All his life, the Cyan Cottage gave him a place to feel sheltered, but it no longer felt like a home without anyone to live in it with him. Slowly, since childhood, the familial warmth drained like a withered tree without color. If Wangshi died, so would this house.
“NO. Wangshi!”
Gushi engulfed the broken pieces of ceramic glass as Lark knelt down and palpated the side of Wangshi’s windpipe.
Unable to feel a steady rhythm, Lark cried as he felt his hands shaking.
“Wangshi, I need you to open your eyes—c’ mon!” He wiped away the red froth on Wangshi’s chin onto his flannel shirt and rolled him onto his side. Wangshi’s white dress shirt had dried blood on the chest area, while the grey vest and pants had none. With a glance over, Lark could not determine if Wangshi any hidden cuts, but all the signs pointed to an internal injury.
“Please, Wangshi, you need to tell me how to fix you. I need you. I can’t do anything if you’re not here.”
Wangshi's frozen posture made no movement, and his green eyes were unblinking. Lark’s body rocked back and forth as the uncomfortable truth settled in his mind; the only dependable person left in his life was about to leave him and once again, he wouldn’t understand why.
Gushi rammed into his side, and bounced to the end of Wangshi’s naked feet as if trying to say, “Hey! There’s something here!”
Placing Wangshi’s hand down, Lark rushed down to look at Wangshi’s feet. Seeing the clean, clipped toenails of his caretaker was a bit freaky since they usually wore slippers in the house. But on the soles of Wangshi’s feet laid a circular, white patch two inches below the second and third toe. Both feet mirrored each other with the one patch on each foot. Taking a closer look, Lark thought they were biopatches, a type of medical product that promised various effects such as pain-relief, lowered cholesterol levels, heat-inducing, fever reduction, and more depending on the biopatch materials. Lark moved his hand to remove one of them when Gushi’s antenna bopped him.
“What was that for?” Lark sharply turned to the protesting slime, whose antenna turned from silver to red.
“So what if you can change colors, too? That’s not helpful!”
Gushi rammed his gut, and Lark groaned from the impact. “This is not the time to play around—” Lark growled rubbing his stomach. He was about to pounce when he saw the pyramid fall out of his pocket. “This…”
Like Gushi’s color-changing antenna, the silver pyramid shined bright red as if a flame ignited inside it.
Lark scooped it off the floor and talked to it as if it were a sentient object.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but if you can help me, please do it already!”
Desperate, Lark ran over to the white, glossed island in the kitchen and pulled a fruit knife out of a drawer. He placed the pyramid under his thumb. With a steady exhale, the knife sliced over the tip of his finger. The stinging of the sharp blade didn’t hurt as much as the burning nerve pain from only cutting the top of the epidermis. From the one centimeter red line, a pennyworth of blood fell onto the glowing pyramid.
He sucked off the excess fluid from his thumb, looking expectantly at the drop of blood staining the eye of the pyramid. Good grief, the first Blood Rite was instant, so why was nothing happening?
“Put me on top of your watch,” a familiar voice said. It was the same faint voice he thought he might’ve heard, but forced himself to ignore or reasoned was only inside his head when Wei called him.
Lark looked inquisitively at Gushi, and Gushi stared right back as much as a slime could without eyes. The antenna on Gushi’s head still glowed red, and at that moment Lark wondered if it was the slime that was talking to him telepathically.
“You’re wasting time staring at a disappointingly weak slime,” the voice deadpanned. “But then again, you’re even more of a disappointing owner.”
Lark then looked at the pyramid. The voice, it definitely came from there. “Hurry, if you still want to save him…” the voice warned, impatient by Lark’s inaction. Remembering his immobile caretaker, Lark moved the pyramid over his Trinity watch, when a blue screen from his settings menu popped up in front of him.
“Would you like to pair with [SIM]? This action will take up 2 of 4 remaining slots.”
“Yes/No?”
Lark pressed yes on the blue screen. Hundreds of questions and a thousand surprises eventually lost its effect on him.
“Good. Caution burns profits.”
