Nikki proves herself yet again as being the best chef from our entire group. How she managed to cut such thin slices of sashimi with her knife, I do not know, I just know that she did. The fish that she cooked was also expertly spiced and cooked to perfection. Combined perfectly with some of the fruits that we had left over from yesterday to create some new flavor profiles.

-It’s just so perfect.-

“Enjoying your meal, Ami?” Sam bumps against me.

“I am! It’s so delish!”

“Haha, I’m glad you are enjoying it this much.” Nikki smiles as she flips over another fish on them pan.

Sam smiles as well and then rubs my back gently while I’m eating. It looks like she’s not really that hungry, even though she did eat, she has definitely not eaten much at all.

“Are you not feeling that well?” I ask.

“I do. I’m just not that hungry.”

“Oh, can I have the rest of your fishie then?”

“Of course you can.” Sam laughs and then rubs me in between my ears. “Here you go.” She gives her remaining fish to me.

After I also finish that off, I do notice that Sam is still pretty quiet. She’s just staring in front of her. Which is incredibly atypical for her.

“Uhm, is it okay if I go and take a walk with my girlfriend for a bit?” I ask the group.

“You don’t need to ask us for permission, Ami.” Nikki smiles at us. “See you in a bit then?”

“Yep!” I take Sam’s hand, even though I’ve not asked beforehand if she wanted to join, but she still joins me nonetheless. I do see in the corner of my eyes that my sister is looking suspiciously at the both of us as we leave. -Oh well, I’ll answer her questions when we get back.-

When we are on the beach, we walk in the opposite direction from where we had gone yesterday evening. Before walking in a relatively open part of the treeline. I find a small rock formation and decide this is where I want to have my chat with my girlfriend.

“Come Sam, let’s sit down here for a bit.”

She obliges without saying anything.

“What’s wrong, Sam?”

“I told you, there isn’t anything wrong…”

“Sam, clearly that’s bullshit.” I sit down next to her and put my hand on her thigh. “Did something happen between Hilda, you and my sister while you were out gathering wood? Did you fight or something?”

“No, not really.” She shakes her head. “Things are good between us, like they always are.”

“Then… what’s wrong?”

“Hmm.” Sam grunts and then shakes her head. “I… I don’t know…” putting her face in the palms of her hands. “My head just feels… weird…”

I look at her and raise my right hand to her chest. Starting to use my healing magic on her. “Is this helping?” I give it a couple of seconds to do its job.

But Sam shakes her head. “No… it actually feels worse now…” Sam tries to stand up but gets a dizzy spell instead, dropping back down to the rock.

“Sam!?” I stand, now in a slight panic. “Wait… that tree that you three tried to cut down. Hilda said it had colorful wood, right?”

“Uh… yeah… I think… yellow… purple and uh… streaks of black…”

“I wonder…” I quickly open my user interface and go and take a look at my skills. -Nikki mentioned antidote magic before, but I’m not sure if I actually unlocked that…- I quickly read through everything on my screen but in the end I can’t find any antidote magic. But luckily I do have a metric fuckload of skillpoints saved up. I then quickly browse to the leveling screen. It does not take long for me to find a basic antidote skill. When I unlock that one I get a pop-up that it has automatically combined with my other healing skills, together with an addition of divine magic making it incredibly potent.

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I close my screen again, leaving me with 140 unspent points. “I hope this works.” I raise my hands once more and then start casting my heal again. This time the light blue healing magic appears to be drawing out some black clouds of gas out of my girlfriend’s body which quickly dissipates in the air.

“Ho… holy shit…” Sam sits upright again and looks up at the sky. “That feels so much better.” She then looks back down at me. “Wow… Ami… I’m sorry for that… it was as if my mind was completely fogged up.”

“I really don’t care.” I take her in for a tight hug. “I’m just happy you are fine again.”

She reciprocates my hug. “So… you’ve learned antidote magic now?”

“Mhmm.” I nod. “Luckily for us I had 142 points to spare.”

“142!?”

I chuckle. “Yeah, that was Nikki’s reaction too.”

“When we get back to camp, you are not doing anything else before you’ve spent them all, okay?”

“But what if I need a skill and I don’t have any points left?”

