The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 72: Ankhestes

Chapter 72: Ankhestes

After receiving his victory, Kir did the natural thing and passed out from the pain of his injuries as soon as the adrenaline wore off.

He woke up in an immaculate, very white-gray room, looking up at a very concerned woman with avian features.

"He’s awake," she declared, looking away.

Kir didn’t need much to guess that he was in the Academy’s infirmary. But who was she talking-

"Oof!" Kir felt the air leave his lungs as Kordia grabbed him with a hug from the other side of the bed as the nurse. He’d expected pain, but instead, he just felt a dull sort of pressure and a bit more give in his chest than felt natural. "What happened?" he asked.

It was the nurse who answered. "What happened is you let some big oaf break twenty of your ribs, dislocate your tail, fracture your shoulder, and give you a concussion."

"You had me worried," Kordia said as she finally withdrew from the hug. "What the hell were you doing?"

"I got challenged by someone from my hometown... How did you know I was injured?" Kir asked, his voice wavering a bit because each breath hurt.

"Remember that bit of healing magic I can do? Well... after I evolved it got stronger, and I was already in the arcanological medicine course, so when class started I saw you," Kordia explained.

Kir tried to sit up, only for the nurse and Kordia both to push him back down. "You need to rest," the nurse warned. "Your body’s been through quite a lot of shock. It’ll take at least a month unless you can afford better treatment."

"I’ll pay it," Kir said as he came to rest. "Just get me back on my feet as soon as you can."

"Kir, if you go into debt with the college... they could indenture you or sell you into slavery or worse," Kordia warned.

The word ’slavery’ immediately gave Kir pause, but he insisted he wouldn’t be going into debt for long if that’s what it took. The nurse left and came back with an older elvish woman who introduced herself as Anrion Grayheed, the head of healing studies. After a long explanation of the potion she would create, the magic she would use, and their side effects, she handed Kir some paperwork.

It turned out that Kir was already going to be charged for the price of materials and potions, to the tune of a gold strip. If he wanted to heal sooner though...

"One gold bar, two gold coins, one silver strip..." Kir winced at the price. Across the continent, it was ten coppers to a bronze, ten bronze to a silver, ten silvers to a gold, ten gold to an orichal. Aside from coins, strips represented five of a currency and bars represented ten.

The contract Kir was being offered would cost the equivalent of three years of tuition and more at the college. The contract had no interest written into it, but it only gave him one year to pay before remediation could be sought.

Right now, he could only pay less than a third of it from what he had on hand, which he also needed for food and for supplies. But it would get him on his feet tomorrow instead of setting him back a month...

"I’ll take the contract," he finally sighed, signing it. He needed the time more than the money, if he was going to get rid of the seals that had been placed on him. The sooner he had his magic back, the sooner he could figure out something.

After signing, he waited until Grayheed returned with a surprisingly small phial of some glowing yellow substance.

"You’re in for a rough night," she warned. "The ankhestes elixir will be painful in its healing."

"I can take it," Kir answered.

"On your head be it, then," the old elf said grimly.

She administered the potion to him, and it took a lot of willpower for Kir not to immediately gag once it crossed his tongue. The taste was like vinegar and blood and grass all mixed together, with a texture like congealed glue.

Kir shuddered as it passed into his stomach, but his ordeal wasn’t over yet.

"I’m now going to activate the elixir you just drank, as well as hold your ribs in place for them to finish healing properly. Try not to move," she rolled up her sleeves and held her hands over Kir’s stomach.

A moment later, a gentle glow suffused Kir, but then he started to heal, and it was like his chest was filled with a million shards of glass all creeping into place. He barely noticed as her hands traveled along his body, her magic reaching into him to hold his ribs in place as the potion did its work.

His mana wanted to reject the intrusion but he forced it down, focused everything on enduring and not moving. How long he lasted for, he didn’t know, but he screamed himself hoarse, bit his inner lip until it bled, and when the healing crawled its way into his face to undo the damage he’d done, he was barely cognizant of Grayheed’s hands and mana leaving him.

