie herself didn’t seem to realize the stone’s presence, and since her mana wasn’t stabilized, it was naturally impossible to discover a tiny mana-emitting stone within her flesh.
“Well... Anyway, I’m glad you’re all right now.”
“Y-Yeah... Thanks...”
As I turned my attention to Crumb, she bowed. “Thank you. I can’t believe you healed her... I don’t even know what to say.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“But...” It seemed like Crumb wanted to thank me. She even invited me to dinner, and since it was just the right time for it, I was thankful. But ultimately, I turned her down.
Why? Because tomorrow morning, I was going to meet with the noble who ruled these lands—in other words, Rina’s father. But anyway, I hadn’t slept at all last night thanks to the party, so I wanted to hit the sack early. Unlike Master Merlin, I couldn’t cast good spells when I was sleep-deprived, and I couldn’t afford to oversleep either.
“Anyway, that’s the deal...”
“I see. I really wanted to thank you, though,” said Crumb, looking somewhat disappointed.
But considering how busy I was, there wasn’t much else I could do. “Anyway, thanks for the invitation, but...”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll pay you back some other time. Once Sylvie fully recovers, we’re gonna go adventuring again. I’m sure it’ll be a while, but I hope we meet again someday.”
“Me too. I’ll accept your thanks then,” I said before heading for the door.
“Oh, that’s right!” I turned back to face Crumb.
“You’re meeting with Abel tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, I am. What’s he like?” All I knew about him was that he was Rina’s father.
“Well... Amazing, if I were to use a single word,” she said.
“Amazing?”
“Yup. He knows his politics, and he’s as strong as an S-rank adventurer, if not even stronger. He was unfortunately away during the battle to defend the city, but he’s still reliable, even though he’s stepped away.”
Huh. “Is he strong?”
“Yeah. About twenty years ago, was it? He contributed a lot to defeating the Demon King. Even our king gives Abel some preferential treatment.”
“He’s really that amazing?”
“Yeah. I’ve only talked to him once, but he’s nice, so don’t worry.”
“Right.” Crumb was likely just trying to be kind.
Anyway, by the time I was on my way home, the sun had already set, and the sky was dark. “It’s already this late? I better hurry.” I speedwalked back toward the inn.
“Still...” I took the red magic stone out of my pocket and held it up toward the sky. “This looks awfully similar to that.”
“That” being the black magic stone on that farm. They differed in qualities, but they had the same feel. This texture, their similarity to magic stones...was it just a coincidence?
“Well, not that I can do anything about it now.”