FVN Chapter 25: Marie Dunareff (6)
Chapter 25: Marie Dunareff (6)
༺ Marie Dunareff (6) ༻
According to the original storyline, Marie Dunareff would be subjugated by the player party. Unable to regain her rationality until the very end, the renowned mage prodigy would fall from grace and be confined at the bottom of the Academy.
That was how demi-humans that craved blood and sucked life away were treated, even more so if they didn’t understand words.
Like that, Marie would be eliminated from the scenario. Seeing that girl who fell down the abyss in the blink of an eye, the player would mumble to themselves that they would save her next time but in both the game and the previous iteration, Marie was never able to have a happy ending for herself.
Marie was a good person.
She was a nice girl with an uncannily large number of potatoes, who always baked more potatoes than necessary in the morning and carried them over in baskets to share with her friends.
It was fine for a good kid like her to have a better ending for herself.
Efficiency? Monopolization?
I honestly couldn’t understand Park Sihu’s values. Life was not a math equation.
Even if there was no reason to,
Even if there was nothing in it for you,
And even though another person’s death might make it better for you...
Although you might need plenty of reasons to kill another person... you didn’t need a reason to save them.
****
“Wow~ Where am I?”
I uttered the most appropriate line in a semi-conscious state as a cough echoed from the side.
“Ugek... I can’t breathe...”
Next to me were a short-haired boy and a boy wearing glasses with an unkempt hair. They were clumsily dropping biscuit crumbs on the bed.
Jaeger opened his mouth after seeing me.
“Ohh, you’re awake. You...”
“Wait.”
“Hnn?”
A memory of the past came back. It was back when I did something similar to this.
『Don’t do something like this ever again! Those bitches are nothing! Don’t risk your life for them!! Unless you want to see me go crazy!!』
My collars that were grabbed back then felt like they were about to be grabbed again.
“Please don’t grab on my collars and say, ‘Don’t do this ever again! Unless you want to see me go crazy!!’ to me.”
“...What is wrong with you? That’s a bit creepy.”
“Ugh... Are you into that type of stuff?”
Right? It’s not like I’m super prejudiced or anything right? He was the one with a terrible choice of words right?
“Dude...”
Jaeger said while looking straight into my eyes with a serious gaze. I met his solemn gaze and gulped. Don’t tell me he...
“We were freaking cool as heck, weren’t we? Kekeke...!”
“Uhhm... yeah. Huhu... we defeated a Unique Grade. Huhuhu...”
“Damn right we did.”
The laughter of the boys filled the hospital room.
“Ah... this feels great.”
This was awesome. Now this was true friendship.
“Oh right. The doctor told us to let him know if you wake up.”
“I’ll leave the biscuits behind for you. You can... wait, can you even eat them? Shouldn’t you have porridge and stuff?”
“Just eat it and pretend like you didn’t.”
“Uh, wait.”
Jaeger and Lark quickly left the room before I could even stop them.
“Those heartless bastards...”
Guys, please. At least tell me how long it has been...
Fluids were connected to my right arm, and the needle might come out if I raised my body so I obediently stayed down on the bed.
The injuries that had been rather fatal were already nowhere to be seen thanks to my awesome specialty.
I scratched my neck as dried clots of blood fell down like powder. Apart from those remaining clots of blood, there was no other sign of Marie having bitten on my neck.
It seemed that my gamble had been a success.
I was blankly lying down on the bed when someone entered the room.
“Student Korin.”
Thinking that it was either the nurse or the doctor, I turned to the side and found two unexpected guests.
“Mr. Chairman and Senior Professor?”
I bowed as Chairman Eriu and Lady Josephine walked up to my side.
– Tap! Tap! Tap!
Chairman Eriu sat next to me after walking over with the help of a cane.
“I believe this is my first time talking to you, Student Korin Lork.”
The chairman might not remember me, but this wasn’t my first time seeing him. I had learned many things from the chairman.
Of course, there was no way Chairman Eriu would have memories of the previous iteration so this was indeed officially our first time meeting each other.
“How do you feel? From what I heard, it seemed that you had a specialty related to regeneration or recovery.”
“I’m alright. I feel a lot better.”
