Career Advancement

Chapter 26 - Career Advancement

"Ow," Rei grumbled, wincing as Maren's fingers brushed over the tender bruise blooming on her skin. The infirmary's sterile scent mixed with the faint tang of antiseptic as she shifted uncomfortably on the stiff cot.

"Stay still," Maren instructed, her voice calm but her brow furrowed as she inspected Rei's so-called 'battle scars.' The bruise on Rei's upper abdomen had deepened to an angry purple, the mark a vivid reminder of her clash with Johan.

Behind a thin curtain, Alair's voice cut through the quiet tension.

"Is everything okay over there?" His tone was polite but strained, as if he was desperately trying to ignore what was happening just beyond the fabric. Alair's modesty was almost quaint—he stood rigid, deliberately facing away, for it would be improper for an upstanding lad such as himself to glimpse a young maiden's bare skin.

"It's fine, Alair." Rei called back, her tone layered with irritation and amusement. She rolled her eyes, knowing full well that even the sight of her bruise would probably cause Alair's face to flush a deep crimson. Some things, she thought, were better left to 'qualified' hands like Maren's.

Maren, oblivious to the minor drama, leaned in closer. "Hmmm…" Her fingers pressed lightly around the edges of the bruise, her expression unreadable. Rei felt the skin tighten under the touch, each small prod sending a dull ache radiating through her abdomen.

"Do you feel nauseous?" Maren's tone was clinical, though her gaze flickered with mild concern.

Rei winced, then shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Any difficulty breathing?" Maren asked, still focused, her fingers now tracing the lines of Rei's ribs, checking for deeper damage.

"Nope, breathing's fine." Rei gave a weak smile, though the ache in her stomach still lingered.

Maren's eyes narrowed as if she weren't quite convinced. "Do you feel weak?"

Rei, catching the perfect opportunity, let out a dramatic sigh and sagged against the cot. "Yes. Very weak. I feel like I can't work for the rest of the day. Maybe for the next week, even."

Maren paused, her lips twitching. "Really."

Rei closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead, feigning exhaustion. "I may need extensive bed rest. Perhaps... in a luxurious setting?" She let the words hang in the air, trying not to smile.

"Don't be ridiculous." Maren's exasperation was clear in her tone, though her amusement was subtle, like a whisper in her gaze. "You know we don't do paid leave on Red Hilt. Not for drama queens, at least."

Rei's eyes shot open, and her exaggerated pose melted away in an instant.

"Actually, I feel great. Full of energy." She sat up a little straighter, giving a mock salute.

"Ready to serve the glorious cause of barely scraping by."

Maren chuckled softly, shaking her head. "I see you've adapted well to the life of a wage slave, huh?"

Rei scowled. "It's unfortunately who I am now."

"Honestly, you're lucky to be up and walking after taking a liver shot like that. That's usually the kind of blow that drops people for good. Most wouldn't be laughing about it." Maren shifted her weight, giving Rei another once-over, her fingers light but methodical as she probed the area.

Rei shrugged, wincing as the motion tugged at the sore spot. "Guess I'm tougher than I look."

Maren gave a thoughtful hum.

"Your blood pressure's fine, and it doesn't seem like your insides are falling apart, so I'd say you're in the clear. But..." She paused, her brow furrowing as her fingers grazed an oddly firm patch of skin near the bruise. "This... doesn't feel normal."

Rei blinked. "What? Am I dying?" The words came out jokingly, but there was a flicker of unease in her voice.

"No, just... strange. But you're not exactly complaining, so I guess it's nothing."

Rei relaxed, though her curiosity still buzzed in the back of her mind. Maren turned away, rummaging through a nearby cabinet. "I can prescribe you my homemade boo-boo cream for the bruise, if you want. Won't do much, but it smells nice."

Rei narrowed her eyes. "Homemade? You're not just a quack, are you?"

Maren smirked, holding up a small jar filled with a pale green ointment. "Depends on your definition of 'quack.'"

"Right." Rei rolled her eyes.

"I'll have you know, I was noted for my Salveomancy proficiency as an aspirant!" Maren boasted, her eyes narrowing as she applied the last bit of ointment to Rei's bruise. The affront in her voice was palpable—how could anyone dare question her impeccable methods?

Rei raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Really? That's a thing?"

"Yes, it's a thing!" Maren's tone was sharp, her pride clearly wounded. Never mind the fact that this wasn't the first—or even the tenth—time someone in Red Hilt had raised complaints about her unorthodox methods. But what did they know? She was the one with the training, after all. Well, sort of.

"Yeah? Where's your degree in... degree in..." Rei trailed off, struggling to remember the word.

