After enjoying 5 servings of meat steak, courtesy of Octan, They leave the village with Octan carrying the luggage,2 cumbersomely bulky bags.
A while later along the way.
"Can you remind me again why I'm the one carrying the bags?" Octan said with a clear annoyed tone.
"Well, you saw me failing over and over again to carry the bags back there, so you decided to just get over with it and carry them on your own." Lena said following from behind.
"Yeah, and why was that happening anyway. You could carry loads like this as if it was nothing as a child. What, you got weaker as you grew?" Octan said stomping his legs.
"No, actually at some point I had became a gold adventurer." Lena said.
"This all happened when my body suddenly started getting weaker..." Lena said pondering over her condition.
"I know all about your adventuring. It was all over your bounty report. Still you had made one hell of a name name for yourself, huh. It even got me jealous, and the way you just left like that and let all the consequences fall on that poor family, never knew you were capable of that." Octan said turning his head for a second to face Lena.
"Consequences? Wait, you know about what happened in Kinolera after I had assassinated the king?!" Lena asked in a rush.
"You bet. After accidentally catching a glimpse of your face on the paper, I had become quite the vivid reader you see. I had read the news paper for a week straight not cutting a day, even though I used to not even care about it. I read all about how the assassination was taken." Octan answered normally.
"What happened. After I had disappeared... Those... Consquences... What were they?" Lena asks Octan remembering all her acquaintances back in Kinorela.
"Hm... What were their name... That family that used to live with us back then... Uhhhhh." Octan said diving deep into his memory.
Lena's heart stops for a second hearing the description Octan had given.
"Toto... What about Toto's family?! What happened to them?!" Lena said quickening her pace to catch up to octan.
"Oh right! Toto! That was the name of their daughter wasn't it? She was quite the adorable thing. I wish I could've seen her one last time after what had happened. You two were good friends right? How was she back there?" Octan answered normally.
Finally catching up to Octan, Lena faced him and held his collar.
"What happened!? Don't loop around the topic?! Just say it! What happened After that!?" Lena said on the brink of screaming.
"Wooah... Didn't expect this from you. Would you look at this, little ol' Lena cares about someone. How precious." Octan stared into her eyes mockingly.
Lena knowing she was barely even a threat kept holding his collar knowing the only card she had to play was her overwhelming length in comparison.
"*sigh* I will talk if you care that much. Just know everything I will say happened because of you, and you only." Octan said and gestured Lena to put him down.
Lena let him down.
"They were executed for treason." Octan said with his new friendly tone as he stared at Lena with his head raised.
"They were deemed traitors for cooperating with the person who had assassinated their king, probably not true but I doubt they cared for the truth. They wanted to set an example for the moment while they searched for you, and the family who had just happened to be the closest with, and even shared history with you, was put to blame. With all of that in mind they had publicly executed Toto, her mother, and her father. What happened to the youngest one is unknown to the public and that includes me." Octan continued in the same tone.
As if it was some kind of automatic countermeasure, Lena's head went blank.
'Toto? dead? What? why? But? Trestina? What about trestina? Was she not discovered during the investigations? Is she alive? Is she at least still out there? Wait if she is? What does she think? What does she think of me? Of the person that had abandoned her and left her with such a huge burden.' So many thoughts running into each other she might as well be thinking about nothing.
Octan stood there and stared at Lena with his usual neutral expression showing neither anger, sadness, happiness, nor satisfaction. He gave Lena a moment and then spoke.
"Let's go, our destination's rather far." Octan said as he started moving again.
Lena turned her head following Octan as he passed her, but before she could follow him Octan stops.
"Also, here." Octan said as he reached into one of the bags and pulled out the metal orb from before alongside a weapon handle without the weapon.
with the handle in his right and the orb on his left, he brought them next to each other and ,using iron control magic, made a dull edged sword.
"I know you were using one of those during your adventuring so here you go." Octan said tossing it towards Lena.
Lena catches it mid air, but struggles to hold it.
Octan sighs goes back, picks it up, and then places it into the bag.
"I will give you it back when you can carry it." Octan said as he started moving again, without stopping this time.
