Klaus took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I think we’ve finally escaped from them."

For now, at least...

He stood at the cave entrance and listened for a long moment.

There were no footsteps, no chanting and no distant shouts echoing up the rock face. It was just wind moving through the mountain pass outside.

This place was a complete mountain area.

It was vast and rocky, riddled with formations and natural tunnels that could hide a search party indefinitely.

The cultists were still out there somewhere.. he had no illusions about that. The Wraith of Bindings had survived worse than a ceiling falling on her, and she had enough cultists willing to be used in a search so simply walking away from the fight wasn’t the same as being safe.

He had flown around on the magnetic sword for longer than was comfortable, carrying two unconscious bodies and trying to scan the rock face for anything that could pass as shelter.

The weight had made maneuvering slow and his mana reserves were lower than he wanted them to be.

Most openings he found were too narrow to get through properly. Several were too shallow... anyone walking past the entrance would see straight into them and one had fresh boot marks in the dust and iron torch brackets hammered into the walls and he’d avoided that immediately.

This cave however had a wide enough entrance to get all three of them through, enough depth to matter and a bend partway in that completely blocked the interior from outside view.

Anyone approaching from below would have to climb to reach the entrance, which meant noise and time. It would do. He wasn’t going to find better at this altitude with this much weight to carry.

Klaus turned around.

The cave smelled of rock and dried blood. His own cloak was still on, which meant he was the only one who’d come out of the mountain flight in any condition to function.

Seo and Neo were both on the ground on opposite sides of the cave, away from each other.

They were both bleeding but both of them still alive, somehow. Neo had it worse by a clear margin... the chest wound was still seeping at a slow and steady rate and his face had gone gray, it was clear that he was running out of blood.

And as for Seo, the noble was burned and her spine was bent in a way that should not have been survivable.

Klaus looked at them for a moment.

’I could just leave...’

He was the only one on his feet and his sword was still nearby. One burst of Magnetic Field and he’d be across two ridges before either of them woke up.

That wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

He held the thought for a few seconds, then set it aside.

It wasn’t like he had much of a real choice. Even if he left Neo, the protagonist had been a liability since the moment the Death Cult had brought them all together... Seo was a different problem entirely.

Her family was powerful.

They had reach and a long memory and connections in every direction. If she survived this, made it back on her own, and told anyone that he had walked away from her unconscious in a mountain cave, the Aestrea name would be a shadow over the rest of his life no matter how far he ran.

It wasn’t about Neo, honestly if it was only them, he would have abandoned this guy since....

It was about Seo being enough of a reason to stay. Neo was the protagonist... he had plot armor and the goddess watching over him, several elemental affinities and whatever else the world had seen fit to pile onto the chosen hero.

He would find a way out with or without Klaus’s help, probably... He always did but Seo was different so he stayed though not for her sake but for the sake of a peaceful life.

Without wasting any more time, he turned and walked toward her.

The damage was worse up close than it had looked while he was carrying her.

The force of hitting that cavern wall had bent her spine badly enough that through the torn skin along her back he could actually see the bone pressing against what remained of the surface.

Her breathing was shallow and labored. She was alive, probably because of her noble blood.

Noble bloodlines carried passive physical resistance built across generations of mana saturation in the body... it was one of the actual advantages of noble birth that Klaus grudgingly acknowledged.

A commoner would not have survived that impact. Their body simply wouldn’t have had the baseline resistance to absorb that much force without shutting down entirely.

Seo had survived it, barely, and purely for that reason.

’You two better pay me a lot for all of this...’ Klaus thought as he reached into his storage ring.

He brought out the healing potion and uncorked it carefully.

The sweet medicinal smell spread through the cave immediately. He tilted the vial and poured a few drops directly onto the worst of the damage along her exposed spine and some into her mouth, watching the liquid absorb into the wound, and set the vial down carefully beside his knee on the cave floor.

The cracks started almost immediately.

Vertebrae began grinding back into position one after another, each one sounding loud in the silence of the cave.