"Salveomancy," Maren interjected with a huff, stating the official term for healing magic in Yuropea as though it were obvious.

"Yeah, that. Where's your degree in Salveomancy, huh?" Rei's voice was laced with scepticism, her eyes narrowing as she leaned in, ready to challenge Maren's credentials.

Maren hesitated for a beat before muttering, "Well... I didn't actually finish the program, if you want to be technical."

Rei froze, staring at Maren in disbelief. "Wait... what?" Her gaze flickered with alarm, silently questioning whether her life choices—or more specifically, Elena's recruitment choices—had just taken a nosedive into madness.

"Don't look at me like that," Maren shot back, as if she could read Rei's thoughts just from her expression. She crossed her arms defensively. "The Captain handles most of the recruiting, anyway."

"Uh-huh. That makes me feel so much better." Rei raised her hands in surrender, but the side-eye she shot Maren was hard to miss.

"And besides," Maren continued, her voice rising with irritation, "I do my job pretty well, despite what all the unnecessary complaints might tell you."

Rei opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get a word out, Maren jabbed her finger—perhaps a bit harder than necessary—right into the tender spot on her abdomen where the bruise had blossomed.

"Ow." Rei said calmly, doubling over slightly. "Hey, watch it!"

Maren grinned, her eyes gleaming with a smug sort of satisfaction as she finished rubbing in the last bit of her 'homemade medicine.'

For a moment, there was silence between them, until Rei frowned, her fingers brushing the skin around the bruise.

"Is it supposed to feel hot?" she asked, her voice tinged with confusion.

Maren's eyebrows shot up.

"Hot? It's not supposed to do that." Her expression shifted from smug to slightly concerned, as if she were now second-guessing her concoction.

Rei froze, staring at Maren with wide eyes.

"... What?"

"Hell if I know. Maybe the ointment's expired." Maren shrugged nonchalantly, waving her hand dismissively. 

"Expired?!" Rei repeated, her voice an octave higher than before.

"Or, or maybe it's a new sign that it's working? Maybe, nobody really works with Forsaken much so who knows?" Maren said, shrugging her shoulders dismissively.

"Either way, you're cleared for work," she said, handing the note over to Rei without another word.

"Just give this to Elena. She'll excuse your little... absence." Maren ignored her, calmly scrawling a quick note on a scrap of parchment.

Rei took the note, her fingers trembling slightly as she stared down at the piece of paper, then back up at Maren.

"Are you sure you're not just actually a quack?" Rei asked, her voice deadpan.

"I prefer to think of myself as 'unconventional.'" Maren said, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she wiped her hands on a nearby towel.

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Rei carefully pushed open the door to Elena's office. The heavy oak creaked, revealing the Section Chief behind her desk, quill in hand, scribbling something into a large ledger.

Elena's central affairs office was a dimly lit place. Faded tapestries lined the walls, the smell of old parchment and wax filled the air, and the faint hum created a low, constant murmur. 

Rei sat at a small desk cluttered with scrolls and ink pots, her fingers tracing the edge of a blank report form. Elena, the Section Chief, stood by the window, looking out at the chaotic streets of Guella, her sharp features softened by the light filtering through the dust-covered glass.

"Well, you're late." Elena didn't look at Rei, her tone neutral but sharp enough to cut through the silence.

Rei shuffled in, rubbing her sore ribs.

"From fighting with Johan, yes," she admitted, fishing into her coat pocket and pulling out Maren's scrawled absence form. She handed it over.

Elena took the form, her eyes lingering on it for a moment longer than necessary, as if dissecting the authenticity.

Elena didn't at all think that Rei was past the point of forging documents, if anything Elena thought it was quite in line with Rei's personality to be forging one here or there. So whenever Elena is handed one directly from Rei's hands she makes sure to double check every detail.

"Is that so?" she said flatly. The look she gave Rei sent a shiver up her spine—it was clear that Elena had already formed her own conclusions about Rei's abilities, suspicions bubbling beneath the surface.

The air between them grew tense as Rei sat down. Elena, though calm in her exterior, was calculating; Rei felt like a book being read.

'She knows too much,' Rei thought, her discomfort growing.

"Well, I'll excuse it for now since you came as quickly as you could." Elena's voice softened.

"Besides, I can't really afford to lose you over one mishap. You're one of the more efficient stewards here."

'Well, you're pretty much the only real steward here.' If it weren't for Rei taking on what was supposed to be Elena's workload then she wouldn't be able to go out much and bother Alair and do … normal mage things.

