Chapter 15 - Samur MVP Eckart
Chapter 15 - Samur MVP Eckart
"Sleep now, you've earned it." I muttered to the Minotaur.
My actions had taken away its life so that I could save Noelle's.
I had committed the sin of exchanging one life for another.
However, the Minotaur yearned for death while Noelle wished to live. I had simply acted as the middleman between their exchange.
Anyway, what's done is done. Changing the past is neither easy nor something I desire. Living with the consequences of my actions is a rule I've set for myself.
Let's hurry though, because clearly, the explosion that took away my arms is too much for this Shit Body? to handle.
The pain of destroying one's Mana Circuits is way higher than forcibly creating them; the latter is like the prick of a pin while the former is like being shot in the face with a tactical nuke.
Like seriously, I'm about to die simply due to the shock of sustaining such a heavy injury. Would be awkward if I failed at the final step after doing this much.
Anyway, since I took a life while using 'Amorus V Turna', the spell will also absorb the lifeforce of the Minotaur. This should theoretically be more than enough to cast the spell to heal Noelle.
But just healing her would be boring, no? Since I have this much lifeforce, I might as well do some out of the box thinking.
As far as I'm aware, most of the normal people like to take care of their physical appearance. For convenience's sake, let's assume Noelle is one of them.
Now, just healing the wound with conventional means might leave a scar behind, so let's make it so that she never sustained that fatal wound.
No wounds to heal, no scars to remain.
Hmm, what if I turned this into a business?
'Hi, I'm Samur Eckart, a professional transmigrator who works as a healer to earn some pocket change. For only 1000 gold coins, yes, you heard that right! For only a thousand gold coins, I'll heal your wound to such perfection that it would not even leave a scar behind.'
'How do I achieve that, you ask? It's simple. I'll just sacrifice the life of a bystander by exploding my arms and then turning back your time.'
'Wait, why are you running?'
Huh, I guess I need to work on my Business Pitch.
While I was thinking about such useless things, all the blood was sucked out of the Minotaur's body.
Barely hanging onto my fading consciousness by ignoring the mind numbing pain of my arms, I continued the rest of the process.
This involved scraping away the magical formation I had constructed earlier; 10 years' worth of life well spent.
Using the Minotaur's blood as the medium, I started painting a new magical formation. This one was much more complex than the previous one (for obvious reasons) thus requiring more work and greater precision.
Needless to say, I wasn't using my shattered arms to paint the formation; I was manipulating mana to operate upon the lifeforce.
And since my Mana Circuits were more ruined than an alcoholic father who had just lost his job and had been disowned by his family, the process was excruciatingly painful.
It was like stubbing my toe on the side of the table, except that the table was made of the hardest material to ever exist while I was travelling with the speed of light, and that I was feeling this pain in every single cell of my body.
"I'm, ha, definitely dying after this…"
This life has overstayed its welcome. With this, I'll repay my debt to Azell and then yeet on out to a (hopefully) new better life.
After what seemed like an eternity (but wasn't), the process was complete. The incredibly huge and complex magical formation, consisting of 47 magic circles and 23816 runes, now floated in the air in front of me.
"Time to wake up, dying princess."
I set Noelle as the target and activated the spell.
The theory behind it was simple; it'll isolate Noelle from the Space-Time continuum and rewind her time, bringing her back to the point where she hadn't been stabbed by the blade of the axe.
Separating her was necessary because turning back the time of the entire fabric of reality would not only require a huge amount of energy, but would also leave me with some annoying paradoxes and existences to deal with.
The spell started its work, and it seemed to be striving for the Employee of the Year award.
Noelle's bloody gasps resounded backwards. She got back up, but sideways; it was weird seeing her stand up in such a weird way without any support, but it also reminded me of a certain famous dancer.
Her expression contorted into despair, then her eyes widened and her lips bobbed up and down, portraying her disbelief. Then a small frown appeared on her face along with a sharp glint in her eyes. That was when she was wary of the Minotaur.
And that when she was about to be hit by the broken axe.
I paused the spell at that moment and was presented with the scene of the axe floating in front of Noelle, inches away from striking her heart-
Oh? Well, well, well, ain't this interesting.
Azell's eyes had widened and he was changing his movements.
'Amorus V Turna' actually also provided the caster with extra energy to supercharge all his senses and skills. So it wasn't that time had actually slowed down to a crawl; I had just become much faster than everything else around me, which had a backlash.
...
Shit. My death won't be pretty, huh?
Anyway, it seemed that Azell, in a matter of a few milliseconds, had noticed that something was wrong with his opponent.
Was it his inhuman reaction time, honed through countless hours of practice, which allowed him to do so? Or was it his battle instincts that he had developed over the course of his previous turn?
Kinda amusing, if I say so myself.
Anyway, let's get back to work.
I cancelled out the momentum of the axe to stop it from going any further. With this, Noelle should be safe. With the Minotaur's death as an added bonus, I'd say this was a pretty successful expedition.
Well, there is a casualty in the form of me, but dwelling on it would be my loss.
As they say, all's well that ends well.
I cancelled 'Amorus V Turna', which took away my 'Supercharged' status and hit me with a severe backlash.
"Ahhhh!" Blood spurted out from every possible place in my body, however, I managed to prevent myself from falling down.
If I'm to die, then I'm going to die standing- just kidding, falling down would hurt even more and I naturally want to avoid that.
"Huh? Eh?" I looked at Noelle, she was blinking with her eyes swimming around, trying to make sense of the situation.
On the other hand, the Minotaur's corpse fell down with a boom and created small clouds of dust.
"S-Samur!" Azell cried in bewilderment. "What… What have you done?!"
He approached me, but could only look at me in worry while flailing his arms around, probably wondering where he should put them to support me.
"Told you to believe in me."
I'm a man of my word after all.
"You…"
"W-what happened- wha?!" Noelle trotted over to us and then shrieked at my unhealthy state.
Hmm, as I expected, turning back her time also erased her memories of what really transpired. For her, finding me bloodied even though the axe was heading for her should be hella confusing.
I kinda don't want to explain to her the real series of events that happened as that's going to be a pain in the ass.
"Azell will explain it to you."
"Huh?"
Heh, I used the advanced psychological trick called 'Diversion' there. Have fun dealing with her, Regressor boi.
Anyway, I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I sure did a wonderful job carrying my team there.
From now on, call me 'Samur MVP Eckart'.