Chapter 405:
Just How Far Did the Spell’s
Damage Reach?
“THE CAPTAIN WAS FOUND unconscious in his study. His workers carried him out and gave him a potion right away. He regained consciousness at once, but he collapsed again the next day, and things repeated like that for a whole week. We thought it was odd, so we took him to a doctor, but they couldn’t diagnose him. Then we set him up to convalesce at home, and it was around that time that potions stopped working on him.”
“The potions stopped working?” Juggy sounded shocked.
“Yes, sir.” Melisa’s face shook with pain, and Eche squeezed her hand. “Since they stopped working, we started giving him the medicine the doctor prescribed, but his condition only worsened. There were more and more days when he simply wouldn’t wake up. It was too much for me to handle alone, emotionally and physically, so I had Eche come to help me. On the first day, she noticed there was poison mixed in the medicine, so we gave him a detox potion immediately, but…” Melisa sadly shook her head.
“What happened to the doctor who prescribed that medicine?”
“We looked for him right away, but he had gone missing. The vice-captain we sent to search for him also disappeared.”
Hm? The vice-captain is missing? Not under the spell? Oh, that’s right, I did hear that the vice-captain’s whereabouts were unknown. But…that’s strange, isn’t it? Does this village have two vice-captains, then? I’ve never heard of anything like that.
“Um, excuse me, ma’am, but does Hataka have two vice-captains?”
“Er, no? We only have one.” Melisa looked bewildered by my question. So there was only one vice-captain…
“But you seem to have a missing vice-captain and a vice-captain who’s under the summoning circle’s spell, right?”
Melisa gave me a curious look in reply. Maybe I had misheard something.
“Oh! Right, I’m sorry, when the vice-captain went missing, we had her assistant fill in for her as sub-vice-captain,” Nalgath explained. “The village watch would fall apart with its captain and its vice-captain both out of commission.”
Now that made sense. So there’s a sub-vice-captain. I’d gotten nervous, thinking there was something wrong there. I really hope things don’t get more complicated than they already are.
“There’s a sub-vice-captain? That’s news to us!” Eche told Nalgath, and Melisa nodded in support. Nalgath frowned deeply at the sight of it.
“Don’t tell me we forgot to announce that we had a sub for the vice-captain?”
“From the looks on Melisa’s and Eche’s faces, I think we did,” Arly said. “We were called away to the forest to search for the missing vice-captain at the time, so we didn’t know.”
Nalgath clutched his head in his hands.
“But we were under the spell, too, weren’t we?” a tired-sounding Piarre asked. “When we got back from our mission, we were calling the sub-vice-captain just plain ‘vice-captain,’ and we didn’t even notice. It just felt normal, right?”
Juggy nodded. As I sipped the tea Melisa brewed, I lamented that things had indeed gotten more complicated. So this meant the sub-vice-captain was under the spell and the real vice-captain was still missing. That much was clear. But the village watch was leaving a lot of things secret that should have been made public, so was it safe to assume that was why the villagers didn’t think anything was wrong with the rumor of the captain and guild master fighting?
“Magic just complicates everything, doesn’t it?” Juggy said. “We still haven’t even found the summoning circle that put everyone under a spell in the first place.”
Nalgath nodded. Melisa and Eche cast worried glances at the party.
“When did all of this start, I wonder?” my father asked.
“When did what start?” Nalgath repeated.
“This whole problem. Did something happen before the spell started making the guild master act strangely?”
That would be over two years ago. The only people who would know were the adventurers and villagers of Hataka. I looked at Nalgath’s party, and their faces got more and more serious. Were they remembering something?
“I don’t remember,” Juggy said.
My father and I gasped in unison. He doesn’t remember? But…why? Could it be… Is this like the time my father and I lost our memories because of a summoning circle?
“I feel like parts of my memory are missing,” Piarre echoed.
“Was it because it happened two years ago?”
“No, something just doesn’t add up. I remember some things clearly…and haven’t any of you experienced short-term memory loss recently, too?”
“Yeah…good point.” The blood drained from Arly’s and Nalgath’s faces.
“Maybe your memories were erased,” my father said.
“Erased? Can summoning circles even do that?” Nalgath snapped. The others gave my father stern stares as well.
“Yeah, summoning circles can take away people’s memories. Ivy and I were rescued before the spell could seriously affect us, but parts of our memories were still erased.”
Everyone was looking at me, so I nodded to back him up.
“Wow… So there really are summoning circles like that.” Piarre’s words hung in the air, and everyone fell silent. Each of us was lost in our own thoughts. Melisa and Eche left the room to get some more tea and some snacks. They both looked much more exhausted than they’d been when we first came in.
Now that the room was silent again, we heard Flame’s shuwaaa, shuwaaa healing noises in a steady rhythm. I looked over at the captain’s bed and saw that Flame’s eyes were tightly shut. It probably hadn’t finished curing him yet. I looked at the captain’s face. I couldn’t see it clearly, since it was surrounded by Flame’s clear red slime, but he did look a bit healthier than the first time I saw him. It might have been an empty hope, though.
“It’ll be okay.”
I looked at my father and noticed he was also watching Flame.
“I know, but it sure is taking forever.”
An hour had already passed since Flame had gotten to work. I had never seen a curing session take so long, so I couldn’t help but worry. My father’s hand rested on my head, its warmth spreading through me.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Excuse me, but a man who says he’s Nalgath’s father is here,” Eche said.
A flustered Nalgath flew out of the room, which lightened up the heavy mood a little. I sighed quietly. I never handled tense silence well.
“Er, what’s going on over there?” Zinal asked me as soon as he entered the room and saw what was happening in the captain’s bed. Fische’s head turned sideways in confusion.
“We were going to cure him with a potion, but Flame decided it was best to do this instead,” my father explained. “Also, the nurses say potions stopped working on him.”
Zinal looked surprised at the news. Nalgath dragged out some chairs. “This is going to take a while, so have a seat.”
Sighing quietly, Zinal said, “We’re all very confused ourselves, what with all the rumors we’ve picked up. It’d help us out a lot if we could get your opinions.”
Eche followed Nalgath’s lead and brought out more chairs. Once we were all in the room, we sat wherever we wanted.
“I’ll tell you what we’ve learned first,” Nalgath said. “So, it seems like we’ve all lost parts of our memory.”
“What?!” Zinal’s party looked over Nalgath and his comrades one by one.
“Are you sure?” Garitt asked.
Nalgath’s party nodded.
“Wow… I guess the memory loss wasn’t bad enough to affect our daily lives, or else we would have noticed something was strange. Just how much of your memories are missing, anyway?” Fische asked uncomfortably.
“I can’t remember what the guild master or the captain were like two years ago,” Nalgath said. “And even recently, there are some strange gaps in my memory. I’m not sure how far back it goes, though it seems like I can speak and go about my daily tasks just fine.”
Juggy nodded. “It’s been the same for me as well.”
Arly and Piarre echoed that it was the same for them. Something must have happened two years ago, and if their memories were erased, it had to have been something significant. But if their memories were erased, that had to mean they would never come back again. I knew that because my father’s and my missing memories still hadn’t returned.
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