Seo’s face tightened against the pain even through unconsciousness with her brow pulling together as her teeth pressed hard and a low groan coming out of her mouth with each adjustment.

Her fingers curled against the cave floor then the process moved outward from the spine as burns sealed over.

Deep cuts closed from the edges inward as bruising faded from purple-black to yellow to nothing. The labored breathing deepened as her body put itself back together whether it wanted to or not.

When it finished she looked whole and she looked like herself again.

Then her cloak which was already shredded and burned from the reflected fireball gave out entirely and tore away from her body.

Klaus looked at the cave ceiling immediately.

He studied a particular section of the rock up there that looked very unremarkable and interesting while reaching up with one hand to pull his own cloak off then he leaned forward and arranged it over Seo, drawing it closed around her shoulders and pulling it across her body carefully.

He was adjusting it with both hands on her shoulders positioning the fabric, however there was suddenly movement at the edge of his vision but Klaus didn’t register what it was for what it was as he kept working.

Across the cave, Neo’s eyes had opened without a sound.

The protagonist stared up at the cave ceiling first, processing the pain in his chest with his hand moving slowly toward the wound.

’It’s a miracle that didn’t pierce through my heart completely...’ Neo thought as his fingers found the edges of the hole in his chest.

Then Seo made a small sound... a low whimper making Neo turn his head.

The Commoner was crouched over his Lady with both hands on her shoulders... She was clearly not clothed beneath whatever was being arranged over her.

Neo’s eyes went wide.

He tried to get up but his body refused entirely.

His legs gave nothing at all when he pushed against the floor, His arms barely produced a twitch as he’d used everything he had getting that avalanche of rocks to cover the entrance and stabbing forward at that bandaged woman... the chest wound had taken the rest of it.

The chest wound had drained him past the point where intention could produce motion.

’Come on fucking body...’ He thought with the veins along his neck standing out hard as he pushed against his own limits. ’Move.’

His eyes glowed faintly yellow as he forced wind mana through himself. That was when Klaus caught the glow at the edge of his vision... but it was too late.

Neo’s hand shot out like a whip looking somewhere between a grab and a strike but it didn’t reach Klaus. It instead reached the uncorked healing potion sitting on the cave floor beside Klaus’s knee.

The vial spun sideways across the stone, hit once, bounced, hit again at a worse angle and shattered against the base of the cave wall.

The healing fluid spread across the cold floor in a thin shimmering pool and soaked immediately into the porous rock.

It was gone within seconds... every drop of it...

Klaus stared at it.

That was ten gold... The one resource he had structured every next contingency around... Sitting on the cave floor as a drying stain on porous rock that had already absorbed most of it.

"You fucking dumbass."

He was across the cave before the words had finished.

His fist connected with Neo’s face in a straight punch that snapped the protagonist’s head sideways and made him lurch hard into the wall.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

He grabbed Neo by the collar, hauled him upright against the stone, and drove his knee up into his face with full force.

Neo’s head cracked back into the rock hard enough that Klaus felt the impact through his own leg. Blood from his nose joined what was already running from his chest wound.

He slid down the wall but didn’t go down completely as something in him refusing to collapse even now.

"You—" Neo spat blood from his mouth. "Y-you tried to assault her... while she was unconscious..."

"I was putting a cloak on her!"

"You were touching her..."

Neo shoved Klaus backward with both hands despite the hole in his chest. He got his legs under him somehow and threw his weight forward, bearing Klaus down to the cave floor and sitting across his stomach.

"I won’t forgive you—"

The first punch came down and caught Klaus across the face while Klaus gritted his teeth.

"Who the fuck cares about Seo?"

More punches came.

Klaus moved his face aside, felt one graze his cheek and crack against the stone floor instead. He drove his own fist up into Neo’s stomach hard and Neo lurched forward so Klaus threw him sideways, rolled free, got to his feet, and kicked the protagonist in the face before he could recover.

Neo hit the wall and left blood on the stone as he slid down.

"You fucking spoilt it!"

