Chương 11: (11) B1 C11: The Girl

As the woman's blood flowed through my body, the hollowness within me vanished. The strength that I'd lost before the battle returned to me, now flooding into my body with an eagerness I'd never felt before. I closed my eyes, my concentration entirely focused on the sensation of warmth sliding along my tongue. My hands clutched at the woman's shoulders with a white-knuckled grip, though the effort wasn't needed on my part, as she'd already passed on.

Then, once I felt the last remnants of her vitality pool into me, I dropped her corpse onto the ground. Her shoulders slammed unceremoniously into the earth with a heavy thud. I wiped my wrist against my chin, coating my hand in a blanket of blood as I did so, before turning my attention to the impending notification blinking at the edges of my vision. +1, 500 BP (Level 15 Human Rogue) I smiled in glee as my eyes stared at the truly gargantuan number hovering before me.

I'd never killed anything with this much BP, yet this woman wasn't even that strong. Considering her capabilities, it was very likely that I'd be able to find others with just as much vitality, if not more, within the coming days. Interestingly enough, Humans and other sentient races weren't organized into the monster system that the rabbits and myself were based around.

Instead, they were organized into the familiar leveling system I was used to, and instead of a rank and a race, their 'classification' was organized by their level, followed by their race, and then by their class. I hadn't even fully received the BP I was supposed to be given. 1, 500 was my current bite capacity, so I might've received even more if I'd simply had a higher thirst attribute. I leaned back, the smile upon my face becoming even wider as the excitement pulsing through my veins continued to grow.

That was more than enough BP to level up multiple times in one go. Absolutely incredible. The sound of a distressed cough tore my attention away from the floating panel in front of me. I closed it, turning my attention toward the girl only a few feet away from me, and quickly moved closer to inspect her injuries. Most of her body was covered in her own blood, all the way up from her chest to her knees, yet the bullet wound in her abdomen wasn't nearly as large as it was only a few minutes ago.

Her breathing was ragged, her body pale and sick, and her skin covered in sweat, yet the girl's expression wasn't as pained as I'd expected. She was healing far quicker than what I used to consider physically possible, but she wasn't healing nearly as fast as she needed to. I was no doctor, yet I had the strange feeling that she was only going to be able to recover once the wound in her stomach was closed—and quickly.

I didn't have access to sewing needles, as if I knew how to stitch a wound closed in the first place, so I quickly turned to look at the fires that had encircled us over the last few minutes, as well as the few bolts scattered across the ground around me. If I were to heat one of them up and press it against her wound—no, that was foolish. It would've allowed me to close the bullet hole, but it wouldn't solve the internal bleeding or the extensive tissue damage that would follow.

Cauterization would do more harm than good, but staying near the flames also wouldn't end well, so instead of worrying about helping the girl heal, I crouched closer to her before lifting her into my arms. Then, I turned my gaze to the fires as I frantically searched for an exit. With the wall of fire surrounding us, I found little I considered a safe passageway, yet the growing flames hadn't blocked off all exits. Not yet.

To my north, nestled between the carnage surrounding it, was a small path free of the flames closing in. The path was thin and dangerous, yet much safer than the alternative of jumping directly through the fire. I held the girl tight, hoping that she wasn't going to bleed out before I could get her help, and charged. As my feet stomped into the narrow passage, the fires at my sides began to tickle my skin.

My face dropped as I felt the overwhelming sensation of pain spread through my body as, for the first time in my new life, the sensation of burning agony slammed into me with the force of a moving locomotive. I lost my footing, nearly tripping forward as the sensation threw me completely off of my momentum. The edges of my skin cried out, each cell begging for relief from the heat as panic flooded my senses. Ow. Ow. Ow. What the fuck? Why am I being hurt? How the fuck am I being hurt?

The fires didn't abate simply because I'd lost my focus, and as they closed in quicker, I quickly pulled myself back up to my feet as I tried my best to concentrate.

"Oh, god," I mumbled to myself. I closed my eyes and began to push the pain out from the center of my mind. It was almost impossible to think of anything other than the growing agony, especially as the fires continued to eat away at my legs, yet the damage hadn't yet reached my muscles and tendons. I looked down at myself. Everything from my knees to my toes had turned bubbly and orange, with pustules popping out near my ankles, yet my legs were still fully functional. So I'm not completely immune to pain.

Would've been nice to fucking know. Was this some sort of weakness that tied into Soulless, in some sort of weird roundabout way? You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. I took a deep breath, then immediately regretted that action as smoke quickly filled my lungs. The smoke poked at the inner linings of my body, almost like a thousand toothpicks had found purchase within my flesh. I grunted, then returned my focus to the path in front of me.

I took a step forward while ignoring the stinging pain spiking through my body. The soles of my feet were on fire—both literally and figuratively—but with every step I took, I found myself ignoring the pain more and more. As I slowly made my way through the open path, I felt the girl in my arms become lighter. My feet slammed into the earth without fear, easily crossing the distance between the carnage and the surrounding forest nearby, and soon I found myself outside of the blaze.

I coughed, expelling the rotten air in my lungs, as I took a look around me. My legs were smoking and screaming at me, yet the fires tickling my skin were long gone. I took one last look at the wreckage behind me, my attention focused on the distance between us, as I quickly healed my legs with a small dose of BP. The pain disappeared, alongside just a dozen of my Blood Points, and my legs returned to the flawless complexion they sported only moments ago.

