Chương 70: (68) 2.21. A Ray of Hope

"I'm no healer, but that doesn't look good." Scule stood beside Shia's unmoving form, peering down at her pale face as Reginald let out a sad squeak and nudged the unconscious elf with his head. On top of whatever damage the radiation had already done to her body, it looked like Shia had landed hard on her head when the golems had launched them, and there was a small pool of blood already forming under her skull.

"Come on Shia, stay with us," Vin said, moving to place a hand on either side of her head and flinching as he remembered his stump once more. Shaking it off, he placed his remaining hand close to the wound, focusing on his magic." Renewal." For the first time since he'd begun practicing magic, Vin was surprised to feel an uncomfortable pressure on the outside of his mana pool, as if the world were trying to keep his spell from functioning.

Rather than flowing through the completed runic formation and activating all on its own, he found he actually had to focus and push his mana through the structure.

The result was his spell coming out severely weakened, and he wasn't able to use Runic Recalibration to adjust anything without risking the entire formation collapsing. Doing his best to fight through the ambient death mana, Vin managed to fire off his weakened Renewal after a few seconds of intense concentration. The life magic seemed particularly thin and fragile, but what he was able to emit still seeped into Shia's head and got to work.

It didn't do anything to fix her complexion, but it at least healed the crack in her skull and stopped the bleeding.

"We need to get her out of here now," Vin panted, wiping the sweat from his brow as he scooped the unconscious elf over his shoulder and stood up. The world swayed for a moment as his head began throbbing in pain, and he fought to keep the ever growing nausea down.

"Shia has the lowest vigor of all of us. If the radiation is affecting us this badly, there's no telling how much time she has left until it kills her." As if proving his point, Scule turned and finally lost his own breakfast, violently throwing up off to the side. Slowly, wiping his mouth, the petian groaned.

"I gotta say, this fragment kinda sucks," he chuckled weakly, giving Vin a shaky grin that did little to hide his growing fear.

"Don't worry, we're going to be fine," Vin said, hoping he sounded more sure than he felt.

"Reginald, are you able to scout ahead and make sure there aren't any more golems waiting for us? I hate asking you to put yourself in danger for us, but you're the healthiest one here and most likely to survive another surprise attack like that." Saluting with his tail, Reginald gently nuzzled against Scule before taking off. Scule shook his head as he watched the rat run off.

"Damn rat… Always trying to play the hero…"

"Come on," Vin said, leaning down and offering the shaky Rogue a hand. Not even able to muster the energy to complain about being humiliated, Scule accepted the help, allowing himself to be deposited into Vin's front pocket Reginald normally traveled in.

"So what's the plan?" Scule asked, his head poking out of the pocket as Vin snatched up Shia's fallen staff and began running.

"We need to get out of this fragment, but I don't think we'll be safe in the swamp like this," Vin admitted, running as fast as he was able while carrying Shia over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Even if all those creatures are dead and there are no monsters, based on what the elder told us from when her people tried venturing into the swamp I'd probably get sucked right into the wet ground carrying Shia like this." Getting trapped and drowning in swamp gunk was definitely pretty high up on his list of 'worst ways to die,' and even the thought of that nasty gunk Reginald had been covered in when they'd finally returned from the swamp sent a fresh wave of nausea through him that he had to fight down.

"I'm planning to try and make a beeline for the next fragment and hope it's relatively safe," he decided, knowing at least that plan didn't lead to certain, swampy death.

"It means more radiation exposure, but that won't kill us nearly as fast as drowning will."

"Why not head back to Sakis?" Alka asked, drifting along beside him as he ran. Alka had been unnaturally quiet since taking down the golems, and Vin couldn't help but notice the worry and shame written all over her ethereal face.

"At this point, we're actually closer to the next fragment," Vin explained, doing his best to shield part of Shia's body from the sun with his own as he ran. He didn't think that would actually do much when it came to radiation, but he couldn't help but try.

"Besides, you're forgetting I studied with their head mage. The stone villagers don't have any forms of healing magic."

"Shia's the only one that knows how to neutralize poison," Scule said, his face pale as he focused on not vomiting a second time with every step Vin took.

"My general antidotes aren't going to do anything against something like this. If she doesn't wake up…"

"Let's worry about that once we're safe," Vin said, not willing to entertain the idea that they were all going to die a slow and excruciating death from radiation poisoning. As he ran, his Resistance skill leveled up for a fourth time, and Vin wracked his brain for anything he could possibly remember regarding Project Ark's warnings about radiation. Other than the general symptoms, all he could recall was that if the symptoms were manifesting this quickly, they didn't have long before total body shut down.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. His own steadily growing headache certainly wasn't reassuring. Pushing his endurance to the limit, Vin chased Reginald in a straight line across the deadly fragment as they ran toward what he could only pray was safety. It was a good thing Reginald was running out ahead of them, because just as they were beginning to close in on the fragment border, the ground exploded a second time.

This time directly underneath the rat.

