"Kurt, you're fired. A small fry with no attack skills is just dead weight."
The lowest floor of the dungeon. In a rocky cavern thick with miasma, the Hero Ares pointed at me and laughed.
"Huh...?"
The leather pouch packed with medicine bottles was knocked from my hands. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the cave.
A greenish liquid spread at my feet. The antitoxin potions I had spent three days brewing seeped into the hollows of the rock and vanished.
"Don't get cocky, pack mule. We're S-rank. We can clear this place easily without you."
My companions wore thin smirks. Gillen the tank, Marie the mage—not one of them tried to stop him. If anything, they looked relieved.
I am Kurt Ahrens. Twenty-two years old. This party's [Apothecary].
I can't use a sword or magic. But my medicine works better than anyone's. It closes wounds, purges poison, drains away fatigue. For three years, that was how I had kept these men alive.
"Ares. Listen to me. The miasma here isn't normal," I said, as calmly as I could, picking up the broken bottles.
"It's the Bonemelt Miasma. No taste, no smell, and you don't feel a thing when you breathe it in. That's exactly what makes it dangerous. It builds up slowly in the core of your body before you even notice. At least take the antitoxin potions. Just one bottle. If you drink it, it'll slow the buildup."
"Shut up."
He kicked me away. My back slammed into the cold rock, and the breath left my lungs.
"The stuff you brew is just a crutch. Anyone who leans on a crutch is third-rate. A real hero doesn't need medicine."
Ares spat and looked down at me.
"Got it? Then stay here and die alone, pack mule."
My companions' footsteps faded away. The light of their torches disappeared toward the great hall deeper inside.
I was left alone in the dark.
I gathered the shards of the broken medicine bottles one by one. The glass cut my fingertips, and red blood dripped onto the rock.
But I felt no pain.
Three years. For three years, I had stitched their wounds, drawn out their poisons, and kept them alive. At every camp, I cut into my sleep to grind herbs, and brewed medicine through the night.
The battle at the poison swamp where Ares nearly died, the cliff collapse that crushed Gillen's organs—my medicine had saved them every time. Behind all the conquests that got them hailed as heroes, I had been the one holding them up.
And this was my reward.
...Fine.
I stood up and brushed the sand off my clothes. Strangely, no anger welled up in me. All I had was a quiet certainty.
The Bonemelt Miasma that lurks on this lowest floor. It isn't a fast-acting poison. It accumulates in the body slowly, over several days.
And then one day, the instant the buildup passes its limit—as if a dam has burst, every bone in the body begins to melt from the inside.
After that, you won't last half a day. You can't stand, your joints crumble, and all you can do is scream. That kind of hell.
What had been preventing it was my antitoxin potion, which I had secretly mixed into their canteens every morning. But now that was gone too.
And only one person in this world can make the medicine to lift that curse.
Me.
A secret formula I had finally perfected after deciphering the old texts of the Apothecaries' Guild and mixing it hundreds upon hundreds of times. Those men had called it a "crutch" and kicked it away.
I turned back the way I had come. My steps toward the exit felt strangely light.
From the great hall behind me came the triumphant laughter of Ares and the others.
—Go ahead. Laugh while you still can.
In a few days, that laughter will turn to screams. I can already see it.
"By the time you notice, it'll already be too late."
I didn't look back as I left the dungeon.