Messmer

The more than ten thousand shamans had greatly strengthened the Nurse Corps' reserves. They and their descendants were also excellent sources of recruits.

However, the greatest gain from this journey was not these shamans.

Just as the treatment work was drawing to a close, Marika and Godfrey brought a boy before Horace.

He looked about thirteen or fourteen, with a slender frame and short, flame-red hair.

But his back was deeply bowed the entire time, as though an invisible burden weighed on it, and his arms hung somewhat unnaturally at his sides.

He kept his head lowered, his eyes darting away, not daring to look at anyone.

Yet Horace recognized who she was the moment he saw him.

Messmer.

Messmer the Impaler, who had been banished to the Land of Shadow and fought the player in the game!

"Horace," Marika said, her voice carrying a rare heaviness and tenderness as she gently stroked the boy's bowed head of red hair.

"This is Messmer. He... is my child with Godfrey."

Godfrey stood beside them with his arms folded, studying the boy with tightly furrowed brows. His gaze was complicated, holding concern, and also a trace of unease?

He seemed somewhat emotionally distant toward this "son."

Marika continued, "Within Messmer... there is an 'essence' we call the 'serpent.' It... is very dangerous, and has been trying to corrupt and influence him all this time. To suppress it, I placed a 'sealing Grace' in his eye socket in place of his eye."

She gently lifted Messmer's face, and Horace could see a faint golden glimmer shining from the boy's right eye.

"But even so, the serpent's essence remains unchanged. It has only been temporarily confined. Messmer is in great pain, and he cannot live like a normal child. The Erdtree's power... rejects the serpent to some extent." Marika looked at Horace, pleading in her eyes.

"Horace, could your Great Runes... help him? At least... make it hurt less, and let him stand up straight?"

Horace looked at the frail boy before him, tormented by the foreign presence within his body, and complicated feelings rose in his heart.

He could sense an immensely deep and evil aura lying dormant within Messmer. Unlike the Formless Mother's overt thirst for blood, it leaned more toward the primal evil of "devouring."

But he had not even dealt with the Formless Mother's corruption of his own body. How could he resolve a serpent rooted in someone's very essence?

"I'm afraid I cannot eradicate the serpent within him," Horace said honestly. Seeing disappointment flash through Marika's eyes, he changed tack.

"But perhaps I could try using Great Runes to seal it further, buying Messmer more time and room."

He walked up to Messmer and crouched down, meeting the boy at eye level.

Messmer shrank back a little, but still mustered his courage and looked at Horace.

"This might be a little uncomfortable, Messmer," Horace said gently.

"I'm going to place some 'rules' on you to lock up that bad thing inside your body. Would you like to try?"

Messmer looked at Marika's encouraging eyes, then at Horace, and finally gave a small nod.

Horace took a deep breath. This time, he was extremely cautious.

He could not target the serpent itself directly. Instead, he had to establish layers of shackles around Messmer's "existence" and the serpent's "activity."

He imposed several Great Runes, hoping to suppress the evil serpent and direct its outward manifestations toward the flames Messmer possessed from birth.

The process of the Great Runes taking effect was not easy. Messmer trembled violently, cold sweat seeping from his temples.

He clenched his teeth and did not cry out.

At last, the light slowly faded.

Panting, Messmer slowly straightened up. Though still slender, he seemed to be under much less of that invisible pressure.

He tried raising his hands. His movements were still somewhat stiff, but his arms no longer hung as limply as before.

The clearest change was in his back. Though he still could not stand straight as a pine, at least he was no longer bent almost double.

He looked blankly at his hands, then felt his back before turning to Horace in disbelief.

"It feels... a little... lighter?" His voice was faint and uncertain.

Marika embraced Messmer in delighted surprise. "Wonderful! Messmer, you can stand up straight!"

Godfrey also came over, pressed his large hand onto Messmer's head, and ruffled his red hair with a grunt. "That's more like it."

Horace, however, knew this was only a stopgap.

