The dying dog was in pain, ravaged, and it would take more than just luck for him to survive even one more day. I tried using some healing magic to cauterize and close the wounds, but they were ineffective for parts that were missing entirely. The minimum amount of healing I was able to provide started showing early signs of rot almost immediately. Without a plague affinity, it was truly impossible to survive in these lands.

His stomach was half open, with most organs having been eaten by the plague long ago, there wasn’t much left in it. The white of his bones was exposed due to multiple patches of skin missing, without them, the skeleton itself was slowly decaying.

Latie let me handle the unlikely survivor while she continues her report on the state of the village. As it was my job to protect her, I couldn’t really leave her alone, so I ordered Tara to follow her. Leaving me and Hybry alone with the dog.

The most obvious way to help the dog would be to end his suffering, but he didn’t seem to want to, even if it meant more pain. Feeding him more water did make him happy, even when the liquid wasn’t safe to drink, he felt relieved to be able to quench his thirst.

Not able to move anything, but his tail, I tried to give him as much comfort as I could. As his last moment might be close, my presence was all I could give him in his misery.

As I simply slid my hand against his brown fur, I tried to think about how I could help and maybe even save him. I was the only plague user in the whole country, so if someone was able to find a way to do something against the plague, it was me. With how rare the affinity is, it wasn’t a surprise that there was little to no knowledge about how to cure the effect of the plague. Without any book or miracle potion at my disposal, magic was all I had, and with some luck, all I would need.

“Think Emery.” I thought out loud.

Healing was useless at this point, as it would rot right away, so I needed to tackle the problem to its source, the plague. With how long he had been exposed to raw plague magic, I couldn’t absorb the plague or diminish its effect whatsoever. Food and rest, the best remedy for most sickness, would do him no good and would probably worsen the situation even further if it did not lead him to his death altogether.

I could probably cure the poison, but as long as we were in the middle of the plague land, he would get infected continuously until he died. Moving him in his state would take hours, and I doubted his body could take that much.

This means the only way for him to survive was to somehow develop a plague affinity, but is it even possible? I never heard of anyone ever having developed an affinity further than what they were born with, but as always, I’m too new to all of this to be sure of anything. The zombie or plagued dead we saw earlier might confirm that it is in fact possible to develop an affinity.

She said that it was once a normal human being, meaning a human without a plague affinity. It might be the work of Viperearth as a Calamity monster. She said that he was the one who changed the whole area and things living here. For all I know, the guild never would have sent us here if it wasn’t for him contaminating the place. With his power to permanently poison the land, he could have transformed the ones who were left behind in these plagued dead, although he probably didn’t care at all about what happened to insects like humans. For him, anyone is just another insect roaming in his new territory, whatever happens to us is not his problem.

Back to the plagued dead, their body must have developed some sort of plague affinity to be able to survive here, that or an equivalent. Either of these truths might be enough to help the poor thing, the only worry is had was to make sure he didn’t turn into a zombie dog that tried to kill us. Since they didn’t seem to maintain any once of sanity, their fate must be way worse than just death. If it came to that, I kill him before that happened.

Thinking about it, I think I might have felt a faint plague affinity coming from the plague dead we saw earlier. With how much-plagued mana there was around, he blended perfectly with everything else, but I’m sure that he must have one. The problem is that it was very feeble, and that zombie got plenty of time to have his body get used to it. To add to that, he probably was able to cultivate his affinity by eating living things rich with mana, explaining why there is no other life form around. Simply finding a way to give the dog the same weak affinity might be enough to keep all the poison from killing him, but it was my best shot anyway.

First thing first, I tried to feel the mana inside the dog. As he was in this area when Vipereath contaminated it, he might also have been given a plague affinity. After an entire minute of concentrating all my attention on the dog mana, I did find a plagued affinity, but it was extremely faint and lacking in potency. It was a relief that at least he had the spark of the affinity, that meant that if I could grow it strong enough, his body would be able to endure the poison for good.

To nourish his affinity, I didn’t see other solution other than feeding it myself with my own plagued affinity. Putting my hand on his side, I concentrated as much plague mana as I could and slowly transferred it into the dying dog's own mana. The transfer needed to be as slow as possible to not infect the dog with poison by accident, with how potent my poison was, he would die in no time against it. Compared to my poison potency, Viperearth poison was much less concentrated but instead focused on spreading far and for a long time. Mine was naturally extremely potent to almost acidic level and was more appropriate for killing fast with a single hit.

Taking my time, my reserve of mana was diving fast, so to be able to continue the cultivation I had to absorb some of the ambient plague mana. Absorbing it, and changing it into my own was not hard, and my body did it naturally, which was a blessing as the level of concentration needed would have been too much to multitask properly. The quantity of mana needed to grow an affinity was absurd, taking exponentially much more than what I first thought it would, and it was increasing as the affinity grew. I also used the last drip of my own mana to heal the minimum amount of wounds I could.

