Only I Am A Reader

A few streets away from the Blacksmith District…

"Here, it should completely heal within a month."

Sitting in a room filled with an herbal aroma, an elderly man firmly tied the ends of the white fabric covering the wrist of the man sitting opposite to him.

"Ah, thank you, doctor Kane! The voices yesterday freaked out my youngest. If I didn't react in time to catch that heavy box he dropped, my hand wouldn't have been the only broken thing you would have to fix today…"

Scratching his head with his free hand, the middle-aged man awkwardly smiled at the elderly doctor.

"By the way, do you happen to know the cause of those screams by any chance?"

"Cough, I heard quite a bit from the words of my patients, but none of them make sense. Most of them made up some stories about great swordsmen having a legendary battle, but those ghastly screams that resounded from the forest were definitely something more than that."

The elderly doctor let out a small cough as a hint of fear showed on his face. Most of the people in town were curious about what happened just like the man in front of him, himself included, but no one had the guts to go check it out.

"Indeed, it sounded like a hellhole had opened out of nowhere. Do you think there are ghosts in the forest?"

"What? Even if I'm old, I'm not senile enough to discuss this foolery with you! I would rather believe the poison king had passed by the town yesterday rather than believe in ghosts!"

As the pair started arguing loudly, their words unknowingly slipped into the ears of someone sleeping very close by, causing an expression of discomfort to cover his face.

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"Huh?"

The boy's eyelids opened up, uncovering different colors underneath them, still hazy from sleep.

'This is… where?'

Looking at the unfamiliar ceiling, Leo didn't bother questioning whether he was alive or not as most novel characters did. Instead, he wondered where he was.

Although his memories were still hazy, Leo couldn't help but feel ironic about having fallen into such a cliche situation…

"Oh, you are finally awake?"

Hearing a familiar voice, Leo felt relieved deep inside. Thankfully, he didn't get to test what would happen if he died inside the novel.

"Did their discussion wake you up? It's not like you can blame them since you were the cause of it. You did make a mess there."

Finally entering Leo's line of vision, Crane smiled as he brought his chair closer to Leo's bed.

'I let it out...'

Mostly remembering what happened before he lost his consciousness, Leo bitterly smiled at Crane in return.

As a special reader, Leo enjoyed the privilege of obtaining various skills and abilities, but that wasn't the extent of what he obtained…

Skills and abilities were simply the useful parts of what he obtained, the rest were either useless or harmful, what Leo exhibited that night was one of the things that stood on the border of both. It was 'emotions'.

Compared to skills that were usually unique to the book or a certain number of books, emotions were present in every book, with every book he read, Leo gained 'emotions' that he wasn't the source of.

As these 'emotions' assimilated into his own, they became part of him. Unfortunately, the stronger his emotions became, the more of a problem they caused.

Having noticed this problem early, Leo mentally locked the stack of emotions with the help of mental training, keeping it under suppression so that it wouldn't affect his 'normal' life. However…

Although everything could have been said to be barely under his control yesterday, the variant that came in the form of the Fanged Wolves' team leader proved too much of a hurdle. In the end, he could no longer suppress one of these 'emotions' due to his own going out of control.

'It overflowed.'

As he focused on killing his enemy to survive, he couldn't suppress his killing intent, allowing it to overtake him for a small window of time.

Despite the fact that everything was already back in control, Leo felt apprehensive about the incident. Was it a good thing? Or a bad one? He felt lost.

"Ah, I'm sorr-"

After coming out of his trance, Leo looked at Crane in surprise as he blurted out- or at least tried to blurt out an apology before being stopped by Crane.

"It's okay, there is no need to apologize. I know I said I wouldn't involve myself, but I was terribly wrong. I feel ashamed having let a child like you go through this experience."

Staring at Crane in surprise, Leo felt slightly shocked by his words. If there was one thing that the novel had emphasized about Crane, then it was nothing other than his unwillingness to get mixed into the problems of others. To Leo, this change in Crane's personality felt even more shocking than his visual change.

"Besides, wasn't I the one who helped you make those… 'machines'? It's only right that I take them away myself. Though I do have to say, you really went wild with that 'herbal essence'..."

"Haha, it wasn't like I had much of a choice."

Although he had concluded quite a bit about how the aftermath was dealt with from Crane's words, Leo still wanted to make sure nothing unpleasant had happened.

"Ugh…"

However, as he tried to sit up, the pain that had subsided spread out from the wound on his abdomen.

"Take it easy, you lost quite a bit of blood there. We can leave the talking for later, just rest for now. Not that I think you will get to rest anyway."

Leaving his words behind, Crane didn't even wait for Leo to answer before he left through the door, Leaving Leo speechless.

'I guess this is the town's 'Hospital'...'

Looking around instead, Leo discovered it was the simple medical facility of the town. Although it was his first time here as both Leo and Arthur, Arthur had visited this place a lot as a child along with his 'Brother'.

Despite the lack of medicinal developments, Leo looked at the bandages that covered his abdomen with satisfaction. Although the doctor was a little noisy, his medical skills were acceptable. Just enough pressure was applied to the wound to stop the bleeding.

'Right!'

Remembering hearing faint words before he lost consciousness, Leo stopped examining his wound as he called out for the personal book!

[ Plot change confirmed. Impossible event occurrence has been detected. ]

[ The… ]

However, before he even managed to glance at the new words that were inscribed into the book, 'something' crashed into the 'hospital' room.

"Arthur!"

It was then that Leo got to understand the meaning of Crane's words....