The Great Runes had sealed off the outward manifestations and suppressed its activity, but the serpent's essence remained.

Moreover, the part he had guided to manifest as "flame" might not be a welcome trait to the Golden Order, which worshipped the Erdtree and regarded all flames with wariness.

He told Marika his concerns in private.

Marika, however, seemed optimistic. "Flame is better than a serpent. At least flame is bright and warm. If Messmer can control it, then it's his strength, too. The Erdtree... should be able to accept it."

She did not sound entirely certain when she said "should," but immediately grew firm again. "Anyway, it's better than before!"

Horace had no answer to that. Fine, if you think it's all right, then it's all right.

A few days later, government affairs in Leyndell seemed to enter a particularly busy period.

The mountainous piles of documents and reports made the Beast King Serosh's already sparse mane look even more woeful.

He had spent several days in a row hunched over piles of paperwork, his paw nearly cramping around his quill.

That day, after finishing his morning inspection of military preparations-which really meant fighting a few bouts with the Crucible Knights-Godfrey returned to the office. His brow knotted at the sight of another newly delivered stack of border dispute reports and tax statistics awaiting his review.

He turned to look at Horace in a nearby corner, where Marika had roped him into studying some new crop irrigation plan, then looked at Serosh, who was nearly buried.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He strode over and hauled Serosh, who was still wrestling with numbers, out of his chair.

"Take a break, old friend." Godfrey pressed the bewildered lion onto a cushion nearby, then turned, grabbed the equally bewildered Horace, dragged him to the desk, and pushed him into the chair.

"???" Horace stared in utter confusion at the mountainous piles of documents before him, bearing all manner of Golden Dynasty seals.

"I'm leaving this to you!" Godfrey patted his shoulder, his tone brooking no argument.

"You seem pretty good at handling those Law documents. These are more or less the same! Hurry up and finish them, and I'll buy you drinks tonight!" With that, he gave Horace a thumbs-up full of encouragement and buck-passing.

When Serosh was first hauled onto the cushion, he was still a little dazed. Then he realized what was happening, and relief immediately spread across his face. He gave Godfrey a grateful look, then swiftly pushed the quill and several of the most urgent documents toward Horace, his movements smooth and natural, as though rehearsed countless times.

Horace: "..."

He looked up at his big brother's face, which practically said, "I believe in you," then at Marika, who was pretending to study the ceiling while secretly sighing in relief, and finally at the pile of documents before him that clearly contained the Golden Dynasty's core secrets...

"Are you kidding me?!" Horace finally snapped.

"I'm Caria's envoy! A foreign official! You're letting a foreign envoy handle your country's most confidential government documents?"

Godfrey picked his ear, utterly unconcerned. "Foreign official, domestic official, what's the difference? You're my little brother! We're family. Why split hairs over yours and mine? Get reading. That urgent border report says a bunch of giants are causing trouble in the east. See whether we should send a squad of Crucible Knights to put them down or try offering them amnesty first."

Marika leaned over as well, pointing at another document. "This one, this one. A town in the west says their Erdtree sapling isn't growing well. Horace, do you know anything about this?"

Serosh had already curled comfortably into a ball of fur on the cushion and begun snoring wearily.

Horace looked at the "lord" and "god" before him, feeling a long-absent headache welling up.

Back in the tribe, hadn't his big brother and this bunch of unreliable people often forced him to handle all the annoying matters they could not be bothered to think through?

After all these years, one had become a lord and the other a god, yet this bad habit had not changed one bit!

"This Golden Dynasty..." Horace picked up a report on a dispute over renovations to Leyndell's drainage system and muttered to himself.

"How has it lasted this long? How has it not collapsed yet?"

Damn it, Messmer still didn't let me off.

Melina's origins have not been settled, but I lean toward her being Marika's biological daughter.

Because that way, whether through Ranni or Melina, you can call the Queen of the Full Moon your mother-in-law (laughs).