The Lone Healer-Chapter 224: The Aftermath, Part Eight

Elena just stood there.

Neve turned around, beginning to walk away, before she noticed Elena wasn’t following.

"Hm? Did you drop anything?" Neve asked. "Come on. Dungeon’s done."

Upon hearing that, Elena finally snapped out of her stupefied trance.

"W-What?" She asked. "That was... a test?"

"Yeah," Neve replied, putting her hands on her hips. "I wanted to see if you could perform under real pressure, outside of a simulation. You passed. Good job."

Despite the congratulatory sentiment, Elena found herself feeling rather angry.

Not at any monsters, but at Neve.

The healer must have sensed that, as she quickly took on a slightly more sympathetic expression.

"Okay, I’ll admit, a bit fucked up on my part to manipulate you like that," she conceded, "but, Elena, if you’re going to be working as a support, people need to know that they can rely on you. I don’t just mean if you join my guild, by the way, but just in general. People need to know that when shit hits the fan, you’re not just gonna sprint in the opposite direction. That you will be the glue that holds the team together, because, as a support, that’s your job."

Elena heard that and, though she couldn’t form any substantive response, she was still annoyed.

"Look, if this makes you change your mind about joining the guild, then whatever. But, the important thing is that you proved that you can do this. That you can be a Support player. You still have a ways to go, sure. You need to train and, unless your Technique gives you EXP from kills, you might have to get your hands dirty. But, you *can* do it. That much has been confirmed here."

As much as Elena resented being toyed with like this, she couldn’t disagree with that last part.

Sensing that she nearly had her, Neve said:

"But, if you’re still down to join the guild, let me tell you, there’s gonna be plenty of cool stuff. I haven’t bought it all yet, but we’re gonna have a training area, housing, a cafeteria, a-"

"Housing?"

Elena couldn’t stop herself from asking that.

Neve smiled.

"Yep. Housing."

"..."

That made it infinitely harder to turn this deal down. After all, sleeping on park benches and in old, wrecked cars, sucked. It sucked so much.

Besides, she couldn’t really blame Neve for doing this. She was right, after all. If she accepted Elena into her guild without her proving that she could handle the duties that would follow, it could cost people their lives.

So, slightly reluctantly, she finally said:

"Fine." Pouting, Elena turned away. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"Nice."

---

{Neve}

With a few strokes of her pen, Neve finished the process of getting Elena registered.

She was now the first official non-staff member of the Pillars of Unity.

"Come back whenever," Neve told her as the silver-haired girl walked out of the school. Given that the housing offer had been what convinced her to stay, Neve felt she’d be coming back sooner rather than later.

"You could have at least had me out there with you," Erin said, standing to the right of Neve’s desk.

"I’m inclined to agree with her," Charlotte added, standing to Neve’s left. "What if you’d miscalculated the poison’s damage? You could have both gotten killed."

Neve shook her head.

"I had it under control from the start," she stated. "The reason I picked that place out was because I heard it didn’t have a proper boss, meaning I could just go through enough random fights until Elena did something. I used {Rorvan’s Spirit} to measure how much damage the poison had done to my body since the spell’s mana regeneration buff increases the lower your HP is. And, when the System asked me to allocate my stats since I had to be lowered to level 10 for that dungeon, I went out of my way to put a lot of them into Speed, just to make sure I would still be faster than anything in there, in case Elena failed and I actually had to save myself. The biggest threat," she added, "was the potential of some player killer deciding to follow us into the dungeon. That could have actually turned out bad. But, thankfully, that didn’t happen."

Just like Elena before them, after hearing her out it seemed clear that they still had their reservations about all of this, but found it difficult to argue.

"I won’t be doing something like that with every single potential member, by the way," Neve added, just to ease their concerns. "But, in this case, I thought it would be the best way to prove she was suitable."

"I guess it’s understandable... You only want the best for this guild. I get it."

"Hm? No," Neve shook her head. "Not just suitable for the guild. I wanted to prove that she’s someone who could handle going into the next Final Challenge, in 10 years."

Upon hearing that, Charlotte’s brows touched the ceiling. Neve felt that perhaps this needed an explanation as well.

"Even if she’d rejected my offer, and she’d told me to fuck off or something, I wouldn’t regret testing her like that, because all I’m really trying to do is find 100 people who I think stand a chance at the Final Challenge. Not just physically, but mentally."

She looked away from the two women around her and looked down at the desk on her table.

"John, Stella, Carson, and several others who went to the last Final Challenge had the stats to make it through. Hell, if some of them were given the same opportunities that I’d been given, they’d probably have an easier time with it. But, the overwhelming majority of the players who went in lacked the mental strength. I can’t join the next Final Challenge myself, but I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again. So, I’m going to build this team," Neve declared with a firm tone. "100 people, one by one. People who aren’t just capable players, but capable humans. People like Elena who wouldn’t hesitate to put their own life on the line to save someone else. That’s the real point of this guild. It’s to find people like that."

"... Provided that Elena wants to go into the Final Challenge. You’re not just planning on throwing her in against her will, are you?"

"Obviously not," Neve rolled her eyes. "It’s up to them, at the end of the day. But, I’m confident at least a few of them will agree."

"Why?" Erin asked. "We went through all manner of horror in those other worlds. I died in so many different, awful ways that I cannot imagine anyone willingly signing up for such an ordeal."

"Because," Neve replied, "there are a lot of people out there who have lost it all. A lot of people out there with nothing to lose. A lot of people out there who are as angry as I was. A lot of people who probably want to get one over on Tamira like I do... They just need a nudge in the right direction. And, I’m here to give it to them."

"I never took you to be such a schemer," Erin told her with a smirk, though she did sound somewhat impressed as well.

Neve only smiled at her in response, for a bit. Then, she said:

"I have to be. It’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning."

"Remember, the other option is to lay with me all day," Erin said, not without casting a fleeting glance at Charlotte. "You’re always welcome to turn down the voice of duty."

Neve chuckled lowly.

[Okay,] she thought, then. [Onto the next one.]

---

In the lobby of an old apartment complex, a woman sat surrounded by almost a dozen other people.

Like her, they were all waiting to be told where to go next. These were people who lost their homes to the monster outbreaks, and would soon either be relocated or sent back to their old houses.

It couldn’t happen soon enough for this lady, as once it did, maybe, just maybe, her kid would stop crying.

She kept a hand over his head, warmly running it over his hair in hopes of calming him down, but she failed.

Something else did manage to calm him down, though. The appearance of a blue-haired woman at the lobby’s entrance.

Everyone in that lobby knew who this was. It was thanks to her, after all, that the potential of returning to their homes even existed.

Her arrival was not unlike that of an angel descending onto humanity. But, it seemed as though it would be a brief visit, as she made a beeline toward one person.

That lady and her kid.

"You’re Carson’s wife, right?" Neve Stephens asked. "Here," she said, placing a note in her hands. "He wanted me to give this to you."

Stunned, shocked, and in awe, it was now the lady’s turn to start sobbing.

Neve knelt in front of her.

Her sapphire eyes went from her to her son.

She smirked.

"You know, if you need a job to provide for this cute kid, I might have something in mind..."

In all honesty, whatever it was that she was about to offer was irrelevant.

In her heart, the lady had already agreed.