I tell Lance to start gathering all of his men that will learn warrior. While he’s doing that I go and check on the prisoners I hurt. Most of them are fine, scrapes and bruises that will heal eventually but the one who challenged me is in very bad shape. He wasn’t knocked unconscious but that is only unfortunate for him because he was put in immense pain. He’s got two black eyes, a broken nose and he’s missing five teeth from the top of his mouth now. I talk to him.
“Sorry about that.”
I start to heal him while saying.
“I should be able to heal most of this but I can’t do anything about your teeth unfortunately.”
He cries out in pain for the first few moments of me healing him. After healing most of the damage he calms down and stops moaning in pain. He spits out two more of his teeth as he says.
“You didn’t have to *spit* go that far.”
“You’re right… You didn’t have to lie about why you’re here either.”
He looks daggers at me as he sits forwards and stands up. As he walks away he says.
“All of the prisoners are here for petty reasons, I stole food. You just almost killed a petty thief because I lied to make myself seem tougher in front of these other people.”
“I’m sorry… I overreacted but you’re at fault too. You challenged someone and were willing to fight a child before you knew you were outmatched. I knew someone like you before… Just seeing you fills me with regret from what I should have done. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here so I wont kill you… Please don’t make me regret it.”
He just walks away… This entire situation just reminds me of Burke… I hope he can get over this. I’ll have to pay close attention to him. He seems to have the highest chance of doing something stupid and he might try to convince some other people to do something stupid with him. The whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope my gut feeling about him is wrong. If he acts up again, I’ll kill him without hesitation.
It makes my arm hurt thinking about it. Not my missing arm but the arm I lost after fighting with Burke… I need to continue to push ahead, most of the men have finally gathered for me to teach. Teaching his men warrior will be no small task but it is only around 800 men. It will still take a few days for me to teach them. When I taught the archers I was able to teach all of them while only feeling slightly strained… I could possibly teach 300 men per day, maybe 400 if that is all I did that day.
That’s what I plan on doing right now. I split them into two groups and send the first half of the group away to continue watching the rest of the men. I then split the remaining 400 men into four groups so each group can easily hear me while I go over the basics of the warrior class.
The first group is easy enough, the second group I can start to feel tired already. With the third group it feels like I’ve stayed up the entire night. Finally, after teaching the fourth I feel ready to pass out from exhaustion. Lance takes over talking with the men now about their new class. I barely make it through the portal and into bed before I collapse.
Leaf’s point of view
Something odd happened today… This is the first time I’ve ever stayed up later than Kite. With how he sleeps, he’s normally up far later than most and I have woken up before him but never have I went to sleep after he has. It’s strange but I don’t think much into it, I kiss him goodnight and fall asleep myself. When I wake up however, I know that something is wrong. Kite is still sleeping, he’s never slept for this long ever since I’ve met him.
I look at him and he looks fine, maybe alittle sweaty. Something just seems to off about him sleeping in like this. Kite is such a hard worker him sleeping in like this is too abnormal. I pull the blanket off him and know immediately that something is wrong. His arm is… Black sludge is leaking from his arm and soaking into the bed almost touching me while I was sleeping. The black sludge flows through his veins all the way up past his arm and into his chest…
What do I do? Cold sweat covers most of his body. I rush out of the room and head towards the room adjacent to ours that has his pets. We recently moved out of the castle mimic because it was too much of an inconvenience for everyone to get to Kite if they needed to. He expanded his old room to fit us and added a side room for his pets. I kick open the door to his pets room and yell.
“Someone go get Hilda junior! There is something wrong with Kite.”
Hilda junior’s point of view
Ugh, I’m still so tired. I look up at Sock who barged into our room screaming for help before picking me up and carrying me out of the room at the confusion of my parents and sisters. I barely had enough time to grab my doctors bag before he plucked me from my bed. He places me down once I started kicking. I jog through the hallway still in a half daze from just waking up and ask him what is happening.
“There is something wrong with Kite.”
I’ve been woken up twice before for similar situations where the night doctor wasn’t enough to handle a situation but never was it as urgent as this. I slap my face a bit more to shake off the haze and start to speed up following behind Sock. We don’t live very far from Kite and the hallways are almost completely empty besides a stray sleepy person making there way back to their rooms after getting food or using the bathroom.
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I enter his room and the scene is very similar to the condition Leon was in months ago. No… He’s in an even worse, a far worse state than Leon was in. I’m shocked at the sight of Kite missing an arm but that is the least of his problems. I move close and push back the animals standing close by him who don’t need to be.
Pokodo is here and has started some form of treatment but she isn’t as knowledgeable with this type of injury. At least she knew enough to not try and heal him without knowing what exactly was wrong to begin with. Leaf stands close by and I have to do a double take when I see that. I yell at her.
“Leaf! We don’t know if this is contagious, you need to step away from him right now!”
She stays by him for another few seconds but my death stare is enough to make her step away. With her moving to a safe distance I start to examine him in more detail. He’s sweating profusely, I jump up onto the bed and push open his eye, they are his normal color with no signs of them starting to turn black. I breath a sigh of relief, that's the first good sign in this situation. His veins look bad but I don’t think it’s just ghoulification happening to him. I ask Leaf now.
“What was different today that could have caused this?”
“Do you mean besides his arm being cut off? Not really… No, now that you mention it, he came home extremely tired today.”
“That might actually be the cause of his problems. This isn’t just one injury, his body has been fighting off several problems for a long time now and the moment he lowered his fatigue this low all of them piled up to becoming this problem.”
One problem compounds on another. This is not only from the ghoul infection but it was most likely complicated by his mana poisoning from before. I also suspect that perhaps a parasite and a virus are also playing roles in his condition. He looks abnormally pale. I wipe off some cold sweat from his forehead with a cloth and yell out.