“Alright, let’s spend at least 120 of those points then.”

“Okay. I think I can agree with that.” I nod into my girlfriend's neck.

“Uh… and now that I think about it… speaking off camp… shouldn’t we head back to see if your sister and Hilda are fine?”

“Oh! Right!” I quickly release my partner from her hug and look in the direction we came from. “Come, let’s go before anything bad happens!”

“Right behind you.” Sam gives me a nod, after which I start running towards the beach.

When we arrive back at camp, Brianna, my sister and Nikki are still sitting by the fire. My sister is still eating some fish. Although she looks quite surprised as to why we come back running.

“Is Sam okay?” Lise asks. “Or is there a different reason why you came running back.”

“She’s okay now. But are you feeling well?”

My sister looks even more confused before giving me a nod. “Uh, yeah. Completely fine and dandy.”

“I’d cast it on her to be sure, Ami.” Sam says.

“That was the plan.” From where I stand I cast my healing magic on her with my staff, yet this time, not even a small puff of black smoke leaves my sister’s body.

“Uuuuuh? What are you doing, sis?”

“I’m pretty sure Sam got poisoned at the tree you three tried to cut down, that’s why she was acting strange. But apparently that’s not the case?”

“Ah, no, I’m actually immune to poison because of my skills. You know. Paladin stuff.” My sister quickly stands up. “Hilda however… She went to lie down in her lean-to… I thought she was just tired...”

I look at Sam, she looks back at me and gives me a nod. “Then we’ll quickly go and find her.” I start running on towards the lean-to’s with Sam close behind me and in her turn Lise following close behind her.

When we turn the corner however, it looks like Hilda didn’t even make it to her lean-to as she’s collapsed in the sand, right in front of Sam and mine.

“Oh shit.” My sister calls out as she sees that.

I quickly go down on my knees and start channeling my magic into my heal. She’s still alive but I can feel that she’s severely weakened. So it’s good that we noticed in time.

When my heal starts doing its work, just like with Sam, a dark smoke starts getting drawn out of Hilda’s body. However this time, there’s a heck of a lot more of it.

“Is that the poison?” My sister asks.

“Yeah. For some reason it looks like this when I draw it out of bodies.”

“It looks very sinister…”

“It kinda reminds me of the angry souls back at the Dwarger capital…” I mumble as I finally draw out the last of the poison.

“Mhmmmm…” Hilda groans and opens her eyes. “Wh… where am I?” Sam takes her by the arm so she can help Hilda up a little.

“You got poisoned.” Lyse says as Sam helps Hilda sit up.

“Poisoned? Poisoned by what?” Hilda rubs the sand off her face.

“The big tree we tried to cut down.”

“I think the water presumably had mixed with poisonous sap from the tree.” Sam states. “I got pretty messed up as well.”

Hilda still looks pretty confused. “And you were fine?”

“Yup, paladin.” Lise points at herself with her thumb.

“Right… Okay… let’s not use that wood for huts then…”

“Whaaaat? Can’t I have my personal hut made from poisonous materials?” My sister chuckles.

Hilda rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything.

“Ah, so you don’t want to sleep with Nikki anymore. I’ll tell her.” I grin at my sister.

“Please don’t, she will actually kill me if you say that to her.”

“Hmmm… give me some ear scratches and I’ll think about it.”

“Deal.” Lise puts her hand on top of my head and scratches me behind my right ear. “I’ll give you some more later.”

“Alrighty.” I smile.

Sam then helps Hilda stand up completely.

“I guess we should be lucky the poison worked as slow as we did. Otherwise Ami would have had to use her resurrection magic on us instead.” Sam says as we walk back towards the fire.

“Hey, that’s a good question. Would my resurrection have removed the poison out of your bodies?”

“Uh… I think it would have?” Hilda shrugs but she’s clearly not sure.

“We can go back to test it if you want.” Lise proposes.

“No thank you. I’d rather not.” Hilda quickly shakes her head and Sam chuckles.

-Testing it wouldn’t be possible anymore anyway since my antidote magic merged with my healing skills. And now that I think about it… shouldn’t ‘alpha testers’ know things like this? Maybe they just looked over it.-