Who could put others in front of themselves? Very little people could do that.

It was a notion that slipped from the hands of too many. To give one's life for others, to die so that others could live, something like that was ridiculous. In life, enjoying time with your loved ones and making promises was normal. Throwing away many hopes and following other's dreams was as well. But life— it was something only those gifted with the utmost charity were able to give away.

Suu didn't possess that gift.

She wasn't a saintess, and neither an angel. She would not throw away her life for a friend, even if said friend was someone she had shared her life, good and bad times, with.

Still, she couldn't let Thom fade away.

"We're close to Pontya already. Huff... It gets colder the more you go north, doesn't it..."

She brushed her hair away from her face as her arms effortlessly placed the heavy bags of food inside the carriage. It was already close to winter, so it was hard enough to get food. However, the coin she was handed by Thom made commodities like apples and pears easily accessible.

"You didn't have to go alone." Thom said, resting his back on a crate inside the wagon.

"What are you talking about, you." She shoved another bag inside with a small pout. "You're still getting recovered, aren't you?"

Suu pointed at the scar on Thom's abdomen.

Although close to half a month had already passed, the scar was still fresh enough that it looked like it could still get infected. Thankfully, Thom's knowledge in crafting salves and potions had come in handy, and they had avoided both infections and dangerous blood loss.

However, potions and salves that weak could not cure broken bones.

Suu had tried several times to obtain spells that could cure his wounds, but Skill Master would not cooperate. It kept saying something along the lines of "Learning failed, current magic system unable to activate healing properties.", which, if she was honest, was just extremely bothersome and inconvenient.

"Well, I'm better now." Thom said, rolling his left arm around. It was something he couldn't do a few days back, which really showed the power of [Superior Recovery III].

"A few broken ribs and a severed collarbone never killed anyone, right?" Suu smiled and jumped inside the carriage, closing it behind her back.

"Now I'm just terrified of this shit." Thom pointed at the black blade of Yorthand. "If I trip while carrying it I'm done for, what the hell."

"If Erina can walk around with a greatsword made out of that thing, I'm sure you'll be fine."

Suu grabbed the bag of tomatoes that she had just bought, and started to carefully feed the horses as she petted their back. A dumb smile was drawn on her face, which made Thom smile like an idiot as well.

He couldn't have smiled like this before, But the further they got from Seashore, the clearer his thoughts had become. He had started to feel ashamed of how he had acted back at the village, but shame was quickly replaced by guilt. He had tried to apologize to Suu several times ever since, but he couldn't bring himself to it.

It wasn't that his pride was impeding him, but that he felt it was possible he'd do something like that again. He knew for a fact it wasn't Seashore's fault he had slipped, it was his own.

"How many days until we're there?" Thom asked.

"I say about five." She said, waving her hand in the wind with disgust. "Ah, fuck dude, horse spit is the worst..."

"Alright. I think I'll be fine by then." He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry for leaving everything to you like this. I swear I'll take all the shifts next time."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it." Suu sat on her riding seat and tied up her hair, which was longer than she had ever used it. Not only her, Thom as well. They were in bad need of a haircut and a bath.

The following days were peaceful and quiet, involving a fair share of camping and waiting for rain to clean all their clothes. By the eighteenth day, as soon as Thom opened his eyes, the message from Skill Master cranked in.

「Learning successful. The passive skill [Superior Recovery III] has been upgraded. [Troll's Regeneration] has been acquired. All wounds will heal 10 times faster than usual from now on.

As of now, without including unique skills and job-class skills, the user has obtained 24 skills. The user should prepare for an imminent upgrade of his capacities.」

"That last message again..." He sighed. "I wonder what it means."

After two more days of traveling, the walls of Pontya could already be seen. Suu looked like she was about to shed tears of joy, while Thom could only stare with lost eyes at the imponent figure of the city. Compared to that small, dying village, he couldn't help but let out a small sigh in anticipation.

A bath with heating crystals and actual soap, how dearly he wanted that seemed inhumane. He was probably going to clean his body before doing anything else, he was scared that he would run into Valta while smelling like vegetables, dirt and sweat. He didn't want to be reminded of the smell of the farm, or remind it to anyone else.

As soon as the stable appeared in their sight, Thom breathed new airs of relief.

The place where the horses were kept wasn't just a lonely old building with a place for the animals. A small farming house was not far, and just beside the byre, connected to it, was a building where the man in charge of the horses could stay. Although they had expected someone to be there, it was empty enough that they waltzed into the stables without seeing a single person.

They entered the sheds and unloaded the cargo as they waited for the place's owner to come fetch back his horses. It could seem like a waste of time to stand idly waiting for someone instead of searching, but Thom enjoyed watching Suu caressing the horses and bidding them goodbye like they were their dear friends. It was something she couldn't be blamed for after spending forty whole days with them, and a fun scene for him to enjoy.

Thom wanted to keep smiling, but his joy was suddenly interrupted by the whispering voice of a man.

"Hm?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to find the origin of the voice. Small flames ignited in front of his eyes, and the auras started to show up one after the other. Besides the horses, whose auras were light and breezy, there was Suu's fort-like bonfire, and the occasional feeling of an insect popping by.

That was it for the stables. However, if he focused a little more, he could start to draw the image of two men sitting at a table, their figures shifting in accordance with the whispering voices he was hearing.