“Is that so? It’s unclear why that wasn’t shown during the grading test... and there are many questions I have for you but, firstly...”
He stood up by supporting himself with the cane, before giving me a deep bow.
“Thank you. It is thanks to your courage that another student’s future has been saved. I am sincerely grateful for your dedication.”
Following Chairman Eriu, Senior Professor Josephine also lowered her head and showed me her gratitude.
“The students were in danger because of our inexperience and ignorance. We ended up making you guys shoulder the things that were supposed to be done by adults. Let me apologize regarding this matter.”
His self-deprecating tone of voice and his lowered back showed no signs of going back up. Eriu Casarr – the one in charge of one of the world’s 4 biggest academies – lowered his head.
“Words alone won’t be enough for an apology. You are our benefactor, and if there is anything you wish for, then we will try our best to give you the rightful compensation.”
The room turned silent after his words.
In fact, there were a lot of things Eriu Casarr could say as an excuse.
This was not something he had been intending on doing, and was outside everyone’s expectations. So let’s just move on.
He didn’t say anything like that. This person was someone who always acknowledged his own flaws and tried to shoulder more responsibilities than necessary.
『 I have made many mistakes, but you are definitely not one of them.』
I remembered the words that the Chairman had said to me in the previous iteration, and I believed in his goodwill.
There were many things I could gain from Eriu Casarr. He should know it better than anyone else on how impactful each and every one of his words were. He must be aware that he had given a blank cheque to a single student who could make all sorts of requests.
The biggest and the most valuable thing I could gain from the chairman were his ‘lessons’ but... now wasn’t the time. Not yet.
“Please give me a magic stone.”
“...Mhmm?”
“I’m trying to make a spear, but it’s hard to look for the right materials. It would be even better if you could help with the payment on top of that.”
“...”
Actually, I could probably ask for a complete spear and immediately get one. However, I wasn’t looking for an expensive spear that was just a little bit better than other spears.
It was because I was hoping for a spear that was best suited for myself that I had requested for materials instead of a legendary equipment.
“Alright. You can choose the best materials out there. And we will also provide anything else that you need.”
This was a jackpo... I mean, a really good reward. What should I make? And which blacksmith should I go to~?
Scary, cold and mind-numbing.
The brain doesn’t work properly, and reality strikes at you without any consideration for your feelings. Like how a soldier at the battlefield feels ever so tiny at the face of a tempest that terrifies the heaven and the earth, Marie would have felt the same way.
Even I was the same.
Everyone would have to experience it at least once.
Marie was a genius. She was a prodigy loved by mana.
Because of that, the desperation for life and the fear of death must have been an extremely distant relative of hers until now.
It’s not that she wasn’t a hard worker, and it’s not like she lacked experience.
It was just that most of the things in existence were just unable to stimulate the genius called Marie Dunareff.
It was only recently that the girl faced reality and a true sense of fear. The thing that everyone had to experience had recently come to her.
Marie was stimulated by the danger and fear, which must have been the cause of her awakening into a vampire.
“Haa...”
The wings of a butterfly causing a storm, huh...
Because I had been overly focused on the incident with the Murderer of the City of Fog, there was something I had missed. In the end, the cause of Marie awakening into a demi-human was danger and fear that was great enough to stimulate this genius.
After meeting Hua Ran, I aroused something inside her and it was because of that change that Hua Ran participated in the practical lesson at the hunting grounds. During her participation in the practical lesson, Hua Ran must have coincidentally come across Marie, and had probably used her true powers to contend against the Grade 1 genius.
And that was what stimulated the vampiric molecules laying dormant inside Marie’s body.
I could only sigh upon realizing the malicious quirk of fate and the combined result of multiple coincidences.
Actually, things like this used to happen quite often in the previous iteration. The backlash of the death of Alicia Arden, and Park Sihu’s failed attempt at killing Hua Ran resulting in awakening the Yaksha inside her were such examples.
No matter how insignificant something was at a glance, they had the power to change the current.
Because we were living in a real world instead of a game, and because the people that we had been disregarding as NPCs were in fact breathing organisms, they naturally reacted in different ways to the different circumstances.