"Reginald!" Scule cried out as they lost sight of him in the cloud of dust and rocks. Vin paused, staring in shock at the height some of the rocks reached from the golem's surprise attack. If they'd been knocked up that high it was no wonder Shia and him had lost consciousness when they landed. Thankfully, Reginald proved his superiority over them once again.

Before the dust had even settled, the rat emerged from the cloud of rocks, shooting out the side and giving them a reassuring squeak as he kept running toward the fragment border.

"That's my boy! Take that you piles of rubble!" Scule shouted, wincing as he shook his fist at the three medium sized golems while Vin curved around them. Luckily for them, the golems seemed content taking pot shots at the fleeing rat rather than chasing them down, as Vin doubted his ability to outrun them with Shia slung over his shoulder.

Once they were past the golems, Vin realized they were finally close enough for the next fragment to become visible, and he nearly wept as he spotted what looked like a regular old forest instead of a sea of lava or some sort of spike filled wasteland. Putting on a burst of speed at the sight of salvation, Vin actually caught up to Reginald just as they crossed the border together, finally putting the flat plane of death behind them.

A quick glance back was all the confirmation Vin needed that the rock golems seemed uninterested in following them out of their strange flat biome, and he watched the golems slowly merge once more into the stone ground, reforming the destroyed landscape and returning it to its unnaturally flat state. Breathing heavily, Vin made sure Shia was still secure on his shoulder as he leaned against the gnarled wood of an old tree, glancing at the notification that popped up. Third ring fragment discovered!

1, 500 exp gained.

"Thank the gods," Scule said, scrambling out of Vin's pocket and jumping down to wrap the panting Reginald in a big hug.

"Don't scare me like that, you overgrown mouse!" Letting out an exhausted squeak, Reginald wrapped his tail around the petian, returning the hug. Vin smiled, watched the two of them for a moment before a shooting pain in his head reminded him of their impending demise. Carefully laying Shia down on the forest floor, Vin took a deep breath and held his hand over her head once more.

"Renewal." This time the magic flowed from his core as easily as always, and he let out a sigh of relief as the dense life magic swept through Shia's head. The elf's eyes flickered briefly, and Shia let out a pained groan before turning her head and throwing up what little was left in her stomach.

"Shia!" Vin said, keeping up the dense flow of life magic even as he felt his mana quickly draining.

"Can you cast Neutralize Poison on yourself? We don't have a lot of time!"

"Won't… work…" The elf coughed, her head slowly shaking from side to side as she scrunched her eyes closed.

"Not… strong enough."

"Not strong enough?" Alka repeated as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Then what the hell do we do?" She stared at Vin, almost like she was expecting him to have some sort of back up plan.

"I… I don't know," he admitted, dread slowly creeping up within him as his one and only plan quickly fell apart. If Neutralize Poison wasn't enough to save them… Was this the end? Shia's sudden coughing fit snapped him out of his downward spiral before it could even begin, and he stopped shooting life magic into her long enough to give her a swig from his waterskin. Nodding her thanks, Shia raised a shaky hand, pointing off into the woods.

"Four miles… That way… Settlement… Help us…"

"What settlement? How can you know that? Shia!" Vin tried to get answers from the wavering elf, but before she could tell him anything more, she lost consciousness once again. Vin stared at the unmoving elf, his heart stopping for a moment before he saw her chest rise once more. At the very least, she was still breathing.

"Well, that was ominous as all hell," Scule said, one hand on Reginald's side and the other pressed against his temple as he squinted up at him.

"Unless you have any better ideas, I guess we're listening to the delirious elf then, eh?"

"She is a Druid, and this is a forest," Alka pointed out, already back to scanning the forest for dangers now that they had some semblance of a plan once more.

"It's not like you have any better ideas, right?"

"Other than dumping the rest of my mana into Renewal and praying for the best, no, I don't." Vin wracked his brain, trying to come up with some sort of solution. In the end, nothing he could think of could save them. The only idea he could come up with was returning to Erik. And while he was pretty certain the dryad would have the magic needed to save them, they'd probably all be dead long before they managed to make it all the way back to the Sacred Forest.

Running back through four different fragments was a little harder than driving yourself to a hospital.

"Right, we pray Shia isn't just having a fever dream and that she somehow knows where we can find people," Vin decided, scooping the elf up once more and hefting her onto his shoulder.

"Alka, keep your eyes peeled for monsters. We've already burned through both uses of Human Vessel today, and I don't fancy our chances of surviving any more surprise attacks in our current condition."

"No kidding, I'm pretty sure a toddler with a spoon could take you out right now," Alka said, forcing a laugh that did little to hide how worried she looked.

"Scule-" Vin paused, focusing on keeping his breakfast down as a powerful surge of nausea swept through him. Grimacing, he forced his body to relax, and managed to keep himself from vomiting, if only just.

"... this goes without saying, but stick with Reginald. Shout if you see anything."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Scule said, slowly getting into Reginald's saddle and rubbing the rat's head.

"Don't worry buddy, we're all going to be okay." Trying not to focus on the concerned squeak, Vin took in another deep breath, angling himself toward Shia's indicated direction and staring into the unknown forest as he began jogging. With hours at most before the radiation killed them, he could only pray they were making the right choice.