Fallen Mage Regressor

That night, Mal dreamt of the heroine.

The Serablade pierced through his stomach like a knife through butter. He could feel it invading his body, its golden light spreading inside of him like a parasite.

When he woke up, he was covered in sweat.

He lay there for several minutes, breathing in and out. Once his heart was under control, he let out a sigh.

”How utterly shameful of me,” he muttered.

This was the second night in a row that he’d dreamed of her.

It was funny. For most other people, he knew that the heroine was a symbol of hope. Equipped with the blade that banished the darkness, she really was a figure from legend.

But for him…

”I suppose even with all my power and inexperience, even I’m vulnerable to mental distress.”

Mental distress was such a distant way of putting it. But how else was he supposed to say it?

He shook his head and pushed himself into a seated position. He needed to get his mind away from his dream. He stood up and planted his feet next to a chair that was placed by his bed.

His knees wobbled, unused to standing after so long in bed. He gripped the bedstand and barely managed to prevent himself from falling. After a minute or two to get used to the sensation, he pulled his hand away and managed to stand on his own two feet.

”Right,” he said. ”Nice to see that I’m at least capable of that much.”

He crept to the door of the clinic, each step taking half an eternity to accomplish. He just reached it when it suddenly swung open on its own.

Sharp amber eyes greeted him. Lusia tilted her head, her curly black hair bouncing with the motion.

”Master,” she said. ”You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

Mal squinted. He looked at what she was holding in her hand—a fresh change of sheets. He looked back and at the chair that was placed next to his bed.

”Have you been staying at my bedside?” he asked.

”It’s for my own convenience. If I’m closer to you, it makes it easier to monitor your vital signs and provide you with food and water.”

Mal’s lips twitched. Of course, he’d been reading into it. Lusia would never do something for him out of the kindness of her own heart. And that was exactly the way he preferred things.

”Good,” he said. ”I’m glad to hear it.”

The two stared at each other in silence before Lusia opened her mouth.

”If you’re standing up, you must feel better,” she said.

”Absolutely not.” Mal gave a bitter laugh. ”I feel like crap.”

”I see.”

She looked him down from toe to head.

In the back of his head, Mal’s mind whirred.

He still had to fix her core. There was a man, a researacher of the church, Theologue Cornelias. He’d done research into hollow cores, though he was more known for his Absolute Barrier spell that blocked both physical and magical attacks. Didn’t stop his from dying of dysentary, though.

Mal would need to find him.

”If you’re going to walk outside, you should at least change,” she said.

She walked over to an empty bed and placed the stack of sheets she’d been holding down onto it, then split the stack in half. As it turned out, there was a fresh change of clothes sandwiched under the sheets.

Mal forced himself over to the empty bed and sat down to the side. He reached out for the clothes, then stopped.

Lusia was there.

Staring at him.

While he was about to change his clothes.

Mal drew his hand back and coughed into it. ”Lusia, I’m about to change.”

”Yes.” She tilted her head. ”Do you require assistance?”

Mal did a slow blink.

”No.”

”Why not? It isn’t as if I haven’t done that for you in the past.”

Mal’s jaw worked up and down. ”If I recall correctly, that was when we were both eight.”

Mal didn’t actually remember, but he could take a guess.

”And?”

Now, Mal didn’t consider himself to be easy to fluster. Many a woman had attempted to seduce him at the peak of his power. Not a single one had succeeded.

Despite this, he could already feel his cheeks warming.

”Lusia.” He took a deep breath. ”Please exit outside and wait for me.”

”At once, master.”

She turned around and exited and Mal let out a sigh of relief.

That woman is genuinely going to be the death of me, he thought.

When she left, Mal took off his hospital gown and slipped on his pieces of clothing. One by one.

His skin was pale—not quite as pale as when he’d been a dark lord drunk on his own eldritch power, but pale nonetheless.

At the very least, he thought, this time, it’s because I just lost a bunch of blood, not because I was dabbling in dark magic.

Normally, he would feel at least a flicker of annoyance at his injury. The fact that he had gotten hurt was offensive to him in his capabilities. The fact that he was still in bed meant that he was wasting time.

But he found it hard to summon that emotion. For some reason, he felt content. Like the sacrifice that he had made was well worth it.

Whatever. He could think about this later. He finished changing, and stepped outside.

Mal’s footsteps started out a little wobbly, but with each one he gained a little bit more confidence and a little bit more of his old strength back.

