‘No,’ Lilyth said and pointed the shotgun at the monster. ‘Bad dog.’
What’s a dog? Aki wondered. Probably some creature from Lilyth’s world.
She pulled the trigger. The projectiles it launched impacted the creature but caused no visible damage. They did successfully direct the monster’s attention towards Lilyth. The creature crouched and pounced towards her, but her girlfriend appeared to be ready for this as she started to move to the side and extended her hand as if she…
Oh no… Don’t tell me she is going to…
Lilyth screamed in pain and put her hand on her chest as if she was having a heart attack. Her move turned into an uncontrolled collapse, which mostly took her out of the monster’s path anyway. It caught her on the leg with its hind paw, which sent Lilyth sprawling and caused the undead beast to tumble forward.
This also screwed up my jump big time. While luckily, I managed to avoid most of the creature’s pounce; it caught me on the leg with its hind paw. This threw me off my flight path and sent me sprawling.
‘Lilyth!’ Aki shouted and sent out a Lesser Abyssal Bolt at the creature.
The hellfire projectile impacted it on the side, exploded and blew away most of its ribs on the side. Encouraged by this Aki launched another spell and aimed it at the monster’s hind legs.
‘Don’t let it touch you!’ Lilyth shouted, clearly in agony and holding her leg next to the place where she got hit by the abomination.
Aki’s ability struck true and destroyed the monster’s left hind paw. To finish it off, she pointed the Lance of Longinus at the monster’s head and fired. The skull shattered and the creature started to dissolve.
Level 12 Lesser Rot Hound has been slain.
You have received 1200 experience points (4372/3500 total experience points progress to level 7)
You are now Level 7 (872/4000 total experience points progress to Level 8)
Your total health has increased
Your total stamina has increased
Your total mana has increased
You have received 2 perk points (Current Number of Perk Points: 2)
Hiding her elation from the level up she started rushing towards Lilyth. Her girlfriend needed help.
Sweet Jesus. Reflexively trying to cast a spell was not the smartest thing to do. A choking burning pain started spreading through my chest. Then, as I fell to the ground, it honestly felt a bit like a fire elemental was sitting on my chest. As it slowly passed I began to register that part of my leg had dissolved after the bloody thing nicked me. That somehow hurt less than the chest pain but was no less agonising. So it was a great relief that Caei hurried over to my side and started to take care of my wounds. I felt immense relief when the pain subsided and the part of my body that was destroyed started to grow back. I broke out in tears and said:
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‘T-Thank you,’
‘What happened to you there?’ she asked with genuine concern. ‘
‘I forgot I couldn't cast spells,’ I sobbed. ‘Felt like a heart attack.’
Aki joined us and knelt by my side, grabbing my hand.
‘I’m going to be so useless…’ I said.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ Aki said and smiled. ‘I’m sure of it. Just don’t go casting any more spells.’
To my great dismay, we’ve discovered that the Administrator either destroyed most of her paperwork or it was stolen by someone. All the drawers were pulled out from the desk and empty. The books on the shelves were of no immediate use to us too. They were mostly medical handbooks and treatises, and Caeileera did grab some of those for herself. One VERY valuable find was a Life Arcana textbook from the Imperial Academy of Magic. Caei’s eyes lit up seeing it, and I didn’t blame her one bit. We also ended up grabbing some books on alchemy for Aki. After we left the dungeon, she did mention her interest in it to me, so I was more than happy to oblige her on the front. Once we had a moment, I would need to go through the stuff from Löwe’s and Rivard’s lab with her. I ended up dumping most of the ammo from my backpack on the floating disk and packing up the books instead. Those were far more important to us in the long term than the weapons. Unfortunately, but also unsurprisingly, the bookshelf was fresh out of any books on stuff actually interesting me - this being history, language, or even fucking novels.
Well… there was one history book, but I did a safety check on it and found out it was written in the dry, unimaginative way a lot of these are written in. So I ended up entertaining myself by throwing it in the middle of the rot spiral. It dissolved in a very fun way. Some part of me was screaming about “valuable cultural artefacts”, but I think I was doing Dwynveia a favour by getting rid of it. No sane person would ever read that anyway.
‘We now have a choice,’ Lil sighed once they were done looting. ‘The Morgue or the West Wing.’
‘You keep mentioning how a visit to the morgue would be bad,’ Aki queried. ‘Why? What's a morg?’
‘A place where you store the dead.’
‘Ooooooooh.’ she said with wide eyes. ‘It is a difficult choice, isn't it?
‘Yup.’
‘I vote for the West Wing,’ Caei said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
‘Yeah,’ her girlfriend sighed. ‘I don’t think there is a point in expending resources there.’
‘Hmm…’ Aki said. ‘But what if the answer is there? The writings of the elf doctor mentioned people were forgetting some things. Like that… room. What if they forgot about this morg?’
Lilyth seemed very confused for a moment.
‘Zi Jaler,’ Aki suggested, realising the source of Lilyth’s uncertainty.
The slimeling nodded in thanks. A shadow crossed her face, mixed with an expression of doubt.
‘That is a… very valid point, actually.’ she said after a while. ‘Yeah. Worth a try. I think.’
‘I guess so,’ Caei reluctantly agreed.
She remembered Caei saying that Lilyth should not carry all the burden. They thought she didn’t hear them when they were whispering in the armoury and Aki did respect their privacy, but she couldn’t help actually being able to hear them. Caeileera was right, but wasn’t it partially their fault? They did just dump all the responsibility on her, or rather Lilyth assumed it and they didn’t protest. Aki was happy that someone was there to make all the difficult decisions, but could she really complain about being helpless then?
And Caei… her point of view seemed to be, “We’ll help you to carry the burden”, but she didn't seem to consider the more important question of “Should Lilyth be the one to carry it, to begin with”?
And… I had to face it: going into this hospital was my idea.
It was high time I got us out of it.