Rog’s right arm fell to one side while he fell to the other and rolled away. In the end, he managed to avoid a death blow, and as someone who opened all twelve of his veins, his body didn’t fall into shock at the loss of a limb. The consequences of the blow, however, were direr than that, but at the time neither of them could process it.
Red sought to charge at the ghoul to catch its attention again, but he didn’t need to. As soon as Rog was thrown to the side, the ghoul turned to the youth, staring at the core in his hand.
“Get the two of them closer together!” Aurelia’s voice sounded by his ear.
The youth didn’t know what her plan was, but he knew she was his only hope. Red felt the Spiritual Bestowment talisman wearing off, and he knew that if this wasn’t resolved right now, he would definitely die.
He turned around and dashed towards the female ghoul downhill, who was already getting up and charging back at the fray.
Aurelia urged him on. “Focus on the core! Don’t resist what’s about to happen!”
Her words alarmed him, but he knew this was no time for hesitation. He focused on the core in his hand right as the two ghouls closed in on him from both sides.
The glow on the crystal intensified, and suddenly, Red felt something being pulled out of his body and into the core. It took him a split second to realize what it was.
‘Moonstone Energy.’
The youth didn’t resist it. As the energy from his special acupoints was pulled out of his body, a human shape seemed to form in the air above the core. Red was quick to recognize it as Aurelia, but there was something different about her this time around.
Her skin became pale and sunken in, her hair turned white and was floating about as if with a life of its own, but what really caught the youth’s attention were her eyes. They were completely red, and blood flowed down the woman’s corpse-like face like tears. Her feet weren’t touching the ground either, as Aurelia floated a few meters above.
Her whole aura had changed, and Red felt an unprecedented sense of fear as he stared at her figure. He was reminded of what kind of creature Aurelia was in the first place.
‘A ghost.’
As soon as she appeared, the ghouls chasing after Red also froze. Their expression changed, and they stared at Aurelia with terrified gazes. Without hesitation, both of them turned around to run.
Before that, though, the woman acted. Her jaws distended, and her mouth opened up to a wide, dark gaping hole. Then she seemed to take a deep breath.
Red felt the surrounding air change. A familiar sensation came to him.
‘Spiritual Energy.’
A second later, Aurelia let out a soundless scream. The air seemed to shake and trees rustled about as her wail spread to the surroundings. Red couldn’t hear any of it, but he felt something reach into his mind, and he felt light-headed. Still, he kept his consciousness.
A few seconds later, Aurelia’s scream seemed to stop. Then, out of nowhere, the woman simply disappeared into thin air before Red could even question her.
That was when he felt something strange. Or rather, he didn’t feel it.
The fluctuations of both ghouls were gone.
Red, who was too distracted before by Aurelia’s terrifying appearance, looked back at the creatures who were chasing him. Both of them were now laying on the ground, unmoving.
They were dead.
Red was confused, but he didn’t have time to investigate. He turned around and dashed back toward the area where Rog had collapsed.
He found the hunter sitting against a tree, holding onto what remained of his right arm. He was still conscious, though his expression was pale.
He looked surprised upon seeing Red. “What happened?”
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“They’re dead.” Red said as he approached the hunter.
“How?”
“Don’t ask.”
The youth ignored him and examined the man’s right arm. It was cut off just above the elbow, but it seemed like the bleeding had mostly stopped. This wasn’t what worried Red, though.
Rather, it was this blackish substance that seemed to be spreading from the wound, towards his shoulder and the rest of his body, from the veins beneath his skin.
“I tried the healing pill.” Rog shook his head. “It didn’t work.”
Red didn’t respond and continued to examine the wound with a frown.
Rog grunted. “How bad is it?”
“We need to cut off the rest of your arm.”
The hunter was silent for a few seconds, but still nodded. “… Do it.”
Red didn’t hesitate. He cleaned his sword thoroughly from the ghoul’s blood before putting it over the remaining length of Rog’s arm.
He looked over at the man, waiting for his signal. Rog took out a knife from his waist with his other hand and bit into its handle. Then he nodded at Red.
The youth’s sword swung down. It met no resistance as it sliced off the remains of Rog’s upper right arm, stopping just short of the man’s shoulder.
