Logan watched Freya stomp towards him with fists clenched. She started yammering at him for carrying Kat home, but Logan wasn’t in the mood to listen right now. He put Kat carefully down. The girl whimpered half-awake and clutched at Logan’s satchel. Logan pried her fingers off gently.

“Frey. Get Dr. Rosenberg.”

Freya was about to say something more, but Logan snapped at her. “Now!”

She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, took another look at Kat and gave him a sober nod. Logan sighed in relief.

The elderly [Healer] half ran, half hobbled to where Kat lay. Logan gave him an [E-Grade Numa Crystal, 100%]. One of many.

“Use this. I’ll give you another if you need.”

The old doctor didn’t ask what had happened or what was wrong with Kat. He told them to give him space, and immediately hunched over the young girl’s body, checking her pulse and pupils and whatnot.

After a minute he turned to Logan. “Young M— Logan. What bit her?”

“A beetle-monster. One of those blue and black things. Her thigh.”

Dr. Rosenberg ripped the messed up thigh of her jeans open, and revealed a graze of a beetle-horn and four puncture wounds that had bitten into her leg. He inspected the wound and pressed on the flesh, eliciting a groan from Kat. Then he sniffed it of all things.

“They aren’t venomous,” the [Healer] said.

“The other thigh,” Logan said sourly. Freya came and kissed Logan’s shoulder. Logan nudged her head.

“Happy to see you again,” he said.

“Likewise,” Freya murmured. “What happened?”

“I’ll… Tell you later.”

The other thigh wasn’t ripped violently. It had three of those manufactured clean vertical cuts to make it look cooler. Logan always thought they looked dumb as hell. Who’d spend a hundred bucks to buy ripped clothes. Idiots, that’s who.

Between one of those cuts, there was a burn mark on Kat’s skin. It wasn’t much larger than a cigarette butt, but the skin around it was angry red in inflammation. Logan knew exactly what had caused that. His ears were burning. One word for it would be paralyzing, corrosive death sludge (patent pending). Another word could be irresponsibility.

“Use the crystal!” Logan urged the doctor who was clearly weighing his options.

Dr. Rosenberg raised an eyebrow moderately. “How?”

“Tell it what you want. Tell it you want to heal her from the toxin, and you want to repair tissue or whatever.”

The good doctor did just that. The crystal clearly yielded some energy, and the red swollen skin around the burn got ever so slightly better.

“Oh,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “I leveled up. That’s… Interesting. But it says the level requirement is not met.”

“What level are you?” Logan snapped urgently. He had seen Kat’s state weakening by the hour. He’d have thought it would get better overnight in a nice cool place to sleep, but it was the opposite.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“One,” Rosenberg said. “Well two now in [Medicine]. I also have some of these… Attribute points, mostly in Insight.

Logan groaned in frustration. He snapped his fingers at Balmer, who was standing there particularly uselessly right now. “Give me back my weapon.”

“What are you—”

Logan snatched the scythe-rang from the goon and without hesitation cut a proper gash on his forearm. Freya yelped.

“Logan!”

Logan thrust the arm at their [Healer]. “We’re going to powerlevel your ass. Heal it.”

The good doctor gave him a hesitant look. He gulped and made a polite, mild-mannered request of the Numa crystal.

Everyone looked at the four inch red gash on Logan’s arm. First the trickle of bleeding slowed down. Then the flesh knit itself back together an inch from both ends.

“Oh!” Rosenberg said.” I leveled up quite a lot.

“Again!” Logan demanded.

For the next ten minutes Logan cut and Rosenberg healed. Most everyone, including Logan’s father, came and watched the procession. They only stopped when Logan fell to his knees from weakness of blood loss. Regardless, he presented his trembling arm to the doctor. He healed it fully.

When Logan fumbled for his weapon, about to make another cut, Malcolm Specter grabbed his wrist.

“Enough.”

“It’s not!” Logan spat out, half delirious. “It’s my fault! I will fix it.”

“You will rest,” His father said in a tone that brooked no argument. Then he took the blade from Logan’s weakened hands and cut his own arm. It was a forceful and deep cut, blood flying in every direction. Without the slightest flinch on his stern face, Malcolm Specter offered his hand to the doctor.

With blurry vision, his dizziness almost overtaking him, Logan noticed the E-grade crystal was almost spent. He fished for another one from his bulging, glowing pouch.

“Here,” he managed to say before passing out in Freya’s arms.

*

Logan woke up in the shade of a great tree of leathery leaves and gray trunk. Freya held his head on her thighs and smiled down affectionately.

“Not a bad way to wake up,” Logan said and gave her half a smile.

Freya brushed a strand of hair off Logan’s forehead. “Now this I know how to do at least.”

“What?” Logan muttered.

“Oh. Nothing.”

“How are you feeling?” Freya asked.

“A little weak.”

“Dr. Rosenberg told me you would need to eat something. We have some beetle-meat left.”

“G-great,” Logan muttered. “More beetles. Just what I wanted.”

Freya rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get you some.”

She returned a few minutes later with beetlemush and water in crude clay bowls. That doctor who had started working with clay must have gotten a few levels. The bowls were smooth and almost even.

“She alright?” Logan asked quietly.

Freya’s face scrunched up ever so slightly in disgust. She fixed it up fast, but not fast enough.

“Don’t be an asshole, Frey,” Logan said gently.

“You— I— She pisses me off, alright!?”

Logan laughed. It hurt his ribs. He was still sore from the yesterday’s death battle. But a weight fell off his sore shoulders.

“She’s weak,” Freya said. “Took the doc two of those crystals to stabilize her. Now she’s resting in the den.”

“That’s what you guys are calling it?”

Freya shrugged. “It caught on.”

“You heard what happened?” Logan asked quietly as he wiped his mouth after gulping down the water bowl.

“Some of it,” Freya said. “Balmer started making a report, when your dad stopped cutting himself. I’ve never seen either of you so… Intense.”

“Specters have for generations grown intense when teleported into another realm.”

She giggled, but Logan noticed that she was mostly humoring him. He couldn’t blame her. That joke wasn’t exactly Late Night show material. Blood loss was surely the reason.

Logan told her what had transpired. It sucked living it again. Logan didn’t ask himself anything stupid like what he should have done better or differently. It was a question whether they should have fought the beetles or not. This time it had worked out, sure.

But. He’d put people in risk of death for greed. That sounded awful lot like a Malcolm Specter move. Logan didn’t particularly enjoy that thought. But at least the risk had paid off. 23 [E-grade Numa Crystals]. Well 21 if healing Kat had taken two. That would leave seven for the three of them. Logan could get a lot done with 7 of those bad boys. Oh, he had plans.

“I guess I left my satchel where we arrived,” Logan said and got up. “At least we made a fat bank!”

“Yeah, umm…” Freya said, searching for the right words.

Logan didn’t like where this was heading.

“He didn’t?” Logan asked, anger mounting in his voice.

Freya cringed. “He did.”