Somehow, I survived.
I was shaking as I thought about how close I came to dying again, and not from some trap or a maddened adventurer, but from a creature that actively wanted me dead.
A creature smart enough to vary their attacks, and with enough self preservation to give up on the fight when it saw that dying was too likely to ignore.
This is already an awful world to live in if that was a common snake here. If I wasn’t combat trained I would have been poisoned in the first few seconds and that would be the end of me… I had no training using a sword, so maybe it was something a trained adventurer would have no issue with, but I wasn’t that and I probably would never be that, if I were being honest with myself.
The first thing I did was look around to see if I could find any other danger… the snake was likely further away as it had to close its open wounds or risk bleeding to death, and the only other creature I could see were a few disappointed looking ravens perched on a nearby tree. I see this world has those little opportunists too.
Letting out a sigh, I glanced down at my leg. It was already hurting and I was wobbling before the adrenaline even wore off, it would be crippling when it does.
My pouch was on the ground, my coins scattered across the rocky floor, and the leather map was stained with blood. I wasn’t sure if it was my blood or the snake’s.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to move so freely later, I quickly dropped to my knees and gathered everything I could within a few seconds and stuffed them back in the pouch.
Then I stood up and painfully hobbled to a nearby rock, almost dragging my leg as I kept adjusting for the pain. The bleeding was significant this time.
As I plonked my butt on the rock, I kicked something. Looking down I saw that potion of healing… or at least what I thought was a potion of healing.
How fortunate. And tempting, like some devil was telling me that I could definitely trust this potion with my life.
The snake’s knife tail had cut into my thigh, and it was both lucky and unlucky. If it was my calf, there would be a high chance of ligament injury, which would have me benched… permanently, if I couldn’t get proper medical help or healing. If the tail blade hit a major artery, of which there are many in the thigh, then my future was likely that of death from blood loss…
I didn’t know the anatomy of snakes in this world, but I felt the likelihood of the bone tail-blade being a stinger seemed low to me. If it was venom, though… there was basically nothing I could do. Not with the lack of tools at my disposal.
Calming myself a bit I started by treating the injury.
Removing obstructing clothes, cleaning the wound, wrapping it with a clean bandage and keeping it in a neutral position.
After that, I just had to wait for it to heal a bit, then move to a safer spot, look for something to disinfect the wound properly.
My eyes were drawn to the potion again. I had that thin book about potions, and I had nothing else I could do at this moment other than wait and hope nothing else attacked me.
Understanding that I had to choose between the risk of being off guard or the risk of waiting long enough for something else to find me, I pulled out the book and quickly skimmed over it while on edge that something else might show up.
And several minutes later, I had a basic idea of everything in the book, if not the details.
First and most important: from what I could gather… potions are magic.
That means it won’t even work on me!
*sigh* I could still drink it to see what it does, but if not even the magical madness dust in the temple worked on me, there was no way this would. It’d be better to save it if I saw someone else who needs help, or to sell it for non-magical medicine for me.
Other information the book covers:
Potion application, Potion expiration (healing potions last a while), Potion testing, Proper potion storage, the magic nature of potions, and the recipe of a basic healing potion and a few basic antidotes.
That last part was especially useful and identified some plants with anti-venom and general anti-poison properties, and wasn’t magical.
It had been maybe ten minutes, maybe more? From the size of the injury and depth of the wound, my estimate was that the wound would heal enough in about half an hour to the point I might be able to walk with it. The wound wouldn’t thoroughly heal for a few days, but at least I’d be able to safely move without risking bleeding to death.
I decided to check on how bad the bleeding was at this point. Depending on that, I would try to drink the potion even if there was a 99.9% chance it would do nothing.
And… the bleeding had stopped. Completely.
I did notice that I don’t bleed anywhere as much as a normal person and that I stop bleeding rather quickly… but this was a bit abnormal. Not entirely unheard of, but beyond the norm without the help of any medicine.
I didn’t heal enough that I could safely put pressure on the wound yet, but that was only a matter of time. I just had to hope I didn’t develop an infection.
It seemed the potion wasn’t needed, which was a good thing, but this also delayed me knowing if potions work on me in the first place. That and if this really was a healing potion.
Thinking about it for a few more seconds, I opened the bottle and took a small sip of the potion before closing it again. It tasted like weak vinegar and… I felt no difference no matter how long passed, I was just left with a bad taste in my mouth, both literally and figuratively.
With that, a bit of the potion was wasted, but it seemed to prove that potions didn’t work on me, which was unfortunate. No magic did, it seemed, and potions were sadly magic.
This probably meant that the acid Milvarr was going to throw at me back then wouldn’t work either… unless it was non-magical acid.
At least one thing was almost certain: Because of my anti-magic, magical healing will not work on me. I have no reference for how strong my anti-magic truly is, though. Maybe it only stops weaker spells? Maybe it stops everything? Maybe it only has a set percent chance to work and I’ve just been really lucky/unlucky every time so far?
