This Love is Futile - Chapter 45

()x9-12 minutes 25.07.2022

Translator: P411

Editor: PalenMisha

Read at Watashi Wa Sugoi Desu!

“Mac…!”

Crash threw away the sword that cut the man and supported my body that was falling down.

Ah, my HP had decreased to less than 10%. I was still bleeding, so I needed to quickly heal it.

Crash sat down immediately to support my body.

I took out a High Potion from my inventory with my weakened hand and gave it to Crash.

“This… on the wound.”

“I need to spray this, right!?”

He snatched the High Potion from my hands and opened the lid with his mouth and poured down the content on my wounded side.

“Hot…”

I could feel my wound slowly regenerating back. But this sensation, it was a little bit… It somehow felt similar to the sensation when the optional scar on my side was caressed by Vidello-san.

“Mac! What should I do next?! You aren’t going to die, right?!”

“That’s why I’m saying, I’m not going to die…”

Ah, Crash was crying.

I see, well, I had been wounded in front of him. I hoped this doesn’t become a traumatic experience.

I took out another High Potion from my inventory and held the bottle with both my hands as if to open it.

When Crash saw this, he took it away from me and opened the lid with his mouth once again. Ah, well, he was supporting me with his one hand. Rather how should I put this, his gesture was quite manly.

“What are you gonna do with this…?”

“I’m gonna drink it, so give it to me.”

The moment I reached out, Crash personally brought the bottle to my mouth.

I desperately gulped down the High Potion that was poured into my mouth and breathed out a big sigh of relief from the sensation when the recovery effect slowly kicked in. Alrighty, most of my HP recovered!

“Thanks, Crash. I’m recovered.”

I slowly got up and wiped the tears from his cheek with the palm of my hand.

“I told you that I’ll be fine, right? That’s why you don’t have to cry anymore.”

“You pushed yourself and got hurt like that because of me…!”

Yep, my undershirt had a huge tear in it again and it was quite pathetic that my optional scar could almost be seen through it at a glance.

“Aren’t you the one who best knows that my potions work?”

“What would you have done if you got stabbed in the heart or somewhere else before you could even use it!?”

“Ah— that’s… Even if I become like that, I’ll revive back, so don’t worry too much about it.”

“That’s not the point here! Aren’t you a pharmacist?! Seriously! What are you thinking!? A pharmacist challenging a swordsman in a fight with a sword! You idiot!”

Ah, yeah. You were right. But you know what, in a case like this, I had no choice, you know.

I glanced at the man’s body, which was still lying down at my feet.

Come to think of it.

“Unlike monsters, humans don’t disappear…”

This was my first time seeing an NPC die as an enemy, so inadvertently, my face distorted while looking at the (dead) body that would forever be lying there.

“Humans aren’t monsters that can be reduced to magic particles, so they won’t disappear.”

Eh? So monsters disappeared because they were reduced to magic particles? I see. That’s why they disappeared into a glittering light. So this wasn’t about the game’s spec but there was a reason behind this.

“Then, let’s move on because I don’t want to have this in my sight all the time.”

Crash still had a grim face, but I pulled his arms and we started walking again.

Ah, somehow I kind of felt tired. Although my HP recovered, the reduced stamina wouldn’t be able to recover with the High Potions.

I had lost quite an amount of blood and I had to buy a new undershirt again.

The sky had completely darkened and it was hard to even see our feet.

“Maybe it’s time we stop going and take a rest.”

“Mm.”

We stopped and started looking for a place where we could rest.

Although I was searching with him, I had no idea which place was good to take a rest or not.

“That place might be fine.”

At the place where Crash pointed, there was a tree lying down.

It didn’t feel like the tree was knocked down by monsters and it was already half-buried in the ground as if it was assimilated with the earth, so it looked like a nice backrest.

“Ah, ok.”

While activating the enemy search function, we sat and leaned against the tree.

Crash drew a small magic circle on the ground. Then, he put a few twigs on top of the magic circle and whispered ‘Fire’, and then the twigs were lit on fire.

I was impressed with Crash’s skillful execution in which he hid the campfire by sticking large leaves on the ground around it to prevent too much light from leaking out.

“Where did you learn all these survival skills?”

With my mind becoming relaxed looking at the flickering flame, I threw a question at him and he answered.

