-Reyha Kingdom; Gallo's Outskirts; Goblin's Lair; 10th Floor-
In a room, filled with bone adornments, various vegetables, and a few organs, laying on what could be called an improvised bed, Kymani, seemed to be asleep, something that soon changed for him, when he just darted up as if he just had a nightmare, waking up and then taking a few seconds to breathe and take in his surroundings, before noticing the only other person there.
It was a goblin man, wearing a bone mask similar to Rakuia's and he looked at Kymani before saying. "Look! Look! The new goblin chief awoke! Praise be! Praise be! Tell me, has your body fully recovered? If not, I will make all the sacrifices you need! All of them! Just say! Just say!"
"... That won't be necessary, but where are the others? I need to talk to Iketica." Kymani raised his eyebrow hearing what the masked goblin said, but he was probably not getting too much done by correcting or anything among those lines, so it was for the best that he focused on what mattered, right now.
"Call! I call him! Just wait here!" He responded not letting Kymani say anything else.
Following him leaving, immediately Lavenica entered the place and came running without a word before hugging Kymani, something that surprised him, but he didn't dislike it one bit and reciprocated by getting up and holding her tight in a hug.
"Master, I apologize for my negligence in allowing for something like this to take place at all, just so you can grow at a pace that satisfies you. Having you in a bad state for a while, it... It wasn't good... Every second of it I felt more and more useless, and I know nothing I say can make up for it, but I hope punishing me will be enough... Please don't excommunicate me!" Lavenica had a deep frown and even teary eyes as she hugged him.
"Don't be so dramatic, you did nothing wrong. I put myself in that situation. So far you have been there to support and that's more than enough for me, even right now, you're doing great, and I'm not getting rid of you. Even if you had made the mistake you think you made, it's not that simple. I too make mistakes and stupid decisions... Are you planning to excommunicate me for those?" Kymani smiled and gripped her the tightest he could without trying to hurt her in the hug as he told her about his thoughts on the matter.
"... Silly, I can't excommunicate you, and even if I could, such action was no different from shooting myself. Master, even if you don't mind, I would like to do better and stop allowing you to just jump into the fray that way. So, please allow me to help you more, ok?" Lavenica stepped back and put her hand on Kymani's cheek then began speaking to him, as their eyes met, and the seriousness of her words was evident in those same eyes.
"Fine, go ahead and do it. Just remember, that there are no one-way trains, it's both ways." Kymani contained to smile and as their eyes met, they began to lean closer to one another almost magnetically with not much thought behind the action.
"I shall try to remember that." Lavenica responded half aloof and more so lost in the current motion.
As their faces were soon near the point of collision, none of the sides showed any sign of stopping until...
"Here! Here! I bring Iketica! Here! Here!" The masked goblin barged in or maybe that wasn't the right way to look at it, considering it was his place after all, regardless he was here and Iketica came in as well.
"Kymani! My man! You're finally awake! First of all, I really wanted to apologize on my wife's behalf and-... Are we interrupting something?" Iketica immediately began speaking without paying too much attraction to his surroundings, and then noticed what was going on in front of him before smirking as he questioned it.
"No, we can continue this later. Right now, I need to talk to you about a few important matters. No hard feelings, I can get carried away in fights too, that aside, I'm sure you'll explain to me the situation, right?" Kymani looked at Iketica breaking the moment, but immediately put his arm around Lavenica's waist and pulled her in close, as she then hugged and leaned onto him.
"Before you respond, sir Iketica, even if you are Master's friend, do be wary of ever doing something like this ever again. I'm well-studied goblin anatomy and finding the spots that induce the most pain is a small matter, and I wouldn't mind teaching them to your wife either. Oh, and I must thank you once again for your help." Lavenica had a bright smile on her face as she said all that, clinging onto Kymani, who wasn't really letting go of her either.
"Yeah... I'll keep that in mind miss... Lavenica was it?... As for you Kymani... Where do I even start?" Iketica has chills go down his spine as he thought of Lavenica's words before he turned to Kymani.
"How about starting from the beginning? Oh, and if it's going to be a long story, I would rather be sitting than standing." Kymani responded with a small smile still on his face.
"Of course, let's first sit here. Logart, leave us alone! And don't let anyone in, understand?!" Iketica ordered the masked goblin, and Logart immediately did as said.