I needed to be incredibly careful. If I get injured, the only option I have is relying on a non-magical doctor (which is unlikely given that it felt like I had seen more magical things than not so far), or my own knowledge, and there’s no way a surgeon can operate on themselves…
-
Allow me to skip through the next hour or so. While it was painful, I had forced myself to my feet early and dug through every bush I could find nearby looking for a specific type of berry. I was lucky and I did indeed find a few. They looked like little pebbles and it’d be very easy to not notice it, but I had the help of a good description from the book. They were called ‘Pebblewarts’
[Small little grey berries about the size of a fingernail with the texture of stone. Due to their lack of resistance to being popped, some people refer to them as warts. The bushes they grow in are most commonly sighted in regions near sea water.
They have both disinfectant and anti-venom properties, but it needs to be distilled into a potion to effectively draw either nature out.]
I squeezed out the juice of several of these berries onto my wound and reapplied the bandage. It was supposed to have a mild disinfectant nature as well as working as an anti-venom agent. Ideally one would make an extract of these and mix them with other agents to make a proper disinfectant or anti-venom, but in a desperate time like this, the raw juice was good enough.
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It didn’t swell and I didn’t die, so it hopefully worked?
There was a lot of introspection that went nowhere while I healed, then I got properly dressed again and double checked my money.
I went from
1 silver, 2 bronze, 3 big copper, and 10 small copper coins
to
1 silver, 1 bronze, 6 small copper coins
I saw another snake and I decided I didn’t care about those coins enough to risk another knife fight. And since then I’ve been walk-limping with the metal staff along the coast eventlessly, sweating under the humid heat that had started to set in as the sun got higher and higher in the sky. It might have been a bit disrespectful to use a fallen warrior’s weapon like this, but I hoped they could forgive me from beyond as I needed to survive to pass this weapon on to his or her next of kin.
And out came some large and annoying insects to constantly fly around me. I hadn’t been bothered by insects till now, despite this being a jungle, but these ones seem attracted by the scent of blood I was giving off, from how they kept trying to get to my wounded thigh.
The bugs were green and brown, so they blended in well with the foliage around me, and they moved fast so I couldn’t get a good look at them. The buzzing made me think of mosquitoes, and they probably weren’t too far off from them.
And then I finally found the river.
From the map and calculating distances in my head, this river wasn’t very far from where I woke up. It might have just been two hours away at most… but It had probably taken three to four hours for me to get here. Getting injured and slowly limping my way forward had made this take so much longer, and now my clothes were clinging to me as my sweat dripped down my body and into the cloth. I still had filth on my from that disgusting temple, and I was dying to dunk my head in some cool water…
I had two wounds I couldn’t afford to let meet the river water, the one on my right arm and my left thigh, that was a surefire way to get an infection. And without medicine, that was a death sentence.
It was unfortunate that I didn’t have any waterproof bandages (and I only had another wrapping worth of bandages left in my medical kit).
Fighting the senseless impulse to jump into the river, I slowly dropped to my knees and looked into the water. It was a small river. It was probably more apt to call it a large stream. The water flowed fast and I couldn’t get much of a reflection in it… it was unfortunate. I knew I was in someone else’s body, but I didn’t know what I looked like yet. Maybe I could see if my sword was cleaner, but it had a layer of grime from the dungeon and snake blood dirtying it.
I considered cleaning it for a moment, but I honestly couldn’t care less about that at the moment, I could do that the next time I’m safe and resting.
I let myself be satisfied with just splashing a few handfuls of water on my face, rubbing away the sweat and refreshing myself a bit.
Letting out a sigh, I stood myself back up, fighting the swarming insects as I straightened my clothes the best I could.
I needed to follow the river for several hours, then I would find the village nearby.
But could I walk those several hours right now? Yes, but not very fast. I healed fast, but not that fast. I’d still need a day before I could walk normally again.
And that led me to another choice, do I push forth ignoring the pain to get to town before nightfall? Or do I try to find a safe place to rest?
The risk of getting attacked along the way or the risk of getting attacked while I rested and hopefully healed faster… both seemed awful, but since it was just me and I had no one else to help protect me or take guard shifts, was the second option really a choice? The only benefit is that I could gather more plants and attempt to make something with alchemy that could help me… it wasn’t worth it.
The day was still young, it was likely late morning at this point. I decided to trudge on, pushing through the low branches and leaves that seemed deliberately placed to get in my way. My pace was slowed by the terrain, and even more so as I avoided putting too much weight on my injured leg, pausing to rest any chance I could do so safely.
There were a few more double snakes around, but they didn’t attack me when I made it clear I could see them and I was ready for a fight. They were frighteningly smart, a lot smarter than monsters I see in most fantasy stories and games where they just mindlessly attack people. These bastards are real opportunists.
