Dominic woke with a hand over his head.
The dull ache that had been with him for days had yet to fade completely. It wandered through his skull like it was playing hide-and-seek. Every time he tried to focus and locate it, he reached the same conclusion:
It was near the spot where his head usually hurt during a bout of rhinitis, but deeper, somewhere he couldn't quite sense—like a mudfish forever swimming through deep water.
The new Chief Resident, Feld, had explained that this, like his occasional mood swings, was a post-surgical aftereffect. If all went well, it would gradually improve with time.
The implication was that things might not go well.
After a few days of unease, he had more or less accepted the fact that he had lost his memory.
During that time, an Evil Spirit had controlled him and made him do some incomprehensible things. Thankfully, a certain devout knightly family had helped stop it all before the situation became irreversible.
Then they had raced back to the Monastery to seek help from someone closer to the Heavenly Father—in other words, the abbot.
The abbot, who had proven his abilities in Dunling, had lived up to everyone's expectations. After a series of complicated procedures, he had opened the head that had been corrupted by evil, removed the source of the problem, and implanted a silver bead or two to keep it under control.
And now he was indeed getting better. Perhaps the pain meant that holy power was battling the lingering evil.
Though something still felt a little off, the whole story was very clear and perfectly orthodox. With a little polishing, it could be added to The Legend of Saint So-and-So as supporting evidence.
With luck, if the protagonist of the surgery really became a