Chương 71: 1-70 Recover and regroup

Josef had barely taken the time to put on a change of clothes before he and Zippa hurried off to find their companions. He briefly considered covering his head with a makeshift turban to hide his ears, but ultimately decided against it. With how mutilated the cartilage of his ears looked, nobody would care to question why they weren't pointy. Anyone who saw them would think they had just melted off. If they could even stand to stare at him.

As they rushed along the meaty room in heavy silence, Josef unsurprisingly couldn't help but feel uncomfortable in his own skin, which felt simultaneously dry and numb, and scratched awkwardly against the linen of his clothes. On top of that came the itchiness, though that might just be caused by the lingering regeneration from his magic, trying to repair his skin with little success. Except for his chest, where a different kind of itch was settling in.

Without even checking, he knew that the scales were once again spreading, taking over more of his damaged body. Apparently, this was the perfect opportunity to claim more of him for the shift towards dragonhood. At least this would likely cover up his body much more quickly than any attempt to fix his skin with healing magic. It was a silver lining of sorts, even if he would much rather have returned to his own healthy body.

For whatever definition that even held true, considering he had already gone through a major overhaul after gaining a body of mana. A body of mana. The thought slammed into him like a tsunami, washing all other thoughts away. Hadn't he already seen parts of himself crumble away several times, whenever he pushed too far, spending mana that was needed to keep his body in one piece? Those always came back just fine, and that wasn't entirely on his affinity, either.

Just like a plant could recover after a dry period, rehydrate and return to health, his body had also recovered itself from a lack of mana once his reserves filled up again. Not something catastrophic, like his entire hand crumbling during the fight against those knights. But that withering blackness that saw his skin or fingertips crumble? Even though he usually supported the recovery with magic, the process didn't depend on it.

It was completely beyond his understanding how that worked, and he had little desire to mess around with it too much, considering how easily he could mess himself up like that. Also, he doubted his body consisted entirely of mana and nothing else, because he could not even imagine keeping his own shape effortlessly if it was truly that moldable. What mattered was that he had a reliable way to remove his burnt skin.

If he could just deprive it of mana, it would crumble away, making room for new tissue to take its place. It was an almost foolproof plan, or so he thought. He even got started on it right away as they hurried along. It took a while to notice, but the firelight behind them hadn't dimmed all that much, even when they moved a considerable distance, showing just how much the suppressive dark around them had lifted.

What had misled Josef at first was the rather dim light created by the scaled torch running beside him, but that wasn't even the fault of their surroundings. Only when he ignited his own spell to illuminate their path even further, did he notice that the radiance had increased considerably. The poor output of his friend was apparently rooted in emotional matters. Hopefully, he would cheer up a little bit if the plan to recover his skin worked.

Stopping the spread of his own mana was a weird sensation, like holding his breath, but with a muscle that wasn't designed for it. He could move and shift it around, changing its path and density, but deliberately keeping it away from an area that demanded it felt fundamentally wrong. Which was fair, considering he was knowingly hurting himself for all intents and purposes. But sometimes a certain measure of harm was necessary to help a patient return to full health, and this was one such occasion.

His action certainly caught the eye of Zippa, who almost stumbled when he saw the human leaving a trail of flakes of dead, black skin.

"What is going on?" he exclaimed in shock.

"Is it getting worse? Do you need a break?" It was obvious how frazzled he still was, but Josef simply shook his head, explaining, "No, just some on the move triage I'm testing. If this works, I'll be fine in no time." Without further explanation, he pulled on his mana even harder, and finally, a large section around his right arm could no longer take it, as the last of its skin was lost to the wind.

Then, relaxing his control, he instead pushed some healing mana into the area, watching as it rebuilt what he had removed. The result wasn't perfect, as the fresh, rosy skin still bore some faded marks, but compared to before, it was a difference like night and day. Was the remainder of the damage rooted deeper? If mana did really make up the most of his body, then his own emotions, sensations and expectations might have influenced the process.

He had still felt the itch from the recovering burns, and couldn't keep the expectation of failure completely out of his mind. Going for the other arm to test this theory, he found its recovery even more complete, creating a slightly asymmetric picture, as the scars on it were almost too faded to see. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Showing off his result, he waved his arm at the lizard and laughed.

"Look, Zip. It works. Good as new." That did visibly brighten his mood, though the frown quickly returned when Zippa looked at the human's face.

"I'm happy for you, really, but I wish this hadn't been necessary in the first place. If it wasn't for me-""Then we would never have made it this far." Josef finished the sentence for him.

"Without you, I would put my money on the knights taking our heads. Or the parasites would have overrun us. Would you have preferred that?" He didn't even wait for an answer to his rhetorical question.

