Your Majesty, Dinner Is Ready. - Chapter 69

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 69 — C-Rank Dungeon: Sanctuary of Rest (2)
“These patients have already received all the critical healing they require, but since their conditions show no signs of improvement, you must exercise maximum caution.”
Elion, a priest, surveyed the bedridden patients while deliberately avoiding our gaze.
“I apologize, but there is no distinction between day and night here. All meals, rest, and sleep must be taken care of within this healing ward, and I would be grateful if you would oblige.”
“We’re supposed to sleep here too…?”
The harshness of these work conditions was striking enough to catch even Pendrick—Mr. Optimism himself—off guard.
The middle-aged priest continued nodding while keeping his eyes averted.
“We are desperately understaffed, so please forgive us. After five days of service, another volunteer team will arrive to relieve you.”
Elion bowed deeply at the waist.
“Until then, I’m afraid you must remain on duty in the healing ward.”
“…Well, we have no choice. It will be grueling, but at least it’ll be meaningful work!”
“Once you complete your service, I will bestow upon you a modest blessing.”
The clear condition for conquering this dungeon.
Not mere priestly modesty—this was genuinely a humble health improvement blessing.
Moreover, it was temporary, lasting only a week before fading.
– Five days of work is the clear condition? The reward seems a bit meager for the hardship…
“There’s nothing for it. You shouldn’t expect lavish rewards for volunteer work, should you?”
Pendrick, who didn’t even particularly revere Artaine, eagerly defended the Guardian Faith’s modest treatment.
Yet Astrímia still voiced her doubts in a quiet tone.
– Kar, isn’t the reward completely different from what you said before we entered the dungeon? What happened?
“I never lie about dungeon surveys.”
– …I see. I think I understand what you mean.
“As expected of you, Astrímia.”
I gave a thumbs up, and received a wry mental laugh in return.
“As I mentioned, this will be arduous work. But when you labor with joy in your heart, even hardship eventually becomes nothing more than a cherished memory.”
I offered these heartwarming words—the sort you’d find in a self-help book—and turned to look at Bartimir.
“Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I do!”
“A path of hardship lies brightly before us.”
“There are so many spiritual and bodily afflictions gathered in this place…!”
For us, this ward was no hospital—it was paradise.
“Dungeons are supposed to be riddled with hardship and adversity. What meaning would a safe, dull exploration have?”
“A truly righteous mindset.”
“I may lack common sense, but I’ve acquired solid knowledge as an explorer.”
“How admirable. Shall I pat your head?”
“Let’s not.”
My firm refusal was followed by Bartimir turning his whole body away in a sulk—and just then, Elion, who had disappeared somewhere briefly, returned.
He carried an enormous stack of documents, which he set on a desk near the entrance before pressing his hand to his chest with a slightly sunken expression.
“Here are the patient records and precautions you must study. You absolutely must memorize them. Just this month alone, more than ten people have died because they were caught off guard by symptoms of patients they hadn’t learned about.”
“…More than ten?”
“Precisely twelve, I’m ashamed to say. The previous volunteer teams who came before—both of them—met tragic ends…”
The decisive reason the Sanctuary of Rest received a C-Rank Classification despite only requiring five days of service.
If you failed to respond correctly when the various spiritual and bodily afflictions plaguing critical patients triggered anomalies, you could die.
After confirming everyone’s darkened expressions, Elion clasped his hands together and offered a prayer.
“Please, may Artaine illuminate your lives…”
For a benediction offered on behalf of those undertaking caregiving, it was far too solemn.
“I shall take my leave now. Please hold firm.”
Moments after the middle-aged priest departed with worry and guilt etched across his face,
Valentin stepped forward, his expression grown serious, and opened his mouth.
“As the priest said, you all heard it clearly. Twelve people died this month alone. All of them were members of the Harmony Faith who came to volunteer. If we drop our guard, we could meet the same fate.”
The Sanctuary of Rest.
The temporal setting: the era of the Holy War, when a massive extermination campaign was being waged against the Evil God’s cults, demons, and monster forces across the land.
The spatial setting: a facility established by a selfless Saint to heal all the sick and afflicted who flocked from across the entire continent.
