Chapter 123 - Truth
Once Yuki managed to chase away the robbers, he looked back at his frightened and fragile family. Of course, he had no right to call them that. After all, he was just a random kid who crashed their place and out of pity they let him stay. Even though these were Yuki's thought's, Marcell along with Elpis had thought of it differently.
"Hey Jack... did you call us your family back there?" Marcell asked.
Yuki didn't know what Marcell was talking about. Maybe it was because he was half asleep but Yuki didn't understand half of the stuff that came out of his mouth. However, after a few seconds of thought, Yuki remembered when he said those words. He had told the robbers ``''Why should I trust someone who was willing to harm my family?" which when he thought of it now sounded silly.
"Oh right I did. I'm sorry if it offended you. I didn't realize what was coming out of my mouth since I was so sleepy," Yuki apologized.
"No, don't apologize. Why would we be angry at the person who saved us? In fact, we're glad that you'd consider yourself as part of our family," said Marcell while Elpis nodded her head in agreement.
Marcell had forgotten about his leg injury. As such, he tried to get up to embrace Yuki however in doing so, he quickly fell back to the ground as he once again felt the sharp pain in his legs. Marcell had tried to hold back his tears from the sheer pain however his strategy to look strong wouldn't hold up much longer.
"Wait, I have something which can help you," said Yuki as he opened his inventory.
[Open inventory]
Yuki pulled out a full status recovery potion and poured it into Marcell's mouth as Marcell looked like he wouldn't be able to do it himself. Moments later, Marcell's wound closed as the bullet that was in his leg rusted then disintegrated. Soon after, Marcell was as good as new.
"Was that a full status recovery potion?" Marcell asked in a concerned tone.
"Yes?... is there anything wrong with that?" Yuki asked.
"How did you even come into possession of something like that- wait no. First of all, why would you give me something so expensive? I heard those things cost 500-1000 silver," said Marcell.
"What do you mean? They're relatively cheap. Plus, it was to close a wound which would eventually cause an infection if not treated immediately," said Yuki.
"Cheap? Are your from a family of nobles Jack? 500-1000 silver is not cheap. Well unless you're an active dungeon raider which with that you'd be risking your life but would earn a good amount of money from it. Although it still wouldn't make sense for you to have that kind of money laying around to spend at your leisure unless you cleared a dungeon until the halfway point. Since exp is divided into a group, unless you were in a really strong raid party which was willing to complete and redo a dungeon, you wouldn't have gotten to the halfway point. All that would leave would be the outside monsters which are mostly goblins which don't drop a large amount of silver. So there should be no possible way for you to have that kind of money lying around," Marcell said as he analyzed every possible option Yuki had.
Yuki had been cornered. He didn't have a way to escape the situation without exposing his real identity. Yuki stood still as he tried to come up with a lie which would be satisfactory enough for Marcell and Elpis to believe.
"Well you see-'' Yuki had begun to speak, however he was interrupted by Marcell.
"No more lies.. please. We're your family now," said Marcell.
"Does he really think my shell is going to crack with some emotional cliche sentence like that? Why do I care if I feel that I can trust them? I felt that way about Jobon and the others but look at where it's gotten me. I can allow myself to trust when I'm at a point where it wouldn't matter if I get betrayed, by that point, I'll have enough power to take on the entire world. Only then will I trust people," Yuki told himself.
"Although, I do need an alibi to get me out of this situation. I should make it emotional," Yuki said to himself.
"Okay, I'll tell you only a bit since I don't fully feel comfortable with telling you the entire story. All I ask of you is to keep this a secret," said Yuki.
Hearing this, both Marcell and Elpis nodded in agreement as they eagerly awaited to hear what Yuki had to say. By this point, their daughter had gone back to sleep in Marcell's arms.
"Here it goes then... The thing about my parents wasn't a lie. My mother had actually died and my father had left me. However, I wasn't planning on leaving the dungeon until I cleared it. So... I might have cleared it along with a second dungeon... by myself," said Yuki.
"Wait.. you're joking right? Is that even possible?" Marcell asked.
"I would think so since I did it. However it was no easy task, each battle lasted anywhere from 10 hours to almost 2 days. Sleep almost doesn't exist there. It's an endless war inside. The only reason I even cleared then was because I used a lot of my potions inside there to boost my stats. If I had gone in there with almost none of my potions with me, I would've surely died," Yuki explained.
"Do you ever plan on returning to the dungeons or have you retired from the raiding life?" Marcell asked.
"Not really. I wanted to continue on to the next dungeon but some stuff came up and I decided to take a break from constantly putting my life on the line and have a little break. Of course I would be willing to leave if that would be your desire," Yuki said with an innocent face which didn't have any lies hidden within it.
"Heaven's no, we want you to stay with us longer. What type of family would we be if we were to kick you out," Elpis stepped in which made Yuki smile.
"Looks like they're taking this family thing a bit too seriously," Yuki thought to himself.