Lena followed staring at the bags on his back as they swayed from the right to the left.
At night.
The usual fire camp.
Lena sits on one side staring at the fire as it crackles. Octan on the other keeps the fire alive by supplying it with firewood from time to time.
"So, what do you think sounds closer? kak kak kak, or kok kok kok." Octan said trying to brighten the mood.
"Neither." Lena replied.
"Yeah... I thought so too..." Octan said dejected.
"Soooo... I guess I will be the one cooking this time around, though don't expect anything good. I haven't improved at all since the last time I cooked." Octan said as he got up and peeked into one of the bulky bags searching for the ingredients he had bought.
"I need to stop carrying all those ancient parts..." He said as he buries his head into the bag.
"I swear it was here somewhere." He said as his hands follow his head inside.
"There!" He said finally finding the said ingredient.
Octan said pulling out a small pouch compared to the bulky bag it was in. He then gets started on dinner.
Lena continues staring at the crackling firewood.
"Till when are you gonna stay like that?" Octan asks.
"Like what? Isn't this normal? this is how you used to act." Lena says.
Octan says nothing for a bit then retorts.
"I'm not someone to look up to. Instead you should be purposefully trying not to do what I had done. You had witnessed first hand what my actions had lead up to with kouko." Octan says pointing the knife he had been using for cooking towards Lena.
Lena doesn't reply.
"*sigh* Then why don't we talk about something? Like that arm of yours, what's up with that and the whole armor piece thing?" Octan asks.
"The armor piece stops the pain." Lena answers briefly.
"Ah. that so..." 'Was I really that down?' Octan questioned his past self.
"And the pain, what is that exactly?" Octan continued the topic.
"I do not know, neither does any of the doctors I had went to. I had even went to mana-hospitals, but even they were completely useless." Lena said.
"How did it start exactly?"
"One night, as I was wriggling on the ground because of the indescribable pain from my right arm. I had a stupid thought, Isn't an armor supposed to stop the pain? And then that stupid plan actually worked." Lena said.
"Hmmm... and when did the pain first start?"
"It started racking up over time, I would say it first started around the same time my right eye's sight became blurry."
"and when was that?"
"Right after the dungeon raid. I was on death's door when I had miraculously reached a mana-hospital. After a good time sleep I had woken up with nothing left to show other than the bandage on my right eye." Lena said still staring at the fire.
"That's weird... So your eye is still there? and you can even see with it, but it's blurry... What exactly happened in that dungeon." Octan said not stopping with his cooking.
Lena thinks back to the dungeon raids, goes silent for a while, and then replies.
"Me and a friend had fought the boss two-on-one." Lena said lowering her head but enough to still see the fire.
"And that boss, did he do any kind of attack that made you feel weird?" Octan asks.
"No... Not really... If there was anything that had made me feel weird it was that technique." Lena says.
"Technique?"
"Yeah the one you once used against a giant. The one where you take control over an enemy's mana orb." Lena said.
"What?" Octan's eyes widen as he hears Lena's answer.
"Yeah, except you had used it to fight back against the enemy. I had made it explode as it was implanted into the boss' body." Lena said.
"You dumbass!" Octan said as he had left everything in his hand and immediately stood up.
"Do you even understand what you had done?!" Octan said violently approaching Lena.
"w-what?" Lena said as she notices Octan.
"How are you even Alive right now!" Octan asks.
"What you had done wasn't taking over an enemy's mana orb! You had dispersed all the mana within that orb! And if it was enough to blow the boss to pieces then That must've been one hell of an orb, and to disperse it all at once and stay alive. That could only be possible if your body had redone it's mana flow!" Octan said as he grabbed Lena's shoulders.
"W-what?" lena didn't understand a word.
"Hell what do you even know about mana! That's the most basic principle! Mana flow is the path mana takes around your body. It's how mana stops itself from leaving your body and instead focuses on keeping it alive. Now answer me quickly. When you had done that 'technique' were you wearing an armor piece too?" Octan asks in a haste.
"Y-yeah, I had thought it would protect my arm from the blast." Lena said slowly growing worried from Octan's tone.