Along the river, I consulted the book of potions a few times, but almost none of the plants, trees, fruits and mushrooms I found were in the book. I was lucky enough to find a certain plant referred to as an ‘Elight bloom’.
[A light blue flower with long petals that close and twist shut when under direct sunlight, only blooming when in shade. This wild flower commonly grows along flowing bodies of freshwater.
The petals of the Elight bloom are mildly poisonous.
The leaves have a coagulating property.
The roots absorb mana from the flowing water and have a magical healing potency that can be used as the primary ingredient in a potion of healing.]
It was a nice find. The leaves would be useful to make staunch for me if I need to control bleeding, and the roots would be good for either trading, or making a healing potion, provided that my anti-magic doesn’t destroy the potion mid mixing?
I took that as a good sign and pushed forward a bit more and as I sidestepped a nasty looking twisting violet fern that grew as tall as me, I noticed a vaguely familiar form standing in the water ahead.
There was a large grey-skinned man standing in the middle of the river, holding a spear. At first I thought it was a statue because of the stony skin. He was shirtless, wearing thick leather pants with a large belt. Blue green tattoos marked his back and arms.
As I stepped closer to take a closer look at this figure, they finally moved, the spear in their hand suddenly bending towards and striking into the water. Pulling it out, there was a fish impaled upon it… that was rather incredible spearfishing form. I had finally met another person!
“Excuse me?” I called out to the man, but only got a quiet grunt in reply, as he half turned to look at me, gem-like blue eyes piercing through me, before seemingly losing interest and going back to fishing. Is everyone I meet going to be so weird and taciturn? Or are his grunts another language I don’t know?
“I’m sorry, but I was looking for a settlement! I believe it’s somewhere nearby, but do you know where I can find it?” I asked the large man, but he didn’t even acknowledge me, single mindedly focusing on his fishing.
Maybe he was a mute? Or he didn’t like strangers, or people in general. I’m not a psychologist, so I can only guess that I can’t talk to this man… but I decided to try talking a bit more to see if I got any usable response.
“It’s no use talking to Rangaar when he’s fishing.” I heard a feminine but low voice call out, and looking to the side I noticed a tough-looking human woman leaning against a tree, writing something into a rough looking notebook with a wooden feather-like pen. The first human I’ve seen since I got here!
I took note of the notebook and pen before anything else. I didn’t have a firm grasp on the level of technology in this world because I had only been in old ruins and a jungle, but the notebook didn’t look like vellum or papyrus. It seemed to be paper, even if it was rough.
Paper was available even back in the middle ages, but it wasn’t exactly cheap. Based on the price, I could probably tell if we were pre-industrial era or in the industrial era. The use of swords and leather armour made the latter seem unlikely, however.
And that pen… fountain pens didn’t exist till the start of the industrial era because they’re really difficult to make by hand. They have several small parts that need intense precision, but those were metal pens. Wood pens would mean that they have something inside that contains the ink, like rubber or plastic… The technology didn’t fit what I was seeing.
The woman herself was a fairly tall and decently-built bronze skinned woman with short red hair wearing a set of sturdy looking leather armour over a red shirt and brown pants, with a spear holstered on her back. It was impossible to believe she existed in the industrial era with everything she was carrying. But her teeth were notably well kept, so they likely had dental knowledge and facilities in this world. She looked like she worked for her money, and didn’t have anything fancy on her, so I ruled out the pen costing a fortune.
She seemed like a mercenary or adventurer from my guess? Unless she was a guard and it was a small settlement without a uniform?
Before I could say anything, she closed her book and put it and the pen away, placing a hand by her hip, where a shortsword I didn’t notice was sheathed.
“You need some help, looks like you had a rough time out there.” she asked in a drawling voice that almost made me think of a texan.
“Oh, hello there.” I greeted her with a smile… probably a tired one. “Yes, I have had… a rough time, putting it mildly.” I couldn’t help but laugh a bit thinking about everything that happened in what, twenty hours?
“I’m Armin. Armin Fischer. Do you know where I can find a settlement? I… really need to lie down.” I introduced myself, my mouth moving faster than my brain. It was only after I said that that I remembered I was in another person’s body, and that that person likely passed by this village, at the very least…
“Oh I can do you one better, I can take you there.” she replied, tapping her armoured side, where the symbol of a shark with a shield was etched into the leather. “I’m a guard for the village of Noffan, I’ll make sure you get there safely.” she seemed to not notice or care about what I just said, so maybe the two hadn’t met? Or I didn’t stand out very much.
Jesus, it was like a dream come true. I felt like I went through a whole arc of my life since I first woke up, but it was finally over. I could go to whatever this village was and just shut down for a day. Then I’d do whatever I could to arrange Milvarr’s rites, find out about my body’s last owner, that priest and monk, whoever they were, and then I just needed a way to earn money and look for a way to get back home!
Everything was finally lining up, I felt like I finally hit the jackpot!
If only I were a lucky man.