The Mushroom Capital, outside the City Lord's manor.
The commander looked at Vera one more time to be sure. "You'll truly be all right?"
Vera smiled. "It's fine. I understand my own condition. Besides, City Lord Farr has already agreed to help me find my people. You don't need to worry about me anymore."
"Then good luck to you, brave Viscount."
"And to you."
Farewells said, the commander swung into the saddle and rode for the city gates.
After the two of them had reached the Mushroom Capital, the commander had sought out City Lord Farr, and through the communication crystal in the City Lord's manor, passed word of the situation to Oath City. Lorenzo's order came back: the commander was to report to Oath City at once. Even at parting, the man was still fretting over the state of Vera's head.
Vera, though, once lucid, had pieced the situation together quickly.
He still remembered the matter of his [Sacrifice] and its side effect, and combining that with the commander's account, he had roughly reconstructed what happened: apparently, after Lar Fortress fell, he had tried to assassinate the duke leading the Empire's army, and failed at the very last step.
In truth, Vera had no idea how much else he had forgotten beyond Lar Fortress. But what worried him now was not his memory. It was...
Quick, light footsteps sounded behind him, drawing closer.
Vera turned.
"Vera!"
Fayin, sent word by Farr's people, crashed into his arms so hard he staggered back half a step, his back fetching up against a tilted gallery pillar before he steadied. Her hands seized the cloth at his waist in a death grip, and her whole body was shaking.
"There, there. I'm fine, and you two made it out too. That's what matters." Vera stroked her hair, then looked up the way she had come. "That's right, where's Fayling? Is she all right?"
"Vera?" Fayin pulled back sharply and searched his puzzled eyes, and understood. "You used [Sacrifice] again?"
Vera smiled wryly. "Probably. It seems things got dangerous. The truth is, I don't remember Lar Fortress at all."
Tears welled up in Fayin's eyes again. For a long moment she had no idea what she could possibly say to him.
In the end, she could only take his hand in silence and lead him toward her lodgings in the city.
Vera's expression grew heavier with every step. Fayin's silence gave him a bad feeling.
Then the bad feeling came true.
The moment they arrived, he saw an elf sitting inside, face drawn and dark, and No. 5 sprawled over a great block of ice, bawling its heart out. Vera wasn't connected to the mycelial network, but No. 5's grief needed no translation: it had wrung itself dry of mushroom juice, wrinkled all over, and the dried juice had left the whole surface of the ice sticky.
Vera stepped closer, and saw what lay inside the ice.
"Fayling?" He stumbled back half a step. "No... how can..."
Behind him, Fayin, sobbing, recounted everything that had happened at Lar Fortress. The ice enclosing Fayling's body was the work of a water-element mage Fayin had found after escaping.
"No... how can this be..." Vera swayed on his feet, his outline seeming to blur. Sirian moved to steady him. Vera glanced at him and managed a weak "thank you."
Then the whole room sank into a long, long silence, broken only by No. 5, still draped over the ice coffin, squeezing out its mushroom juice one hiccup at a time.
Just as No. 5 seemed about to die of dehydration, it suddenly bounced upright.
It curled a tentacle around its telepathy stone and pressed it to Vera's foot: "I've got it! I've got it! I can go beg the Fungus Lord! I can ask the Fungus Lord to bring Fayling back to life!" No. 5 was excited enough to leap, but bone-dry as it was, it had no bounce left in it at all.
At those words, though, Vera scooped it straight up. "Truly?"
No. 5 whipped its sagging cap up and down as hard as it could.
"Wonderful!" The group crowded together, hope flooding back all at once.
It took a good while for Vera to calm down. Then he turned to Sirian. "Forgive me for only asking now, things have been a little chaotic. Madam, you would be...?"
Sirian: "Again?!"
In truth, with No. 5 crying that loudly and that long in the mycelial network, Lin Jun had known the situation over there for ages. He simply hadn't much cared.
Another ordinary human dead. That was all.
In a chaotic age like this one, Lin Jun had watched countless similar cases through the fungal mat, and plenty of poor souls far worse off.
The only ones who could still stir Lin Jun's feelings were the core members he had raised for so long.
As for why Vera's group received any of Lin Jun's attention at all: only because of [Sacrifice], and that old geezer the Divine Tree.
Compared with Fayling's death, Lin Jun had real business on his hands at the moment.
The Mushroom Fortress had just defeated the dwarven legions, and Badul, of all things, had slaughtered Morfrey, then turned up at the Fortress with her head in hand to propose peace. Lin Jun had no objection, though naturally some benefits had to be extracted while the extracting was good, and among them was Morfrey's intact corpse.
