Chapter 391: Consequences of the Battle
"..." Slowly I open my eyes, feeling immense pain throughout my body. The first thing I notice is a simple room with nothing extraordinary, followed by realizing that I’m lying on a bed.
I see Eclipsya sleeping, using the bed as support, while next to her I see my master sitting on a chair reading a book. I try to move my hand to caress Eclipsya, but there’s nothing.
’Ah...that’s right...I...lost my right arm...’ It didn’t regenerate, showing how severe the damage is, my whole body is also too painful.
"I see you’ve woken up," My master says, stopping his gaze from the book. I struggle to look directly at him.
"Yes...how long...have I been sleeping?" I ask uncertainly, hoping it hasn’t been too long.
"Two days," He says, as I notice how low my mana is and the abyss halo and tail’s mana reserves are depleted.
’Two days...and I haven’t recovered almost any magic...’ The damage is even worse than I thought.
"You’re very lucky, Pandora, very lucky indeed..." He says as he gets up and comes over to me. I see the many bandages on what used to be my arm.
"Master....why..."
"Why didn’t I heal your arm?" He completes, not letting me finish with my hoarse voice.
"Pandora, did you realize the stupidity you did? Your arm sustained permanent damage..." He speaks, staring coldly at the place where my arm used to be.
"But...I regenerate and...there’s healing magic..." My race has an absurd regenerative capacity, along with passives and magic.
"Pandora, it’s not possible to regenerate the mana path with such severe damage. You can still recover your arm, but it will never be the same again. You will be unable to use it the same way as before, it will become slower, stiffer, and with less mobility."
"It won’t affect your day-to-day, but it will affect the way you fight and the way you use magic with that arm...if you don’t understand, it means that until the day of your death, your arm will never be able to fully recover 100%. There is currently no magic capable of healing such severe damage," He speaks, leaving me surprised.
’Permanent damage...’
"I think...it was to be expected," I say with resignation and sadness, accepting that my arm will never be 100% again, probably a consequence of me having sacrificed it in an extremely unstable magic I had just created.
It’s not like I didn’t know the risk, using unstable magic can damage the mana path, and regenerating it is extremely complex to the point where very severe damage has no recovery.
Mana is fundamental, everything that exists has mana, even a mere grain of sand. Naturally, mana is something complex, and damage to the path it uses are things that even the goddesses probably can’t easily deal with.
"Thank you, master...for saving me..." I’m a proud person, but I know how to be grateful. Without him taking care of me, I probably would have died.
"You are my disciple, it is a duty I accepted when I began to train you..."
"Your daughter has been strange since you arrived here injured like that. Initially, she seemed desperate and couldn’t stop crying, but then she became cold and unresponsive."
"You should talk to her. I’m going to leave, I’ve spent too much time here taking care of you," He says, checking my arm with a look before leaving.
"..." I look at my body, organs, bones, and any other damage will heal 100%, but the arm is really with the mana path very damaged.
’It seems that apart from the right arm, I won’t have any other permanent damage...should I consider that a stroke of luck?’ I knew regeneration wasn’t absolute and that fights have consequences, but knowing I’ve received permanent damage shakes me a little.
Especially since it’s the right arm, which is the one I use the most. Of course, thanks to adaptation, switching to using the left arm won’t be difficult, but it’s still annoying.
"Even dead, those vermin still screwed me over one last time..." I look at Eclipsya sleeping, she is firmly clinging to the sheet.
’Strange, isn’t it...she’s probably traumatized...’ I think I know what she has, she probably "lost control", similar to when I saw Elena "die" and went through the loss of control.
This "trauma" triggered the reaction, just from what the master described of her, I already know it’s that. Now it remains for me to find out exactly how Eclipsya lost her control.
’How will this work for her?’ I admit that after the loss of control, I became a little too controlling of what I love. It seems that Eclipsya inherited this trait from my race.
"Daughter...wake up," I shake Eclipsya a bit with my left arm. For now, it will take a while for my right arm to regenerate on its own, probably a few weeks.
"M-Mommy?" As soon as she hears my voice, Eclipsya wakes up. She looks at me with a gaze too gloomy for a child, despite the joy of seeing me wake up. Her eyes have obvious signs of continuous crying and she seems tired, must be exhausted.
"I’m glad you’re okay, Mommy," She speaks coldly, a bone-chilling coldness, but I know it’s different from indifference. It’s the same coldness with which I went through when I lost control.
"Daughter, what do you want to do with me? Be honest," I ask with a weary voice, avoiding moving to not reopen the wounds on my body.
"..."
"I want to lock you up for trying to abandon me, I want to throw you in a cage so you’ll never be in danger again, I want to keep you safe under my protection forever."
"I want to isolate you from this dangerous world and keep you with me forever, so you can never abandon me again and no one can take you away from me," She speaks with a disturbing smile before realizing what she said and starting to cry.
