Recovery

Note:「」means the sword 'The Eye of the Storm' is speaking to Leon, via his mind.

Leon woke up on a snug and comfy canopy. He examined his surroundings to find himself in a decently sized room, with a bunch of compartments with name labels. To confirm his suspicions, Leon scanned the compartments, until he found a familiar name tag that read 'Lucia'. He now could confirm he woke up in the Guild staff break room that was behind the receptionist desk. After gathering his thoughts, all of what happened started to come back to Leon and replay like an old movie in his mind.

His long, yet successful week in the forest in an attempt to get stronger and level up. The starting success in his exploration of the Goblin cave, only to wind up facing an Ogre. He also remembered the Ogre's attack and felt his back send signals of sharp pain like knives as he tried to move out of the canopy.

The remaining memories of the situation with the Ogre were a little bit fuzzy as Leon tried to remember it.

Leon pondered for a moment. He was too preoccupied with his broken back and trying to live at the time to have remembered everything

'What exactly happened towards the end, right after I broke my back?'

Leon's thoughts echoed in his mind like a wind tunnel and he was surprised to receive a response.

「To be precise, you actually do know, however you are not powerful enough to utilize your true powers to access that part of your mind yet.」

Leon almost jumped out of the canopy, however, the pain from moving stopped him.

'Wait a second, this voice. It sounds familiar, I can feel a tinge of familiarity.'

「I was the one you talked to when you were dancing on the line of consciousness like a circus performer. You should also know me from the vision you had before that woman splashed water on you and woke you up. 」

Leon recalled the reoccurring dream and Lucia waking him up just to almost kill him. He tried to reach as far as he could into the depths of his memory to pull up what he saw as he was carried by Bav's group.

He remembered what had happened just before his consciousness slipped from the light into the void.

'You are the sword, I got from the blessing?'

Leon could sense a string of his soul attached to the sword resting right beside him on the ground.

「Yes. I can read your questions that are bouncing in your mind, however, it will have to hold off until later, when you are strong enough to receive them. Be on alert someone approaches us.」

The door opened and two figures had come through. The first one was a very familiar face who had caused Leon much fear and pain, it was Lucia. She seemed to calm down as she held a mellow smile seeing Leon awake. What really surprised Leon was the person who followed right after Lucia, Bav from the Phantom Guild had appeared.

Lucia started her way back out the door.

"Here's who you are looking for Bav. If you don't mind I have to get back to the front desk."

Bav nodded as Lucia walked out and he bowed.

"Thank you for risking your life for our guild members, when you did not have to. To repay your kindness, I will heal you and check up on you until you are fully recovered from your wounds."

Leon shook his hands.

"You really don't have to Bav. I can pay for a healer from my guild to do it."

Bav shook his head.

"If you didn't discover the Ogre, then it would have been my team who would've been stuck fighting the Ogre. To be frank, I am certain we would not have made it out whole, even winning is doubtful at best. To be frank, your sacrifice and injuries may have spared my guild and I many lives of my party and I. So I insist, let me heal you as a gift."

Leon tried to reject, but he saw the determined looks Bav had and decided to give up.

Bav took a look at Leon's back, always putting pressure on it to check which parts needed his attention the most. He would target the whole area with a basic recovery spell to speed the healing up and on the more battered places, he would use another healing spell. Each day for a whole week Leon would get treatment from Bav while being watched by Lucia.

One time Leon had attempted to try to go escape Lucia's watch when he regained some movement. However, as he was halfway through a window, a hammer landed in the wall next to him and Leon decided it was better to just bear the pain of not adventuring rather than dying.

The only thing truly different that happened during Bav's treatment, occurred on the fifth day of the week of checkups. On the fifth day, the healing session went normally as usual, with Bav doing the routine small talk as he healed Leon.

However as he started to leave, he went back and gave Leon a special present.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Leon, I have something for you."

Bav handed Leon the dagger that he had abandoned in the cave when it was bent as he used it to try to block the Ogre's punch.

Leon looked in surprised.

"How did you get this?"

Bav simply explained.

"Since an official report was filed on the incident, the guild went to retrieve anything left of our fallen members for a funeral. They luckily found your dagger on the floor under a rock, while they were searching."

Leon inspected the dagger to realize there was no bent or dent, in fact, it looked brand new.

"I am truly thankful for the dagger, but you didn't have to repair it. You are already repaying me with the aided recovery, I can repair it myself you know?"

Bav shook his head.

"The repair was ordered by our Guild Master, Kyle. Although, that girl, Emilia really annoyed the Guild Master until he caved in."

At the mention of Emilia, Leon blushed slightly and tried to act casually. Bav noticed the slight tint of red, but simply gave a small grin and left.

After a whole week of healing, Leon finally had fully recovered.

As Leon made his way down to the Guild Hall lobby, he spotted a bored Lucia waiting at the receptionist desk with no one in line due to the fact that the sun had just risen.

He walked up, full of spunk.

"Lucia is there an upcoming E Tier test coming up?"

Lucia not noticing anything out of the norm, blankly replied.

"Yeah, there is one tomorrow actually."

Leon smiled.

"Be a darling and sign me up, would ya."