Free Web NovelChapter 155: What comes with Adventuring
Lys stood there at the counter, his splinted hand still resting on the wood. Pell’s words kept repeating in his head.
She died before sunrise?!
He tried to make sense of it, but his thoughts moved slowly, like they had to push through thick mud. The woman’s tired eyes from yesterday flashed in his mind again and again. She had looked at him like he was the only hope left for her daughter. And now that daughter was gone!
Pell shifted behind the counter. He cleared his throat softly. "Lys... lad, I’m really sorry. We did everything we could once the bag got here. But sometimes... things just don’t line up in time."
Lys heard the words, but they felt distant to him. He nodded once, slowly. His mouth moved on its own. "Thank you... for sending the herbs to her." The sentence came out quiet and mumbled. He was not even sure if the words left his lips properly.
His legs felt strange all of a sudden. The room tilted a little. He grabbed the edge of the counter tighter with his good hand.
Vessa stepped forward fast. Her strong hand caught his arm just below the shoulder. "Easy," she said. Her voice stayed calm, but her grip was firm, not letting him fall. "Come on. Let’s sit down for a minute."
She guided him away from the counter, toward the side of the hall where a long wooden bench sat near the door to the drill yard. Lys let her lead him. His feet moved, but his mind stayed stuck on the news.
They reached the bench. Vessa helped him sit. The wood felt hard under him. Pell left the counter, too, and walked over to stand in front of them. The older man rubbed both of his hands together, looking uncomfortable.
Vessa sat down beside Lys. For a long moment, no one spoke. She and Pell exchanged a quick look, like they were both trying to figure out what to say next. Vessa’s face stayed mostly blank.
But her eyes showed something else, it was saying she had known about this news since this morning. She just had not wanted to be the one to tell him.
Lys stared at the floor between his feet. The bandages on his chest pulled every time he breathed. The ache in his ribs felt sharper now, but it was nothing next to the heavy feeling in his stomach.
He had thought quests were just jobs. Take the paper, do the task, get the guild points. Simple. Not just his Early knowledge about adventuring and stuff, but also this world’s people’s excitement also made that look this way to him.
But in reality real people waited on the other side of those papers. Sick people. Desperate mothers. And sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, people die.
Pell finally broke the silence. "You did good getting those herbs at all, Lys. Not many would have made it back with a bag full after running into something like that."
Lys did not answer. He kept staring down.
Vessa leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees. She spoke plainly, with her own way of consoling him. "It was not your fault."
Lys lifted his head and looked at her. The words surprised him. She did not say it like she was trying to make him feel better. She said it like she was stating facts.
"I walked into the forest last night when you did not come back before dark," she continued. "I found the spot where it happened. The ground was torn up. Trees broken. It had turned into a battlefield, if you could even call that. I saw the hobgoblin, too. Or what was left of it. You had already cut its head clean off. And then I saw the state you were in, covered in blood, just lying there, alive. Most F-rank adventurers would not have survived that fight, Lys. Hell, a lot of D-ranks would have died too. But you are sitting here on this bench, just after a single night. I don’t what to call it other than a miracle."
Lys felt a small warmth in his chest at her words. She means, he had grown. Though the system numbers proved it, too, but hearing Vessa say it out loud felt different. She was a real warrior. Her acknowledgment meant something. His effort had paid off.
But the warmth faded fast. It was not enough to push away the other feeling.
"The girl still died," he said quietly. His voice sounded rough.
Vessa nodded once. "Yes. If that helps reduce your guilt about it, know that I also share some of the responsibility for that."
Lys turned his head to look at her fully. Surprise showed on his face. "What? ho..."
"I chose that quest for you," she said, disrupting him. Her tone stayed flat, like she was stating facts from a report. "The forest has been acting strange for days. Undead showing up where they should not. Creatures moving into zones they do not belong in. I should have put the pieces together faster that there could a dangerous creature like hobgoblin could also be there. The undead two days ago was a sign I forgot to take into action when I sent a rookie adventurer like you into that forest."
"I thought herbs like those would be easy to find, the way they are in the capital. That was my mistake in judgment. I sent you in alone without flagging the risk properly, and this happened."
Lys opened his mouth to argue. He wanted to tell her she did not have to take the blame to make him feel better.
Vessa held up her hand before he could speak. "I know what you are about to say. You think I am just shifting the blame to make you feel less bad about it. But it really was partly my fault, believe it or not. There is no doubt about it."
Lys closed his mouth. He stared at the ground again. The heavy feeling in his stomach grew after hearing it.
Vessa kept talking. "We both made mistakes here. But mistakes can teach us something if we let them. What do you think you should have done differently?"
Lys thought for a moment. His mind still felt slow. "I... I don’t know. Maybe I should have been more careful in the forest. Checked the area better before going deep. Or come back sooner when I couldn’t find the herbs before dark?"
Vessa shook her head slightly. "You can think like that. But no matter what you had to do, you couldn’t know when situations like this would come at you. There is no other way around it. You can try your best, yet something like this might happen. As long as you keep doing this adventuring work. Every adventurer faces something like this sooner or later. I faced it many times when I was younger, too."
"My old mentor used to tell me to treat every quest like just a job. Nothing personal. He said it would help protect the heart. And for a while, it did. But I learned later that it was wrong. Because real lives are at stake when we take a quest. You can’t turn that part off completely, knowing if you mess up, then somebody might die because of it."
Lys listened without interrupting. Something in her words felt important for some reason.
Vessa looked at him directly. "Seeing you like this today brought back memories I had almost forgotten. I used to feel exactly the way you feel right now. I gotta thank you for reminding me about this feeling after all this time. It is something I never wanted to forget, but I did anyway."
Lys looked up at her. "What is it?"
She gave a small smile, which did not reach her eyes fully, but still looked real. "That we are adventurers. The adventuring part is human, and so is the pain that comes with losing people along the way. We should not throw away one feeling to keep the other. Without both, we are not complete."
Her words settled inside Lys. He felt a shift in his heart. Not the pain going away, but something else growing beside it.
He now looked at Vessa with clear admiration on his face. She had always been strict during training, pushing him hard without soft words. But right now she was giving him something deeper, far more important than he thought. At least it was important to him.
Vessa stood up. "For now, that is all you can do. Go home and rest properly. Take the time you need to live with this pain, but do not forget it. Remember, time does not heal everything. It just teaches us how to carry it forward."
She put a hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. The touch was light but steady. "The guild will still be here tomorrow. Come back when you are ready."
Before she turned around, she said one last thing, "And Lys, you did not fail as badly as you think now. You survived. You brought the herbs back. You actually tried. That matters more than you think."
Pell nodded from where he stood. "She is right, lad. Take care of yourself. Don’t let this single mess up let you down." fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
Lys stayed seated for another minute after they finished talking. Then he pushed himself up carefully. His body still hurt, but the heavy feeling in his stomach felt a little different now. Not lighter, exactly. Just... clearer.
He gave Pell a small nod. "Thank you, Mister Pell. I’ll go for now. See you later."
Pell got back inside the counter and gave a warm smile as usual.
Lys turned and walked toward the guild doors. His steps were slow because of the bandages and the splint, but they were steady.
Before he crosses the open guild door, he turns around again and looks at Pell.
"Uhh, Mister Pell. Do you happen to know where that woman lives outside the village?"
Pell looks up at him with a surprised look.
