As soon as I uncapped the healing potion and used it on the boy, the gaping wound closed in an instant, fresh flesh filling it in.
"Ugh…."
"His wound really healed."
Those who had watched in doubt let out gasps of amazement as the injury mended before their eyes.
Stopping blood and healing wounds was originally the domain of priests.
It was one of the miracles drawn from the goddess's holy scripture.
Unless one was a priest of deep and unwavering faith, it was impossible to use healing magic.
That most obvious piece of common sense had just been shattered by the healing potion a single man had brought. There was no way they could help but be astonished.
The village chief stepped forward on behalf of the others and bowed his head.
"Thank you. Thanks to you, we were able to overcome a dire situation. May I ask your name?"
"I am Ainz Ooal Gown. Call me Ainz."
The combination of black robes and the Mask of Jealousy was more than enough to make Ainz look suspicious, but the magical item that healed people recast him as merely an eccentric mage.
"Ainz, I do not know how we could ever repay you…."
"Offer your thanks to Flamme. I came all this way to meet her, after all."
At those words, Flamme, who had been watching from beside me, smiled.
"Thank you, Ainz."
"It was nothing worth mentioning."
In truth, this level of expense was nothing at all. If I thought of it as something spent for Flamme's sake, it did not feel wasteful in the slightest.
A Minor Healing Potion.
This item, commonly called a potion, restored 50 HP and was meant for beginners.
In the game, it had only caused a simple numerical change, but now that it had become reality, its efficiency was astonishing. To think it could heal a punctured abdomen so easily.
If even a low-grade healing potion had not worked, I had been considering using a higher-tier one, but fortunately it had not come to that.
'If even a low-grade one can do this much, what would happen if I used something of a higher tier?'
In Yggdrasil, where items were divided into lowest, low, middle, high, top, legacy, relic, legendary, and divine classes, the difference in rank determined an item's power.
The same was true even for something as simple as a potion.
When I imagined how much influence the countless weapons and tools within my subspace could exert upon this world, a chill ran down my spine.
Once everything was over, the village gradually returned to its original state, like earth hardening after the rain had passed.
That was thanks to the barrier Flamme had spread, which had minimized the damage.
As we prepared to leave, our business finished, the village chief who had come to see us off handed over a bundle.
"It is only a humble token in return for saving our village, but please accept it."
When I opened it, I found preserved dried meat, bread, and fresh fruit inside.
Cradling the weighty food in her arms, Flamme spoke in a worried tone.
"You did not need to prepare all this. This is only a small village. It cannot be so well-off, can it?"
"It is cheaper than the price of our lives. Everyone in the village thought the same and gathered what they could."
Some of the villagers who had come to see us off nodded from a distance.
People of many trades had each set aside a small part of their daily lives and put their gratitude into that bundle.
"I see. Then I will accept it gratefully."
"We are the ones who are grateful. If not for the two of you, our village would have suffered a great calamity."
Leaving the village behind, we set out on the road back home.
We walked along a mountain path carved out by human hands.
Flamme, who was leading the way ahead of me, rummaged through the bundle, took out a piece of fruit, and tossed it toward me.
The fruit I caught looked exactly like the one I had once eaten with Jirei.
"Do you not care for fruit?"
"That is not it."
By the nature of the undead, eating food was impossible.
On top of that, I had not told Flamme that I was undead, so removing my mask was uncomfortable.
My hand hovered near the mask as I hesitated.
Would it be all right to tell Flamme?
For a moment, I thought that she might understand even this cursed body of mine.
And yet, at the same time, I feared she might recoil from an appearance no different from that of a monster.
I had heard that she had lost her family to demons.
As I stood there unable to do one thing or the other, Flamme suddenly turned her head away.
"Forget it."
She bit into her fruit and spoke loudly enough for me to hear.
"I wanted to wait until you showed me on your own, but that doesn't seem easy."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It means I've started caring that much."
Her braided hair swayed like a tail.
I did not really understand what she meant, but if she was not looking at me, then it should be fine even if I bit into the fruit.
I opened the jaw of the mask and put it into my mouth.
From the sensation against my teeth and the sound alone, I felt I could tell how delicious the fruit was.
Was it because I still wanted to seem human? Even though I could not taste it, I spoke my impression honestly.
"It's delicious."
"That's all? That's far too plain."
The answer came back at once. Since she still had her head turned away, I could not see her expression.
Did she want a more detailed impression?
For Ainz, who had no sense of taste, there was a limit to how well I could describe flavor.
'Come to think of it, this fruit resembles the one Jirei gave me. Let me remember what I said then.'
"It's sweet, crisp when bitten, firm and springy, and the flesh overflows with a refreshing juiciness."
