As I was thinking about what sort of excuse to make as to why I was away on my shift during my night watch, my mind went back to how I even got here in the first place.
(The last thing I was doing was working on my new skill and...huh?)
After transferring over the contents of [Soul Siphon]'s container, I had that splitting headache, which sohow lead to getting into that fight with that monster. Looking at it now, it reminded of the hydra of legend, with its nine snake-like heads and fat lizard body.
Though one of the heads was separated and laying off in a different direction.
(But more importantly...)
"Alicia, can you hear ?"
...
"I, I did it!"
My vision grew blurry as tears ran down my cheeks. I did it. I really did it. There wasn't any doubt that was Alicia's voice at all.
(Umm, right. I need to explain everything.)
"Alicia, how much do you rember?"
"That's right."
"Exactly."
She was able to rember the last few monts of her life pretty clearly. It was a good indication that there wasn't any problems anywhere, that both preserving her soul and transferring her to the new container worked in its entirety.
"I, I don't know for sure, but, I think, did you see my mories from the last few weeks?"
"You saw my experiences as dreams then? In that case..."
It was a bit embarrassing that she saw everything. Then again, from here on, I wouldn't get a single bit of privacy from Alicia. Not like I really expected to. It was a price I was fully willing to pay. Then again, I hardly got any privacy when she was alive either.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my tears away. We could spend all day talking, but I didn't have ti for that. There were things I had to do. We could talk as much as we wanted later.
"If it's what I think it is, then that's it."
Sight was such an integral part of my own life, I had no words to describe it, and could only look around in place of explaining it.
The canyon with its sharp walls, the small lake at the centre of it, the monster corpse to the side, its head a bit closer to us. To be honest, there wasn't much to see, but my own standards didn't matter since it was Alicia's chance to experience sight properly for the first ti.
"It is."
I felt a little ashad that despite my vocabulary, I couldn't really say anything more.
After a few minutes of nothing but looking around, I decided to make preparations to head back while chatting idly to Alicia.
I needed to fix myself up at least the bare minimum before we headed back. Checking out the ingredients in my bag, I took out a long strip of leather I hadn't used before. I didn't have enough rabbit fur I liked to use and the wolf leather was too hard and uncomfortable against my skin, what little of it I had left. Instead, I tried out an alternative for the first ti.
It had co from so sort of snake monster. It wasn't particularly big, but it was quick and kept trying to bite . Most likely it was venomous, but its movents were really predictable. They were only troubleso when they snuck up while you were detracted by a larger monster, but [Sense Presence] shut down the possibility of not noticing them.
The leather they dropped was long and narrow, on top of being pretty thin and soft. It seed pretty strong as well.
With a quick snip of my claws, the scaly leather was brought down to dinsions. I poked so holes on the end, then cut a strip from the remaining leather to be used as a cord before wrapping the newly cut strip around my chest. The cord went through the holes as I laced it up before pulling hard on both ends and tying it together. The thinness made it a little difficult to handle, but tied very easily.
I hopped in place a couple of tis and was satisfied with the stability. My chest didn't bounce uncontrollably, though it still bounced. Nothing would stop that with my size.
Next I took out a sheet of leather from a large pig-faced orc. The leather was thick yet tough, and the sheet was so huge I could easily wrap it around my whole body. Maybe it could even fit four of inside with its size.
But I didn't need so much. A quick snip cut out a pair of ellipses, to which I added a few holes to. Next I cut a few more cords from the last of the snake hide I was using and threaded them through the holes, then wrapped them around my feet, securing the larger sheets to my soles.
Standing up, my face turned to a frown pretty quickly. The thickness of the leather made standing on them a bit unpleasant, and the thinness of the cords dug into my feet a bit. But it would have to do, as I didn't want to waste more ti than I had to.
I took a few steps around and got used to the weird feeling as fast as I could. It would be pretty embarrassing to trip because of my shoes, but it would be even worse to be found out I had sohow lost my old pair. Probably.
Once done, I made my way to the hydra corpse and started pulling it into my bag. Thankfully the throat of my rabbit plush bag stretched enough as I stuffed its head into it, but I ended up reaching its limit as I tried to stretch it to fit the rest of the body.
It was unfortunate, but I had to carve the monster up to put it away. First, I removed each of its necks and limbs and stuffed those into my bag. Next, I divided up the body into strips before stuffing the remainder into my bag, not forgetting the loose head.
I pulled on the shoulder straps of my bag and looked up at the blue sky. The sun still hadn't crested over the lip of the canyon, but asuring by how the shadows were receding from the western cliff side, it was clear that the morning was quickly waning.
(It would be best to hurry.)
But just as I was about to activate [Float] and [Spirit Form], a nagging sensation struck the back of my mind.
"Ah, umm...I feel like I'm forgetting sothing. Like there's sothing missing..."
I rubbed the back of my neck as I thought, only for it to strike like a fool.
"Claret! It's weird she's not here!"
"Yea, I took her in as a familiar...that's right. I can feel her presence through the contract!"
Rembering that feature of the familiar contract, I felt out for her presence. Surprisingly enough, it was quite close. Inside the sa valley, just a few dozen ters from where I was. There, I could see a pile of broken gravel piled up making the walls of a small, oddly shaped crater. The inside wasn't visible from where I stood, but her response definitely ca from it.
A sinking feeling welled up inside of as I floated over to have a look.
What I saw was what looked more like a pile of at and shredded cloth than anything else, but I realized what it was imdiately, even though I had no idea what had happened.
"Claret?!"
I dropped down to her side as fast as possible and fell to my knees in horror. Her entire body was so badly beaten that it was difficult to recognize her as a person rather than so sort of abstract painting made alive. Her limbs were all bent where they shouldn't have been, her torso misshapen horrendously, I couldn't even identify any of her facial features with any level of confidence.
Tears ran down my face, unable to accept the fact that she had gotten so hurt. Leaning over, I reached for her cheek as carefully as I could, but my hand passed right through. Activating [Spirit Form], I tried once again.
Her mouth moved slightly, but it was clear that she couldn't properly open it to make any sounds. My lower lip trembled as I struggled to say anything, but finally I chose not to say anything out loud. She might not have even be able to hear anything due to her injuries.
The dark spirit's body trembled ever so slightly, but due to her condition, it was probably already pushing her to her limits.
I thought frantically. There was no way I could let her stay in this condition. The scent was different form normal, but it even looked like she was covered in blood, and was well on her way to bleeding out.
Since this was a fantasy world, healing potions would be the first thing to co to mind, but while I had so suspicious vials and bottles I had collected in the dungeon, I had no idea which ones, if any, were of the healing variety. It was too risky to even try them.
As alternatives, I had healing magic, as well as the one healing trick that worked for myself, and may work on Claret due to her nature being more similar to my own than any normal person's. That was eating.
Rather than choosing one though, I went for both choices to maximize my chances and reduce the ti taken as much as possible.
I imdiately produced a normal sized mana treat and gently pushed it between the dark spirit's lips.
Her response was weak, but she did her best to open her mouth far enough to let push the clump of condensed mana inside. Her lips closed as her jaw slowly moved. I couldn't tell if she was even capable of chewing it, but just by having the mana treat in her mouth should help at least a little.
Next, I spread my hands over her chest and channelled my mana to her body as I activated [Aqua Magic] to heal her broken form. A deep green mist spread out and enveloped her body as I concentrated on infusing her with my own energies and prompting them to repair her battered body.
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