Chapter 103: Long Ride Ho (Arc 4 – The Boundary)
In the night that felt like it was going forever, within a dark dense forest, a girl ran for her survival.
“Get off !”
Small ravenous monkeys were leaping off the trees onto the poor girl.
“Nanananan!”
Only about forty centitres tall, these mini-monkeys had long arms with jagged, sharp teeth.
One after another tried jumping on the woman as she ran. The mont they latched on, their jaws dug into her skin and began nibbling away.
“Arg-h!”
She tried grabbing them off and throwing them to the ground. Flesh flung off as the monkey’s teeth dug in deeper once the pulling tension began.
The pain of chunks of flesh being torn ssily for muscles was ignored. Her desire to live and anger for being forced to run through this forest
If it wasn’t for the forest suddenly lting, she wouldn’t have been forced to run through this danger haven. The monkeys were a threat to her life, her mind was in overdrive, focusing on all the information being injected into her mind. She wished she was capable of stopping all the monkeys, but that wasn’t feasible, so she just had to make sure no monkey jumped on and mauled her neck or an important muscle… She knew they were all important, but any that allowed her to keep running were more important. She had to keep running before one of the more dangerous monsters revealed themselves.
A large jaguar-like creature jumped from the tree, and its maw devoured the monkey eating the girl’s shoulder.
“ARGHH!!” The girl scread as she was slamd into the ground and the beast’s paw drug into her back.
The remaining monkeys stopped chewing and ripped the remaining flesh off, then ran away with their prize.
Blood and saliva dripped onto her body as the monster finished its al.
“[Starlight-Argharrow].” Using her skill to see the space around her, a dozen arrows appeared behind the monster that it wasn’t aware of.
“Crriiiiii!”
Arrows penetrated the beast’s back, and with a push, the girl tried to escape with a burst of flas.
“Grraaaaa!” In an attempt to stop its al, the beast's claw drilled down the person’s back.
“BURN!” That only ignited her anger even more. Flas flooded around her, firing at everything in this highly flammable forest.
The jaguar-like creature retreated to heal as flas scorched its eyes, but the scent of the prey remained in its focus.
The won wobbled up and continued to run. The small wave of flas already began spreading to the trees.
Everything in this damned forest grew within a matter of days—trees that challenged skyscrapers in height—but it also so easily fell apart like cotton in the wind with a simple match.
The girl ran as the fire speared and animals moved to their places of solitude and safety to survive the forest’s collapse.
While she ran, she needed to nd her wound.
Grabbing one of the vine straps she kept around her waist, she wrapped it around her back and pulled it tightly. She stumbled forward, still trying to keep moving. The vine stuck to her back and inflicted intense stabbing pain into her muscles as if needle-sized chopsticks poked into her flesh and played with food. The only good part was that so of her internal muscles were slowing healing because of it.
After a long, painful run.
Once she believed she was safe for a mont, she brought her disfigured hand onto her back wound and dragged it down as a small fire seared her skin.
“Argh~!” My eyes shot open, and a loud clap was heard as my head fell into my hand.
Now awake, I was still in the viewing room on Nina’s ship.
What… happened…
(“ [Sleepless Nights] while certainly still a part of your skillset, just was being repaired so for the first ti in years you slept for a mont ”)
[Sleepless Nights] was a skill that removed my ability to sleep. It did offer alternate modes of resting that allowed my consciousness to be at various levels of activity, but it was still always active. I had never slept or truly dread.
Will there be any more skills doing shit like that?
From what I rembered, out of my main non-magic skills, only [Disruptive Starlight] was truly a shell of its forr self. I didn’t feel anything off, and neither did Espr say anything about [Sleepless Nights].
(“ [Sleepless Nights] was only really monts away from being repaired, but it was basically non-functioning as that part of your soul healed. [Disruptive Starlight] is undergoing a very slow repair process; honestly, you will need to level up for that one to truly begin working again ”)
What, is levelling up just jumpstarting the damn skill’s recovery process?
(“ Yes ”)
Sigh…
I rolled my eyes; even after properly sleeping for the first ti in years, I was still fucking tired. Though, I guess I can’t call that properly sleeping since it was more of a nightmare.
(“ If you are wondering why you had that vision, that is because it is a mory that is ingrained in your sou–”)
–Because monts that occur around when one levels up are ingrained into one's mory. It just so happens that most of mine was when I was in combat. Combat encounters, where in quite a few I didn’t escape with at least so bodily injuries. Let us not forget, I have just lost a lot of levels, which has made my head lighter, and so of those supposedly permanent mories are less ingrained, which ans if I had to guess, only my earlier ones stand mostly unaffected.