"You wouldn't, because you're a good guy and you care. But don't you try to take the weight off my shoulders and carry it yourself. I can take responsibility for my own actions. And if you need someone to blame for all this, go take it out on the boss monster. It deserves that far more than you ever will." As the reptile's face was still locked in a state of troubled confusion, he decided to go for a killing blow from an entirely different angle.

"Unless, of course, this was only an elaborate plan to get my clothes off. In that case, shame on you, you horny lizard." This time, Zippa really stumbled, although he quickly scrambled back up, catching up to Josef again.

"After all the things I said, you just had to remember that line." Then he chuckled dryly before playing along.

"So what if I did? My genius plan has worked, and nothing can take what I have gained."

"I can tattle to your brother. He will know the true depths of your perversion," he jested. That one drew a more natural laugh out of him.

"Go ahead, there is nothing you can say that would surprise him. Have you ever looked into his eyes? He has seen some real shit."

"He has that kinda gaze, doesn't he?" he mused loudly. Zippa flashed him a toothy smile at that.

"You haven't heard it from me, but that's because he has a bit of a squint. Makes it look like he is always staring off into some distant horror."

"Oh, that's gold. I'm so telling him that, though." This time, both of them broke into laughter. It was a silly exchange, and not entirely relaxed, but it had pulled the reptile from whatever mire his head was stuck in. At least for now. He knew that they were going to have a serious conversation once there was more time.

"Thanks, Jo," Zippa finally told him after several seconds of silence.

"Anytime, Zip." Continuing on, Josef experimented with his newfound ability to see mana, scanning his unusual surroundings. Turning that on in this room almost felt like those minutes before the break of dawn, when the distant sky lit up, but everything else was steeped in darkness. The unnatural dark, which they had pushed back, was very saturated with mana, positively glowing on its own. Only, it wasn't the type of glow that allowed you to see more.

Instead, it felt more like an area that sucked away all other colors of mana, tainting them into muted tones of grey. But that was probably the trick behind it, wasn't it? If it sucked up their light spells, or fire mana, then they would naturally see less after it was converted. It was a clever method of limiting them, and once again something he would note for his own manipulation of mana. In a way, he could achieve something similar with his Mana Stream, though using that spell was a lot less subtle.

Finally, as his brain grew tired of the continued contemplation, Josef no longer had to distract himself from the uneasy feelings his familiars were radiating. They were very close to their location. Strangely enough, having Pretzel send similar feelings as Dusty at the same time did much to clear up his usual difficulties in deciphering the rabbit. It was almost like a resonance between the two links. If only it was a less troubling emotion they were projecting to him.

He once again almost took a tumble down some sort of ravine within the meaty ground, but thanks to the increased illumination, he was able to react in time. Unfortunately, it also gave him a great view of what was waiting at the bottom of this hazard. There were rows upon rows of teeth, making the bottom appear almost like a white, foaming ocean.

With careful observation, he even noticed that these teeth were not merely grinding back and forth, but instead running along the curve of the ravine before disappearing in the distance. And this wasn't even accounting for the constant grinding and gnashing sounds from below. The gap in the floor also rapidly widened in one particular direction, suggesting there was an even more horrifying area that way.

"That's one massive meat grinder," he sighed. And they would have to run around it, at least partially. Josef's familiars weren't directly on a path to that widening area, but they would have to move along its side to get there. There were many places he'd rather be over this grotesque floor, but there was no helping it as they wandered closer. The noise from the teeth below was almost deafening, but at least their footing appeared to be quite stable.

Not that he would tempt fate by walking close enough to the edge to risk falling off because of a misstep, but at least the chance of that happening wasn't as high as he had first feared. In the end, between Zippa's awakening and then finding the rest of their party, only a couple of minutes had passed. However, it looked like the rest of them had gone through hell during that time.

Aifreed was the only one seemingly unharmed, while Bezzo was bleeding profusely from several stab wounds, and Linda sported a rather gruesome gash across her torso. Even his familiars hadn't been spared from the damage, with one of Dusty's ears outright missing, and Pretzel covered in the distinct color of blood, though he could not see from which wound it had come.

"Finally, you're late." Bezzo wheezed, sounding out of breath. Or maybe his lung had been pierced. Though that rhythmic sound stopped for a second when he saw the human's face.

"Later," was all he said, as this was neither the time nor the place to talk. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to fix all the damaged skin, and he was somewhat reluctant about depriving parts of his head of mana. That sounded like a shortcut to brain damage if he messed up in his haste. Which was why he was still rocking that fashionable baldness, with roasted ears on the side.

Readying his healing spells, preparing to fix up his friends for fighting whatever monstrosity they were facing, he halted in surprise. Josef had first assumed that his companions were facing off against an assailant that he had yet to spot, but when the sound of crossing swords registered in his ears, he came to realize that he had already laid eyes on their quarry. As Linda desperately defended herself from several lethal strikes, he understood that right now, all of them were holding out against Aifreed.