rajdakin

Warning: feels ahead. Hopefully.
Also, I decided to name this arc “Curing the disease”. (Side note: this arc will probably be even shorter than the previous one.)

Later in the afternoon, after they received Laura’s card
“Well, now that we’re all D rank and in the same party, what do we do?”

“Well, as we agreed let’s go visit your village and family. Because you fled your village and from what you told they should be worrying, and maybe I can heal your brother now. Then we’ll go visit my family. Because you’re not the only one with a sick family member...” Finn said looking far away with sad eyes.

“Oh... Yes... Right. Umm... Sorry.”

“Well, you didn’t know. There’s no problem.”

“... Let’s also pick up a request for that. Just so we also gain money. Well, if we don’t find anything it’s fine too though.”

---
They did found one request for that. But only one. And, suspiciously enough, the request was to investigate that disease(?) they were planning to cure.
It was also the only request that had a red number (5) on it in the entire request board. That meant that admercs went MIA¹Missing In Action, meaning supposedly dead and no orange number, which meant no reported failure.

“Suspicious...”
“Yes, very much...”

“Well, we’ll take it anyway, right?”

““““Yes...””””

That request was originally a C-ranked mission, but due to the high number of MIA and no failure report, it has increased to high-D rank, meaning they started to take this request seriously.

Being a 5-people-big D-ranked party, with one recent addition only, they were indeed considered high-D rank as a group, so they were allowed to get that request, but only after receiving warnings to retreat on the first signs of danger, to which they agreed.

And so, they departed to Laura’s village.

---
The trip was pretty uneventful. They managed to arrive in one piece, without meeting any monster, which was not likely but not worrying, seeing as the distance between the city and that village was not too big.

They arrived as the sun set. A single villager was looking out for threats in the direction they came from, and as he saw Laura he started running into the village shouting that Laura came back. With that, the other villagers started exiting their houses, looking relieved, though for most it was probably relief that it wasn’t an intelligent monster that came and killed Laura. Those quickly returned to their houses to sleep.
But there were still some that were genuinely happy to see Laura back, and they started scolding her – yet another scolding session, that made 2 on the same day! – for fleeing the village even though she was absolutely not prepared for anything, life in a city, life and survival in the wilderness...

Then, her parents came, and they started running toward Laura while half-crying. Laura, seemingly contaminated, also started crying as they embraced each other.

And during that, the group of four adventurers stayed away awkwardly.

Some time later, everyone finally calmed down enough to notice the four that accompanied her, and after looking interrogatively, they noticed their D-ranked admerc badge.

“Thank you for bringing our daughter back... May we know who you are?”

“Um, well, my name is Tris, this is Finn, Jiro and Daler. Also, uhh, how do I say it...”

“Your daughter is an adventurer in our party now!”²How convenient for me, to have such a blunt companion x)

“““... (Facepalm)””” (Finn, Tris & Jiro)
““““““““Wait what‽”””””””” (The villagers)

Inside the house of Laura’s parents
“So, basically, when we exited the dungeon, we stumbled upon your daughter, and then various confidential things that are better forgotten” (as Tris was saying that, he looked like he preferred to indeed forget those memories) “which led to your daughter being good at... well basically everything right?”

“Basically, yes...” (Finn)

“So now she’s registered at the adventurer’s guild.”

“I see...” said the father with a complex face.

“... How’s Brian?” Laura asked, with a small voice.

“Right... There was no progress. We can still feed him but...”

“I take it Brian is you brother? How about I go see him now?”

“What do you mean? You don’t have to –”

“No, we took a request to investigate a disease looking like the one that is affecting... Brian? Right, Brian. It’s also one of the reasons we decided to come here, and well, Finn’s parents too have it...” Tris said, whispering the last sentence.

“Oh. Then, please follow me.”

They were led to a room a bit farther from the entrance door, which was a bare room except for the only bed in it.

On it was someone that made Laura tear up.

“Brian...”
She started running toward him, while openly crying.
She hugged him, and seeing as there was no reaction from him, she started crying even more.

It took a long time for her to recover.

Finally, it was time for Finn to see if he could find anything wrong.

And it was at that point he realized that Artemis’ knowledge would be very useful. Before, he, like most if not all other people, had no notion of germs, parasites or the likes, but now he knows what to begin searching for.

Since the body doesn’t have any non-autonomous response (like heart beating, respiratory functions not impaired), the problem should be in the brain, with all interfaces from “conscious parts” to the rest of the body damaged or severed, or the spine is the problem.
But given that the face also doesn’t move, his first reflex was to check on his brain.

And indeed, he found something... Something rather alarming.

He found that the source of the problem was a parasite. But, this parasite released microorganisms, that moved through the air, making everyone around him infected.
And after checking himself, he found that indeed, he was infected too.

However, there was a different response from his body as compared with Brian’s. His body didn’t outright reject that foreign body, whereas Brian’s did.

And that meant that the parasite was in a dormant state, until it was attacked.

Finn broke into cold sweat as he realized why 5 groups died before. The healers, that found this, tried to heal everyone in their group, which made everyone in it paralyzed and starve to death.

rajdakin

1033 words! Wow that was hard. (Started 09/03, ended 09/09... It took 1 week.) Well hopefully the next ones will take me less time! (Oh and also apparently I’ll left align for now, it was 2 to 1 in the poll on chapter 5...)