The West Wind's Destination - Chapter 5
‘A mage?’
The secret weapon prepared by the Empire’s mages to counter the alchemists always involved fundamentally negating the alchemists’ creations.
‘Have they come to kill me?’
The mages had considered Bea and her master, who had turned the war in the alchemists’ favor, their biggest nuisances. Even after they had killed her master and Bea had vanished, ensuring their victory in the war, the search for Bea continued for quite some time.
She didn’t care about her own life. But all the materials for her critical research were inside the barrier. It would be troublesome if even one was damaged, especially since her research was on the verge of completion.
‘It’s been quiet until now. Why suddenly…?’
Thinking of a direction for the battle that would minimize damage to her materials, Bea kicked open the door to her laboratory.
“What the?”
There was no enemy outside. Bea, who had tensed up expecting an immediate attack, suddenly relaxed.
The wind blew in through the gaping hole in the barrier, carrying the scent of blood. Following the smell, she saw someone lying on the ground.
“…Dead?”
The intruder who had breached the barrier was in a sorry state, clearly not fit for battle.
His silver hair, tangled like threads, was matted with blood. Some had already turned a hard brown, while some remained sticky and wet. Despite continuous bleeding from a cracked skull, his hair hadn’t lost its moonlight-like color.
He was unconscious. And it wasn’t just his head that was bleeding. His shoulders and ribs too, as if it were a miracle that his organs hadn’t spilled out.
But one crucial question troubled her.
‘How did he get in?’
Looking at the breach in the barrier, it seemed he had fallen from a great height. Unconscious as he seemed, breaking through someone else’s barrier required considerable concentration.
Bea’s barrier was anything but flimsy. A dying man couldn’t possibly have broken in.
She looked around, but there were no signs of other pursuers. It made no sense, but pondering how it happened was a waste of time.
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’s about to die.’
To prevent any unexpected incidents, Bea pulled out a dagger. She wouldn’t appreciate it if this man suddenly came back to life and attacked her. So, she intended to stab him once more in the throat to finish the job.
But, strangely enough, her body wouldn’t obey her commands.
Hmm…
Bea knelt in front of him, deep in thought.
‘Is this the cause?’
A perfect human specimen. Bea had never seen anyone else who was so flawless.
As humans grow, they tend to develop some asymmetry, but his symmetry was perfect. Moreover, while humans could grow with the ideal proportion due to physical activities, his physique was overwhelmingly superior.
In simple terms, he was tall and robust.
His arm muscles were developed, possibly from wielding a sword, but usually, if someone is right or left-handed, one side develops more. However, even this part of him was perfectly balanced on both sides.
Despite his body being a wreck, if this was noticeable, his original form must have been even more perfect.
If there was one asymmetry… it was his eyes.
To check if he was dead or if there had been damage to his brain nerves, Bea opened his eyelids and shone some light on them. His pupil reactions were normal.
Only the colors of his eyes were different.
One was gold. The other was violet.
She never cared about beauty, but even Bea, who didn’t usually distinguish such things, could call him beautiful.
The reason Bea hadn’t killed this man and instead observed him for a long time was purely due to being captivated by the beauty of the human form itself.
In the end, as she was unable to kill the man, Bea dragged him next to her laboratory.
“Too heavy.”
…After a few steps, she gave up and laid him down.
Opting for an alternative, Bea laid a sterilized white cloth on the floor and dragged him onto it. The inside of the barrier was almost like a sterile room anyway, so it was fine.
‘Should I try to fix him?’
Truth be told, Bea was more accustomed to definitively ending lives than saving them. But the human body structure was all the same, wasn’t it?
Especially since she had recently been delving deeply into the human body through her homunculus research, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
The human body was no different from a sophisticated machine, just one that also involved various chemical reactions.
She didn’t care about the subject’s pain or side effects. Bringing a knife and disinfectant, Bea, like fixing a broken machine, boldly manipulated the unconscious man. She aligned and fixed broken bones, and stitched torn flesh back together.
Snap. Crack!
Vicious sounds echoed within the silent forest barrier.
It wasn’t easy.
In this era, all physical injuries were treated by mages. It was easier and faster to heal through magic, after all. But Bea, as she was not a mage, had to find ways to heal with her hands.
She had never treated a person before. She had never even created such magical tools for the sake of aiding. Therefore, this was more like practice than actual treatment. Whether the subject suffered or not was not her concern. Her objective was to satisfy her personal curiosity.