With wide eyes, Lark watched the Trinity Watch absorb the pyramid into a triangular capsule, taking its place next to two empty sockets.
Once the pairing finished, the triangular capsule disappeared and the face of the watch returned to digital mode.
Now what?
As if on cue, the voice still spoke inside his head and said, “Place a hand on Wangshi and say scan.”
Following the order, Lark walked back to his caretaker and flexed his wrist. In a bold and confident voice, he repeated the order. “Scan.”
A bright white flash crossed his vision, and he doubled down to his knees and elbows while covering his face as if he just saw the sun up close. He pressed his arm against his eyes and punched his chest while taking deep, sharp breaths to get oxygen flowing back into his lungs.
“You used pain to calm yourself…interesting. But open your eyes already, dumbass.”
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Slowly peeling away his arm, Lark squinted, feeling as though someone had just used a hundred camera flashes on his face. “How are you communicating with me?” he croaked as nausea swirled inside his chest when he saw faded black squares in his vision. “What am I supposed to be seeing, where’s Gushi and Wangshi?”
Hearing its name, Gushi hopped and nudged Lark’s legs.
Lark reached out to the spot near his feet where he felt Gushi’s cuddly attention. His hand pressed against the cool plasma coat; the tactile sensation for some reason felt completely different from when he could actually see. And that’s when a cold sweat swept over his back, the black squares hadn’t gone away, and he was losing daylight. Closing his eyes, Lark asked again, “How are you communicating with me?”
“Think of me as a superconscious,” the voice replied. “And your conscious often advise you to do things, so listen to me, when I say you should open your eyes to see what’s wrong with Wangshi.”
“But I can’t see anything!” Lark said, gripping the fabric of his pants.
“Try again until you’re successful. You’ve got nothing to lose, except the life of your servant,” the voice answered plainly.
“He’s not a servant.” Lark inhaled through his nose and exhaled before opening his eyes. Still, all he could see were blurry black boxes, but before he could complain, words appeared on the black boxes. Soon, he could see the edges of his surroundings like the cuts on the floor to the fallen furniture in the room. The black boxes stayed in position when Lark turned his head and saw Gushi hugging his leg. Looking back at the black boxes, he realized they were hovering over Wangshi’s body in several locations: feet, chest, and head.
He crawled over to where the biopatches on Wangshi’s feet were and a black box showed him the information he already suspected and more. The black boxes were exactly like the blue holograms on his watch, except they were black, blocky and filled with knowledge he wouldn’t have known about such as the ratio of material used to make them, the company that made them, the serial numbers on the package, where they were bought, its uses… Too overwhelmed by the wealth of information, Lark stared blankly at the black box before the voice caught his attention.
“You’re a student, so figure out how to separate the useless information from the pertinent ones. Ask yourself the right questions, and the answer will appear before you. You’ve confirmed what they are, so what else do you need to know?”
“Why are they on his feet?” Lark wondered.
Like the storage ring, the black boxes performed under his thought directives. It scrolled through words like a database and highlighted relevant pieces of text: acupuncture, increase memory, increase blood flow, increase energy, and meridians.
“How could the biopatches be used in that way?”
Once again the text shifted, opening another black box of a diagram of the human body with red, orange, green, yellow, blue, and violet lines that seemed to map out various regions in the body.
“Kid you’re moving too slow. At this rate, you’re really going to let the old man die while you play doctor. Just extract all the information by grabbing the box.”
Unsure of how it would feel, Lark hesitated to interact with the strange magic from the moment he could see, but remembering that Wangshi’s life was at stake, he forced himself to reach the illuminating black boxes by Wangshi’s feet. As soon as his fingers touched the screen, it reacted. At first, the blocky exterior felt like touching the touchscreen on his smartphone, but then the white floating text entered his brain as it disappeared from the disintegrating black box, and instead, he turned into the smartphone. Figuratively anyways.