Thom opened his eyes and looked at the small office next to the shed. Was the voice coming from there?

It seemed strange enough that no one had come to receive the horses they borrowed, but if the man was actually present, it became even harder to believe. Then, what Thom was hearing was probably not a whisper. It was simply that the sound from the man's voice was muffled by the door that separated him from that office.

"Oh, he's here." He blinked in surprise. "Should I knock on his door?"

He walked to the office and was about to knock, when he noticed that the conversation inside was perhaps a little too heated for him to suddenly come inside. Instead, he simply leaned beside the door and rested his head on the wall. Soon, he started to hear their voices.

"I told you we shouldn't have gotten this job!"

"We've been working with them for years! What the hell did you want me to do, just ditch them? Our heads would be rolling if I had not signed that fucking contract!"

"Forget about it, forget it! We did it, it's done already, so let's forget about it. Are you sure the line worked?"

"The guy told me it worked, and I don't know jackshit about magic. If it worked, cool, if it didn't, it's not our fault!"

"Okay, okay. Hufff... Huff. Let's just welcome our guests and keep them entertained, alright?"

"Right."

As soon as he heard the chairs tumbling back, Thom dashed forward and stopped behind Suu. The girl turned and saw his weary face, sure that he had just run out of somewhere. She twisted her smile and teased him.

"Uwah, you look like you were doing something bad. Are you becoming a criminal now, Thom?" She said.

"Shush, I wasn't doing anything wrong." He replied.

The two people from the office started to come out, a bright smile on their faces as soon as they saw Thom and Suu standing by the horses. They meandered their way towards the pair of black-haired swordsmen and halted just a few feet away, aggressively clasping their hands together.

"My! I see you're in good health!" One of them said.

"That's splendid! We're sorry for the late attention, we were busy in a very important conference about the businesses' finances, you see." The other followed as he rubbed his hands together in a pretty grotesque and overly exaggerated mannerism.

"Aha..." Thom arched his eyebrow. He knew that their words did not match at all with what he had eavesdropped before, but he could not say such a thing without sounding like an absolute jerk.

"Well, doesn't really matter to me!" Suu said, handing the reins of the horses. "Your boys were fantastic! I'm very glad we took them with us!"

"Is, is that so?" The man nodded. "Very well, I will take them to their stalls, so please, serve our guests something to drink!" The man pointed at the other.

"Of course!"

One of the tenders took away the horses while the other rushed back into the office. Thom looked at Suu with a deep frown, and the girl returned an equally as worried face. Without any communication aside from a soft nod, they started to slowly back away from the establishment, trying to go unnoticed by the two men from before.

"I don't know what this is, but if it is a trap, they hired the worst actors they could." Thom said in a low voice, already standing on the road.

"Well, they have been living with horses, their acting probably impresses our equine friends more than the rest of, you know, us living beings." Suu replied in the same vein, sneakily following Thom from the back.

However, as soon as they were already outside, a voice called for them.

"H-Hey! Don't go that way yet! I mean, no, don't go! Aren't you gonna drink your milk?! Why are you leaving?! You are supposed to stay here at least another fifteen minutes!" The man said from afar, holding to glasses of mil on his hands.

"We should just run."

Thom said and Suu agreed. They dashed away from the sheds as they traveled the main road, seeing the big southern gates of Pontya from afar.

"Don't go to the main road! Wait! Aghhh!"

The voice of the hysterical man didn't matter, they had escaped from similar situations several times in the past, and doing it right now only seemed like nostalgia had come knocking down. It was a pleasant feeling, the one that the city of Pontya emitted.

Maybe for both Suu and Thom, the gates in the distance were much like the doors of their home, although one they hadn't lived much in. After the mess they had suffered back at Seashore, their hearts were at rest from the view of the slums and the people within it. The only thing left would be going uphill, crossing the bridge, and entering the walls.

A hint of soft laughter rose from Thom's cheeks. He was wishing badly to enter his room, throw his clothes to the floor, hang the bag from the towel hanger, and enter the bath. And, although he wasn't particularly fond of the thought, he also wanted to see how the scar looked from another angle.

It had only been forty days, but it felt like an eternity. The eagerness to speak to Valta was surreal, perhaps even tell her that he had managed to sort out some feelings in the midst of his trip. Especially his resolution to stop looking for the star-gazed girl, which had weighed heavily in his mind before.

With illusions filling his mind, he ran in large strides towards the main road. Suu was by his side with the same expression on her face, one of pure joy. Those eyes were filled with a glistering sparkle, at least, for a while. Until they were corroded by the twist of her face. She stopped in the tracks at the same time as Thom, who had also twisted his nose in disgust.

A stench lingered in the air.

Thom looked around. The sun was setting in the western horizon, and the clouds were dying their white bodies in shades of orange and blue. To that side, the road that surrounded the outskirts was visible. A road he had never taken. As a counterpart, the road on the east seemed familiar. It was a road he had taken before.

The wind blew from the north as the sun settled down. With the smell washed away, he was finally able to identify it.

It smelled like burned bodies, like dirty crops and dead people had been mixed together. Something had set ablaze far away. Then, from the east, going upstream in the river, a column of smoke rose up. Thom blinked like etching the image on the surface of his eye, one time, two times.

"That's a big fire." Suu whispered.

"Yeah." He answered while taking small steps forward. "That's the direction of Marz' farm." His breath pushed out heavy.