The sun on his head and skin was a welcoming feeling after so long inside. The air itself was warm, and it hit Mal that at some point, spring had properly begun and he hadn’t even noticed. It had started early this year, sure, but that hadn’t been the true beginning.

He double checked his internal calendar. It was the worm moon.

Third month of the year.

Why did it feel so much longer? he thought.

It felt like something interesting was happening pretty much every day, so he supposed that was probably part of it.

His feet slipped.

The ground flew toward his head and he could already tell that he was going to be spending another several days in the clinic —

A set of hands wrapped around him from behind and prevented him from falling.

”Master, please watch your step,”

Lusia pulled him back to a standing position. He let out a breath and smiled at her. ”Thanks for the catch.”

”May I ask where we’re going?”

”The dormitory. I wanted to make sure that those idiots actually cleaned up their mess.”

Lusia nodded. ”Understood. We may need to find new furniture if they haven’t already.”

”A day on the town? I can get behind that.”

Eventually, they came to the front of the door. There were still scratches and splinters on the ground. Mal frowned.

”Do you know if they at least tried to clean up the dormitory?” Mal asked.

”Unknown. My duty and my place has been at your side, master.”

Mal’s lips quirked up. ”I see.”

Of course, Mal knew full well that she was impersonally loyal to him. But it was hard to suppress the smallest flutter in his stomach when she said things like that.

At this rate, he thought, I might end up falling for her.

Mal blinked.

He slapped himself across the face as hard as he could.

”Master?” Lusia tilted her head. ”Why are you engaging in acts of self-harm?”

Mal held up a hand in her direction. ”Don’t worry, it’s not like that.”

She gave him a dubious look, but didn’t say anything.

Mal reached for the door and unlocked it with a quick slide of his card. The door clicked open and swung inward with a slow wheeze.

”Honorable leader!”

”Ape, you’re well?”

”Mal, what are you doing out of bed?”

Mal stepped inside and cast a stern glare at all the inhabitants.

”It’s almost been a week,” he said slowly, enunciating each word. ”Why does our dorm still look like a tornado ripped through it?”

The shattered pieces of the table and chairs were just strewn randomly across the floor. The walls were covered in scratches and burn marks.

Honestly, Mal was exaggerating. There wasn’t enough stuff inside of the dormitory to damage. As such, it didn’t actually look that bad.

But still, it was about the principle of the matter!

”Er, classes have just been taking up so much time,” Nima said. ”I’ve just been drowning in work.”

”Classes have been suspended for the past several days due to the demon attack,” Lusia said.

Nima staggered backward, grasping at his chest. ”You really don’t hold any punches, do you, Lusia?”

”There are no punches involved. I did not physically harm you in any way.”

”It’s a metaphor, Lusia,” Mal said.

”Oh.”

Mal crossed his arms. ”So, what’s your excuse?”

Rolam chuckled and ran his hands back through his red hair. ”You know, the time just got away from us, honored leader. We’ve been engaged in many honorable activities that have consumed our time.” He chuckled again, this time, the sound dying out before he sighed. ”Honestly? We have so little stuff that it was just depressing to even try to clean it up. Every time this honorable one was about to, all I could think of was how it would take approximately 15 minutes, and that our room would be completely empty.”

Nima scratched the back of his head. ”Same here. It was just sad to look at, so I kept on rushing through this room to get out.”

”Philo is not like the rest of you,” Philo said. ”He was too busy studying.”

Mal rolled his eyes.

”Rolam, Nima,” he said. ”I want both of you to clean the walls and sand it down. We’re probably going to paint it. Philo, start carrying out all of our garbage and put it into the disposal.”

”Right away, honored leader!”

”Yeah, you’re right, I’ll help out.”

”Philo will do as you say.”

Lusia glanced over at him. ”What of me, master?”

”You and I are going to sweep up.” Mal glanced up at the ceiling. ”And I guess we’re gonna have to wipe the place down and maybe sand off any burn marks. I’ll need to look into how to redo the flooring and ceiling.”

”Both of us?”

”Yeah, both of us.” Mal’s breath caught. ”Right, I forgot. You don’t like that —”

”It’s fine.”

Mal’s eyebrows raised. ”Are you sure?”

”Yes,” she said. ”As the matron would say, many hands make light work.”

Mal suppressed a smile. Instead, he nodded at her. ”All right then, let’s get to work.”

