Kisuke smiled at the dying Line, "'Tis I."
Kisuke then checked her whole situation once again in greater detail and started some first-aid measures, "Does it hurt?"
However, Line didn't notice his actions as all emotions she had been keeping, gushed out along with her tears, "...I... don't want... to die..."
All this time, she has been toughing things out. With the use of the things that she'd learned from Sona, Line was able to fend off Valletta, creating an opportunity to escape for the others with her.
Thanks to that, Valletta lost her interest in the others and focused on the 'weird' Line, who seemed to be capable of using all sorts of magic without chanting, albeit, very weakly.
Valletta 'interrogated' Line but the latter didn't even speak. In any case, her interest was in line with Line's goal of creating enough time for the others to escape. She also already stopped thinking that she'd be able to come out of this battle alive.
The more the fight went on, the more Valletta became curious at Line's ability. In the end, she attributed it to a very rare skill and decided to take her alive to be brought for her God's entertainment.
Catching on to that, Line spat in Valletta's face, instantly angering her and making her impaling Line with her cursed sword after making many large but nonfatal cuts all over her body, leaving her to die from blood loss and cursed festering wounds that continuously inflicted large amounts of pain and suffering.
Notwithstanding, she didn't say anything and thought that she was able to successfully give her comrades a window of chance to survive.
When Ais and Bete arrived, Line was already on her deathbed. But even then, Line endured it with her blurring vision and asked, "Were they able to get away?", in a stuttering manner.
As soon as Ais nodded at her question, relief came over Line as she peacefully awaited her death, doing her best not to think of anything else at this moment as she'd surely regret it.
But her trying to calm herself down and emptying her mind didn't get her desired results when it suddenly became noisy beside her and a certain man she was trying her best to forget suddenly appeared with a smile.
At that point, all that she was trying to keep in went out as she recalled all the days she adventured with the members of the Hestia Familia. Especially the memories about the man who gave her back her aspirations and motivation to try harder to achieve her dreams.
"I don't want... to die...!", repeated Line with greater energy than before. But thanks to her pushing herself, she started coughing blood which blocked her breathing. Still, after seeing Kisuke's face, it reminded her of what she wanted to do and what she wanted to reach. Her journey had just started and Line couldn't just let it go. Even if she knew that it was already impossible, she wished for a miracle. She wished she could still join their adventure towards the unknown.
Hearing this, Ais could only close her eyes and grit her teeth while Bete decided to look away. Both of them knew that at this point, it was already impossible to save Line even with the most expensive potion and anti-curses. That was what common sense and experience dictated to them anyways.
Kisuke's smile grew wider when he saw and felt Line's will to live, "Easy now, girl. You're not dead yet since you can still speak with such enthusiasm."
Of course, Kisuke's joke felt out of place and both Ais and Bete couldn't believe they were hearing it. Nevertheless, Kisuke disregarded them and continued, "I wanted to teach you how to cure this thing yourself, but we won't have enough time and you'd die for real. Instead, I'll show you an ability that belonged to a friend, which in my opinion, is the greatest form of healing."
Kisuke then took out a token. It was the token that contained Inoue's 'Rejection' ability. As the orange barrier covered Line, Kisuke started explaining, "Instead of helping, aiding or guiding the body's regenerative process, this ability directly affects reality itself. More specifically, it reverses causality itself, making it so that you didn't take any damage at all. Meaning, this ability makes it so that you were never injured in the first place."
Line's head was a mess and she could barely hear everything he said. However, she still tried to remember all of it despite her inability to understand it.
"Well, this is just a copy of that ability, a very poor copy that hardly does what it's meant to do.", Kisuke then suddenly yanked out the cursed sword sticking on her belly without any hesitation, making Line groan in extreme pain. "That said, it could only remove the curses and reverse your wounds for a bit. It'll be your job to heal yourself. Just think of it as practice."
But Line didn't mind the pain and understood that Kisuke just gave her another breath of life. Although she also knew that she couldn't heal her current wounds with her current ability, when she heard Kisuke uttering the word 'practice', she figured that Kisuke was expecting her to surpass her current self.
And indeed it'd be thanks to this that Line would have a breakthrough with her overall Magic capabilities, surpassing even Riveria's manual control of Magic Power. And unknowingly to Kisuke and Line, the latter would have some insight regarding the 'Rejection' ability, forever changing the course of her future.
A few seconds later, a small green magic circle appeared on top of the wound on her stomach. After a minute, multiple magic circles already covered her full body, all aiming at her wounds, though most of them would fail and fizz out of existence before reappearing again.
However, each iteration of those magic circles were an improved version, signifying Line's improvement in realtime. 'Death really is the best training partner.', thought Kisuke as he stood up while carrying the cursed sword in one of his hands.
