I hobble my way over towards her as fast as I can. There’s a growing pool of blood underneath where she lays. I drop my bow to the side and kneel down into it, feeling it seep into my leggings. She pulled the dagger out after she stabbed herself, so there’s nothing blocking the flow of blood. I put my hands on her wound, trying to apply pressure while ignoring how clammy her skin feels.
Her eyelids flutter open. She stares up at the sky for a moment before her head falls towards me. A spark of relief appears in her eyes as she gives me a lopsided, bloody smile.
I return her smile, but we’re not out of the woods yet. “You’re bleeding out right now. Do you have some sort of skill that will increase your health regeneration? Like [Meditation]?” My own voice sounds muffled to my ears as I speak.
The girl stares at me dully for a moment, then tries to crane her head so she can look at her stomach. The very motion seems to send pain through her, because she grimaces and drops down again. Her eyes flick back and forth - is that what reading Status screens looks like?
Looking like she’s found what she wanted, she begins taking a deep breath inwards. She opens her mouth - then winces and erupts into a coughing fit. Shit. I press down harder on her stomach as each constriction of her muscles sends out a pulse of blood.
“Woah, woah, hey, I think you damaged your throat pretty badly when you were trying to sing earlier. Are all of your abilities like that? Is there anything you don’t need your voice for?”
She gives me a look full of frustration, although I don’t think it’s aimed at me. At least, I hope not. She then closes her eyes, and at first I assume she’s trying to think, but after a second I realize there are tears trailing paths through the grime and blood on her face.
“Oh, wait, no, it can’t be that bad. I mean, we killed the mind control flower, right? This, this is just a knife wound. People deal with these all the time, and they have to do it normally. At least we have magic powers, so there has to be something we can do.” As I speak, I desperately try to think.
I can speed things up and slow things down, but what could that accomplish? I could try and fast forward her wound, but it would just make her bleed out faster before any healing starts. I could try and make a bandage of time and slow down how fast the wound is bleeding out, but considering how I just hurt my back by messing with different time zones on the same body I would probably mess up something else with her. Like, accidentally cause blood to back up into her lungs because her heart can’t push past the slow time, or make blood overflow out of the slow time into her abdominal cavity, which would make her bleed out regardless. Fuck, why didn’t I test out how fluids operate through different time conditions when I was at the lake?
Did my level up give me anything I could use to heal? ‘Status.’
Name: Kira Uhrmacher
Level: 5
Race: Human
Affinity: Time
HP: 23/24
Mana: 0/54
Time: 0/51
Stats:
Unassigned Points: 2
STR 10
END 11
PER 14
INT 20
VIT 12
WIL 6
AGI 13
WIS 22
Titles: [N/A]
Traits: [Passed Down Through the Centuries], [Nothing But Time], [In a Split Second], [Badge of Participation]
Abilities:
Passive: [Weight of Time], [Split Second],
[Horologist’s Hands] (New)
Active: [Unbound Eyes of Time], [Extended Moment of Clarity], [Improved Mana Manipulation]
Skills: [Restorative Meditation]
[Novice Archery] (New)
[Analysis] (New)
I skim through the screen, going straight to my abilities. [Analysis] I’ve seen before when it was referenced in the description for [Badge of Participation], and archery is self-explanatory, plus I just got it when I shot the flower. The only ability that I’m not familiar with is [Horologist’s Hands], a new passive of mine. ‘Horologist’s Hands.’
[Horologist’s Hands] [Legendary] [Tier 1]: Worship comes in many forms. Some preach, some punish, and some dedicate their professions. You have begun to walk down the path of a horologist, and although you are still unskilled you carry a legacy on your shoulders. Depending on your faith, Time may provide you with insights to improve your craftsmanship.
* This ability requires the Affinity [Time]
* This ability comes from the trait [Passed Down Through the Centuries]
* This ability increases your [AGI] by a percentage of your [INT]
* This ability increases chance of success when working with gears, small mechanical parts, intricate machinery, and clock faces by a percentage of your [INT]
* This ability increases the precision of your craftsmanship by a percentage of your [INT]
That’s… a lot to unpack, but it doesn’t mention healing, so it doesn’t fucking help right now.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A cold, pale hand grabs onto my forearm. I look down at the girl, whose eyes have flown open and are burning into mine with the intensity of grabbing onto a last hope.
She removes her hand from mine and gestures towards the flower at the center of the circle we’re in. I look that way, then back to her.
“Do you… want the flower?”
Her excitement changes to frustration, which tells me the answer is no. She starts pointing again, although it seems like she’s just pointing in the same direction.
“Do you want something… around the flower? Something in the moat, maybe?” I ask. She nods her head frantically.
“Did you drop a suture kit or something in there?” I ask, but she rolls her eyes and just keeps waving me towards the moat. Does that mean yes or no? She seems to think I’ll know what she’s talking about when I see it, though, and I think we’ve passed the point in the cost benefit analysis where asking questions to narrow it down stops being worth the time it costs.
“Okay, I’ll get it for you. Here, hold your hands like this, alright? Keep putting pressure on it, I’ll be right back.” I place both of her hands on her stomach and push them down. She gives me a weak smile, made all the more disheartening by the fact that her teeth are more red than white at this point. Still, I do my best to return a look of confidence before I pick up my bow and head back towards the moat. I’m a little worried about leaving her alone, but she seemed pretty insistent about getting this thing from the moat. Whatever it is.
