HDBMTD 60

~Chapter 60~

6. Are you going crazy?

Imperial hospital healer Lina was on night duty.

While walking down the hall with a lamp to go to the restroom, she noticed something faintly moving in the darkness. Thinking she might have imagined it, she adjusted her glasses — but the shadow didn’t disappear.

Feeling puzzled, she walked closer and saw a boy crouched in the corner.

‘Huh? Why is a patient here…?’

It seemed like a child had left their room and gotten lost. Lina walked up and held out her hand to the boy.

“Hey, it’s cold, let’s go back to your room. I’ll take you.”

“…”

The boy didn’t reply, but he obediently took her hand.

And in that moment, Lina felt goosebumps run over her entire body.

The boy’s hand was ice-cold and stiff.

Uneasy, Lina lifted the lamp to shine it on him — and realized something strange.

‘That’s not a patient gown.’

The boy was wearing the hospital’s burial shroud for corpses.

Just as Lina recoiled to pull her hand away, the boy’s mouth stretched wide in a grin.

I was lying in my hospital bed.

I was getting better by the day; discharge didn’t seem far off.

Not long after Lucien left, I heard Nocturne had gone out. Because of that, I wasn’t being watched today.

So in the evening, I was able to look at the lamp’s flame for the first time in a while and restore my empathy power.

I wasn’t planning to use my ability to escape or to slip away from Nocturne completely.

I was actually considering his proposal positively.

‘It’s too much to just refuse…’

Nocturne, who had been living in refusal of purification after losing Aria, had made his one and only pair proposal to Aria’s clone.

It was like watching a dog that had lost its owner, wary of everyone, cautiously approach someone with a scent similar to its master.

‘How could I turn that away…’

Still, there was something else bothering me.

So I stayed alert, with my empathy power active. And then—

— Kyaaa!

A familiar scream rang out, making me sit up in bed.

‘Just as I thought. If they’d taken in my energy, it would cause a disaster, not a miracle.’

Something bad was happening in this hospital.

When I stepped out of the room, my escort followed. He didn’t block me like before — just seemed ready in case something happened.

When we reached the first floor, three people were already gathered in the hallway.

Lying on the floor among them was none other than Lina, the bespectacled healer who always smiled. Her face was pale and twisted.

I hurried over to check her condition.

Her breathing was even and steady. At a glance, she just looked like someone in a deep sleep.

“It seems she only lost consciousness. I don’t see any other injuries,” one of the healers nearby said, as if to reassure me. But I didn’t believe them.

Because I had read Lina’s mind just before she fainted.

‘I clearly saw that boy…’

“Your Highness, you’re not in the best condition — let others handle this and go back inside,” said Jason, the escort Nocturne had assigned to me. I ignored his advice and looked around.

It had only been about five minutes to get here. The culprit couldn’t have gotten far. I grabbed Lina’s lamp and stared into the flame. My sharpened empathy power spread outward in rippling waves.

It extended down the hallway, up the stairs, and beyond the hospital… until, at the back of the hospital, I sensed something chilling.

Found you.

I immediately shouted to the orange-haired knight behind me.

“Jason, go out the back door! Catch the boy in a burial shroud at the edge of the forest! It’s a wraith!”

“W-what?”

“Hurry, it’s running away!”

Understanding, Jason rushed out the back door. I quickly followed.

A wraith was a soul-eating beast. Any corpse whose soul was eaten by one could, in rare cases, become a wraith itself.

That boy outside had probably been a victim whose soul was taken by a wraith.

From Lina’s perspective, the boy was wearing a burial shroud. If he’d come from the morgue, he must have passed guards on his way here. That meant Lina might not be the only victim.

‘I can’t let it get away.’

Panting, I stepped out the back door.

Ahead, Jason stood at the forest edge, and between the trees I saw the small silhouette of the boy.

The wraith in a boy’s body opened its mouth to Jason.

“Hey, it’s cold, let’s go back to your room. I’ll take you.”

“D-did that thing just…”

“I-it-it’s moving! Someone! Uwaah! Kyaaa!”

The wraith mocked the dead, mimicking the screams of the living with a twisted smile.

When they’re first born, wraiths can barely move, but the more human souls they consume, the closer they become to human. This one had already eaten many souls, enough to mimic human speech.

As I stepped into the forest, Jason yelled,

“Your Highness! Don’t come closer!”

If I didn’t, we couldn’t catch it.

Ignoring him, I locked eyes on the wraith. Once it fully digested the souls it had eaten, there would be no saving them — I had to act now.

The wraith, still hiding among the trees and staring at Jason, turned to flee when it saw me.

“Stop.”

My command froze its body. With a creaking sound, its head twisted to look back at me. Lifeless eyes in a corpse’s face stared at me. I unleashed my empathy power.

— Give back the souls you swallowed.

“Uu… uu…”

— Spit them out.

The wraith bent over, covering its mouth. I frowned as its chaotic emotions and fragmented memories flooded into me.

“Uweehk!”

At last, the boy vomited up the souls he had swallowed. Gray smoke gushed from his mouth like clouds, scattering in all directions.

When there seemed nothing left, I shouted to Jason,

“Now — attack!”

The wraith staggered to run again, but it was too late.

Jason drew his sword and stepped forward without hesitation, driving the blade precisely into the wraith’s core.

“Kraaaagh!”

Letting out an inhuman scream, the wraith dissolved. With its core destroyed, the body crumbled away like smoke.

“Your Highness, that was incredible!” Jason said, full of awe. I smiled at him — then suddenly bent over.

“Ugh… bleh.”

“Your Highness!”

Hearing the commotion, Tita and several healers ran out the back door toward me. They tried to heal me, but I waved them off. One healer ran inside and returned with water. Rinsing my mouth, the nausea eased.

“Thanks.”

“Your Highness, you’re drenched in cold sweat. Please, come inside.”

Tita’s face was worried as she urged me in. I slowly shook my head.

“I’m fine, it’s just been a while since I fought.”

The vomiting was a side effect of using my empathy power to make the wraith vomit.

During empathy, thoughts and senses are shared — so if I make a wraith vomit, I feel it too. It was a normal reaction.

But even after breaking the link, feeling the pain of its death was a surprise.

Aria had rarely experienced such lingering effects. My mental barriers were weaker now, but when I’d tested myself against an A-rank Eshape before, I’d been about the same level as her.

‘Could it be that non–S-rank mental-types normally suffer these side effects?’

Right, I remembered — this was why the memories of A-rank and below were erased during the war.

‘Poor non–S-ranks… having to fight like this.’

Aria may have had a rough youth because of her exceptional power, but in the end she lived strong. Being strong was worth it.

“There are four unconscious people, right? Lina and three guards.”

At my words, the healers rushed inside to check.

“Yes! They’re all waking up now!”

Good — it seemed all the victims’ souls had returned.

As expected of a large hospital, all the guards were combat-type Eshape, but not high-grade enough to handle a wraith, so they must have been caught off guard. Still, it was a relief no one died.