The hunter wailed and grunted in pain, biting deep into the knife handle, but still held onto his consciousness. Red was also quick to act, feeding Rog two healing pills from his own pouch, the whole supply the youth brought with himself.
Rog swallowed it without hesitation, and a few seconds later, the pills were already starting to have its effect. The bleeding stopped, and the wound around the man’s stump began to close up. Still, Red tied it up with whatever bit of cloth remained on his torso to stop the injury from reopening.
“We need to move.” Red said, trying to bring Rog up.
The hunter nodded, accepting his help. “You might… Need to carry me.”
Red could feel through Rog’s fluctuation that he was barely conscious. Without hesitation, the youth put the hunter over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Rog didn’t resist, or rather didn’t have the strength to resist in the first place and let himself be carried away by Red.
The youth himself was still feeling the pains from the battle, mostly a few broken ribs and the burning in his back. His regeneration, now slowed down with the diminished crimson mist in his body, wasn’t helping much either, but Red was more than used to moving in wounded conditions, so he wouldn’t allow himself to be slowed down.
“Tell me if you start to feel any other symptoms!” Red said to Rog as he ran away.
All the response he got was a pained grunt.
Red didn’t stop running until he was at least a dozen kilometers away from where they fought the ghouls, almost nearing exhaustion when he finally deemed it safe enough to stop. This was, of course, necessary because he knew the ghouls weren’t the only danger in the region. If there was really someone controlling them, then they would definitely not be too pleased at having lost their minions, and neither Red nor Rog were in any state to fight any longer.
Once he settled down, Red immediately checked on the hunter’s condition. The man was still conscious, and his wounds had yet to reopen, but this didn’t make the youth feel like the danger had passed yet.
Rog grunted through his closed eyes as Red set him down against a tree.
“I heard that kind of thing doesn’t work, y’know.” he said with a weak voice.
The youth frowned. “What thing?”
“Cutting off an infected limb. It doesn’t stop the infection from spreading.”
“It still buys us time.”
The man grunted. “Time? For what?”
“To cure you.” Red said.
Rog opened his eyes and stared at the youth through ragged breaths. “Can you do it?”
“… I will find a way.”
The hunter smiled. “I’m sure… you will…”
Rog trailed off, and his eyes closed as he fell unconscious. Red frowned in concern, but upon further examination, he confirmed the hunter’s situation was stable for now. How long that would last, though, was another question.
With what little time was afforded them, Red sat down and pulled out his insectoid core again. It was significantly dimmer than the youth ever recalled it being, even weaker than when he first got his hands on it back in the underground. He knew this wasn’t a good sign.
“Aurelia, can you hear me?” Red said out loud.
There was no response. Whatever the woman had done to save him had come at a great cost to both her and, in turn, to the core’s condition.
‘Is she dead?’
Red wasn’t sure, but he doubted the woman would be willing to sacrifice herself in such a manner. It was very likely, instead, that she was in a coma or hibernation state, a common defense mechanism for almost all beings when under extreme pressure or life-threatening injuries, whether they were human or not.
This raised another worrying matter to Red, though. Was she still able to keep her disguising technique up under those conditions? If she couldn’t, that meant that the imperials would find their way to him, eventually.
He looked over at Rog with a frown. The curse of undeath was an infectious disease. It could be transmitted many ways, but the most common one was through bodily fluids or scratch and bite wounds. Red had already seen a deer transform into an undead earlier, presumably clawed by the ghoul, which meant that the creature could transmit its disease to someone else through its sharp nails.
Rog had his arm cut off by one of its claws, and even after all they did, there was no guarantee the disease hadn’t already spread to the rest of his body. Even if the remaining disease in his body was weak, it would grow and eventually fester, transforming him into a zombie.
Red didn’t know how long that process might take. It could take a few hours, maybe days, perhaps even weeks. It all depended on the source of infection and the treatment provided. Some people had even lived for years or the rest of their lives with the help of powerful cultivators, dying of old age before the disease could even have an effect.
However, amidst all of this, there was a prevailing common knowledge when it came to undead sickness.
There was no cure.