Once I get to the edge, I peek over. Yep, the bodies are still there. I avert my eyes from their twisted faces, and try to scan the area around them for… something. The flowers that were lighting up the area have all fallen dim, too, which doesn’t make it easier. The faux night that the System has created for us is about as dark as a full moon night, so I can still see a little bit. Nothing pops out at me, though.
I look around me, at the hedge wall. There’s only one entrance, so presumably everyone the Heliotrope lured would have walked in and fell right here. I walk around the edge of the moat, and sure enough, there is a noticeable lack of bodies on this side.
There’s also… I squint. At the base of the sort of pillar in the middle of the moat, where the giant flower I shot was growing out of, there is a crack in the dirt. Vines frame it and go deeper into it - no wait, they seem to be coming out of it and heading up the pillar. I hesitate, not really wanting to go down into the death trap I narrowly escaped from, but the only reason I’m still alive is currently bleeding out, so it’s only fair.
I drop my bow on the ground so that I have both hands free to climb. The structure of roots the flower hive mind used to connect to the hedge wall is embedded in the outer rim of the moat, so it is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be to climb down it.
I fall onto the soft dirt at the bottom of the moat, sending another shooting pain up my back. Technically, I’m only down one HP, but it hurts damn it. The scent is bad down here. It still smells like candy, not dead bodies, but that might almost be worse because I know what is lying underneath it.
After looking around briefly, and kicking a root to make sure it won’t move, I begin making my way through the green jungle gym. Some of the edges are sharp, but without the living force behind the vines most of them aren’t hard to move out of the way, and I end up pulling out my claw and using it as the world’s shortest machete for the heavier ones. Twenty feet is a lot of greenery to get through, so it takes me a few minutes to get to the column of dirt in the center of the moat.
As I approach the crack in the dirt, I notice a faint light spilling from it onto the earth.
I take a cautious step closer, well aware that I have neither mana nor Time, and look inside.
It takes me a second to understand what I am seeing. There’s a small wooden chest inside the crack. It’s not hidden, more like someone wedged it in sideways and then forgot about it. This has to be what the girl wanted. The roots coming down from the flower above are curling around it, and I have to saw through some of them in order to free the chest from their embrace, but I manage to remove it from the crevice. There is a small red gem embedded in the wood on the front of the box, which seems to be where the light was coming from.
I hold the chest tight to my, well, chest, then turn around and make my way back through the forest of roots and vines. It’s much faster this time because I already cleared a path, and in short order I’m at the ten foot wall again.
Scaling the wall isn’t as easy. I come up with the solution of sticking the chest in my armpit and holding it tight with my upper arm, then sort of climbing with one t-rex arm. It’s not pretty, or comfortable, and my back seizes up at one point, but I manage to heave myself over the side of the top of the wall, back onto the grass of the clearing.
I want to lay there panting, but I already spent way too long getting the chest out of the moat. I drag myself to my feet and hurry over to where the girl is still laying.
“Hey! Is this what you wanted?” I call to her as I’m approaching.
She doesn’t respond.
My heart does somersaults as I crash down next to her - then relaxes slightly when I see her breathing. Shallow, slow breathing, yes, but she’s still alive. I shake her shoulder, but she doesn’t respond to that either.
I turn to the chest and crack it open-
Congratulations!
You have found a [Rare] chest! The System has scattered these chests around each arena. They may be found in hard to reach locales, protected by interesting [organisms], or only accessible through puzzles. The purpose of adding chests to your SAD is because [Humans] are categorized as [inept] without tools, and for enrichment! The purpose of making chests difficult to access is to ensure only [Humans] with adequate skills will benefit from their contents, ensuring that SAD is continuing, and for enrichment!
NOTE: There is no System-provided reward for collecting multiple chests, or attempting to collect all chests in an arena. Finding multiple chests is a reward of its own.
Of course. People drop loot when they die, so of fucking course there’s loot scattered around the map. Actually, that’s probably where my robe came from - the waterbender must have found a cache. Maybe my bow came from one too - it doesn’t matter.
I take a look at the contents of the chest I’m holding. It’s one of those boxes that has a velvet lining with spaces for whatever is meant to be inside it. There is one vial full of a red liquid, one full of a shimmering, iridescent rainbow liquid, a shiny red coin, and a gleaming black dagger with gold inlays along its blade.
I pull out the red potion. Unless a lifetime of video games has misled me, this should be a healing potion - because of course there are healing potions.
What if it's poison?
Well, she's about to die anyway.
I tip most of the potion down her throat, past her cracked, bloody lips, then pour the rest of it straight on her stomach for good measure. The change is instant. Her skin goes from cold and damp to a healthy pink, her lips healing themselves almost immediately. I watch in fascination as her stomach puts itself together, torn muscles reknitting and skin smoothing out. The blood doesn’t rush back into her - it’s still practically everywhere - so it’s not a rewinding effect, which is unfortunate. If it was, I could try to figure out how to replicate it with my powers. Well, I can always work on trying to figure out a different process that has the same results.
The girl opens her eyes and blinks a few times groggily, then focuses on me. She sits up and raises a hand to her neck, then beams a relieved smile at me.
“Hi,” she says, whisper-soft through her still healing throat, “I’m Triss.”