The ambush was over, the monsters were defeated, and no one was seriously hurt. Well, Symon was hurt pretty badly, but he'd healed himself back to peak condition by now. Aslan had also acquired a few bites to his limbs, which similarly required healing, but hadn't seemed to affect the man nearly as much as Symon had been. Counting the bodies, they found 27 dead monsters, the majority of which had been focused on Aslan. Symon could admit he was currently the weakest link in the party, so he was unsure why the creatures targeted the most well-defended member instead of him. With his shield, light chainmail armour, and general combat experience, he'd endured the swarm for far, far longer than Symon could have.
It had worked out in his favour, but this wasn't the first time he'd observed illogical behaviour from the various monsters here. He was hardly an animal behavioural expert in the best of times, so who was to say there wasn't a perfectly normal explanation once one factored in the existence of magic?
He'd healed everyone who needed healing, so it was time for the best part of surviving life-or-death combat; the rewards.
Okay, living is better, but this is a close second.
With a mental command, Symon told his Ledger to manifest. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but as he looked down at the ground he saw the slowly expanding pool of blood from a nearby monster corpse slowly fill in the cracks in the stone. When viewed from above, the red lines formed letters.
[You have acquired a new passive: Bleeding Resistance]
[Bleeding Resistance (0): Reduces rate of blood loss from wounds. Reduces the physiological impacts of hypovolemia.]
[ Status:
Name: Symon
Class: Cursed Healer
Strength: 0.90 {+0.03}
Constitution: 1.24 {+0.06}
Acuity: 0.93 {+0.03}
Intelligence: 0.97 {+0.03}
Will: 1.22 {+0.04}
Vessel (Vitality): 17/17
Abilities:
Idealise (13) {+4}
Seize (11) {+1}
Essence Bond (11) {+1}
Passives:
Bleeding Resistance (3) {+3}
Languages (8) {+1}
Pain Resistance (7) {+2}
Poison Resistance (2) {+2}
Running (8) {+1}
Swords (3) {+2} ]
A brand new resistance! Symon wasn't expecting it, although when he looked at how much of his blood had been spilled out onto the stone, he supposed it made sense. Although...
"That's a good question," Symon said back, trawling through his memories as he tried to figure it out. He hadn't checked his Ledger in a while, so the poison wasn't necessarily part of this fight, but he couldn't find an obvious cause. He might have guessed food poisoning, but Atabek was too good of a cook for him to seriously consider that.
No, it has to be something more recent...
The bleeding resistance was obvious, he'd bled so much and still survived that the Ledger felt him deserving of a resistance. It was probably why he also gained so many levels to his healing, although it did feel like he'd almost gained too much. Did he really bleed that much? For that matter, why did he bleed so much? He'd become uncomfortably accustomed to rapidly estimating how severe his own injuries were, and he was pretty sure that he shouldn't have been bleeding nearly as fast as he did. Thinking back to the great spurts of blood that had shot out of him, it was kind of ridiculous in retrospect. If he'd seen it happen in a movie, he would have rolled his eyes at how unrealistic it was. It was akin to a car blowing up in a massive fireball after being shot with a few bullets.
A mysterious increase in his poison resistance, and a mysterious extreme amount of bleeding — he was pretty sure he knew what was going on.
He squatted down next to a dead monster, pulling open its strange circular mouth and inspecting the bloodstained teeth. "Hmm, I think its saliva is an anticoagulant."
"Blood thinners, makes it harder for your body to clot a bleeding wound. I'm guessing it's why they weren't intimidated by us, they're used to using their pack tactics to bleed out larger prey," Symon said. That last part was just a guess, but it made sense to him.
Symon sighed. "You're insufferable, you know that? You also know I went to a medical school, right? It's kind of my thing." There was a big difference between the med school a brain surgeon would go to and the much shorter course a paramedic would take, but he felt no reason to clarify that now.
His studies had also taught him the value of the scientific process and empirical testing, so he wasn't content with leaving his theory as just that. He sat down next to the monster and, as gently as he could, put a small cut into the tip of his finger using his sword. It was so small, barely even a papercut, that the wound closed together by the time only a single drop of blood appeared. He studied the droplet for a moment, before flicking it off onto the floor. Next, with a slight grimace, he scraped his finger across the tooth of the deceased creature, staring in fascination as a small stream of blood poured out of his finger, quickly slowing down but taking a full eight seconds to stop completely. He'd timed it.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Yeah, it's definitely a blood thinner, probably part of its saliva. The Ledger must have recognised it as a poison and given me levels in both resistances."
It was difficult for Symon to feel lucky after being used as a chew toy, but his Ledger had just grown by leaps and bounds. The Bleeding Resistance in particular would be especially helpful. Generally, his first priority for treating wounds was to stop the bleeding, then fix enough to get his body into fighting condition. His healing had levelled up, making it more powerful directly, but he'd also been given extra leeway in not bleeding to death. He didn't intend to rely on it in order to ignore wounds, both due to its low level and because he didn't want to bleed everywhere, but he was still appreciative. Just like with Poison Resistance, it wouldn't do much in his day-to-day life, but he could think of plenty of scenarios in which he'd be grateful to his past self for earning them.