“I will emphasize this once more: this dungeon holds far more mortal perils than any C-Rank Dungeon you have ever experienced.”
……
The team members’ faces grew taut with tension and dread.
What transformation must be occurring in my own expression as others observe it?
Competitive spirit and anticipation.
Or exhilaration and enthusiasm.
Whichever it was, my mindset was already determined.
“Since this volunteer service is under your leadership, might we impose on you for a word before we begin?”
I didn’t refuse. I opened my mouth at once.
“You must not relax your vigilance for even a moment. This healing sanctuary teems with lethal contagions—terrible plagues, spreading curses, self-aware poisons, and madness that spreads merely from meeting the gaze of its bearer.”
Death itself doesn’t frighten me much.
But I have no wish to die in some dull, unstimulating fashion—a death without meaning.
This Dungeon provides the perfect environment for precisely that sort of ordeal.
And so a smile rose to my lips.
“If you wish not to proceed with this service, speak up now. Elion will guide you out of the Temple. You need only remain until the clear condition is satisfied.”
As expected, not a single member voiced refusal.
I nodded briskly and surveyed the ward.
“Then shall we start with ventilation and sweeping the floors?”
***
Nursing is brutally taxing work.
You must care for patients who cannot sustain their own daily lives, tending to them day and night—a burden that ordinary resolve cannot easily bear.
Burning love, steadfast professional pride, reverence or faith—some pillar of devotion is needed to lighten the strain on body and spirit.
Without it, you risk the emotional catastrophe of coming to despise the very patients you serve.
“Everyone, move swiftly!”
For adventurers whose future aspirations held no place for “nurse,” the Sanctuary of Rest was nothing short of a nightmare dungeon.
“Lucius, patient 53 is in distress!”
“I’m coming!”
Lucius the Priest rushed to the patient Valentin had indicated and slowly rang the Black and White Bell with Olive Branch.
Ding.
A clear, bright chime sounded.
“Artein, you who watch over all the innocent, sustain this fragile bloom that writhes beneath undeserved cruelty with the shelter of your shield.”
Ahhhh.
As white radiance spread from the bell and descended, the patient who had been writhing in anguish with ragged cries gradually found peace returning to his face.
“…Rest easy for now.”
“Lucius, patient 199!”
“Understood!”
The duty of Priest Lucius.
To soothe and protect the minds and bodies of patients suffering from various afflictions.
Ding.
“Artein!”
With each toll of the bell, another patient found stability.
Though his Holy Power must surely be draining continuously, Lucius’s expression remained perpetually drowsy.
“Ilia! Patient 393!”
“On it.”
Holy Knight Ilia channeled Holy Power into the rounded sacred instrument in her hands.
– Artein watches over us! All fear, begone from here!
A bright hymn of praise echoed through the entire healing ward, drowning out screams and the sound of hands striking bedframes.
It was not merely acoustic in nature.
Pale waves of Artein’s essence swept gently through the air itself.
《The patients’ minds and bodies are deteriorating far more slowly. Even the Wise One, though it grates to hear, marvels at the efficiency!》
An exceptional hymn—one that even an evil spirit found worthy of attention.
Holy Knight Ilia’s role was to continuously employ the sacred musical instrument to slow the rate at which her patients’ health declined.
《No matter how I consider it, nursing is rather a harm to the patient. Why should they struggle in agony, clinging to life, when eternal rest would be so much preferable?》
From the evil spirit’s perspective, it was a rational argument.
I closed the window I’d left open for ventilation and shook my head.
“As long as everyone holds on, the Saint—that powerful priest—can heal everyone cleanly with a high-tier Secret Art. Though she’s continuously expending Holy Power to maintain the Temple’s defenses, so at best she can manage twenty people a month.”
And this single healing ward alone held a thousand patients, with other wards packed just as full.
The weight pressing down on each volunteer only grew heavier by the moment.
“Pendrick, patient 220! Bartimir, take 461! Kar, check on patient 33!”
“Understood!”
At Valentin’s command, Pendrick and Bartimir hurried off, and I dashed to check on my assigned patient.
“555, 302, 17, 920!”