To supply the insanely hungry affinity, I siphoned as much mana available from the surrounding land to a level that I almost felt the plague level of the village go down by a percent or two.

The dog was still lying on his side but started to move more and more. Its tails wagged more vigorously as the process was moving along, and the pain seemed to lessen over time.

Multiple minutes of eternity later, I reached the limit of how far I could grow the affinity. To reach the next potency, it would need more mana than I could deliver in multiple months of feeding it. Now, the plague affinity was around a third of a real affinity, with some luck, this was enough. There wasn’t much more I could have done anyway, as I started to feel a bit exhausted. My own supply of mana reached zero a long time ago, and the headache was slowly growing in my head. Worst, all the mana leaves I usually keep with me were decomposed by the ambient poison, so all I could do was tank the pain.

As the ambient mana was not my own, I couldn’t keep it in my body to replace my own, even when I purified it. It would have been too easy that way. With Hybry near me, I could take my time to recuperate without worrying about anything.

Laying myself on the desolate ground, I took my time to catch my breath and ease the headache. With sweet dripping, a part of me wanted to sleep already as the sun was starting to go down. There wasn’t much time left before night. Worse of all, my stomach grew hungry with the lack of nutriment, and without a single leaf to eat, it was a sound I was gonna hear until we got back to Lendwrek. Normally I would always have some food with me, but it would rot minutes after entering this land, so at the time, we ate during the flight and left our rations with Lendwrek.

Feeling something dripping on my face, I opened my eyes to find a living carcass looking at me. His eye sockets were still pitch black, but I could see a glimmer of life in them. There was still some damaged patch of his skin that showed the bones, but he didn’t seem to even register them. His most damaged part, the rib cage, was mostly healed, but only to a minimal degree. The bones were sticking out of the skin which made him look famished. There was no telling if he would ever recuperate entirely from the experience, but at the very least he would live to try.

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Licking me, his breath was stinky, smelling strong like food that had been left alone for months. It still got a smile on my face though, with how drained I was, It felt good to see that all my efforts weren’t for nothing. He even seemed to go along just fine with Hybry, the two just acknowledging each other without any bother. It was a relief that he didn’t turn into a plague dead. My method of purifying the contaminated mana must have eliminated the virus both into the dog and his new affinity.

For a second, I thought about using this trick to develop a new affinity with other elements and gain more magic power. The simple news that a person's affinity wasn’t locked at birth could be huge. The problem was the insane quantity of mana needed to grow an affinity. It took at least 300 times the amount of my mana pool to grow the little spark of affinity he had, and it wasn’t even a full-fledged affinity, or at least it didn’t feel that way. I doubted he would be able to use any real plague ability like I or Hybry could. For him, it was less of an affinity and more of a resistance. Since this area was an unlimited sea of plague mana, the quantity wasn’t a real problem, but the little spark of affinity installed by Viperearth was an absolute must, so the chance to replicate it was suicidal. To complement the technique, there was also the need for a purifier, in this case, it had been me. With how volatile the raw elements can be, simply absorbing it was probably a bad idea, just the potential side effect could be devastating both for the body and mind.

All in all, this was not something that could be replicated without careful preparation. The fact that I pulled it off was mere chance and luck. The best thing to do was to hide this new discovery until I learned more about it. In the wrong hands, such a trick could be weaponized like in all these apocalypse movies, at least in mine, people were safe as long as they didn’t piss me off or and pushed me into madness.

Still tired, I gathered the strength to stand up and rejoin Latie. It goes without saying that the dog decided to follow me. Not only would he have died without me, there wasn’t any other human being around. After all, how could a dog earn his title of man’s best friend without a human around. Officially making him into my familiar with the ritual could wait until we were somewhere safe with a full stomach. I wasn’t the only one hungry after all.

Without any idea of where Latie was, I focused my inner sense on locating Tara, since I ordered her to follow Latie. Although it wasn’t the most accurate thing, as my familiar, I could detect approximately where she was. Finding out that she was near the border of the village, I grabbed Hybry in my arm and made my way there with my new dog.

Even if it took less than a few minutes to reach the pair, I was able to find a name for the canine during that travel time. Calling him dog all the time would be both impractical and stupid, so I decided on the beautiful and noble name of Gnash. Gnash the plague dog sounded menacing enough in my head that I wasn’t able to find anything better. With his rather nasty look and malnourished appearance, it was unsurprisingly fitting. Without any objection on his part, his name was now settled.

Looking at the dog, Latie was surprised to find that he was still alive and doing way better than when she left me with him.