By now, the battle had been over for a few minutes. Everyone was done checking their Ledgers, and were ready to resume their journey through the valley.
"Hang on a second," Symon said. "Aren't we forgetting to loot them?"
"To... loot them?" Aslan asked, the confusion evident on his face. "What would you take from them?"
"Err, their mana cores?" he replied, also looking around in confusion. Of course he wanted to hurry to the village, but there must have been so many cores here. They'd be throwing away money by not harvesting them!
Aslan looked at a nearby monster corpse for a few moments, back to Symon, and then back to the corpse. "Friend Symon, these monsters are far too small to possess a core."
"I'm not so sure about that. Those six little cores I showed you over breakfast were from fish," he said.
"Ah, yes, some type of mighty aquatic beast you had slain before we met?"
Now, it was Symon's turn to be confused. He had told Aslan where the cores came from, right? Or had he...
"No," Symon replied. "It was the same fish we'd had for dinner the night before, the ones with the little glowing horns."
"How big were these specific fish you killed?"
Symon held his hand out in front of him.
"Oh," Aslan continued, his eyes widening as he looked at the space between Symon's hand and the ground. "That is much bigger than the ones we had for dinner."
"I meant that the fish were about the same size as my hand."
"Oh," Aslan said. "Then perhaps you should cut one open."
----------------------------------------
Safiya had loaned him one of her knives, although he'd had to promise several times that he wouldn't damage it. Now, it was being used to butcher one of the monsters. They were doglike, but only in the vaguest of senses, so he didn't feel bad about doing it. They were all a pale, bone white, as well as being skeletally thin. They'd looked like undead, sun bleached bones, but he'd already discovered they were living creatures when he fought them and disemboweled one. Skeletons didn't have intestines, after all.
The skin was tough, but so thin that he doubted it provided much protection. He hadn't noticed much resistance when his sword cut through them, supporting this theory. The strangest part of them was the lack of a head, as well as their odd, cylindrical bodies. If anything, they looked the most like stick insects.
Glancing over at the rest of the team, they were having a quick snack as they recovered from the exertions of fighting.
What a waste, Symon thought. They're so numb to the wonders of magic. This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen, and they don't care to find out how it works...
No one recognised these creatures, so when he asked how they could see without a head or indeed anything resembling a sensory organ, the answer was incredibly dissatisfying. "It's just magic," he'd been told with a shrug. That had flipped a switch in Symon's mind — he'd been the type of child to always ask "But why?" after every question. It must have annoyed his parents and teachers, but he'd just been too curious to care. There were so many things he just didn't know about the world, and this was his chance to finally be the only one in the know, instead of the only one in the dark.
Magic surely had some influence on the creature's biology — the mana core was a physical organ, after all — but it seemed sad to no longer wonder how such fantastical things were possible. He hoped he never got so used to magic that he found it mundane. Of course, he understood that not everyone was willing to do... this, just to learn something new.
With a soft snap, he cracked off some of the thin ribs of the creature, exposing the internal organs.
"Look here, at its heart. It's way too small for a creature this size," he thought, directing the words toward Keelgrave. It wasn't strictly necessary to focus for the communication to work, but it made the words easier for them both to understand if they were concentrating on each other. Thankfully, Keelgrave wasn't able to actually read his mind, just his internal monologue.
"No, I'd bet that all of them are like this," he replied, ignoring Keelgrave's complaints. He peeled back more of the creature's meat. "The circulatory system as a whole seems too small, the veins and arteries don't look big enough to supply a creature this size with blood."
Keelgrave was silent, but he could tell the spirit was paying attention as he continued cutting open the creature. He wanted to figure out what was up with those quill projectiles. He'd taken a look at one he'd pulled out of himself after the fight was over, finding it to be a spike of a bone-like material, roughly the thickness of his finger but twice as long. It was hollow like he'd previously guessed, meaning the projectile wouldn't plug a wound shut and instead allow the blood to flow freely like a spigot. When coupled with the anticoagulants, it made sense why he'd lost so much blood only shortly after taking a few hits.
Cutting open the long tube that was the creature's body, it wasn't long before he found the source of the projectiles. A long, esophagus like tube ran half the length of its body, with a blood filled sac at the end.
Keelgrave said suddenly.
"Why, what's up with it?" he asked as he begun carefully slicing around the organ.
When he pulled the organ out, it looked like a small stomach. It began spilling blood out of a few small holes before he turned it around to face upward. "Does that mean it's valuable?"
He felt Keelgrave's spirit vibrate and twist in his vessel as he considered the question.
"Yeah, no way I'm going lug around a bag of rotting blood for a little extra cash."
"I wouldn't call it a waste of time," Symon said, looking at the cracks in the floor that had filled up with ruby red blood as he'd worked.
[You have acquired a new passive: Anatomy]
[Anatomy (0): Improves awareness and understanding of biological systems.]