Chương 70: What are you going to do with him?

They made their way back through the tunnel maze. Thankfully, they had Catriona and Lys leading them, because Evan would never have been able to find his way back to the control room on his own. Catriona, however, who'd spent her entire youth roaming a vast, dangerous forest, was excellent at orientation, even down here in the network of samey-looking hallways and rooms.

"You were right," Oliver said. He was a little out of breath. Luca wasn't very heavy, but the fight with Victor had taken a lot out of Oliver.

"About sparing Benedict's life, I mean."

"Maybe I just got lucky. I mean, trusting the dude in the black outfit with plague powers who nearly turned my leg into stinky black goo and who also comes from the family whose house we just trespassed? That was a pretty big gamble."

"Was it, though?" Oliver asked thoughtfully.

"Did you really gamble?" Evan considered the question for a long moment.

"No, not really," he finally said.

"I trusted my gut feeling. My gut feeling said Benedict is a decent guy under the thumb of a really idiotic cousin."

"Your gut feeling tends to be right. You're good with people." Evan shrugged at the compliment.

"I'm a couple of years older than you. Had a couple more years of life experience. And I met plenty of people from all walks of life at my job. That probably gave me some insights too."

"Oh right, you were some kind of healer in your world, right?"

"Something like that, yes." Oliver adjusted his grip around Luca's waist.

"Pain and sickness strip away a lot of armor and masks. I see why dealing with people in that state a lot would teach you a thing or two."

"You're being very profound, Olly," Evan said with a chuckle.

"Am I? Then here's another profound question. What are you going to do with Benedict?" Catriona glanced over her shoulder.

"Good question. Are you going to let him go free, or are we going to hand him over to the authorities?"

"Why is it up to me?" Evan asked.

"Shouldn't that be a group decision?"

"I grew up in the Old Forest. I don't know enough about the justice system of city dwellers."

"I don't know anything at all. World Traveler, remember?" Evan protested.

"Oliver, what would happen to Benedict if we hand him over to the Guardian Guild?" Oliver blew out a long breath.

"I'm not a lawyer, but I think execution is not a very far-fetched thought. The Professor killed a lot of innocent people, and he kind of participated in it." Evan swallowed. He'd wondered how common the death penalty was in this world. Now he had an answer.

"So you think we should hand him over and let them punish him?" Oliver pressed his lips together.

"Better don't ask me. I'm not exactly unbiased. You did kill Victor for similar crimes, though."

"Victor participated because he wanted to use the Professor's creation to further his own power. He actively chose to house and fund the man. Benedict had little choice but to go along with things. Victor would've probably killed him otherwise."

"That's what he claims," Oliver said with a sour expression.

"He did betray his own cousin the moment he had the opportunity," Evan reminded him.

"And he saved our lives," Catriona added.

"That should count for something. We owe him a life debt." Oliver sighed heavily.

"That's a good point." The entrance to the control room came into view. The light inside was still on, and Benedict was waiting for them in the doorway. He was holding two potion bottles in his hands. One was filled with blue liquid, the other with yellow liquid.

"What does he need? Healing or cleansing? Or both?" Oliver and Evan dragged Luca into the control room and laid him down on the floor.

"Lys, guard the door," Catriona told her familiar.

"Warn us if you sense anyone coming." They gathered around the unconscious Luca.

"His ledger says he has a brain bleed," Evan explained. Benedict immediately handed him the blue potion.

"Healing then. I hope this still works. How long has he had the status condition?"

"Hard to tell," Evan said as he uncorked the bottle.

"What does it matter?"

"It matters," Oliver said, voice tense.

"If you wait too long to heal an injured person, the health bar can be refilled completely, but their body won't be restored. The injury will heal as a defect. A scar, a missing limb…" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Evan looked down at Luca with concern. The injured organ in his case was his brain. Did that mean Luca would have brain damage if the critical time window for healing had already passed? The thought turned his stomach.

He'd seen enough brain-damaged patients to know that he did not want this terrible fate for the happy-go-lucky, carefree Luca. Especially since it was Evan's idea for him to join their team. If not for him suggesting it, Luca would've just gone back to his home village to live an ordinary, brain-damage-free life.

"How long do you have to heal an injury?"

"That depends," Catriona said.

"On the severity of the injury and the strength of the healing potion or healing skills."

"You're in luck. This potion is very strong. I brewed it myself," Benedict said.

"I don't have a proper potion brewer skill build, of course—Victor wouldn't allow it—but it's a bit of a passion of mine." Evan pulled down Luca's chin and gently poured the potion into his open mouth. As soon as the last drop of liquid had run down his throat, his eyes opened a tiny gap. He groaned, flailing his arms.

"Luca? Can you hear me?" Evan asked, unable to suppress the worry in his voice. He was waking up alright, and his health bar was almost completely refilled, thanks to Benedict's potion—but had they been fast enough to heal the damage his brain had sustained? Luca's response came out as a mumbled salad of syllables, which wasn't very reassuring. Oliver grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

"Come on, Luca, wake up. We need to know if you have brain damage." Luca's eyelids fluttered open, and his lips twitched into the slightest smile. His voice came out raspy, but more intelligible this time.