Facing Ais and Bete who both had stupefied expressions, Kisuke said, "Wallenstein-san, please look after Line-san for a moment. We don't want anything to disturb her while she's healing herself."
"...Where are you going?", asked Ais.
Kisuke thought for a moment before answering, "Err... to issue a complaint?"
"...C-complaint?"
Kisuke turned around and started walking away, "Yep. They did beat up my precious student after all, of course, I'm going to complain."
Ais still couldn't wrap her head around Kisuke's words as she watched him walking away until he reached his destination thirty meters away from them, where he faced the wall on his left side.
Kisuke started swinging around the cursed sword in his hand for a few minutes as if he was very bored.
"...What is he doing?", asked Bete after being healed a bit by an Elixir. He didn't dare to ask him directly, since he figured that he couldn't hold a candle against him after that one single exchange between them which immediately disabled him.
To that question, Ais could only shake her head.
After a few more minutes, Ais was about to ask him what he was planning to do, but he suddenly uttered to himself, "Finally~! You're here."
Immediately, Kisuke swung the cursed sword at the wall a few times before it suddenly collapsed into pieces, creating a large hole in it. The wall, which only Gareth was able to break when he used all his might, was instantly torn into pieces with just a few swings of a sword.
Stepping forward, Kisuke spoke with a jovial tone, "Excuse me~! I'd like to issue a complaint to those who smell like my student's blood! And, in fact, a solution for that~!"
From the hole, Bete and Ais heard the panicked but familiar voice of Valletta, "W-who are you!?"
"Kisuke Urahara, your everyday shopkeeper~!" A second later, Bete and Ais saw blood spurting from the hole with a few heads rolling out. They couldn't even utter a single word before they were decapitated.
AN: I'm really sorry about these delays. A lot of stuff (not good ones) is happening IRL, and they keep me very busy.
Thanks to that, the next chapters would be further delayed as I deal with these shit-tons of problems.
Editors:
28th00: I wonder, did he get the God too? That’d be nice.
Alexander: A second Inoe, huh? She’s somewhat similar to Inoe, who decided to stand up to accompany Ichigo in his life. Well, I guess this means that he earned the ‘healing cheat’ trophy.
Valletta Grede, a head executive of Evilus and currently a member of the Thanatos Familia, was in a light mood. Although she wasn't able to kill Finn, her hateful enemy since the time of the old Evilus, and the others escaped using their own monsters against her, she was able to relieve her stress on a left-behind member of the Loki Familia.
As of now, Valletta was roaming around the Knossos to check the integrity of the doors and walls after the beating it went through from the battle between them and the Loki Familia, when the wall on their right unbelievably collapsed and a young man with a big smile and Far Eastern attire went through it, "Excuse me~! I'd like to make a complaint to those who smell like my student's blood! And, in fact, a solution for that~!"
The sight of a strange man suddenly destroying an almost indestructible wall and coming in a casual manner, incredibly confused Valletta and her underlings, "W-who are you!?"
All of a sudden, the strange man suddenly disappeared in front of them while leaving his words, "Kisuke Urahara, your everyday shopkeeper~!"
Something warm then suddenly touched Valletta's cheeks. Upon checking it, she was shocked to see that it was blood, 'What...? Whose blood... is... this?' She finally realized that her underlings didn't have their heads attached to their necks anymore, "W...what?"
Feeling a threat from behind her, Valletta immediately turned around while putting her cursed sword across her body before she was uncontrollably launched away by a kick.
"Gaha!!!" Valletta landed on the wall beyond the hole, cracking its stone exterior. But before she could drop down, a hand grabbed her neck and pinned her against the wall, "Guuhhh!"
A few seconds later, her vision cleared and she saw the strange man, and inescapably stared at his grey eyes full of coldness, "Hiih!!!"
With a terrified expression, Valletta immediately started pleading while the hand on her neck also started tightening, "P...please spare... me!"
But the strange man's smile only grew wider, "No can do~! You played with my student so I'll have you disappear."
The sudden flood of dense killing intent made Valletta frenzied as she suddenly swung her cursed sword towards his neck. But her actions were inadvertently stopped. When she looked at her sword, Valletta saw two fingers pinching it without any effort.
An attack from a Level 5 like her was effortlessly stopped, "...M-monster...!"
Those were her last words as Kisuke snapped her neck and threw her lifeless body away.
After he was done with issuing his 'complaints', Kisuke returned to where Line was and saw Ais' dazed expression and Bete's astonished expression with a hint of fear in it.
Without any words, Kisuke picked up Line in a princess carry and started walking away. The two others didn't say anything and just let them walk past them as they disappeared through the darkness of the man-made dungeon.
"Say... Did you know about his strength?", asked Bete suddenly.
Ais only nodded at his question but that was more than enough for Bete.