Lin Jun was in no hurry to decompose her and install [Lust] on himself, however. He preserved the succubus's body, to decide later as things developed.
Beyond the dwarves, there was of course the problem of the United Kingdom.
Wherever the Mist rolled, it digested the fungal mat, so to this day Lin Jun had not managed to observe Levi's imperial army through it. But the Mist pushing deeper into the Kingdom with every tidal cycle, the scattered trickles of routed human soldiers... all of it fed Lin Jun information indirectly.
Clearly, the Demon King possessed some means of avoiding, perhaps even steering, the Mist. Only that could let an imperial army march inside it.
Riding the Mist, the Empire had broken nearly half of the United Kingdom's new defense line outright, its spearhead now pointed at Oath City.
At the same time, Sigmund had emptied Highkeep Fortress and led his army out to close the pincer. Premeditated, beyond any doubt.
The only thing that could pass for good news was that the Mist's shrinking circle had finally reached its last stage; from here it would slowly recede. That alone had kept the Empire from riding the Mist all the way in and paralyzing Oath City's defenses too.
Even so, the United Kingdom's position was already desperate.
The Empire held the initiative completely. They could blockade Oath City and then rampage south through the Kingdom's heartland, or join their two armies and try to take the human capital in a single bite.
At a moment like this, Lin Jun had a decision to make: pull his main army back and move it through the underground city's rift to the Mushroom Capital to prop up the humans, or send the army currently massed on the border driving straight south, and relieve the siege by striking the enemy's own homeland.
Set against all that, Fayling's death rated, in Lin Jun's eyes, about the same as hearing that an allied army had lost a foot soldier.
Still, since No. 5 had come begging to him personally, Lin Jun didn't mind helping. Decomposing one person cost him next to nothing. He simply couldn't promise the result.
Led by No. 5, Vera's group carried Fayling out of the city, lifted her from the ice coffin, and laid her upon a stretch of fungal mat, where No. 5 circled her, dancing the Puchi dance in praise of the Fungus Lord.
The mycelium stirred and climbed over Fayling's body, and Vera's group went rigid with tension.
And Lin Jun, controlling all of it, felt it the moment decomposition began: Fayling's soul was not sticky enough.
As expected.
A soul's stickiness came from trust.
Fayling was no believer of the Mushroom-Worshipping Cult. She held no faith in him. The only one who could possibly lend her soul any stickiness was No. 5.
Unfortunately, No. 5's standing within Vera's little band trended infinitely close to that of a pet.
People will like pets. People will even love pets. But very few people will place their lives in a pet's hands.
Fayling was exactly such a case. Her soul carried a little stickiness, but nowhere near enough to support converting her.
Just as Lin Jun was about to declare the conversion a failure, something strange happened. The stickiness of Fayling's soul began to climb, fast, and in short order passed the conversion threshold.
The dead, quite obviously, do not change. So what was this?
It took Lin Jun very little effort to trace the anomaly to its source: the Virtue on Vera's panel was glowing. The man himself didn't even seem to have noticed.
[Virtue of Sacrifice: at the cost of the self, realize the wish]
So that was how "realizing the wish" actually worked.
Unhurried, Lin Jun tucked Fayling's soul into a Puchi body, but he did not tell Vera's group to come to the underground city and claim her just yet. If Lin Jun's memory served, this Fayling happened to be a certain someone's first love, didn't she?
Fayling, a Puchi for the first time in her life, was still drifting in a daze when several Puchis dragged her out of the cocoon.
"Norris! Norris! Look what the Boss brought you: employee benefits!"
Back at the mat, meanwhile, Fayling's body had been decomposed down to a skeleton and clothes, and after that, nothing more stirred. Fayin waited a moment, then couldn't hold back, asking in a small voice: "No. 5, what's happening now? Is my sister..."
No. 5, rehydrated and plump once more, wrinkled its cap and sank its mind into the mycelial network.
A long while passed before it answered: "It worked."
Fayin clapped a hand over her mouth, tears of joy welling through her fingers.
She crouched down and cupped No. 5's cap in both hands, her voice laughing and crying at once: "Then where is she? Where is she now?"
Sirian, too, quietly let out the breath he'd been holding.
No. 5 rubbed its own cap. "The Fungus Lord says he wants to play with her a while first. He'll return Puchi Fayling afterward."
The smile froze on Fayin's face. The corner of Sirian's eye twitched and would not stop.
No one noticed Vera behind them, leaning against the gallery pillar, watching them all with a long, thinking look.
(End of Chapter)
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