He tagged the other two floating black boxes above Wangshi and learned that his caretaker did indeed suffer a serious internal injury from placing RBC-stimulating biopatches on broken meridians. Moreover to his shock, he discovered pins on Wangshi’s head and chest, which were connected to the three broken meridian pathways. What Lark saw on the diagram correlated with Wangshi’s placement of the pins and biopatches. The orange lines represented meridians, and inside Wangshi, the three pathways related to his memory and flexibility were severed for sixteen years. Lark frowned as he pictured his caretaker enduring pain by forcibly fixing his broken meridians through basic acupuncture.
As for what spurred Wangshi to do this to himself… Lark swore to finish off the Wishes of the People. Without Tim’s present, Wangshi would have never tempted retrieving sealed memories through primal means. According to what Lark learned from the black box located above Wangshi’s head, Tim left a magic seal that would unlock upon twelve passing hours and leave knowledge about Wangshi’s three broken meridians, while giving him false hope of fixing it.
The RBC-stimulants were purchased online this morning after breakfast and Wangshi placed them on acupuncture points ascertained to help improve memory while sticking needles into the places where the magic seal said would be beneficial. However, this was not the truth. The RBC-stimulant caused a blow-back to occur with the red-lines, causing the meridian pathways and arteries to entangle. With the blood traveling from the feet up to the chest area and nowhere to go due to the entanglement, it forced its way out through the closest orifice. The needles on Wangshi's head were supposed to maintain immobility during the recovery process, hence the paralysis and extra damage caused to the meridian pathway. It was a setup.
“Wangshi…” Lark murmured and frowned even more after learning the self-inflicted injuries were fatal. “I can’t fix you.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Lark was ready to have a breakdown.
“Kiddo, calm yo’ self. If I said you can fix the old man, you can fix the old man. Stop jumping to conclusions and think for once in your life.”
Angry, Lark vented to the only other viable character in the room. “If you’re so great, then stop playing mind games and show me!”
Hearing its owner’s loud voice, Gushi flattened itself like pizza dough.
“W-wait, sorry I didn’t mean you—” Lark reached out.
“Good, now scan.”
Out of reflex, Lark raised his arm to block out the burst of light he experienced during the first go around, but this time only the one black box sprung up. On one face of the box, a 3D model of Gushi appeared in lines that reminded Lark of 3D animation. The other faces of the cube contained tabs on Gushi’s skills, condition, and something akin to an apocalyptic journal.
“Day 1: [Slime from Zzz] summoned by the [Wishes of the People] came to Earth to help capture humans. Slime from Zzz battled [Lark Rune] of Earth. Slime from Zzz used innate skill [Flexible Body] to dodge blunt attacks! Battle ended with capture inside a rank E [spatial ring]! Slime from Zzz is renamed [Gushi] by its owner. Frightened by a dangerous presence in its owner’s spatial ring, Gushi avoided absorbing materials. Summoned by its owner during a battle with Wishes of the People, Gushi absorbs owner with its special ability [Engulf] and [Boiling Body], enabling them to escape from the organization's grasp. Once safe, Gushi returned inside the spatial ring.
Gushi performed in stealth mode, raising DEX stat from 15 to 16.
Day 2: Summoned to a meeting between Lark and two denizens of Terragon, Gushi used Boiling Body to show off its prowess. Happy from the attention, Gushi performed a special slime dance from Zzz known as [Giga].
Boiling Body skill raised from rank F to rank E.
Happiness level raised from 95% to 99%.
Gushi received knock-out damage from a flying human and fainted!
STR stat raised from 8 to 9.
Day 3: Gushi restored full health after a good night’s rest on its owner’s bed. A stand-off with [Fried Egg] leaves Gushi feeling irritated. Gushi absorbed 22 rank F [monster crystals] and 40 [slime batwings] and learned [Transform]!
Gushi used Transform to grow wings.
Gushi used Transform to build an antenna, and learned [Perception]!
INT stat raised from 19 to 20.
Gushi and owner enter penthouse owned by Rune proprieties and searched for owner’s servant. Using Perception, Gushi finds the unconscious servant. Gushi used Flexible Body after heartless owner verbally lashed out!
Happiness level dropped from 99% to 90%…
[To be continued]!"