Being left three in the room, Iketica sat on a simple wooden chair, while Kymani sat on the bed with Lavenica sitting on his lap, still holding onto him.
"So, what do you have to say?" Kymani asked.
"*Sigh* Well, this all started all the way back when Ophrit attacked and dominated our village, things even after it stopped didn't quite ever go back to being the same, not that I expected or wanted it, but Rakuia was affected in a way that made it all feel even worse. She lost all the glee and that glow she had whenever talking about making us the best village we can be. Instead, she was always tired and rarely ever left her house." Iketica began telling the story of the past, being as serious as Kymani had ever seen him, and not exactly happy about the words coming out of his mount, as his frown got worse the more he talked.
"I see, I've been in a similar place before, it can be daunting to get out of that... Very very much so." Kymani responded just as seriously, giving his attention to the story.
"Yes, and that lasted for a very long time, but things started changing when Zendrias and Dentria entered the picture. It was far from immediate, but they would talk to her every day and Dentria was basically living with her at some point, anyway, while Zendrias thought me the S.D.W technique, Dentria thought her the W.D.W technique. That coupled with the multiple events the two organized basically forced my love to go out, and for a pretty long period, she would only go out to practice the technique she was just taught, but in time the rest of the things got too her.
We got closer to one another and later married, but that's a whole other story, that I might tell you someday. The important part, for now, is that, while sometimes after we got together she would get closed off again, so long as I stayed with her through it, eventually she would be back up.
Years later, she had not the same glee from before, but a new one, that really made me happy to see her back at her best." Iketica continued to tell the tale.
"I see and it's a rather nice tale, but how does it relate to what happened in my fight with her?" Kymani questioned.
"Worry not, I'm getting there. So from there, everything seemed fine, but then I noticed that the time Rakuia dedicated to practicing the technique just kept Increasing until a point where was basically all she did, and upon further inspection, I found out that similar to me, she had hit her own bottleneck, so after much convincing, we talked to Zen and Den, only to find out after they examined her that she was limited by a condition, she had a clogged mana circuit, well according to them, more specifically the mana veins found in the circuits.
They said that surgery to remove the problem was too dangerous, having only a 0.3% chance of survival and a 0.03% chance of success, so there was not much that could be done about it. For a very long time, she couldn't accept it, however, eventually, she did, and instead put all her time into perfecting the moves she could use. Unfortunately, those moves became basically everything for her, just like anyone else in this village, she couldn't forget Ophrit and the possibility of him coming back or someone similar appearing, so she made the technique into what defines her duty and meaning...
Den and Zen then left, but our village will forever be thankful for all the things they did. I can't blame them, but this just allowed Rakuia to dive even further into this, and nothing I ever said changed her mind about this...
The worst part was that, while nobody here can die for sure... It is still not common to just throw yourself at it with no meaning behind it, but she did... Many times she tried to not wake up again... That was left in the past and after living through a lot we got here, where we are today." Iketica had teary eyes but did not cry, even so, his pain could be felt in each word.
"Thank you, thank you for telling us the truth. You didn't have to and I can only. Imagine how it makes you feel..." Kymani was genuine and felt differently about them, as she found himself taking it all too lightly.
"No need for that... I'm actually thankful for how understanding you're being... After all, only you were at real risk for which once again, I
apologize. Anyway, you said you wanted to talk about something important, what is it?" Iketica inquired.
"Before that, sir Iketica, I just wanted you to know, you're a much better husband than I thought and probably than you give yourself credit to be. You did great, and I'm sure Rakuia, knows that." Lavenica expressed.
"As she said." Kymani agreed.
"Guys... Hahaha! No need for flattery, I don't do too well with that. Hahagaha!" Iketica laughed and almost none stop when he finished talking.
"Now, I wanted to ask you if you know anything about the dungeon guardian, but that can wait, let's go check on Rakuia, she probably needs it." Kymani said.
".... So you know about it?... Is that why you came here?... No, it doesn't matter, even if you did, you're right, Rakuia probably wants to talk to you, but she's stubborn as all hell, it would be much appreciated if you two visited." Iketica smiled softly as if lost but seemed thankful.
"Let's go then." Kymani got up and began to princess carry Lavenica to her surprise as she held onto him out of shock.
From then, they got out of the shaman Logart's place before going to Iketica's house, it was time to talk to Rakuia.