“Now that things are a little more stable and controlled, care to share what happened to you while I check the rest of your injuries? Unless there’s something very wrong with one of them, I shouldn’t have to concentrate as hard on them as I had with his,” I nodded towards the still-unconscious form on the ground.
“Why don’t you explain who you are and why you are here?” the guy who I had moved past to enter their shelter asked, still suspicious of me despite my earlier actions. Or maybe because of them, or because I had just demonstrated abilities he couldn’t hope to match.
“If you like,” I shrugged before turning to the guy with the broken arm. Can I check on your arm while I talk? I don’t want to waste time.”
The guy’s eyes flickered from Ned to the guy at the entrance and back before returning to me, confusion and pain written all over his face.
“Sure, I guess,” he accepted, though without any enthusiasm. A part of me wanted to return his attitude to the fullest; if he didn’t want my help, I didn’t need to heal him to the best of my ability; I could just put in the least amount of effort necessary to make it so he wouldn’t die before getting back to their farm and my quest would complete just the same. Doing so would mean this guy could likely never use his arm again, but that was hardly my problem, was it?
Placing a hand on his flesh, I sent my senses into his body, quickly finding what ailed him and nodding to myself. His arm was broken, with a few shards piercing the flesh, one of them incredibly close to one of the major blood vessels, close enough that any somewhat serious impact could be enough to have the shard pierce the vessel and cause a fatal complication. Without surgery or magical healing, the arm would never fully heal, not with the way the shards had splintered off the bone.
At the same time, as I was observing all that, I was also talking quietly, explaining that I was a legacy who didn’t want to stick around a single point but wanted to wander and explore, just as I had on Mundus.
That, in turn, caused Ned to chuckle with amusement and elaborate on my exploits on Mundus. It was not that he knew about all of them; he had apparently just seen a few of the videos and read some of the drama on the forum. Still, what little he had heard was enough to paint me as a mixture between an adventurer driven by wanderlust and a bloodthirsty monster, out to devour the world, a description not suited to make the guy near the entrance any calmer. Nor, for that matter, the one I was still working on, allowing me to observe the physiological changes caused by his mental state, which was fascinating in its own right. Subtle changes in the blood’s chemical composition as various hormones were released, his pulse jumping as his heart started to beat faster, his blood pressure going up, it was quite obvious that his body was readying itself for action, be it fight or flight. In turn, I became curious if I would be able to reverse those changes, allowing me to essentially calm him or at least remove the state of readiness his body was in.
A few subtle nudges and his heartbeat slowed back down while his blood pressure returned to the original level, which, in turn, caused the chemical balance in his blood to shift as well, allowing me to observe that part of the process, too, something I took careful note of. This was an incredibly interesting observation and I wanted to study it for the future, as it might become a powerful tool to manipulate biological systems, either to their advantage or to their detriment. Maybe it was possible to make somebody more reckless or to drive them into a literal berserker frenzy, especially if I combined these observations with those I had made near Jademoon Tower, with the runic empowerment I used on a few people with Lia’s help.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“How can you be so calm around her?!” the guy near the entrance asked, his voice filled with anger. By now, that guy had been introduced as Jacob, while the one I was working on was named Lars. Last and currently least, the guy who was still passed out was named Geralt.
“For one, you need to remember that we all thought Road to Purgatory was a game, not an actual world,” I spoke, noticing how the earlier indicators of stress and fear came back, making me wonder if I should renew my efforts.
“It turned out to be a lot more real than we thought, but nobody knew. Well, at least nobody here and while some might have felt that something was off, that the world was too realistic or something like that, I don’t think anyone even suggested we were essentially visiting an alien world; that would be just insane, wouldn’t it?” I asked, just a little bit annoyed, though I wasn’t completely certain about the cause of my annoyance. Was it due to the accusations, or was it something lingering from my ignorance in regards to the nature of Road to Purgatory and Mundus, which might have contributed to the decisions that ultimately got Sigmir killed?
“Why am I so calm about all this?” Lars asked, his body trying to change the chemical balance in his blood so it was ready to fight or flee, but with my influence, that didn’t work, which, in turn, made his body work even harder to ready itself. I quickly realised that this was essentially an escalating spiral, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. The only sensible option I could see was to lessen my efforts and let his body go into a panic attack, one he would hopefully recover from.
Moments later, after I reduced my efforts to the point that his body was deeply in the grips of a panic attack, he shook me off, removing the last of my efforts with the loss of physical contact, causing the hormones his body had released to take full effect, sending him into a fairly vicious frenzy. Realising that he was no longer coherent, I moved back and out of the way, ready to dodge or defend myself, but Lars’ eyes locked onto Jacob as the biggest threat. Granted, Jacob was the only one standing, and he was blocking the exit, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. However, that Lars would charge at him with reckless abandon was a surprise.
As was his brilliant idea to try hitting him with the broken arm, that couldn’t end in anything but tears.
Two frantic strikes later, that was exactly what happened, though the ending part was mostly because I used Mind Magic to render Lars unconscious to end this insanity. Curiously, one of the timers in my quest suddenly jumped from some fifteen hours to a mere ninety seconds, making it obvious that something was seriously wrong. This is where the tears came in, namely, a fairly large tear in the vein I had noticed earlier, courtesy of the bone fragment.
“Crud,” I softly cursed and stepped past Jacob, who tried to figure out just what had happened. “His idiocy managed to tear a major blood vessel; he’s got less than a minute until he bleeds out,” I explained as I started to work on Lars, grumbling under my breath. It was a good thing that I was a Blood Mage; otherwise, the fool might have been beyond help, even with Divine Magic. That sort of healing was a lot more generalised and focused on the major damage first before working its way down. In this case, that could easily mean that the broken bone was fixed, but the vein continued to leak, causing massive trouble in the long run. Luckily, I could fix the problem, as shown by the timer in my quest, but when I did, I noticed something else.
Two of those timers were showing the same numbers, indicating that something bad would happen in fifteen hours, but how the system could know that, I had no idea. Regardless of that, however, I needed to focus on the other timers, still counting down with less than fifteen hours on the clock, so I really should make sure that Ned and Geralt were on the mend and wouldn’t die from some unforeseen and troublesome complication. Well, I should also make sure that Jacob was alright, but given that the guy was standing and arguing, I wasn’t too worried about him.
“Now, you’ve got some idea about me and what I do,” I told them after making sure Lars was in a reasonably comfortable position. “Care to share how you gentlemen managed to get into this particular mess?”
