// Nico’s First Person POV

I had been standing in front of the mirror above the wash basin for longer than I had intended to, admiring the mark of pure, unadulterated badassery that I now had on my face.

The cut ran like a red line from above my left eyebrow, through the eye, and continued down across the cheek in a line that was precise enough to almost look deliberate.

The Grade 2 Potion and the priest had done all they both could, and what remained was skin that on either side of the cut was barely touching, and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

Which I frankly didn’t mind, because I looked so damn cool.

I splashed water on my face, feeling the cut send a sharp sting through the skin and into the socket of my eye that was considerably worse than the baseline I mentally prepared for.

[Ah... just gotta live with it, I guess...]

I had been running Ice Reinforcement to make myself the most perfectly fitted prosthetic, making sure the ice pressed against the stump tissue with a steady, contained pressure.

The cavity I had shaped around the wound to keep direct contact off the most sensitive point helped, but what remained was a sensation that I could only describe as somewhat bearable.

I had been managing it since I woke up. I plan to keep managing it.

I dried my face carefully with the cloth the nurse had left, pressing rather than wiping because wiping across the cut was something I had learned immediately and without enjoyment not to do, and then I looked at myself one more time in the warped mirror. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Okay..." I said, drying my face carefully with the soft cloth the nurse had left, pressing rather than wiping. "Let’s move. There’s too much to set up and nowhere near enough time to do it..."

The hospital gown went into the inventory the moment my discharge papers had come in, replaced by a white shirt, black trousers, and a single brown leather boot on the one foot that was currently capable of wearing one.

[Might as well complete the look] I chuckled, buying that classic black eye patch, which I settled over the left eye with one hand and adjusted until it sat flat, and then I pulled out the brown cloak Peko had brought for me and did the clasp one-handed, which took two attempts and was not dignified, before I walked toward the door.

Nom-Nom and Peko were waiting on the other side of it.

And Nom-Nom was standing behind a wheelchair with both hands on the handles and an expression of complete practical readiness, as though she had already thought through the logistics and was now determined to adjust her days around pushing me.

While I took one look at the wheelchair and said, "I’m not sitting on that."

"Does the ice not hurt?" Peko asked, her eyes moving to the leg.

"It does..." I said, rolling the tension out of my one working shoulder and began moving towards the door, "The ice from my skin... not around it. So I built a cavity around the wound, but the pressure is still there, and it currently feels like the wound is being pulled back slowly open from every direction at once... But I would rather have that than sit in a goddamn wheelchair."

Both of them looked as though they had arguments they were considering deploying, and then they looked at each other, and then Nom-Nom folded the wheelchair with a single motion, tucked it under one arm as though it weighed nothing, and they both followed.

The corridor outside the hospital room ran along the second floor of the eastern wing, open on one side to the mountain air, and the afternoon sun was coming in at a low angle that caught the wooden beams of the corridor ceiling and laid long warm strips across the floor.

We were currently around the north-eastern part of Old Shinkotsu, where the Temple of Amaterasu was situated across a lush forested mountain.

The temple grounds below were visible between the pillars, full of wide courtyards of pale stone bordered by old cedar trees, the main sanctuary building further up the mountain path with its layered roof catching the same light, the small figures of priests and priestesses moving between buildings in the unhurried rhythm of a place that had been operating on the same schedule for who knows how long.

While I walked along, leaving a trail of frost prints on the corridor floor with every step, each one the shape of a foot made from the ice of the leg seeping into the wood and leaving a perfect, pale impression.

The hospital’s ground floor was quieter than I had anticipated, with only a few healers moving around, and echoing through the main hall was the soft sound of someone reciting a prayer somewhere further inside.

The smell of medicine and pine incense seemed to permeate every building on this mountain, regardless of function.

And just as we walked out of the front entrance, I heard two sets of footsteps coming up beside me, one heavier than the other.