“Junior... how are you able to stand back up? How come you don’t give up? Even back when you were fighting against the elemental body, I thought you would never be able to succeed. Everyone was mocking you but in the end, you pulled it off.”
— It was so cool.
The girl’s confession and question about how I was able to stand back up flushed my cheeks a little.
“Umm...... It’s nothing that amazing or anything but...”
It was a bit embarrassing. Despite the grandiose oaths I made, talking about them was still quite embarrassing.
“You see, I like happy endings.”
“Nn?”
“Good people being rewarded, and bad people being punished. You know, I like that kind of didactic story.”
Hard-workers should be rewarded, but as for the selfish ones... Well, I didn’t feel like cheering for them.
“Senior Marie. You’re a nice person. You’re kind, and you’re pretty... Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I want a happy ending for you if anything. So... I want Marie Dunareff to be happy.”
My cheeks twitched by themselves.
Damn it. It was super embarrassing to voice this out loud. You know, men were supposed to stay quiet and do what was needed to be done in silence! That was the coolest thing to do!
“...Oh my.”
Lady Josephine murmured from outside.
Rolling my eyes, I threw a glance to the side and found Lady Josephine wearing a look of awe while covering her mouth with her palm.
Huh? What’s wrong with her?
“Uhh.”
Meanwhile, Marie continued opening and closing her mouth.
“Uh, uhh... Umm......”
I looked into her eyes and realized that her pupils were shivering profusely. Her white skin turned crimson red and she even started trembling.
What was going on? Was she having a withdrawal symptom already?
“Would you like... some blood?”
“U, uuhkk? Auh, auh... Aahht?!”
Please speak in a human language at least.
“Auhk... auhh! No... I swear I didn’t think of anything weird...!”
“Huh?”
What was with this reaction that seemed like it would come out in a fully-optimized game on a 4k monitor?
Her entire body was flushed in red like a graphic card expressing that it will soon reach all the way to heaven, and Marie hurriedly escaped to a corner before gasping for breath to settle herself back down.
“A, anyway... did it hurt a lot?”
“If you’re talking about my neck, well, it was just a little sting.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry.”
“No no no! I’m really... sorry! I just couldn’t hold myself back. That impulse was... Wait, no. That would just be an excuse...”
Without caring about her disheveled hair and her neck that had dry clots of blood, Marie deeply lowered her head.
“I’m sorry. I am sincerely quite sorry.”
Walking up, the girl held onto my hands and sincerely asked for an apology. There were tears budding beneath her golden eyes.
“Thank you for saving me and for not giving up on me. Thank you for your help. I’ll be forever in your debt.”
— Sniff!
Without even letting go of my hands, the girl wiped her tears that were about to drop down her cheeks.
“Nn... Thank you so much.”
Marie released my hands and took a step back before turning her back to me.
“Junior! Umm... I want to wash myself now! And I need to finish my potatoes!”
“Sure. Senior Marie.”
It was probably best to leave her alone for now.
“Senior Professor?”
In response to my call, Lady Josephine opened a dimensional spell in front of me. I took a step into the abyss that would lead me back to the hospital room when Marie’s voice echoed from behind.
“Bye, Korin! See you later!”
“See you later.”
The girl that was sobbing bid me farewell with a smile.
I was back at the silent hospital room but soon, I could hear the clicking noise of Lady Josephine’s heels.
“Oh dear... Student Korin. That wasn’t so bad.”
“Pardon?”
“Ah~”
Looking like a senior in life who had gone through countless vicissitudes of life, Lady Josephine shook her head.
“I shall discuss everything related to her with you from now on, Student Korin.”
“Umm... sure.”
After showing a faint smile at the end, Lady Josephine walked out of the room.
While scratching my cheeks, I opened the window of the room as the dazzling afternoon sun glimmered through the window.
With this, the 1st Arc had come to an end. It was a happy ending for everyone which used to be impossible to achieve in the previous iteration and the game.
There were a few things that were unexpected, and not a single thing had gone according to the original plot of the game but... that was what made it even better.
Even without the player, the world was still working in one piece.
Even without following the original storyline, we could still achieve a better ending.
I was seeing the new beginning of a world composed of things which we hadn’t been able to achieve even back when it was a game, and even back when we had a player.
It was a nice feeling.