The damage had looked bad, but the burns themselves were hardly something to worry about. Then, once I knew I was safe from danger, I returned my attention to the girl in my arms. I set her down upon the dirt to look at her wounds. She was still breathing, but only just barely, and her wound wasn't any closer to being healed. With cauterization and stitches off the table, I really only had one way to help the girl.

It wasn't guaranteed to work, considering the simplicity of it, but doing something was better than nothing.

"Fuck. Okay, okay, let's hope this works," I whispered to myself. Then, I put my palms against her stomach and pressed down as hard as I could. With the pressure against her abdomen preventing the blood flow from escaping her body, I was hoping to give her natural regeneration the chance it needed to pick up the pace. My Malice attribute was currently at 45, and I was hoping that would give me the physical strength I needed to provide the sort of pressure needed to keep a bullet wound from getting worse.

I turned to look at the girl's face. Her brows were furrowed in pain and her lips were quivering in fear. Perhaps I was wrong, after all. Was cauterization actually a good option? I still had time to go back and grab something hot. Maybe if I moved fast enough— The girl coughed, her entire body shaking as she did so, before she let out a small sigh of relief. Her face began to relax, just slightly, and I felt the wound against my palm slowly knit itself closed.

Her eyelids fluttered open for a moment, a haze of confusion on her face, as she briefly turned to look at me. Her lips moved and a quiet whisper reached my ears, though her voice was too quiet to form words. All I knew was that my method was working. The girl was going to live, so I continued to press against her abdomen for the next few minutes. Throughout that time, the girl's expression continued to grow more and more relaxed.

Her gaunt cheeks and sickly complexion slowly vanished, as if life itself was being restored to her body, and her grasp of consciousness became more firm. Miraculously, after only five minutes, she was nearly fully healed. Her expression was peaceful and she no longer needed my help to recover. The girl wouldn't be able to walk yet, so I lifted her into my arms once more as I took one last look at the carnage behind us.

The docks were thoroughly consumed by the flames, infrastructure and flesh alike charred by the blaze. A small part of me was hoping to get myself some clothes—it'd been a small wish constantly present throughout the last few days—but I knew there was no chance I'd be able to find myself a good outfit in the destruction behind me. Perhaps I'd come back tomorrow night—see what remained.

I turned back around, the girl in my arms slowly turning her head with a dazed expression, before I began to make my way back through the forest. Before I could disappear into the treeline, however, my eyes caught the sight of an abnormality only a few dozen yards to the north. A road—barely a path, honestly—carved its way through the forest from the docks. It wasn't paved or well maintained, nor was it decorated with hand rails or lightposts, but it was easily wide enough to accommodate a small carriage.

A trading route? From this end, it led to the docks, but where did it lead to afterwards? I pulled the girl back up to my chest, as she'd been slipping, before turning my attention back to the forest. I began to move, but secretly memorized exactly where that road was. … It took me an hour to reach the cave, during which the girl stared at me with an expression of shock and fear. She hadn't said a word since she'd woken up, yet it was obvious her mind was spiraling with a dozen new questions a minute.

Only once I set her onto the stone floor of my 'home' did she finally do something other than stare. She scrambled back, her legs pushing her away from me until her back pressed against the wall behind me. Now that she was awake, I took another moment to have a look at her. The girl sported a thick head of dirty blonde hair—just slightly lighter than brown—that reached an inch or so past her shoulders.

Her face was cute and buttonish, with thick eyebrows and small lips, and her eyes matched the hue of emerald jewels. She was muscular, despite her age, and moved with a sense of uniformity and structure.

"Chi sei? Dove mi trovo?" The girl asked. From the inflection in her voice, I knew she was panicking and asking me questions, yet the shock of hearing an entirely different language from the one I was expecting froze me in my tracks.

"Shit," I mumbled, "I… don't speak that language. Do you understand me?"

"You are not an elf? That is… surprising," The girl mumbled. Her words were thick with a foreign accent, yet smooth with practiced fluency, "Yes. I understand you. Father taught me how to speak Caelthari."

"Caelthari?" I whispered. In FFO, Caelthari was a language originating from the Kingdoms of Caeltharion, which was a set of nations bordering on the western edge of the game's playable area. It was a medieval realm, ruled by humans and constantly embroiled in war, and was widely considered the birthplace of humanity. All four of the human-led zones, those being Caeltharion, the Highmarket Consortium, Thyrsheim, and Wyrmrock, spoke Caethari.

Of course, the game treated all languages as the client-set language, English in my case, so long as the player had the knowledge needed to fluently speak them. So if the player didn't have the Caelthari skillset, the language would appear as gibberish to them. With the locals speaking Caelthari, which was apparently just English, I at least knew which nation I was possibly located in.

I probably wasn't in Thyrsheim or Wyrmrock, considering I wasn't in a snowy landscape or on a volcanic island, so that left me with either Caeltharion itself or the Highmarket Consortium.

"That's good," I nodded as I turned back to the girl, "How are you? Are you feeling okay?"

"Who are you?" She asked, her hand lightly pressing against her stomach. She didn't seem to feel any pain, though maybe the wound hadn't fully healed yet?

"My name is… Evelyn. Evelyn Moore. What's yours?"

"Lucia," the girl answered, "Where am I? Are you… with them?"

"The slavers? No, miss, I am not. And you're in a cave, though I can't narrow it down more than that. I'm kind of lost, myself," I chuckled, hoping to lighten the mood, "Seriously, how are you? Do you feel any pain, any aches, anything like that?"

"I am fine," The girl shook her head. She looked at me, her eyes briefly drifting downward for a moment before she quickly looked back up at me, "Why are you naked?"

"Ah. That's a little complicated…"