The moment I administered appropriate treatment to a critical case, another patient showed signs of distress, and I was moving swiftly again.
This had been repeating for three hours now.
“Phew… this is getting a bit tough, isn’t it?”
– A bit? You look completely worn out!
“Astrímia, spare me the commentary. Just offer your encouragement instead.”
“That’s right!”
Me, Pendrick, Bartimir.
Our role as three was to respond with the greatest care whenever patients showed signs of distress.
In a way, it was the most critical duty we could be given.
If we failed to act quickly, the disease would spread to other patients whose immunity had plummeted—and we ourselves would be in danger.
‘…Already wearing thin?’
Work that exhausted both mind and body.
More tiring and heavier than expected.
But.
The sense of fulfillment overflowed more than any other good deed.
Honestly, I was deeply satisfied.
‘This is it. My calling.’
I felt as though I’d found my true vocation.
***
The nursing continued without pause.
“Kar, go to patient 888!”
The moment I’d calmed a seizure in a patient afflicted with a parasitic curse spawned from the Secret Art of a long-dead dark god, another emergency arose.
This time it was a wraith—a warrior who had never reached a high level in life, consumed by regret—possessing the body; applause and praise alone were enough to settle it.
“Well done—patient 221 is critical!”
Barely had one crisis ended before another erupted.
“I’m on it!”
Bartimir rushed toward the patient afflicted with the disease where living flesh rotted and crumbled, and gave the Devotee wrapped around his hand a gentle flick.
The sickness—a miasma that spread by mere touch—was absorbed directly into the bandage and vanished.
“How was it?”
“Well handled.”
“But this place is too dangerous!”
Bartimir clicked his tongue.
Though he was building toward a Calamity Collector build, he wasn’t some demon who went mad at the sight of disease and curse.
“Captain.”
Pendrick, humming softly and finding this difficult nursing strangely manageable, spoke to me.
“Have you ever worked at a healing house before? You’re practically a one-man army.”
“Would they ever hire a Socialite at such a place?”
“Ah, true enough. But how are you so skilled at this?”
“I simply know more than most.”
A thousand patients.
And a thousand different symptoms.
In the game, the Sanctuary of Rest was an infuriating Dungeon that presented patients’ pleas—hundred times in relentless succession—as multiple-choice questions about calamities of mind and body.
Choose even one wrong answer and you had to start from the beginning in this tedious exploration.
I was the first player to create a comprehensive guide to this Dungeon that everyone else dreaded.
《One day you’ll need to empty that excess knowledge from your head. Then you’ll have no choice but to depend on me!》
“How harsh.”
Relying on the Eye That Pierces Truth wasn’t a bad strategy, it’s true.
But if I lazily trusted only this and let my mind grow dull, my judgment and analysis would rust away, and later I’d suffer for it—which was precisely what made it so attractive.
“Kar, patient 447!”
While I was lost in thought for just a moment, another crisis erupted.
I locked eyes individually with the patient whose fingers were covered in grotesque eyeballs sprouting from the skin.
The side effect made my eyes throb so painfully I had to rub them briefly before pressing my back against the wall.
“Are you all right?”
Lucius, the Priest ringing the bell nearby, asked gently.
“Of course I am.”
“You look delighted by all this. I’m a bit embarrassed. When I first came for volunteer service, I was so miserable I almost gave up—all I could think about was how to make an excuse and rest.”
“My mood isn’t all sunshine either. One small mistake and everything falls apart.”
If even one of us failed to respond properly, all of us would be in jeopardy.
Especially these patients, their immunity at its nadir, would lose their lives in an instant, consumed by calamities of mind and body.
It felt like walking a tightrope over an abyss.
That’s what satisfaction meant to me.
“It’s grueling. That’s precisely why I find it compelling.”
When my body and mind trembled violently and I was battered to pieces, only then did I truly feel that I existed in this world.
Abnormal. Peculiar. Deviant.
Whatever eyes looked upon me, whatever words were used to name me—none of it mattered.
“I won’t change roles for you, no matter how much you plead.”
The Sanctuary of Rest pushed people to their absolute limits—both mentally and physically.
And that was precisely why.
‘True exploration’ could be savored in this supreme dungeon.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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