“I… when my father was still alive, I used to walk with him in the forest. I think I was around 2 years old. My mother still hadn’t come back from the demon king’s subjugation, and he couldn’t leave me alone at home, so we went together with him teaching me a lot of things. When I think about it now, I was just slowing him down. But strangely enough, I clearly remembered all the things from those days, and my father also carefully explained everything to me from the beginning.”

“Just from the age of two, you entered into the forest… You’re really amazing Crash. I can’t remember a single thing from the time when I was two.”

“It’s because I’m a half-elf. Elves age slowly, but their intellect is strong from birth. I think I inherited it from my mother. I started talking from the time since I was born, so on the contrary, I found it very strange that an infant of the human race couldn’t speak at all.”

“I see, so it’s a race trait. Then, do you know what it’s like with a beastman?”

I excitedly asked Crash a lot of things. Maybe it was because he was good at explaining things, I was able to comprehend a lot of things a hundred times better than reading books single-mindedly at the library.

I took out long bread rolls from my inventory. We ate them and decided on the order to be on the lookout. Then, I let my HP and MP recover and logged out once.

When I came back to reality, I ran downstairs, ate some bread, and drank some milk in the kitchen, and after carrying out all my daily activities, I logged in again in 20 minutes. This was my fastest record.

The surroundings were quiet, and I could hear the sound of a crackling fire.

I thought my body was slouching, but it turned out that I was leaning my head against Crash’s shoulders.

I got up in a hurry. He was also tired, so why was I making him more tired than necessary? I remembered I slept sitting on the ground holding my knees with my head buried in between…

“Sorry, Crash. I’m heavy, aren’t I?”

“Not at all. You’ve lost a lot of blood, so you need to take a rest in a comfortable position. We also need to walk for the whole day tomorrow.”

Crash was grinning at me while he poked the fire with a twig.

UwU, he was such a great guy.1

“I’ll definitely bring you to the adventurer’s guild safely.”

I said this out loud to encourage myself as well.

Checking whether there were red marks on the map or not and looking at the fire, I pushed Crash away and silenced him, who was pouting saying I hadn’t rested at all.

Crash kept complaining saying it was still fine, but soon after I heard his soft breathing and he was now sound asleep.

Even so, this forest felt strange.

There were no monsters at all. Like Yuuta said, there was this big terrifying monster in this forest, so no small fry could live in the forest or something like that.

We still hadn’t encountered that monster, but wandering in the forest, no matter how much I thought about it, this wasn’t looking good.

And, the quick horse, I let it run away on his own. Was it alright? The bandits were after us, so they probably wouldn’t chase after the wagon. Also its wounds.

I hoped someone found it, pulled out the arrows, and healed its wounds.

If I just sat here, I would doze off, so I rearranged my inventory list, read the quest content carefully, and ah, that’s right, it came to my mind, so I opened my chat column.

“Huh, I can’t open the chat column. Why?”

When I thought about contacting Yuuta, the chat column was grayed out.

Maybe it was because I was still on an emergency quest?

The quest started from the time when I met with Crash and rode the quick horse wagon, so maybe, starting from that time the chat column was closed?

Darn! I should have at least sent a message to Yuuta when I was logged out, telling him to come pick me up in the forest. Oh well, I guessed he wouldn’t come.

I zoomed out the map, figured out the new route to the city, added more twigs to the campfire to prevent the fire from extinguishing, checked my status, and just like that, the sun had risen.

Crash was sound asleep. He must have been really tired. I had already had a shower, and I felt refreshed, so pulling an all-nighter for one night was no problem at all. Because I was still a young man.

I shook him awake and put out the fire with the soil.

“Morning, Crash. Did you rest enough?”

“U…eh? Aa.”

It seemed like he was half-awake. He looked around blankly, and then, he got up suddenly as if he was hit by something.

“Uwa, sorry, Mac! I slept the whole night! You haven’t taken a rest at all, right?”

“I’ve rested enough. I’m fine. I’m full of energy and strength right now, so let’s eat something and get going.”

I patted Crash’s shoulders, who was in dismay saying, “I failed…” and took out the long bread rolls that we had eaten yesterday with various fillings in between. It couldn’t be helped that all of this was the same thing because I didn’t want to fill up all of my inventory slots with just food. If they were the same thing, I could carry 99 of them in one slot, so it was really convenient.

In the refreshing, or rather cold, morning air, we started making our way towards the city again.