Chapter 31: Mana Core - 2
I left the garden, the cool night air doing little to soothe the turmoil in my heart. My footsteps were heavy as I walked back towards the manor, my gaze fixed on the ground. The sounds of frantic activity from the medical passage had quieted, replaced by a tense, somber hush.
As I approached the passage, Chief Doctor Alaric emerged, his face grim, his shoulders slumped. Lord and Lady Sapphire stood before him, their faces pale and etched with despair. Luminous, his small body trembling, clung to his mother’s hand.
"My Lord, My Lady," Doctor Alaric began, his voice heavy with sorrow, "I... I have done all I can. I managed to prevent any lethal incident. Her life is no longer in immediate danger."
A collective sigh of relief escaped the family, quickly followed by a renewed wave of apprehension. Lady Sapphire’s eyes, fixed on the doctor, she asked. "But... but her mana core? Will she recover, Alaric? Will she be able to become a Mage Knight?" Her voice was a desperate whisper, clinging to a fragile hope.
Doctor Alaric shook his head slowly, his gaze filled with profound regret. "I am truly sorry, My Lady. The elixir was too potent. The mana... it was too much for her mana core to process. It has been severely, irrevocably damaged." He paused, his voice barely above a whisper. "She... she will never be able to refine mana again. Her mana core is completely inert."
Lady Sapphire’s gasp was raw. Her body sagged, and she would have collapsed if Lord Sapphire hadn’t quickly caught her. "No!" she sobbed, a heartbroken wail that tore through the quiet passage. "My daughter! Her dream! Her life’s ambition!" She buried her face in Lord Sapphire’s chest, her body wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
Lord Sapphire held her, his own face a mask of grim despair. Luminous, witnessing his mother’s profound grief, began to cry again, his small body trembling. The scene was heartbreaking, a tableau of utter devastation.
My own heart plummeted. Not Evelina. She had dedicated her life to this, to becoming a Mage Knight, to fulfilling Prudee’s legacy, to seeking her revenge. And now, it was all gone. Her dream, her purpose, shattered by a single potion.
A wave of crushing guilt washed over me, heavier and more suffocating than before. I wished, with every fiber of my being, that I had used ’Pause & Observe,’ that I had risked everything to snatch that vial from her hand. What if I had acted quickly, without hesitation? Maybe she wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe her mana core wouldn’t be irrevocably damaged. Maybe her dream wouldn’t be shattered. The ’what ifs’ screamed in my mind, a relentless torment.
I remembered a scene from my past life as Alex Miller. A vivid, painful memory. It was during my senior year of high school. I had been a promising baseball player, a pitcher with a fastball that turned heads. My dream, my long-held ambition, was to play in the Nationals, to make it big. But then, a hamstring injury. A brutal, career-ending tear that sidelined me for an entire year, forcing me to miss the most crucial season of my amateur career. The dream, the years of practice, the countless hours on the mound – all gone, just like that. I had felt the crushing weight of a dream stolen, the agonizing helplessness of watching my future slip away.