Garek came around the bend first, dressed in a plain dark coat rather than his usual gear, and beside him, Mitsuki in simple traveling clothes, her white priest’s robes absent for once, her dark hair tied back and a small bundle under one arm that was almost certainly food she had brought for a patient she had intended to visit.

They saw us at approximately the same moment we saw them, and they both immediately picked up their pace.

Mitsuki reached us first, stopping before Peko with a proper bow of greeting, hands folded, inclining her head to the correct angle of acknowledging a Tier 6 practitioner of multiple affinities, and spoke, "Miss Peko."

Peko returned the bow with her own, fractionally shallower in the way that indicated receipt rather than equality, and said nothing, which was Peko doing the social mathematics correctly... at least I think.

Garek had arrived beside Mitsuki by then, and he looked at Nom-Nom with the wheelchair tucked under her arm and the expression of someone working through what that meant before arriving at the conclusion that not asking was the correct response before bowing to Nom-Nom with a deep, full-torso inclination that Greater Dragon’s presence demanded.

"Lady Nom-Nom."

Nom-Nom looked at him for a moment, and then she jerked her chin up once in acknowledgment, which was the version of returned greeting she used even if it was a God standing before her.

"We were coming to visit," Mitsuki said, looking at me now, her eyes doing the same cataloguing pass Peko’s had done, moving from the eye patch to the line of the cut along my cheek to the boot on one foot and the frost the other was leaving on the flagstone. "... We almost missed you entirely."

"Lucky us then... Let’s walk."

They fell into step naturally, Garek moving to my left and Mitsuki beside him, and we began down the mountain path with Nom-Nom behind us and Peko moving slightly ahead.

"So..." I said, looking at Garek. "Did you manage to get your priorities straight?"

He produced a short breath that was not quite a laugh but carried the same energy as he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

"Yeah. We’ve officially backed out of the contract. Paid the penalties and everything." He paused for a beat, and then he chuckled. "Iron Vanguard has more or less disbanded... But you were right. I need to focus on what matters more."

"Good..." I nodded. "Then you’re finally a man good enough to be a father."

"Don’t be so harsh on him..." Mitsuki’s voice came from beside him, "He knows what he is doing. And besides, the Hollow Cinder Mine has been closed down entirely. The mine collapsed, and because of Fugen’s investigation."

"Yeah, I heard..." I said, and I had, through Peko, who had been tracking the official developments while I was unconscious.

"How are the people from the mine?" I asked.

"Recovering..."Garek replied, glancing at the eastern wing of the hospital, "They are still in the upper wards here... Mitsuki visits them every morning."

Mitsuki said nothing about this, which was its own kind of statement.

We came around a bend in the path where the cedar trees opened up to a set of stone stairs leading out of the mountain, giving a view down across the rooftops of Old Shinkotsu, where dark-sloped tiles caught the afternoon light in long reflective strips.

And as we did, I turned around, looking Garek in the eye and spoke, "Those F-ranks in your party during the mine job. Were they permanent members of the Vanguard?"

"No," he said. "Contract hires for that specific job."

"Good." I nodded and kept walking. "Is your party allowed in B-rank dungeons? You’re the only B-rank... Berant and Selenne are both C-rank, if I remember correctly."

"Yes," he said. "We’re more than qualified. And Mitsuki is also B-rank."

I turned to look at Mitsuki, who was already looking at me with a smugness in her eyes that needed no words.

[This just keeps getting better and better...] I thought, if they’re both B-Rank, then my little plan would more than just work.

"Would your party still be eligible to enter a B-rank dungeon if an F-rank joined your roster?"

Garek’s eyebrows came together slightly, working through the guild regulations.

"There’s considerably more paperwork involved. Acknowledgment of responsibility for the F-rank, hazard waivers, and a reviewed sortie plan. But yes. It’s permitted."

"Good," I said, feeling on my skin as I looked at them and watched the realization land on both their faces that what I was about to say was going to change their lives.

While with a smug little grin, that probably looked misplaced on the picture of badaserry my face had become, I said-

"Now... I’m gonna make you an offer you cannot refuse."