"This quest. The rewards. If I can bring back a dozen leveled fighters with rare skills and good titles, it will change the equation."

Reidar understood. Seraphine wasn't here to help strangers. She was here to save her people.

<I can't blame her for that.> Though Reidar wanted to ask something else of her. Creamont… It was where his parents lived.

"What about the other groups?" Lena asked. "The ones that aren't the Spriggans or War Hounds?"

"The Ember Circle controls the eastern district," Seraphine said. "They're neutral. Traders, mostly. They try to stay out of the fighting. Then there's the Iron Keep in the south. Military types. Disciplined. They are like the War Hounds, but less monstrous, and they can be reasoned with."

She paused. "There are others. Creamont's big enough to hide dozens of small groups. But those are the ones that matter."

Reidar's thoughts turned to his parents. "Do you know everyone in your group?"

Seraphine raised an eyebrow. "Most of them. Why?"

"I'm looking for my family," Reidar said. "My parents. Judy Elmar and Matthias Miller. They live in Creamont. Or they did, before the apocalypse."

Seraphine's expression shifted.

"Miller," she said. "I knew you looked familiar."

Reidar's heart stopped. "You know them?"

"I do," Seraphine said. "You have your father's eyes. And your mother's jawline."

<They're alive. They have to be alive. She wouldn't recognize me otherwise.>

"How are they?" Reidar asked.

Seraphine's face went grim, which made Reidar feel his stomach drop. "What happened?"

Lena's hand landed on his shoulder.

"Your parents are with us," Seraphine said. "Both of them. I must say, your father is an incredible person and a great doctor."

"Your words make me think something is not ok," Reidar said.

She nodded. "While I can talk about your father, I can't say much about your mother… because… because she is in a coma."

The weight of the world fell on Reidar's shoulders.

"A coma? What? What do you mean? What happened?"

"Based on what Matthias said, it happened right at the start of the apocalypse." She paused. "When everything started, they were at home, and… their house collapsed. Your parents got out fast enough to have their lives spared, but a stray rock hit your mother in the head."

Reidar's vision narrowed. The camp, the fire, the other survivors. All of it faded into background noise.

"How did she survive then?" Lena's voice was louder than she had intended. Several nearby survivors turned to look. "Surviving on your own in a coma is not easy."

"It isn't," Seraphine said. Her tone was steady, but her eyes held sympathy.

She turned to Reidar. "Based on what your father said, he brought her to the hospital. Of course, it was overrun by monsters, and… he had to carve his way there while dragging your mother. It wasn't easy…"

She paused. "He failed to attach her to anything requiring electricity, since, you know, they don't work anymore. But he saved her…" She paused.

"It was also thanks to the fact that whatever brain injury your mother got didn't affect her ability to breathe alone. That meant that most of your father had to get was equipment to feed and keep her clean."

She paused again. "The problem was that he was grievously wounded. Since he didn't have healing spells back then, he had to chop off his right foot."

Reidar had no words to say. His hands clenched into fists. He didn't hear Seraphine's last words. Only grim thoughts swam in his mind.

"But they are ok now, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Seraphine sighed. "Your mother is in the infirmary at our base, constantly monitored by our people and the other healers. They have to leave on rotation, though, since they still need to gain levels, and as the fights gets worse, also their healings skills needs to get better."

She paused. "You see… it's not like mending a broken bone or closing a cut wound is hard. That is the basic a healer can do." She looked at the ground.

"No, it's the skills other monsters use that are a problem. Normal wounds can be mended thanks to basic skills, but poisons? Afflictions? That is another kind of ordeal. The stronger the monster gets, the harder it is to heal those wounds."

"But if his mother got a brain injury, then shouldn't a basic healing spell work?"

"No," Seraphine said. "Broken bones and cuts… Yes… they can be healed… but diseases, deep and complicated injuries are something else. That's not the only problem. If a basic healing spell was enough, your father would have regrown his foot already, but he didn't, and that's because there is a limit of time in which you can use a healing spell, and there are also limits about what they can do."

Reidar's mind raced, trying to grasp the medical logic of this new world. "A time limit? What does that mean?"

Seraphine leaned forward, the firelight catching the seriousness in her eyes. "Think of a healing spell like stitching a wound. If you stitch it right away, it heals cleanly. But if you wait days, weeks… the body has already started healing wrong. The spell can't undo that; it just reinforces what's there. A fresh amputation? A spell will encourage reattaching. But Matthias's foot had been lost and healed over months ago. The spell sees a finished stump, not an open wound. It stabilizes it and prevents infection, but it can't rebuild what the body has already lost."

She gestured vaguely toward her head. "A brain injury is worse. The damage is immediate; the cells die fast. A basic spell might stop bleeding and reduce swelling, but it can't resurrect dead tissue or rebuild complex neural pathways. It's like trying to fix a shattered crystal vase with glue. You can hold the pieces together, but you can't make it whole again. For that, you'd need a far more powerful, specialized skill. Something we don't have."

It made a terrible kind of sense. His mother wasn't just wounded; part of her was gone, beyond the reach of the simple magic that had become their new reality.

"That's why your father is focusing on improving his healing skills…"

She looked at Lena, Jake, and Reidar. "As you might have noticed, once you reach level 100 you get access to new perk points, ones that are heavily skewed toward improving what you are trying to do."

She looked at Reidar. "I bet in your case it would be to improve your summoned creatures. In my case, it all revolves around stealth and archery, and in your father's case, it revolves around healing. Don't ask me what specific kind of healing, but of course it has to do with brain injuries."

Reidar nodded.

"That… forgive me if I say this… also explains why they didn't come to find you."

That was something Reidar had had in mind for quite some time. His parents were old, but not that old; they were in their sixties, meaning they could have left Creamont to go find him.

After all, Port Seren and Creamont weren't fat before the apocalypse, and he was already mid-journey. It would have made sense for them to go look for him, but they didn't.

That was the main reason he feared they were dead. It looked like he was luckily wrong, but unfortunately, they weren't in the situation he hoped them to be.

<If only I could find a way to stop those fucking flying monsters from attacking.> But without a vendor, that was unlikely to happen unless he got enough proficiency in Summon Feral Pack, and that needed time.

"It's not your fault," Lena said. "This happened right at the start of the apocalypse, when you were still struggling in the forest."

Her words didn't help. Guilt settled in his chest like a stone.

Seraphine watched him. "I'm sorry. I know this isn't what you wanted to hear."

"It's fine," Reidar said.

"No, it's not," Seraphine said. "But it's the truth. And you deserve to know."

Lena squeezed his shoulder again. Reidar glanced at her. Her expression was calm, but her eyes held understanding.

"What's the situation with the War Hounds?" Reidar asked.

"We are in a stalemate I hope to break after this quest," Seraphine said. "We're evenly matched. They have more numbers now. But we have loyalty, and we have discipline. Neither side can land a decisive blow."

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