"That was detailed. You sound like a teacher."
Her sharp intuition made me flinch inwardly.
"Oh, right. How did you come all the way out here, anyway? It should be quite far from the city where your teacher is."
Perhaps the word teacher had reminded her, because she asked how I had ended up here.
"I followed the rumors people spoke of, and they led me to you."
I told her of the journey that had brought me here.
As I listed the people who had told me where Flamme was, one by one, she chimed in with, "Ah, that person?"
When I reached the part about how I had arrived at the village, Flamme said,
"Without them, Ainz, you would not have made it to the village so quickly."
"As I told the village chief, I came here because of you. If you had not made me interested in magical items, I would never have sought you out."
Joy leaked into her voice.
"A chain of goodwill, then."
Bonds were like magic.
As the old woman had said, they were unrealistic, beyond calculation or profit, a cord woven from red thread.
"Something I did without any grand purpose has circled back to me."
What she had done while traveling from village to village, so that no one else would suffer as she had, had finally borne fruit.
"Then this time, it is my turn to help."
The future great mage promised her wholehearted cooperation.
*
We returned to Flamme's house.
The old woman who had been watching over the house drifted away like mist when we came back.
Once we were alone in the room, we began exchanging ideas about our original goal: securing funds.
First, I showed her a gold coin from Yggdrasil.
"I've never seen a gold coin like this before. What country's currency is it?"
"No one but me would know."
"Then it is either something already forgotten or a remnant of the age of myth. A pity. Its purity is high, but without historical value, it is only an ornament made by casting a mineral into a pretty shape."
"Wouldn't it still fetch a good price if sold simply as gold?"
"It would sell for a high price, yes. But then moths drawn to the gleam of gold would surely come swarming."
As expected, it would not be solved so easily.
Just as Flamme said, if I sold Yggdrasil gold coins, people would appear who cared about their origin.
Moreover, the amount of gold in the world was finite, and there was a great risk of inflation.
So even if I became able to sell the coins, in the end I would only be lowering their value.
"Then how about selling that potion that heals wounds instead?"
"I had been thinking along similar lines. If I were to sell something, I was considering magical items."
Second, I had thought about selling miscellaneous Yggdrasil items of relatively low value.
They would be harder to trace, and unlike simple gold coins, they had value as merchandise, making them less easy to approach carelessly.
It seemed the healing potion I had used this time had left a strong impression on Flamme.
"That magical item would be useful. There are no potions with the power of healing magic."
"Healing magic, hm. I hear it is a high-level form of magic even among priests."
"That's right. Just like the magic of demons, the magic of the goddess is also an unexplored domain for humanity."
Perhaps it was because it bore the name of the goddess rather than demons.
The priests were devoted to deciphering the holy scripture that contained the goddess's magic, and though they had gained only fragments from it, the fruits they had obtained were tremendous.
"Healing magic cannot be activated without a holy scripture, so that is a problem too."
The more I heard, the more troublesome the conditions sounded.
"Then a healing potion that can imitate a similar miracle would be useful indeed."
"No, more than that. Priests are human too. They cannot be everywhere at all times. Even if it cannot completely replace healing magic, it would still mean one more life saved, so there would be demand for it."
In Yggdrasil, where healer allocation had been the norm and faith-based magic casters were plentiful, I had never once considered the widespread distribution of healing potions in this way.
In the current situation, with the war against the demons growing fiercer, it would be a major advantage.
However, there was a flaw in this plan.
"There is one major problem. I have spare healing potions, but I do not have the materials needed to make more."
Yggdrasil materials that could not be replenished.
If I had a guild-scale warehouse, perhaps I could endure for a while, but the items in my subspace were limited.
A product that cannot be sustained loses its value.
When I explained it that way, Flamme fell into thought.
"What materials would you need?"
At that, I explained the ingredients consumed in the crafting process.
The medicinal herbs required for it included a flower.
But that flower was all but a fantastical plant that existed only in Yggdrasil.
"If that potion exists, then that means you've seen the flower, right?"
A single red bottle sat on the table.
"Yes. It helped me a great deal in the beginning."
To a player, potions were as essential as water.
Since I had made frequent use of the crafting system, I had gathered materials many times over.
Flamme smiled slowly.
"Then that's enough."
"Do you have a solution?"
It was the magic her parents had taught her, the one she loved most.
"You'll learn the magic that creates a flower field."
It was impossible to reproduce a flower one had never seen before.
But turned around, that also meant a flower seen even once could be made to bloom.
A flower that did not exist in this world could be created.
It was truly the sort of magic one would only expect to find in a fairy tale.
"Let's make a flower field that saves people."
It was the moment a spell once dismissed as useful for nothing but beauty became magic that could change the world.
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