Chapter 122: Ch160. Sickness - 15 (It was you...)
Days passed and Kurt’s condition neither improved nor worsened.
According to Doctor Lee, he had reached a stage in his condition where only his willpower and his body could do the rest of the work in fighting off the parasite infection.
"Since the parasite itself is already dead inside him, about to be expelled at one time or another, the only thing left for Kurt is to get rid of the infection still coursing through his veins."
With that said, Doctor Lee left the room, preparing to leave.
"Where are you going, doctor?" Toshinori asked, confused.
"My work here is already done, guild master." She answered. "Maybe Collins still wants to stay, to monitor Kurt’s condition, and give me frequent reports, in case his condition worsens. But... Other than that, there’s nothing else for me to do here."
After the conversation she had with Toshinori, Rodrick, and the irregulars, a sepulchral silence spread throughout the halls of Hana no Nagame.
And realizing that she had already achieved what she had come here to seek, she decided it was time to leave.
"And also..." She added. "I trust Kurt’s strength enough to know that it won’t be long before he wakes up. And when he does..."
Doctor Lee didn’t say anything else, just smiled an enigmatic smile, turned her back to Toshinori, and headed towards her room to pack her bags.
Evellyn and the others, however, haven’t missed a single day since their conversation with the doctor.
Everyone set out to train as much as they could, eat as much as their stomachs could hold, and regain all the strength they once had.
Everyone there, after taking their own time to accept what Kurt had already accepted and understood, dedicated themselves to becoming stronger.
Because when Kurt finally woke up, according to what the doctor had said, it would be time to come up with a plan for the final attack against the Ishir and the New Dawn guild.
The moment of reckoning was near.
Evellyn didn’t know exactly how close, but she felt it deep in her heart.
Deep within his oracle awakened treat.
Soon, they would return to the United States.
And this time, to stay.
***
When the sun was already rising high in the sky, Kurt decided it was time to leave his hiding place and start another day of that endless routine.
Something had changed there, and Kurt had decided a long time ago to follow his instincts.
And his instincts told him he should head in a very specific direction, deeper into the forest.
And wherever he went, feeling and hearing the movements of his pursuer, behind the sound of birds and squirrels and insects and reptiles, and even behind the sound of trees and wind, Kurt planted increasingly elaborate traps.
More and more accurate.
Not lethal, but at least over time, they had become more capable of slowing that thing’s progress.
***
As Kurt got deeper into the forest, however, the fog thickened.
He was closer to that blue glow he had seen a few years before.
’Is this forest really that vast?’ Kurt asked himself, trying to remember how long he had walked through that green expanse.
Four years had passed since he had opened his eyes in front of that crater.
Four years of running wildly away from that monstrous pursuer that the voice in Kurt’s head had called [ANTIBODY].
Four years, in which he had learned to survive, be sneaky, lurk in the shadows, and even survive several encounters with his stalker.
Kurt was standing on a layer of rock in the center of a clearing, tying knots in a very thin rope that he had learned to weave from silkworm cocoons that lived in some parts of that forest, when he heard a crack forming beneath his feet. feet.
’Not yet... Not yet...’ he thought, trying to keep the weight on his legs as light as possible.
But it wasn’t enough.
Just as Kurt was about to finish the last knot, the ground beneath him broke, and Kurt found himself falling.
He wasn’t sure how deep the drop was, so he used his perception to measure the dimensions of that hole, as quickly as his mind could absorb that information.
Immediately, he felt his foot grazing very lightly against one of the walls of that hole.
’A broken leg will be a lot worse than a broken arm, but I can deal with it.’ Kurt thought, wincing as he fell, and stretching his legs with all his might, finding the wall of the hole, and pushing himself forward.
Kurt almost lost a few pieces of his face, hitting the opposite wall of the hole.
He shifted his weight around his center of gravity, trying to stay upright as much as possible, and with that, he stretched his legs again, kicking the walls hard, until he felt that the speed of his fall was slowing down.
A few minutes later, with his legs hurting from using too much force on them, Kurt finally managed to reach the bottom of the hole.
He thought he was doomed, having fallen into such a deep hole, but his breath caught in his throat, holding back a cry of triumph, when Kurt realized, thanks to his strange ability to see in the dark, that he had awakened some time before. , in the dark at that depth, that it wasn’t just a hole.
But yes, the entrance to an underground tunnel system.
A series of caves that stretched as far as the eye could see.
’What...’ Kurt thought, raising an eyebrow as he felt as if some part of the puzzle in his mind was finally falling into place.
Kurt took a deep breath, and started walking towards that strangely familiar stranger.
***
Hours later and endless sudden twists and turns, Kurt felt his stomach growl.
He took out a piece of hare meat that he had left drying in the sun, after seasoning it a little, and began to chew.
His feet seemed to move with a will of their own, and a few minutes later, Kurt began to glimpse the glow of rock crystals, scattered across the walls of that cave he had decided to follow.
Not long after, what was once just a few crystals scattered across the rocky walls, glowing in various hues, had become an entire cave made up of those crystals.
The glow of those stones was almost blinding, but Kurt squinted his eyes and continued walking, feeling like he was close to his destination.
And after what seemed like a few more minutes, Kurt found the exit to that glowing cave.
It gave way to a gigantic, shiny stone gallery.
Even bigger than the gallery where Vena was imprisoned...
’Vena...? Who is Vena...?’ Kurt asked himself, not understanding what that intrusive thought was doing in the back of his mind.
And in the center of the gargantuan gallery, a huge greenish crystal geode lay, floating, as if a gravitational force specific only to that part of the planet, took that huge crystal in its hands.
And, coming from the crystal geode, Kurt heard clearly, echoing throughout every corner of that gallery, as it had once happened, in some corner of his darkened memories, the voice that begged him to wake up.
[WE FINALLY MEET IN PERSON, KURT BLAKE...]
