That red liquid was dripping through the small gaps between Rosella Tynes' thin fingers.
Desperately, she tried to hold the blood inside her, but it kept leaking out inadvertently.
"What happened?" I asked Anton, holding his shoulders.
"I don't know! I woke up hearing her vomit, so I woke up the healer and then you!"
Kyle was standing behind Rosella, who was kneeling and almost leaning on the ground.
"I'll try one more ti," Kyle muttered before closing his eyes and beginning to recite:
"Oh, God! Grant the power of holy healing! Oh, power! Grant the ability to endure! Oh, glory! Flood my mind with holy wisdom!"
At that mont, a light began to emanate from the center of Kyle's palms. He opened his eyes and looked at Rosella's back, then placed both hands on her back, and a magic circle appeared.
This magic circle was small and white, but it imdiately expanded to three tis its size.
The environnt was enveloped in a feeling of absolute peace, and everything fell silent—just like when we entered the Tower of Babel.
The look of despair on Rosella's face faded for a few monts.
The blood had finally stopped flowing, but when the white light faded, the magic proved to be more of a temporary relief for Rosella than a permanent solution. In fact, an even greater volu of blood began to pour out of her.
There was so much that it ford a small pool around her.
"Damn...! Maybe one more ti?" I heard Kyle murmur to himself.
"Stop! You'll kill her if you keep going!" I exclaid, pushing Anton out of my way as I got up.
The sleepiness mixed with the shock of this sudden situation prevented from acting in the first few seconds, but that flash of Kyle's healing magic snapped back to my senses.
Kyle looked at when he heard my shout. "What do you expect to do? I'm the healer! I'm the only one who can help her!" he shouted, finally showing a little hostility towards .
"A good healer also needs to be a doctor! Just because you're a healer doesn't an you have to use magic for everything!" I replied, striding quickly toward him.
"W-what do you an by that?"
I knelt down beside Rosella, not caring that my left knee was touching the pool of blood.
"To heal soone, you first need to understand what's wrong with them. Healing magic is healing magic, not miracle magic," I said to Kyle and turned my gaze to Rosella.
"Can you look up? That way, the blood won't flow out so easily."
"If she looks up, she'll choke on her own blood!" Kyle pointed out.
I ignored his comnt and continued to look into Rosella's eyes. If she couldn't, I would understand perfectly.
Even with blood pouring from her like a waterfall crashing into the ocean, and her eyes barely open due to weakness, Rosella looked deep into my soul and finally nodded. She trusted .
If there was any thought stopping from acting, that thought was completely destroyed when Rosella raised her head.
Anton and Kyle looked at , eagerly waiting to find out what I intended to do, and I didn't care about the audience.
I placed one hand on the back of Rosella's neck and brought my face closer to hers until my lips finally touched hers.
Rosella's eyelids, which were barely open, opened completely at that mont, and I felt her resist with her body. At the sa ti, I put my tongue in her mouth.
Rosella tried to push away at first, but soon found relief. She was probably wondering how a simple kiss could be working to stop a mysterious bleeding.
However, our "kiss" lasted only a few seconds. Soon, I pressed Rosella's shoulders back with my hands. When she bent down and started to vomit reflexively, she realized that the bleeding had finally stopped. In addition, the strange discomfort in the back of her throat had also disappeared.
The answer to that was literally on the tip of my tongue — a worm the size of a walnut and as long as a pencil. This worm was white and had small bumps on its "skin" that looked like waves. Its eyes were red like those of an albino rabbit, and the sound it emitted when finally exposed was high-pitched.
"What the hell is that?!" Anton, still sitting on the floor where I had pushed him, shouted as he pointed at the worm.
Feeling it bite my tongue, I quickly crushed it with my hand.
[You have eliminated 'Blood Parasite (Rank D)'!]
[You have received 50 Soul Fragnts!]
The remains of the worm fell to the ground like pigeon poop, and even though the system told it was already dead, I stepped on what was left of it to make sure it was really dead. I had hated Blood Parasites since I was just a reader of The Journey to the Beyond.
"A Blood Parasite. They are the reason for the death of around 4% of Climbers who die on the first few floors," I replied as I wiped my dirty hand on my pants.
"Adult Blood Parasites lay eggs inside fruits or nuts because they know that other animals eat them. But they don't — they are carnivores. The eggs hatch at 37 degrees Celsius, and this usually only happens inside living beings. After that, they start eating their hosts from the inside out. The food can last for weeks or even months depending on the size of the prey. When the food finally runs out, they have reached adulthood and can start the process all over again."
"Wait..." Anton muttered with wide eyes. "That was the baby? That size? How big is an adult?"
"You don't even want to imagine."
"Thank y——" Rosella tried to say, but soon a little blood trickled down the corner of her mouth.
"Don't try to say anything for now, please," I asked her. "The damage the Blood Parasite did to your throat still needs to be healed... Hey, Kyle, now, please, use your healing magic on her."
My request snapped Kyle out of his state of shock at the amount of information I knew that he didn't. He had studied so hard and ard himself with knowledge his entire life to avoid situations like this, but no one could bla him for not knowing everything.
While he used his healing magic on Rosella, I looked around to try to identify what Rosella had eaten to acquire a Blood Parasite.
Although the place definitely had more plants than the rest of the Temple of the Sun dungeon, as there was water here — unlike the rest of the dungeon — at first glance I didn't find any large fruit trees.
It was only when I decided to look a little closer that I found a small, still-growing bush with so red fruits. They looked like blackberries from the normal world, but these were Greenberries — these fruits were nad that because they had small green seeds that were visible to the naked eye, like the seeds of a strawberry.
I knelt down and picked up a Greenberry. When I turned around, I held the Greenberry and asked Rosella,
"Is this the fruit you ate?"
She held her throat as she received healing and looked at Kyle, as if asking whether she could speak yet.
Kyle smiled at her. "It's okay. Your vocal cords have probably already been restored. I just kept healing you to help you regain so energy."
"Thank you," she said to Kyle as she stood up, then looked at . "Yes, it was definitely this one. I thought Greenberries were safe to eat."
"They are, but there's always a risk they can be contaminated by parasites."
I affird and threw the Greenberry into my mouth.
"No!" Rosella and Kyle shouted at the sa ti when they saw swallow the fruit, fearing the sa thing might happen to .
Their worried faces made laugh so hard that tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.
"Ah... You guys really don't know anything about Blood Parasites, do you? These parasites only lay two or three eggs in their lifeti, and they try their best to place them in different spots so their offspring have a better chance of surviving. The chance that more than one egg is in this bush is almost zero."
"Almost zero doesn't an there aren't any... And I'm not kissing you if there are," replied Anton, brushing the dust off his clothes.
" neither," added Kyle.
Kyle, Anton, and I looked at Rosella, who scratched the back of her neck and laughed shyly.
"I guess I'd have to return the favor, Brandon, if that were the case..." she said, her cheeks red and her smile wide.
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