The work went by smoothly, Mal and Lusia moving in tandem to sweep, mop, sand, then sweep again. Though Lusia had ended up disappearing after about half an hour of work, citing something about needing to take care of some work. Mal had let her go without protest. Philo had a trickier time than expected—apparently you could overload the teleporting waste disposal. Good to know for future reference. He’d been forced to head over to the waste disposal building on the edge of campus instead.

Nima and Rolam, meanwhile, sanded off all of the defects from the wall. In retrospect, it might not have been the best decision to make them do that, because now, Mal and Lusia had to sweep out the wall scraps too after they’d already gotten work done.

Mal stopped and looked at his broom. Where had he even gotten this from again?

Oh, that was right. Cassandra. She’d more or less stolen it from some random person off the street and told him about her crack-headed method for purifying a room.

Well, I might as well give it a shot, he thought.

He channeled his internal mana out into the broom. It started at the handle, then extended out toward the binding, then the tips of the twigs that made up the sweeping part.

The white flecks of unaligned mana blasted backward, as if swept away by a strong wind.

Mal stared at the mana and rubbed his eyes.

”Okay,” he said to himself. ”Maybe Cassandra does actually know what she’s talking about.”

By the time Mal was done, most of the unaligned mana in the dormitory had been ejected out the door, along with dirt and the sanded down bits of the floor and wall and ceiling.

Rolam sniffed the air. ”Is it just me, or does it feel a little less stuffy in here?”

”Considering the weird mold that had apparently been growing in the corner of the room, I’m not surprised that getting rid of it managed to help the breathability,” Nima said.

Mal looked at the bottom of the broom. He strongly suspected that the other two had sensed on some level that the unaligned mana in the room had been ejected.

I’ll need to do this pretty regularly, he thought. This should really cut down on the migraine problem.

A set of footsteps. Mal looked up toward the door.

Lusia stepped inside. In her hands was a cloth-wrapped bundle.

”I’m aware that going to Central Hall for lunch with our clothes looking like this would be improper,” she said. ”As such, I’ve prepared a small meal.”

”Did someone say meal?”

Philo’s hulking form shadowed the inside of the room. He stepped inside, ducking underneath the top of the doorframe.

Lusia knelt down and set the bundle on the floor. She unwrapped it with a smooth motion, revealing a basket.

She uncovered the basket. Sandwich after sandwich was on the inside, each perfectly, anatomically precise. They looked like they’d been made by a machine.

”Please, enjoy,” she said.

Rolam darted forward and took one directly from the top. He bit into it and gulped.

”Wow, this is great!” he said.

”I have perfectly calculated the optimum meat-to-bread ratio,” she said.

Rolam devoured the sandwich whole. Philo took one out and took a bite as well. He nodded. ”Excellent. Absolutely delectable. Indeed, the savory taste of the meat perfectly complements the bread. Not only that, but the meat itself was perfectly chosen.”

Mal glanced between them, then the sandwich, then them, then the sandwich.

Lusia was a lot of things.

A master combatant. Strangely loyal. More than a little thickheaded.

But a good cook, she was not.

Rolam coughed.

He coughed again. The coughing turned into hacking.

”What’s that aftertaste?!” he shouted. ”Where did that even come from?”

Nima frowned and opened his mouth, then shut it, chewing slowly. Suddenly, he stood up and rushed outside of the door. The sound of vomit hitting the grass reached Mal’s ears a few seconds later...

And there it is, Mal thought.

Lusia stared at the sandwiches like they were her mortal enemies.

”I don’t understand,” she muttered. ”I’ve extensively analyzed the work of the kitchen staff. I followed the steps perfectly. How could I have failed?”

”It’s not your fault,” Mal said. ”I’m sure you did the best you could.”

”But it doesn’t make any logical sense.”

Philo snorted, a puff of steam coming out of his nose. ”Philo doesn’t taste anything strange. Granted, the stomach of a draconid is far stronger than those of humans or elves —”

The sandwich dropped out of his hand.

He rushed to the bathroom, and the door slammed shut behind him.

Mal glanced over at the sandwiches.

He decided that he would skip lunch for today.

Once everybody had finished cleansing their stomach of the toxic waste that was known as Lusia’s cooking, they’d all gathered in a circle at the center of the room.

”It’s time to discuss our game plan,” Mal said.

”What, for training?” Rolam asked.

”No, for home renovation.” Mal looked outside. ”And how big our budget is going to be for when we head into town.”