Chương 88: Chapter 87 – Mission Accomplished

My next few days were spent half-awake. I was sleepy almost all day and only woke up whenever I was hungry or needed to use the restroom. By the time I felt completely clear-headed again, we had already moved to an inn in the neighboring city for three days. During these three days, the church had cleared the landslide area so carriages could pass through, and began sending people to investigate the Miasma-infected zone reported by the Hero Candidates.

The Church had to send the best healers from the capital here to conduct the investigation of the abandoned church building. According to the reports sent back, they found at least fifty corpses and dozens of "living" ghouls. Some experimental results were also collected. I had to ask Lealia to gather all this news using her status as a Hero Candidate, as this was classified information not disclosed to the public. As for the nearly one thousand people of Grasiva, their last three days had been quite chaotic.

This city was clearly not ready to welcome so many refugees, making the lack of food and sleeping space inevitable. Right now, Lealia and I were arranged to stay in the same inn with about fifty other people, while the capacity of this place was... twenty. But the good news was that since the Miasma had not descended to the residential area, the people of Grasiva still had the chance to return to their hometown.

Their lives in the near future would be a bit unstable because the water source closest to them had been contaminated. However, since the source of pollution had been identified, they could get water from other areas further away. Recently it had also rained more, so as long as they kept in mind to store water, returning to live in the old place was possible. A big curiosity of mine was also answered, which was where the trail next to that abandoned church led.

It turned out it led to a small pier hidden in a secluded corner of the bay. Thus, it could be inferred that the cultists had traveled by sea from the continent to the peninsula, and they also planned to transport the ghouls this way. Sea transport was a very big weakness of Averula, though the reason for this was still not very clear to me. The church took statements from me, Lealia, Kamarti, and Jonas—the ones who had directly entered the abandoned church.

I didn't go too deep into details, only saying that Nathan and I went up the mountain to search for another path out of town, then accidentally came across the abandoned church. For the part after that, I also only told what Jonas had witnessed: that Nathan and I discovered that horrible experiment. Nathan sent Jonas down to the town to report the news, while he went to check the trail to find an escape route.

As for myself, I only said that I fainted inside the church while escaping because I breathed in too much Miasma, and was luckily saved by Lealia just in time. Whether they believed it or not, I didn't give any futher information. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I met Iris, Edgar, and their group again on the fourth day after leaving Grasiva, when the Church people wanted to gather the Hero Candidates to discuss things.

This time when meeting the Church people, I didn't wear a disguise anymore. I believed everything happening here was already messy enough to make them too busy to care about other unrelated matters. Both Iris and Edgar were very shocked to see me. It seemed somehow Iris had concluded I was dead and told Edgar so. Meanwhile, I noticed their Reputation points had increased significantly thanks to helping evacuate the people of Grasiva.

But one surprising thing was how much less Iris's Reputation points increased compared to Lealia's. From what I remembered, the last time I checked, Iris's score was 241 and Lealia's was 115. Now, Iris's was 270, but Lealia's was 163. Maybe I had underestimated other people's ability to judge character. Maybe I underestimated the value of sincerity. Lealia might not try to show off in front of the people in Grasiva, but they could still feel her genuine care.

Or perhaps it was because over the past few days, Kamarti had told everyone he met during the relief distribution about how decisive Lealia was when asking the mayor to evacuate the citizens, and how brave she was to go up the mountain alone to look for her friend. Thank you, Kamarti. Speaking of the meeting between the Church people and the Hero candidates, it was basically to compile all the information one last time before sending it to the High Cathedral in the capital.

Lealia asked a few times during the meeting what the Church would do to save Nathan, but the answer was still just: "Currently we do not have enough information about those criminals, there is nothing we can do at the moment." I stood behind Lealia, lightly signaling her to say what we had discussed beforehand.

"But... we have guessed they might use ships as a means of transport. I suggest increasing searches on the beaches belonging to the bay area, especially... Yathen city." Yathen was located at the position between the bay area near Grasiva and the capital. The Church people heard this suggestion and looked at each other, then simultaneously wrote it down in their notebooks.

"The Church will seriously consider this suggestion." Finally, the meeting ended. The Church representative stood up and announced: "And now, the mission of the Hero Candidates at Grasiva has officially concluded. You have completed it beyond the expectations that the Church and the people placed in you. At the same time, we also deeply regret the incident with candidate Nathan Roger and will do our best to rescue him. Please pack your things, this afternoon we will take you back to the capital."

When everyone had clumsily left their seats, Lealia still sat there sadly.

"Can we really do nothing for Nathan? I mean, after all he did for us..." I thought to myself that he did it for himself rather than us, but it couldn't be denied that without Nathan, I wouldn't have been able to stop this disaster with so few casualties. I placed my hand on Lealia's shoulder to comfort her: "He will be fine. I will definitely find a way to save him as soon as possible." Lealia sighed: "Those people did truly horrible things.

I don't dare imagine what happened down in that basement, more than fifty people died... I feel like I didn't do anything to help."

"That's not true. You saved my life and helped many other patients." The most important thing was that Lealia had agreed to strive to become the healer in the Hero's party. That truly took a heavy stone off my back! From now on, I could use all my strength to support her in pushing Iris out of the top 5 in the Hero candidate rankings, and according to what I observed at the moment, that was completely feasible.

In a moment of excitement from losing another worry, I even imagined the scene of Lealia, Henry, and Rachel holding hands and running in a circle happily and harmoniously like the closest teammates. But then I remembered, there was still a huge misunderstanding that hadn't been resolved between Lealia and Henry. I should just let them slowly get to know each other first.