All he could think about was the pain, until suddenly a silver-white flame appeared above his head. It was a beautiful thing, with a core of blue, and it descended upon Kir, filling him with a sense of warmth and soothing most of the pain he felt away.

Some distant part of his mind registered Kordia arguing with Grayheed, but Kir couldn’t focus enough to understand what was being said except for snippets.

"Not time... experiment... ...student!" "He’s... agony... Won’t... -ffer, now... try..." "If ...that... permanently... him... he dies... be expelled..."

The voices of Kordia and Grayheed seemed to blend. He didn’t know who was saying what, he was so tired...

All he knew was that for this moment the pain was gone, and his body took the sudden absence as a signal that, for the second time that day, he could finally pass out.

In a haze of half-felt sensation, he dreamed.

He was staring at a clipboard, the angry bar in red into which the graph was spiking.

"...just saying, your demonstration output is putting the reactor and the bore dangerously close to becoming a bomb," a woman’s voice said.

He looked at the woman. They were seated across from each other at a table, in an empty cafeteria. The indoor environment didn’t have any outside lighting, and so it was impossible to tell what time of day it was except by how exhausted she looked. The woman had tied-back. black hair. Plastic-framed glasses rested over tired, baggy eyes and a long, white labcoat was worn over sensible office wear. "And your point?" he asked, in a different voice.

Her voice shook with tension. "All of the major stakeholders are going to be here when you start poking holes in reality again. All of them. We barely know what the bore does when it’s working; I don’t want to test what it might do if it explodes with the most important people on the planet ten meters away."

"We’ve been over this. I’ve got a reactor configuration that will shut down in the event of a runaway extrusion, a meltdown, or any event the sensors don’t like. That includes explosions."

"Do you? Because you haven’t let anyone else see any of your programs for the last six months! You let us run the tests, but you hoard whatever it is you’re seeing in the results. At least show me enough to reassure the board-"

"I’ve already talked to the board. They agree that information security is more important than knowing how the cake is made."

The shaking in the woman’s voice seemed to extend itself into her body before -

SMACK!

She slapped him hard. "You fucking hypocrite. You just wanted all this to yourself, didn’t you? What happened to sharing infinite energy with the world?"

Inside, the man felt happy. Happy she’d slapped him. But why?

"I’m putting you on administrative leave," he replied flatly. "You’ll get a copy of my files after the stakeholder demonstration. No doubt the company will want you to present-"

She started pacing, her hands coming up to her forehead before she rounded on him again. "What are we even doing, ||||||||?" "What aren’t you telling me?"

A name. She’d said a name, Kir could feel it. But he couldn’t hear it. What was this dream? Why was he being yelled at? Who was this woman?

He saw it on her chest, her nametag. But where there should have been a name, there was a series of lines, thick and thin. A barcode, he realized.

"I’m telling you to wait," he replied, one eye welling with tears. "One week. Once the stakeholders are out of everyone’s hair, you can have everything. Just... don’t mention this. To anyone."

"Why? So you can take all the glory first?" she scowled.

"Yes," he said, his emotions saying ’no’, yet he leaned forward, onto the table between them. "If everything goes right, or if anything goes wrong, it will all be on my head, not yours ||||||||."

"Don’t play the fucking martyr with me ||||||||. You want me gone? Fine." She stood, pulling a ring off of her finger and throwing it at him. He let it bounce onto the table, where it spun for a moment before he stopped it with his left hand, eyeing the two rings he wore on that finger. "||||| would be cursing you from the grave if they could."

"I know," the man said as she turned her back and stomped out. "They were right, ||||||||," he whispered to the empty air in front of him. Picking up the ring, he slipped it onto his ring finger, found out it wouldn’t fit, and then placed it on his pinky finger where it did. "I’ll see you on the other side," he said to the rings on his hand.

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