'So this is what the old hag meant by not making them our enemy... Even Ottar couldn't make me that helpless.', thought Bete as he recalled Riveria's words that confused him, Finn, and Gareth back then, 'Just what are they?'
.
.
.
The moment Kisuke and Line appeared on Riveria and other's sights, they immediately ran towards them nervously. "How is she?", asked Riveria. It was then that she noticed multiple small magic circles placed on Line's wounds, 'This is?'
Guessing the question in her head, Kisuke spoke, "She's healing herself."
"T-this is Line's magic?", Riveria doubted her eyes, "But why?"
"If she can do it by herself, why not let her do it?", answered Kisuke as he walked past them.
"Where are you bringing her?"
"To my place. I need an assistant for a few of my projects.", answered Kisuke without turning around. But before he left completely he added, "I'll be talking to Loki-sama regarding this so you don't have to worry about it. And by the way, if you don't ramp up your efforts, she'll soon surpass you."
Remembering the magic circles on Line's body earlier, she thought, 'I know...'
As Kisuke left, the others from the Loki Familia asked, "Is that fine, Riveria-sama?" Since she didn't object to Kisuke's words, they'd remained quiet.
Riveria then turned back towards the entrance to Knossos as she felt Ais and Bete's presence coming towards them, "It's fine. She'll have a better time in his hands."
But as soon as she saw Bete's state and him being assisted by Ais to walk, Riveria asked, "Did he do it?"
In response, Bete just clicked his tongue and said, "You never told us how ridiculous that guy is."
"But I did warn you.", sighed Riveria.
Bete clicked his tongue again while others were substituting Ais in assisting him, "Couldn't he just clear this place all by himself?"
At those words, Riveria frowned deeply, "And then what? Letting him solve our problems for us and render everyone's efforts in vain? Are we that weak to depend on him?"
Bete's eyes widened as he understood Riveria's words, "Okay, enough... Don't start lecturing me now. I understand."
.
.
.
A few minutes later, within the Dian Cecht Familia's clinic, everyone who was wounded was being treated by one of the only few people who could dispel curses, Airmid Teasanare.
Within five meters of Airmid's barrier, the wounded Loki Familia members were cramped together to heal their wounds. "How is it?", asked Loki with a concerned expression.
Airmid didn't speak for a few moments as she focused on strengthening her magic, "They're fine. I've already removed the curse from their wounds and the usual treatment methods should now work."
Loki and the others from the Loki Familia who were still awake sighed in relief, "Thank goodness... Now we only have to worry about Line.", said Tiona, who was currently covered in bandages.
Tione, who was in the same state, replied, "Ais and Bete are already on their way..."
But Finn, Gareth, and Loki knew that it was probably too late with her facing an opponent like Valletta, but they didn't say anything to discourage them. 'Unless...', Loki's mind wandered to a certain man, 'But knowing him, he wouldn't make a move even if the whole world was in chaos, unless his group was involved. And to be fair, I'd also do the same.'
Shaking her head and deciding to leave it to Line's fortune, Loki looked towards her grievously injured children again and vowed to take revenge on whoever was behind that man-made dungeon. At that time, she noticed Airmid's troubled expression and asked, "What's wrong, Airmid-chan?"
"Ah... No... I'm just wondering about something.", she replied.
"What is it?", asked Loki curiously.
After some hesitation, Airmid asked, "Well... Did you use some sort of potion before coming here?"
Loki and the others became confused at her question and asked, "What do you mean?"
Airmid hesitated even more but chose to continue, "I mean, I'm just really amazed. They've already lost so much blood when you brought them to me and normally, they would have fallen into shock and died at that point."
"However, every single one of them managed to survive and it seemed that they even had some spare energy. To be completely honest, this is a miracle that I haven't seen before."
While others looked at each other in confusion, Loki understood what was going on. But before she could explain, someone beat it to her, "Ah, that's because their vitality is now much stronger since they already can move their Ki. Although they can't utilize it in battle yet, its effects on overall health and vitality are tremendous, especially to first-time users."
Everyone hurriedly faced the direction where the voice originated and saw the man who became famous and disappeared a week ago, "Kisuke Urahara!"
Meanwhile, Loki immediately requested, "Kisuke, just this one time! Please save Line! She's still in the man-made dungeon!"
"You don't have to worry about her, Loki-sama. I already got her and brought her to my place. I'm actually here to tell you that I'd like to take care of her for a while."
Editors:
28th00: Little did Loki know, Line counts as one his people. His student, specifically. Say what you want about Loki in Danmachi, but she genuinely loves her children. Might be why Hestia and Loki are best frenemies? They’re very similar to each other in that regard.
Alexander: There is this common point between them, which let them have some respect for each other. But I still think that it is simply because Hestia is giving her such good reactions. She’s in the same alley as Kisuke, after all.