121 Above (1/2)

”Great…great…one.”

Li blinked, his senses returning to the present. The sudden influx of foreign memories had come to him in a jarring instant, but at the same time, it did not feel unnatural. To feel the memories and emotions of an entirely different existence so vividly as if they were his own did not feel strange to him. It was just one of many things that were part and parcel to his existence that he was not yet familiar with.

Li looked at the old man whom he now knew was Ivo. He wore a smile of yellowed teeth as his hands clasped desperately around Li's arm.

Ivo struck out a hideous contrast to his youthful days. Where before the man had been tall and sturdily built from farming fields and foraging through the forests, he was now hunched over and shrunken in, his ribs poking through skin pulled taught with hunger. Eyes that had once flashed green with the blessings of life sense now were dull, not even having the clarity of sanity.

”Thank you,” whispered Li. Li patted Ivo's hands while they were wrapped around his arm and gently pulled them apart. Ivo's mouth opened like a beached fish's, trying to voice protest but finding that his deteriorating brain could no longer support it.

Even now, Li doubted Ivo even truly recognized him. Ivo, through his whole life, had lived guided by the feeling of a guardian, of a beat in his heart that he had followed through life and while facing death. It was that feeling that he recognized a semblance of when he made contact with Li, awakening if just the slightest bit of memories faded by decades of deteriorating brain function.

Li knew the cause of the deterioration. It was a tumor rooted in his brain amplified by the stresses wrought to his body caused from casting [Roots of the Kindred One], an A ranked spell strong enough that even Li used it in combat with other level 100 players. Morrigan had healed that tumor, but with her death, there was none more to heal it again now that it had come back from remission.

None but Li, yet now was not the time.

”You've told me everything I need to know,” nodded Li. He put a hand on Ivo's shoulder as he stood up. ”I promise I will make you whole when my presence upon this world is made truly known.”

With that, Li turned to Ada and her husband. He was primarily curious about the faith of the farmers and whether they had maintained it. If they had abandoned their faith, if it had not been truly strong to begin with, then it would have been hard to forge the basis of a following.

But the faith was there. It burned so strongly that it let an entire army of farmers march to their deaths without ever looking back. That kind of faith did not dim easily, and though Li had not interviewed all the other surviving farmers, he was confident that most of them were like Ivo.

That settled just one more thing: the matter of acquiring the land itself.

”Are ye a healer like the good lady in middletown?” said Ada as she looked wonderingly at her father, at how he had managed to show some recognition and emotion for once.