“Someone go get me some hot water and enough cloth to stop the bleeding if I need to amputate more of his arm.”
When I say that I see the grim look on everyone's faces. I carry a doctors bag with me wherever I go just in case I have to preform surgery and I pull out a few tools I might need to help relieve some of these problems. I ask for a stool to stand on so I can reach the injured area on Kite. After a panicked few seconds of everyone looking around and not seeing one, Sock throws himself down on the edge of the bed and tells me to step on him to preform the surgery. I yell at him for being so ridiculous and tell him to go get one from another room.
I stand up on the right side of the bed where Kite was moved to so I could more easily operate on him. I’ve already thought about taking him to the medical bay but if anyone seen Kite in this state it could cause a momentous panic throughout the entire population here inside the fortress.
I sigh again and cut into one of the blackened veins on his arm. A stream of black liquid sprays out of his arm and strikes the wall directly where Leaf would have been standing. The pressure from it and the distance the black liquid went surprises me. I squeeze his veins until most of the blackish liquid is drained then quickly seal up the wound with healing magic. I repeat this process several times until most of it is out of his body.
He still looks to be in very bad shape but all we can do now is hope he starts to get better… It takes 30 minutes for him to stop looking as pale as snow. I wipe the sweat off with a cloth soaked in warm water. During this time both of my parents come into the room. For a moment I think they’re going to say something but they both just sit back and watch. Neko who ran off to get cloth arrives and I instruct all of them to start cleaning the black liquid from everything.
“Scrub them down hard and throw the infected water out where no one can accidentally touch it. Bury it if you have to and burn the rags and bucket as well so this doesn’t spread.”
After the pirate war there were a few sparse cases of some pirates getting infected and turning into a ghoul from the remaining blood and corpses left behind from the fight. The few that were not lucky enough to catch it in time and chop of the infect limb also changed into a ghoul and had to be put down.
It’s another 2 hours before he completely stabilizes… He could still relapse and become sick again. I doubt he will, I think our biggest problem is once Kite does wake up that we keep him in bed so he can properly recover. If he works himself too much directely after a traumatic experience like this it could effect him negatively... I feel tired… Like the most tired I’ve ever felt. I yawn while picking a comfortable corner to fall asleep in. Kite should be fine and if something bad happens they’ll wake me up.
Kite’s point of view
New racial trait unlocked Survivor- After surviving a close encounter with death you become more resistant to that type of damage
Current additional Resistances- 20% Physical, 10% Magical, 10% Fire, 20% Necrotic, 20% Parasitic
Current Immunities- Poison, Disease, Mental attacks
New racial trait unlocked Accelerated growth- Stats, classes and jobs gain 20% more experience than an average race
New secret skill unlocked Philosopher- Fatigue lost from the tutor job and teaching class now reduced by 90%
NOTICE!
Unlocking racial traits unlocks them for every high human from this point onward
I wake up and feel… Actually I feel amazing. This is the best I’ve felt in a very long time and what was with all of those new traits suddenly unlocking? I glance around the room and see several people surrounding my bed… I’m also on the wrong side of the bed, I always sleep on the left. They give me very concerned looks and finally Sock explains what happened to me. He goes on.
“That’s not all, look over in the corner of the room.”
I sit up and look in the corner he points too. I don’t recognize her. Hilda who is sitting down now speaks very quietly.
“That is Hilda junior. After operating on you she fell asleep in the corner and evolved into a hobgoblin.”
I almost involuntarily yell out “WHAT!?” but catch myself so I don’t wake her. I almost forget about all the new racial traits and the title I acquired… I sit in my bed stunned as I look at my new stats.
The resistance bonuses were from close deaths and they stack with my already insanely high resistance stat. A physical blow would automatically do less than 70% of it’s original value plus I would most likely end up dodging it in the first place. Most likely because of my parasite resistance all of my stats have gone up by 20% as well… I’ve also gained full immunity to diseases and mental attacks.
I motion to get out of bed and four people jump me and force me back down. I let out a chuckle and start to fight back but it’s four of my strongest men. Gobber, Sock, Green and Zergnar all hold me in place. One holds my arm, one on each leg and finally one has both hands on my chest holding me down. If I wanted to I could most likely break free. I plead with them now.
“Please let me up. I have too much to do today to stay in bed. I need to teach Lance’s troops and make last minute preparations for the war.”
I start to fight a little more now to test the strength of everyone’s grasp. They’re fighting an uphill battle. I start to raise my hands and if they were trying to force me back instead of holding me down they might have been able to. Gravity is on my side in this situation though. I lift up my arms and legs and everyone except Zergnar who was holding my chest is lifted off the ground. I question again.
“Does it look like I’m sick? I need to get back to work, I can’t even take a day off before the war.”
I start to get frustrated. I could start swinging my arms and legs around until they go flying and make a break for the door. Leaf speaks now.
“You were on deaths door Kite… You weren’t awake for it so you don’t know how bad it was… I know you’re not a normal person but you deserve a break every once in awhile like the rest of us.”
She gives me a stern look and I set my arms and legs back down and they let go. I guess I deserve some rest. I can’t help but laugh at how much I’m fighting to keep myself busy and how much my friends are fighting for me to have a break.
“Alright, I feel fine but if you feel I need to take a break Leaf then I will. Speaking of which, I’m starving.”
As I go to stand up to make my way to the mess hall, Leaf offhandedly mentions.
"Oh, I was going to mention it last night but you were already asleep. I was feeling nauseous so I went to see the see Hilda junior yesterday. It turns out I'm pregnant."