Rei's fingers traced the edge of the ledger she had been tasked to work on. She couldn't help but feel Elena's gaze on her, studying her like some puzzle with too many missing pieces. As the minutes passed, the faint ticking of the clock on the wall seemed to grow louder.

In the quiet office, Elena leaned back in her chair, her expression inscrutable. She tapped her fingers on the desk rhythmically, breaking the uneasy silence.

"You know, it's too quiet today," Elena said, her gaze drifting toward the window.

"Is that not good? Fortune seems to be afoot considering the lack of order in this city." Rei replied nonchalantly, not taking her eyes off her papers or paying much attention at Elena's attempts at slacking.

"It's usually more... lively in Red Hilt. When things go quiet, people tend to get nervous." Elena finds herself spinning her quilt.

Rei hesitated, unsure where this was going. She busied herself with her paperwork, hoping to avoid further interaction, but it was clear Elena wasn't done.

"Oh, right. Apparently, people are saying that Maltha disappeared," Elena casually dropped, as though she was commenting on the weather. The bombshell hit the air like a sudden gust.

The news and rumours have been coursing for days now, about fishermen and trade vessels coming back to where Maltha was supposed to be and finding nothing. 

This was despite all the navigation magics and calculation methods at work, it turned out to be the case as most heading for Maltha, the Pearl of the Mediaterran, come back tired as they gave up on finding the island.

'I imagine the Malthan fishermen and navy must have been very confused if that was indeed the case.' Elena really couldn't care less about what happened to the inhabitants, but found the news extremely interesting nonetheless.

Rei on the other hand stiffened in her seat, nearly dropping her quill. Elena wasn't watching her, but Rei's sudden tension was palpable.

'Maltha …' The word echoed in her mind.

'Damned witch.' Rei thought, her mind racing. This wasn't just idle conversation—Elena was testing her, seeing how she would react. After all, Rei was directly responsible for what would be called "The Maltha Incident," though it depended on who you asked.

Elena turned her sharp gaze back to Rei, curious. "I guess you don't keep up with the news much, huh?"

Rei swallowed, forcing a laugh that felt hollow in her throat. "N-no, I don't think I've heard of it. But that sounds a bit... ridiculous, doesn't it?"

Rei's heart raced. She had kept her involvement in Maltha hidden so well, buried beneath layers of rationalisation and denial. But now, faced with the casual mention of the disappearance of three hundred thousand souls, the weight of it all pressed down on her. Her stomach twisted.

Even though Rei seemed to be quite uncaring and apathetic on the surface, she didn't really like the unnecessary loss of life.

Rei was evil, not a monster. She preferred not killing people if she didn't have to.

"Yeah, it does sound ridiculous. I mean, you can't make an island of three hundred thousand just vanish overnight. Sounds like Osmanyi propaganda, doesn't it?" Elena leaned forward, her elbows resting on her desk.

Rei tried to force a neutral expression, but her thoughts betrayed her. 'It was me actually, I did it.' Guilt began to creep in, crawling up from the pit of her stomach.

Rei had rationalized it before, had blamed the Heavenly Mother, Ylen, for allowing such an atrocity to happen. But now, with Elena's eyes on her, it felt so... real.

Rei could barely focus on Elena's next words, lost in her own spiral rationalisation.

'If the Heavenly Mother truly cared for her children, she would have stopped it.' Rei used the commonly easy tactic of blaming God.

'Now that I think about it, wasn't it technically God's fault?' Rei thought about how it was technically true.

It was Yuithercius that dropped the Essence of Gluttony on Rei, leading to the events so far after all.

'Tsk tsk, truly divinity can be a curse.'

Noticing Rei being stuck in her own thoughts again, Elena's grin widened slightly, her curiosity piqued.

'So much going on inside that head of hers,' she thought. Elena knew there was more to Rei than met the eye, and it amused her to keep throwing wrenches into the conversation, watching Rei squirm.

"Anyway, Rei. I told you that Red Hilt is still pretty new to Guella, yes?" Elena leaned back again, crossing her arms. 

The sudden shift in conversation snapped Rei out of her mental spiral.

"Uh... yeah?" she muttered, uncertain of where this was leading. She could already sense that Elena was setting her up for something unpleasant.

"And you can tell we're short-handed... on everything, yes?" Elena's voice had that familiar hint of mischief, like she was enjoying toying with Rei just a little too much.

Rei sighed deeply, exasperated.

"Please, just cut to the chase. You know I don't like it when you snake around with your words."

Elena chuckled, clearly pleased with herself. "Why, your first mission of course!"

The sudden snap of Rei's quill filled the room, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Ink slowly bled into the parchment on her desk, a dark blot spreading across the page.

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