“How is that possible? He looks battered but unmistakably alive! What did you do?!” She asked while petting the dog. The head pat seemed to have won him over, as he licked her in return.

“No idea really, but don’t expect me to do anything like that again. Anyway, let's go back to Lendwrek while we still can. I’m out of mana, hungry, and I don’t think it in our best interest to stay the night out in these very unwelcoming lands.”

Seeing that I was blatantly avoiding the subject, she clearly wanted to push me for an answer but chose not to. Instead, she agreed to call it a day and go back to a nice and comfortable bed in town. Which I was grateful for. As much as she was the one who needed my protection for any what-if scenario, she was my employer and the one who made the call. If she wanted to stay the night here, we would have done exactly that. I was hungry, yes, but I could endure the sound of my stomach longer if needed. The thought of a heavy and burdensome coin purse at the end of this quest made it all worth it.

With the behemoth moon appearing at the horizon, the sun was getting away, and with it the light it was offering. Even with the light fading with every minute, it wasn’t really a problem. The size of the moon guaranteed a minimum of visibility, and my shadow affinity made it a bit easier to see in the not-that-dark night. If Lendwrek had been my familiar, I could have used our bond to detect where he was, but I still haven’t done the soul-bonding ritual with him and Mendry. Now that I have Gnash with me, I had all the more reason to make it my next thing to do. There was no theoretical limit to how many families someone could have. As long as I have the ritual ingredients, I could do the three of them at once.

Leaving the last village behind us, the night finally settled an hour later. At least we weren’t lost. Since she had a map of the area, simply knowing the localization of the village we were in gave us a good enough idea of where we were, allowing us to easily find where we needed to go.

The walk absolutely didn’t lessen the sound of my hungry stomach. During that time, I noticed that my mana didn’t regenerate at all when my stomach was empty. Without a once of mana in me, I was basically left to my sword and bow to defend myself, which weren’t easy to use when thinking about food. Fortunately, Tara, Tenta, Hybry and Gnash were with us, meaning we weren’t left defenceless. With their protection, I could focus on the unreal starving sound that I didn’t know my body could produce.

As we progressed, the wind suddenly changed direction and Gnash's nose smelled something wrong in the air. Looking around to find what was off, he scouted the deserted surroundings in search of anything alive or not.

“Gnash, you alright?” At Gnash's warning, we stopped and stood on guard. Without any mana, I wasn’t able to detect anything around us, so relying on Gnash and the others was a must to avoid any unfortunate encounter. Our goal was to search and analyze, not search and destroy, whatever was left.

“Grrrrrrr” Growling at a dead forest, the place was not in our path to rejoin Lendwrek. Instead, going into the forest would mean doing a detour that could take hours. As there was a high risk of finding absolutely nothing, we decided earlier to simply avoid it and spare us from this depressing sea of dead trees.

“Did he find something?” Latie seemed curious about Gnash's behaviour and so was I, but whatever he smelled in the forest, it probably wasn’t friendly.

“Seems like it, but there is no way to know what without going in there.”

“In that case, we should investigate to see what it is.”

“You’re right, but whatever is in there is maybe better off left alone.”

“It is my job to decide that myself. That's why the guild paying you, after all, to make sure nothing bad happens.”

“In that case, the wise decision would be to leave before something bad does happen.”

“Sorry, but we are definitively going in. The supply of plague resistance potion is too small to allow us to pass the opportunity to see a new creature of the plague.”

“Doesn’t the plagued dead we've seen before count toward exactly that?” I wasn’t very keen on finding a potentially new abomination of nature. As far as I was concerned, the number could stay at one until the end of time, without any complaint on my part.

“No, we expected the presence of a few of them beforehand. Technically, we haven’t found anything new yet. I remind you that the more we find, the greater the reward at the end. The amount you saw on the quest was a minimum, not a fixed payday.”

“You should have told me that sooner! Let's get going then, I still want to get the hell out of here before said bad thing happens.” With Gnash joining me, I would need even more money to afford food for everybody, even if he probably wasn’t going to eat as much as the others. As long as we were careful, we should be fine.

“For an A-rank adventurer, you’re less adventurous than the others, those I know would have jumped on the occasion and explored as much as possible to make new discoveries.”

“I heard someone mention back at the guild that the number of proficient adventurers dwindled recently, no wonder why. Personally, I’m not very keen on searching for a monster that wants to kill me, they are perfectly able to find me themselves.”

Unable to convince her to simply leave this place once and for all. We entered the forest, but at the very least, I was able to convince her to flee if we found anything too dangerous for me to handle. We could never be careful enough, and in the odd chance that it was Viperearth roaming around, I was not going to fight a Calamity monster, again, especially without my dragons. There was now a limit to my insanity. Dying, or the fear of it, kinda do that to people.