He stood over Neo.

His own face hurt from the punch that had caught him and his knuckle was split from the first hit, but he barely noticed either as he let the anger go flat.

He had bought one of those potions... One... Ten gold... A whole ten gold wasted on a single item.

He had based every plan for getting the three of them out of this mountain alive around the resources he was carrying and every next move had assumed that potion was still in his possession.

What if Neo’s chest wound opened from the strain of moving down a mountain? What if Seo’s back gave way on a slope? He had one answer to both of those problems and it was drying into the cave floor right now.

Because he had helped them. He had done the right thing when he had every reason not to and apparently that made him the bad person here.

He looked at the stain on the stone.

He had no backup... No second potion... He hadn’t bought two because ten gold was already an absurd amount to spend on a single resource and he’d calculated that one would be enough for any realistic emergency because even drops could heal limbs.

He had not thought that the protagonist would be smashing it out of his hands because he couldn’t spend three seconds looking at what was actually happening before deciding what it meant.

A small sound from the other side of the cave.

Seo was awake. She’d pushed herself upright slowly with her crimson eyes moving between Klaus and Neo.

She was still clearly in pain from the way she held herself but her eyes were sharp and present.

"W-what the hell is happening?" she said carefully.

Neo immediately tried to pull himself up against the wall. His face was bloody from both the punch and the knee but he was smiling through it.

"He tried to assault you," Neo said. "While you were unconscious... I stopped him."

Seo blinked.

She looked at the cloak around her body. She looked at Klaus standing several feet away. She looked at Neo... bleeding from his nose and his chest at the same time, smiling with the full confidence of someone who believed entirely in what he’d just said.

Klaus looked at both of them and then he shook his head.

"You two can go fuck yourselves."

He turned and walked to the cave entrance without looking back at either of them, picking up his sword and stepping out onto the ledge before dropping down the mountain face.

Seo blinked. She looked at Neo, still smiling through blood and she looked at the cave entrance, empty now where Klaus had been standing moments before.

The man who had saved her twice was leaving?

Her heart began racing. She pushed herself to her feet on unsteady legs and walked slowly toward the entrance.

When she reached the edge her knees gave and she collapsed down to the stone, gripping the cold rock with both hands as she looked out over the drop below.

The cave was high on the mountain face as she could see the pass far below... Seo caught one glimpse of Klaus disappearing over a ridge below, already small with the distance he’d put between himself and the cave.

Then he was gone.

’N-no,’ she thought, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. ’W-why...’

He had saved her from the maid in that torture chamber... Given her his healing potion and his cloak and the food from his storage ring... Carried her unconscious through the Death cult’s mountain fortress... and she had paid him back by selling him to these people in the first place.

Behind her, Neo’s smile widened the moment the commoner was out of sight. He coughed and blood came with it but his voice when he spoke was certain.

"Lady S-seo." He was still trying to get fully upright against the wall with his body barely cooperating. "All you need is me right now. Only I can protect you. I promise... I’ll protect you."

Seo turned back and her eyes widened.

Holy light was seeping out of Neo’s chest.

It was not around the wound but through it.

White-gold radiance pouring from the hole the woman’s reflected blade had carved, warm and steady in the cold of the cave.

It spread outward and the wound began closing from the inside with the flesh knitting back together without any potion or outside magic as the damage simply being undone as though it had never happened.

The other wounds followed. The bruises from his fight with Klaus faded and his broken nose straightened.

He rose from the wall to standing.

Slowly, He got down to one knee.

Neo looked up at her and the glow in his eyes was not the yellow of his Wind affinity or the deep orange of Fire or the clear blue of Water or the earthy brown of Earth. It was none of those...

It was white-gold.

He could feel it... a fifth presence settling into the space alongside the four he already had. It was the power of Luneth... Holy magic that Saintesses, Priests and anyone from the church could use.

"Lady Seo." His voice came out differently than before. "Even though we are siblings by name, I am still your Humble Servant. Let me be..."

His eyes glowed fully.

"...Your Hero."