Chapter 93: You Did Well

Chapter 93: Chapter 93: You Did Well

Night fell and they made camp... the smell of roasting meat drifted between the tents.

A few barbarians sat dicing meat for the evening meal.

Victor pulled half a boar carcass out of his inventory and set it down for the Dire Lions, and all six dropped on it at once, tearing into it with wet, happy growls.

He also removed a boar thigh for the boars to eat.

Boars didn’t care. They ate any and everything, even their own kind was on the menu. Once they were all fed, he went to sit with the others.

From where he sat by the fire, he noticed Coco moving through the camp with a leather water skin, offering a drink to one tribesman after another. One by one, they turned her away. Nobody said a word. They simply looked past her, or shifted their cups out of reach.

She was a Gatherer, and this was her usual work. Even if they didn’t want, avoiding her like the plague was...too much.

She came to Jaja last.

He looked at her. Victor could see the unwillingness in his eyes, the war between belief and gratitude. But he still held his cup away from her.

Coco pulled back. Her fingers tightened around the leather skin until her knuckles whitened. Her shoulders dropped. Her face, usually so dreamy, looked very small and very sad.

"Coco," Victor called. "Some water, please."

She hurried over. She poured it into his cup with careful hands, and Victor smiled at her. She smiled back, quick and grateful, and then she took her food and went to sit by herself, a distance from the gathering, away from the glow of the fire.

Victor went back to his meal, pretending not to notice Kiki’s eyes on him.

Skewers of Basalt Dragonic Lizard meat hung over the flames. That was what everyone ate these days. It was deliberate. He wanted their mana to keep climbing, though he knew there was a ceiling, a limit to what the beast’s body could give them. Still, it was good food.

But damn...

It’s taste like I am eating rubber

Another reminder... When I go back home, BRING SPICES A LOT OF SPICES.

A cough cut through the camp.

Heads turned. It was one of the wounded, hacking and spitting blood. Several tribesmen scrambled over to him, but there was nothing they could do. Lego knelt by his side, then looked back at Victor.

"Chief. At this rate, he will die soon."

Victor’s jaw tightened. If he hadn’t used the last low-grade potion on the Dire Lion, he’d have used it now.

If only he could just log out, he could buy another one and bring it back. But the logout button was still gray, because the Trial wasn’t over.

Then Coco stepped forward from the shadows. "I... I can help him."

The tribesmen turned on her at once. "Stay away," Lego said. "You’ll make his death worse. If you touch him while he’s dying, the ancestors won’t receive his soul."

Coco’s hands dropped. She nodded, and she stepped back into the dark.

Victor sighed. If she could do something, he wanted her to. But he wasn’t even sure what kind of Spiritualist she was. She hadn’t signed a contract with a spirit yet, and a Spiritualist without one burned through mana quickly.

That was what had happened when she saved Foto. She’d spent everything at once on the spirit that granted her temporary help. But he understood the tribe. This was their faith, their fear, and he couldn’t argue it away tonight.

After a while, the coughing eased. They gave the man water. Lego returned to Victor’s side.

"Chief, as things stand, we can’t heal him. Our bodies naturally resist poison, but he took too many hits, and those damned orc swords were... filthy. The wounds are rotting."

"Can’t we treat it?"

"We tried using red hot iron. But the infection has already gone too deep."

Victor sighed. This was the problem with a lack of proper medical capabilities in this world.

After all, this would have easily been solved in modern times, even without the use of magic.

Victor looked at the man’s body. Scars crossed his chest and arms in a dozen places. Some patches of skin had gone soft and spongy, others hard as leather. And then there was the fever that burned through him, and sweat soaking the furs beneath him. All they could do was wait and hope he lasted a couple of days.

"He might not last two," Lego said quietly.

"And the other one?"

"Better. He may hold on longer. But we need help for both."

Lego hesitated. "Chief. Is there nothing the ancestors can do? You could ask them."

Every barbarian near the fire turned to look at Victor.

He felt a rush of dread. Oh fuck this! It’s not like I can tell them I don’t actually talk to the ancestors. That it’s just me and my head.

