A piercing, white-hot pain like the inside of my chest being pressed to a fire, pulls me out of oblivion.

'ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH!'

'At least that confirms your lung function has been restored, I guess. But keep it down, will you?

Before I make you.' (Elaina)

A second pain stabs me as I try to speak.

'Sohhhkkkk.'

'Hush, you'll need some time to get used to breathing with this effect. Let alone speaking. The pain will go away in time. Maybe months, maybe years. But you have time. You can thank Callista from my class for that. She saved you. Well, three people did, but she reached you first.

Your boyfriend, Joshua. He's a real piece of work. You recall that the basic principle of magic is that what we do is pull the version of reality amongst countless possibilities that we want to exist, and the cost of doing so is related to the chance of that result happening by itself, right?' (Elaina)

'Hs nn mm boffriend.'

'That bastard murdered the Reinhart in so many versions in reality in so many different ways that it nearly killed me trying to prevent her from dying. Your case was different, Alicia intentionally hit you in the lung in every version of reality I saw, so you would be eliminated but would not die as long as any healer attended to you. Though you might have to stop being an adventurer in some of those versions.

You got lucky. In the only version of reality in which she lived, your wound isn't career-ending. Though the scars on your chest and back will never fully heal, so you can kiss your chance of marrying a noble goodbye. The scar on her neck will do the same for her chances, too.' (Elaina)

'I nly wnt to be an advntrrer.'

'Then you'll be fine. In a while. You've been out of it for two weeks. But your boyfriend graduated, so you'll have to pass this course before you can fight by his side again.' (Elaina)

'He's not my boyfriend.'

'You're one crazy woman to endure the pain just to say that. Twice.' (Elaina)

Elaina walks up to the window. The room darkens slightly, as her frame occludes the only source of light in the night sky.

'Don't worry though. You're not the only woman to have an injury like this, so I'll let you in on a secret. But tell anyone else about it and you'll wish I allowed you to die.' (Elaina)

And then she turns her back, and pulls down the robes from around her shoulders. An exquisite sight some men would have died a hundred deaths to see, I guess. Or at least, one dumb blonde musclehead would have. But it's beautiful in a horrifying way. A way I would never have expected.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Through a gaping but immaculately circular hole in her back shone the immaculate disc of the full moon.

'Orcs aren't so weak as to simply stab you 'in' the heart, unlike what Gwyn supposedly said to you. What actually happened was that he thrust his spear so hard what used to be my heart was smashed to a sticky paste coating the tip before being forced through my back, together with one lung, a quarter of my ribs and half of my womanhood. I was always good at manipulating time, but there was also only one version of reality in which I didn't die, and in this version, I was forced to learn certain things about how the body works to make it continue to work with critical parts gone forever. There is no version in reality in which a heart can regrow.' (Elaina)

She giggles a bit, somewhat disturbingly.

'Some people call me a heartless bitch, and it's always been funny to me how they have no idea how correct they've always been. But you see the world differently after you come back from the dead. Something you should understand yourself, since you know what it feels like to die.

You're a strong person, you know that? Alicia couldn't stop peeing herself upon seeing the image of Joshua's face in her mind after she woke up, and there's probably still an imprint on the wall with how hard she flung herself away from him when he visited her in person to apologise. I'm surprised her screaming didn't wake you up either when half the town came over to find out what the commotion was about. It was hit and miss for a moment, but her stunt with her blood spear impressed people enough that she was still allowed to graduate on the spot.' (Elaina)

'If you want to keep it a secret so bad, why do you wear clothes like that all the time?

'I must, you see. I'm missing a lung, and with the kind of activity we need to do as adventurers, I need more air than a single lung can provide. This little hole over here sucks in air if my clothes fit loosely enough, which I mix with my blood, so I get enough. If I cover it up too much, I die. If I lose control of my blood, I die. I'm using magic nonstop, even in my sleep, and the moment I stop, I will die. And saving Alicia from your... not-boyfriend drained me so much Kurt is the only reason I'm still alive now.

You should have seen his face when his hand passed through my chest though. But he will keep quiet about it. Of the many things that man can do, making a woman he finds attractive unhappy is not one of them.' (Elaina)

'Why did you say to Gwyn that I was stronger than Alicia? She can manipulate four elements to absurd extents, and her sword skills don't look like she only started learning the sword here. If you didn't mentally corner her like that, maybe none of that would have happened in the first place.'

'Strength isn't just about the parts of reality you can affect. How much effort you put in, how likely you are to give up, all of these are part of that strength. Having the balls to blame me for the incident to my face when you already know I can kill you in a heartbeat is part of your strength. Just before you died, in every version of reality, you followed Gwyn's teachings to grab her weapon, and in every version of reality, this made her vulnerable to Joshua's attack, in which she died in every version of reality except this one. There is no healer that can reattach a disembodied head.

If you were fighting a similar opponent in the field who heavily outclasses you, your party would have survived while you alone died, while her party would all have died. Frankly, if Joshua had practiced any harder, she would be irrevocably dead, and it was only his lack of experience that saved her. I was hoping she would learn some humility, but it seemed to have backfired; at the rate she's going it's only a matter of time until she gets herself killed if she keeps underestimating her opponents like that. That's a problem a lot of nobles have,

Though at least you seem to be an exception.' (Elaina)