"It all makes sense now! That's why!" Octan says as a grin grows on his face.
"What makes sense? You figured it out? Why my body is continuously weakening?" Lena asks worried.
"Yes, It's because of your own ignorance. You see the trick you had used is a well known trick among higher mages, but even though it's well known no one uses it. Wanna know why? Because it's a suicide trick. Once you use it you will either instantly die, or start a countdown on your life. Lucky you, you landed the latter part of the deal. Anyway, with the latter part of the deal your mana flow is changed, and since you are already out of your mommy's belly a body can't survive a mana flow change. You see when you are still an unborn your mana flow is formed while in your mother's belly. A human body can't survive a mana flow forming normally, but fetuses are an exception with their mother's body supporting them through the process.
When mana flow forms it goes through trial an error many times until it finds the perfect path for the body, one that will expand over time to fit the body as it grows. So even an adult were to undergo such process their mana flow will slowly outgrow their body and have their entire mana flow out of their body. Here's where your problem and lucky shot goes. When your mana flow took place, you had done it with only your right half and with an armor piece covering your arm. You see mana doesn't have intellect, It can't tell whether the armor piece is your body or not, but since it was there on it, it had taken it as a part of your body. As such your right arm's mana flow was extremely out of sync with the rest of your body, and the first to start leaking mana.
Thankfully your stupid thought to put on an armor piece was mistakenly correct, and accidentally saved you from an early death. And luckily with you having chosen such a massive armor piece too, you were able to extend the time given to you until your body fell out of synch with your mana flow. As for your eye, it was only the most open point to let lose mana from. As for your body, at first with the new extreme mana gain from the mana orb explosion you probably had heightened physical prowess alongside a sterner body. But then, As the mana flow slowly fell out of sync, your body slowly lost it's supply for life and as such slowly weakened, or in a more correct term. It slowly died." Octan rambled on still grappling onto Lena's shoulder.
"I-i see." Lena lied as she had understood nothing.
Octan sighed and let loose of her shoulder.
"So... can you treat it?" Lena asked.
"Yeah." Octan said squatting down.
"Just give me a sec." Octan said as he placed his hand on Lena's right-half of her chest.
"..." Lena said nothing.
"There, all done." Octan said merely a moment later.
"Wait really?" Lena questioned the authenticity of his words.
"Really, really." Octan replied instantly.
He then moved his arm towards Lena's right eye and removed the bandage.
"Woooooah, this feels weirdddddd." Lena said as she saw properly with her right eye for the first time in years.
"T-then that means!" Lena said excited as she started jumping around.
"Woah!!!!!!" Lena shouted in excitement as she took off the armor piece.
"I feel so light!" Lena said as she threw fists at the air.
"How did no one figure this out?" Lena asked unbelieving of the situation.
"It's simple, if someone were to just check your mana they would only find it to be extremely wild and jumbled, many things could lead to that, and to treat someone without knowing the exact cause for it could be extremely fatal. Also, I doubt you had told anyone about how you defeated the boss so they couldn't figure it out on their own. After all, such a trick is easy to think of, and easy to find it's consequences as long as you know the basics of magic. Only problem here is that you were blindly following my example, as with the dull edged sword." Octan said shrugging.
Lena calmed down overtime and sat backdown to watch the fire again.
"I'm hoping this helped you raise your spirits." Octan said now back focusing on dinner.
"Yeah.. I only needed a moment to take it all in." Lena said staring at the crackling fire.
"That sure was one hell of a long moment then." Octan says.
"just leave me alone..." Lena says in an obvious annoyed tone.
"As if. Now that you are all good, you're back on carrying duty." Octan announces
"Oh right, that. sure." Lena says.
"Hey... be a bit more rebellious there's no fun if you just agree like that..." Octan says disappointed.
...
"pfft... who would've thought we would be having this kind of conversation one day." Octan said chuckling.
"Right..." Lena said raising her head to the night sky's stars.
Silently observing the night sky, Lena asked.
"How much time did I have left?" Lena asked.
"...7 months."
"So, I was even oblivious of my own clock."