He kept his face still and said nothing, but slapped himself inside his mind.

The camp settled in for the night. The barbarians slept in the center, closest to the fire. The six Dire Lions lay in a loose ring around them, forming a perimeter. Outside that ring slept the boars, snorting in the dark.

Victor stayed awake, taking the first watch.

He sat on one of the sleeping Lions and looked up.

The sky was breathtaking. Stars were scattered in thick bright clusters, and the moon hung clear and enormous. He’d never seen anything like it back home. In the real world, even with the artificial sun dimmed to mimic night, it still blocked much of the sky. And even without it, there were street lights. Nobody there could look up and see something this open and peaceful.

Footsteps approached.

It was Kiki. She stopped near him. "May I sit?"

"Sure."

She sat on the same Lion. She looked at him, then up at the sky. "What are you looking at?"

"Just admiring the world."

She nodded. She turned to him. He turned to her. He looked up again. Then he sighed.

"So... you’re betrothed to me."

The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Kiki’s eyes narrowed. "What, you don’t want me? You want the Spiritualist instead?"

"No!" Victor panicked. "No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t know. It surprised me."

She frowned a little longer, then looked away. "I’m not as happy about it as you might think."

He waited.

"Since I was a child, my father told me it was my destiny to marry the strongest man in the world. The assumption was that I’d be the bride of the chief. But the chief then wasn’t Popo. It was the late king. He was chief of the Southern Bloodline, and king of every barbarian tribe beyond the Boundary." Her mouth twisted. "My father must have assumed the world was just the Barbarian world. And now I’m a Level 5 devoted to a Level 2 chief."

Victor wanted to scratch the back of his head. He felt a little ashamed.

She turned and looked straight at him. "But I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t know why. I should. You’re weaker than me. But all you’ve done is produce one miracle after another. Maybe producing miracles is a kind of strength. One I don’t understand yet. For now, it doesn’t bother me. At least for now."

Victor stared at her.

Starlight washed over her skin. The wind lifted her hair and let it dance behind her, wild and free. She closed her eyes and breathed in. Her chest rose and fell. Victor’s eyes drifted to it, to the full curve of her cleavage, to her shoulders, her sculpted arms and stomach. She was muscular, strong, utterly unashamed, and there wasn’t one inch of her that wasn’t fierce. Not a single part of her that wasn’t valiant.

Maybe this could work. He swallowed, putting a hand over his lower part, to avoid the embarrassment that happened with Coco.

He remembered what he had seen in movies and anime.

According to the greats, this move always works.

He yawned, stretching out one arm and letting it drift upward, ready to settle on her shoulder and pull her in.

Yes. I’m doing it. I’m actually doing it.

So close, he could practically feel her leaning towards him.

His hand was just inches from touching her skin—

A cough tore through the camp. Rasping, wet, worse than before. It was the wounded barbarian, the one Lego said wouldn’t last the night, coughing up more blood than ever.

Victor turned. He did not notice Kiki’s disappointed eyes that his hand was unable to hold her in time.

Someone had already reached the coughing Barbarian.

Coco knelt beside the man.

Kiki saw it and reached for her sword. She was a Spiritualist and should not touch a dying Barbarian.

But quickly Victor raised a hand, and she stopped. They watched.

Coco laid her hands over the man’s chest and closed her eyes. Light began to glow beneath her palms, soft and gold, growing brighter. The barbarian drew a long breath. And then his face loosened as his sleep deepened into something... peaceful.

Coco slumped sideways.

Victor was beside her instantly, fingers at her neck. Her skin burned. Having faced it after using Berserker before, he knew the sign. It was Mana depletion. She’d emptied herself.

Kiki checked the barbarian. She touched his brow and blinked. "His fever’s gone." She looked up at Victor. "He’s sleeping. Properly."

Victor lifted Coco gently. Her eyes fluttered open, glazed and tired.

"I couldn’t heal him fully," she whispered. "I only bought him some time."

Victor smiled at her, "you did well..."