I didn’t say anything as Olivia left the area, since I figured that it really wasn't in my best interest to keep delaying her.
Sally! How could I forget? He was crushed by the rockfall during the match! I just couldn’t leave someone with THAT good of a fashion sense here to die. I got up and looked around the area he’d been standing in when the rats brought him down, and found his bloodied hand poking out of the rubble. Thankfully, a third earthquake began shaking the venue and the rubble was loosened enough for even me to pull him out.
“Are you alright?” I asked him in a flat and unassuming tone.
“Not really, I’m bleeding a lot and I think I broke a few bones, but I’ll probably make it if we can find a doctor. What happened after the rocks fell?”
I didn’t answer.
“So the clothes make you just barely invincible enough, or...?”
“Oh are you asking how I’m still alive? That’s thanks to my dad actually. He gave me something close to immortality.”
“It doesn’t seem very close if you still need a doctor.”
“Maybe not, but it still saved me.”
“That’s convenient. Do the clothes just do nothing at all?”
“Well sometimes…” he shuddered, “they talk to me.”
“Sure, of course they do.”
We began our ascent out of the rubble, into what was left of the guild hall. I was a little concerned, because any doctors that might have been there were probably killed by the meteor. Even still, there were people crouched near the ruins of its walls. I was surprised to see that there were survivors so close to where the meteor landed, they must have been tough.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Hey, are any of you doctors?” I figured that we’d get lucky with this, and sure enough, one of the people called us over.
“Yes! We’re all doctors actually, we were on our way to town when the meteor hit, so we decided to treat anyone that survived.” I almost hoped that there’d be some kind of double tap strike, as saving any lives at all other than Sally’s was counter to the mission that I should, at the very least, not abandon completely.
They cast some sort of magic on Sally and I watched as his wounds closed up. Next, they began bandaging him. Sally still had to limp a bit to get around, but I was amazed that something like this was possible.
“Hey, Sally, I just had an idea. Since you got immortality from your dad or something, and we only need to preserve humanity regardless of how many actually are saved, couldn’t we just make like 2 people immortal and have them just count as saving the world with their human children?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know if it would count towards ‘saving humanity’ if we used the form of immortality that my dad has. It may be hard to believe, but I was actually raised by a Lich who was already dead, which means that he can’t have children. I got my ‘immortality’ after he brought me back to life when he found my corpse in the woods.”
“So does being a lich come with erectile dysfunction? What about dying means you can’t have kids?”
“Well I mean, he’s only got a skeleton left now. So… I don’t see that happening.”
“I still feel like this immortality thing has got potential. Maybe there’s some philosopher’s stone or something in this world to approach it through a different route.”
“Hey, I just have a quick question. You and that Oliva Goldgetter person have both been talking as though there’s a place other than this world that you guys are from. Couldn’t we just bring some people over to that world and have them come back after this all clears up?”
“You have to be under some sort of contract to be brought over for one, but the main issue is that my mission is still failed whenever everyone here dies. I could bring over more people, sure, but it’d have to be a month or two later once everything has subsided, and by then the world would’ve already been reset by its owner.”
“What do you mean ‘reset by its owner?’ Are you talking about the gods or something? Why don’t we just have them fix this?”
“‘Gods’ is being charitable. They aren’t really much of anything except cosmic scale losers. I don’t know why, but the actual single individual that owns this world is paying my employer to fix this rather than to do it themselves. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either.”
The doctors finished their work on Sally, and we began our journey towards the next town over, hoping we’d figure something out on our way.