"No more brain damage than usual." Evan, Catriona, and Oliver burst out into relieved laughter. Luca tried to laugh with them, but winced.

"Damn, my head hurts." He tried to sit up, but Evan gently pushed him back down.

"Stay down. Take it easy. You took quite a beating. Can you move your arms and legs?" Luca weakly lifted his arms and moved his feet.

"Yeah, fully functional."

"Can you see my fingers? How many?" Evan asked, holding three outstretched fingers in front of Luca's eyes.

"Three," he answered correctly.

"We're back in the control room, aren't we? What happened?"

"Yes, we are. We brought you back to Benedict because he had the health potions we needed to heal you. You were in pretty bad shape." Luca's eyes searched the room before they found Benedict lingering in the background.

"Uh, thanks, mate. Glad you switched sides. You did switch sides, right?"

"We're relatively certain about that," Oliver said.

"Benedict deactivated the teleport ward," Evan explained.

"Without him, we would all look like the people we buried in the backyard now." Luca grimaced at the thought.

"So… we won?" Evan couldn't suppress the grin that snuck onto his face. A tiny part of him felt guilty. He'd killed a man, after all, but mostly he just felt relief. Victor Vason had gotten what he deserved, which kept his guilt at bay.

"We won. Victor is dead. The Professor escaped, though. He's still roaming around the estate."

"He's not," Benedict said. He pointed at one of the magical images displaying the outside gardens.

"I watched him leave a couple of minutes ago." Catriona tensed.

"Then we need to go after him. We need to hunt him down."

"At first, we need to figure out how to free the prisoner," Oliver said.

"Have you forgotten that my brother is still stuck in a dungeon cell?" Catriona shot him a sharp look.

"Your brother can wait another hour. Stopping the Professor is more important."

"More important than my brother?" Oliver asked, anger rising.

"Yes," Catriona said sternly.

"If he gets away, he will continue his experiments, and we'll have to start all over again." Benedict stepped in before the fight could escalate further.

"No one wants the Professor stopped more than me, but I doubt you'll catch him now. He's disappeared into the forest already, and he's very good at hiding." Evan sighed.

"We'll figure out a way to find him later. Let's focus on the people in the dungeon first. I'm with Oliver on this one. I don't want to let them suffer in there a minute longer than I have to." He stood up and walked around the control room, looking for an image that showed the inside of the prison cells.

"Benedict, do you know which one of the columns controls the cell doors?"

"We tried to open them with force, but it didn't work," Oliver added. Benedict led Evan to one of the columns on the left side of the room and pointed at a panel covered in gemstone buttons.

"These are the controls, but if I could've used them, I already would have long ago. You need the key. The key that binds the estate to you. Now that Victor is dead, I have no idea who might be able to take control. It didn't transfer to me, that's certain. I would've gotten a message from my ledger." Benedict's words suddenly made Evan remember the strange system prompt he'd received after defeating Victor. He opened his menu to pull it back up. [You killed the current owner of a bound item (Vason Estate Key). Do you want to bind the item? (Warning: Bound items cannot be sold or gifted) Y/N]"Okay, that's interesting," Evan said more to himself than to his friends.

"What?" Oliver asked, walking over to his side. Evan glanced at Benedict. How would the man react if he found out that Evan—not he—had inherited the key to his family estate? How did this happen anyway? Didn't Benedict say the key would pass on to Victor's designated successor?

"Uh… it looks like… well, my ledger offers me the option to bind the key myself." Oliver's eyes went wide before he started laughing.

"Oh man, that's amazing! That solves all our problems and then some." He slapped Evan's back.

"Man, you're going to be the owner of an estate." Luca had propped himself up into a sitting position and looked just as amazed as Oliver.

"A pretty deadly estate, but I guess as the owner you can change that. My suggestion for the first order of business is removing those creepy statues from the garden." Evan was still reluctant to join their jubilation. He studied Benedict's face.

"Are you okay with this?" Benedict looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"Why wouldn't I be okay with it?"

"It's your family home. It should be yours. I don't really understand why I got it in the first place."

"You won it in battle," Benedict explained.

"Of course, if Victor had set me as the designated heir, it would've passed to me, but since he didn't, it became legitimate loot."

"And that doesn't upset you?" Benedict let out a small laugh.

"Upset me? No, it's delightful. Like I said, I don't have many fond memories of this place. I don't want it. And Victor would've absolutely hated the idea of a non-Vason owning the estate. He was very big on our family's supposed superiority. Now look where that has gotten him." Evan let his gaze wander around the room and rubbed his forehead with a sigh.

"I have no idea how to control all this. Or how to maintain a building of this size in general." Back on Earth, even buying a small one-bedroom starter house had been outside his financial means. The house he'd shared with his father had been a rental. And now he was supposed to manage an entire magical estate?

"We can worry about that later," Oliver said in an encouraging tone.

"Let's free the prisoners first and go from there." Evan took a deep breath and focused on the system message again. [Do you want to bind the item? (Warning: Bound items cannot be sold or gifted) Y/N] He chose yes.