"S-Sorry M-Mommy...I-I’m confused, I-I didn’t mean to..." She tries to apologize, but I place my finger on her lips, silencing her.
"I understand you, really, you don’t need to apologize..." I say, wiping her tears affectionately with my fingers.
"But unfortunately I can’t let you imprison me. If you want to imprison someone, do it with Azazel," I say, throwing the problem to Azazel.
"A...Azazel?"
"Yes, you love her, don’t you? She is weak, she is the older sister, but she is nowhere near as smart as you. She needs protection, so if you want to lock someone up, do it with your older sister, not me."
"I am your mother, I am not the person you should love in that way," I see her eyes shine with understanding as the darkness in her gaze diminishes. With this, I know I have successfully shifted the problem to someone else.
She seems to calm down and take a deep breath, while her eyes, despite having a deep darkness, become more lively and calm. She is so intelligent and rational, and I love that about her.
So I know I can’t erase this, it’s a racial trait. There’s no way for me to "cure" or "erase" her desire to imprison those she loves in a cage, so I can only change the target, after all, I don’t want my daughter trying to imprison me in cages to try to defend me.
Of course, I know this will ruin Azazel’s future, after all, Azazel, without wanting to, has already been doing things to make Eclipsya lovingly become obsessed with her, and now I’ve left her free to lock her up, so Azazel has a grim future ahead.
’It’s really complicated to be a mother...it’s not favoritism...but Eclipsya is easier to deal with...’
"Daughter, give your mother a hug, I really need it," I say as she, with a smile, climbs onto the bed and hugs me. She is very careful not to hurt me as I look coldly at the door.
"..."
’Two days...how’s the war situation?’ Just because I was incapacitated doesn’t mean my work is over. I still have a war to win and heroes to torture.
’I can’t go to war in this state...I’ll have to trust they’ll handle the war without me...’ I’m too weak to be useful. If I go to war, I’ll only get in the way and maybe even be killed.
Even though I can make extra limbs, the mana path is always the same, so the right-side arms will always have this same problem, regardless of whether it’s a new limb or not.
"Mommy...Mommy Tsukuyomi is worried, and the dragon girl is also worried about you," Eclipsya says, taking me out of my thoughts about the war.
’Damn...I’m all messed up and I’m still thinking about going to fight...I should stop thinking about the war and recover.’ It’s no use spending energy thinking about the war if I can’t even go there.
"Thank you for letting me know, daughter...could you get me something to eat?" I give her a kiss on the forehead, as she releases the hug and starts to move away.
"S-Sure! I’ll be right back, Mommy," She starts running quickly, it’s kind of cute considering she’s so short.
’I’m in my 100-centimeter form...it seems my body hasn’t returned to normal size...’ I don’t know if this is good or bad, but it’s better that I don’t try to change form or the wounds may completely reopen.
’I’ll have to stay like this for now...’ It will probably take 1 month for me to be able to change form to my normal adult size, and if I’m lucky, in two weeks my arm will have grown back.
"I wonder if when the master said that in my day-to-day I would be normal, he included sex?" It would be terrible if my arm didn’t work properly during sex.
"Damn, I want to fuck someone so badly..." The near-death experience fills me with a desire to have sex, a monstrous instinct that comes from the fact that I want to "spread my seed" before dying, even though I’m no longer in immediate danger of death.
The worst part is that I’ll be frustrated, if I make too much effort trying to have sex with Zephyra or Tsukuyomi, my wounds will reopen.
"Haaa...how many days will I have to be bedridden?" I murmur, annoyed. I’ve never been still for very long. I’m always busy, whether making plans, working on kingdom paperwork, training magic, meditating, masturbating, writing things, adjusting my mana, and many other things.
So I really almost never stay still, and now I’m being forced to stay still, and it gives me an unpleasant itching in my body. I try to move, but I let out a painful groan.
’D-Damn, it feels like my ribs are piercing my heart...’ What hellish pain, and look, I have resistance to pain, but the mix of complete exhaustion and wounds really hurts.
I completely give up on moving, staying still. I’ve already seen that today I won’t get out of bed in any way.
’It changed...’ I noticed that the ring has changed places. It always stays on the same finger it was placed on, but it changes hands. Before, it was on the right hand, and now it’s on the left hand, on the exact same finger as before.
"..." I stare intently at the ring. I admit that this ring saved me, even though the ring itself didn’t do anything. The idea came mainly from him during the fight. Seeing this ring helped me create the magic to be able to continue the fight.
"I sacrificed my arm to Grimm...does she know about it?" I don’t know. I created that magic in a moment of desperation, and it was so unstable that it completely damaged my arm, creating this permanent injury.
"..." I decide not to think about it. I close my eyes to try to rest a bit and at least regain the strength to start walking.