What I said was mostly simple stuff, but with details about the mory loss, I believe I made a decent educated guess.
(“ Congratulations! You are learning ”)
Argh, keep the celebration short, my brain is aching.
My condition hadn’t improved. It was likely at most only an hour since I fell asleep. I could still see the wreckage of the planet behind us as the ship waited for its turn to leave through the transport Tunnel.
I moved around after being still for a rough hour. My body creaked and snapped as I moved, it was still in an absolute ss, but at least my vital organs were functioning after I used my skills to at least repair them.
Haaa, well, ti to ask Nina for a proper job.
I knew it was because she had been looking for for over a year, but having her around was a miracle I wasn’t going to miss out on. I only ignored the question initially because I needed ti to rest ntally first. I knew I was alive and I would be staying that way, so a quick ntal unwinding was priority one. Which I believed I had done enough. The second reason was that I was a little worried about my body being a little too worn out to receive external healing. Healing skills and magics ca in all ranges of flavours, and while it was likely that Nina’s healing wouldn’t tax my body anyway, I decided to let reason one decide my earlier decision.
Now, do I just walk out of the room and call her? Or are there caras here or so shit?
(“ No caras, they have left you to your privacy ”)
That… is a security flaw.
Anyway, I walked to the exit of the room and looked around the hallway. I wanted to get Nina to return and so food.
I spotted soone, and I said hello. “Howdy, can you help real quick?”
It was one of the staff of the ship, a seemingly young woman. “Yes, do you need anything?”
“Yes please, can you get so food, and tell Nina it is alright to co back?" I’m happy to get patched up now.” I gave the staff a wave and leaned back into the room.
The staff paused for a mont and shrugged and began talking to Nina over the communications first, and then requested so food from soone else onboard.
I stumbled back into the lounge and plopped myself on a chair.
“Comfy.”
(“ Indulging yourself? ”)
Only you would call soone finding a chair comfortable, bloody indulging.
(“ Agree to disagree ”)
Eventually, the food had arrived. It was a different person than the staff I saw earlier, and they were a little shocked when they saw missing an arm–I saw their eyes dart to and away from it. I was kind of surprised, considering this was Nina’s crew.
Though to be fair. I was a person in heavily damaged and partially lted armour. Where my missing arm was, it had liquefied and hardened to a spike.
“Thanks for the food.” I waved the person off.
It was a simple dish, so hard bricks of food, so soft mush, and a large bottle of water.
The mouth hatch on my helt stopped functioning, so I had to rip the lower half off.
Ding.
It dropped to the floor, making quite the audible sound.
“Argh, my lips feel sandy.” The breathable air hitting my face was a welcod experience, but licking my lips wasn’t. I hadn’t healed them yet.
The flavours were nice; they tasted like grilled ribs, and the mush was like potato mixed with so sort of sauce. No idea what, but it tasted good.
Eventually, the door opened, and Nina walked in. “Sorry for being late.”
“Nah, everything is good, you are not late.” I continued to eat my food. “Co, sit down.”
Nina sat down on the chair next to , on my left side near my missing arm.
“You got so good food on this ship.”
Nina smiled. “Had too many instances working on dical shifts with flavourless food, that once I owned my own, I had to ensure everyone onboard had sothing good to eat.”
I scoffed down the remainder of the food. “I feel that. The stock stuff they bring on so ships tastes awful without a cook.”
I cleaned my face with a towel brought with the food. “So, how’s your mana looking? Because with everything wrong with my body at the mont, you might get sick if you have to drink any more mana recovery potions.”
Nina confidently said. “I will be fine.”
“Are you sure, because you are looking a bit green, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you vomited later today.”
“You… are quite blunt indeed.”
“...You talked to my family a fair bit, I see.” She ntioned my family before, so I figured she had spoken with them more than I originally guessed. It would’ve been smart. The more you know about your target, the easier it usually is to find them.
“Yes, I got on well with your mother.”
“Well, it is good she has another female friend. Good to know she has less of a chance to be lonely in the future. She is pretty bad at making friends.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just projecting?”
“...You got closer than I thought.”
My mum, Tella, being friends with soone famous sounded weird in my head. I an, she was just a person who liked to sell and grow flowers and talk to people in the neighbourhood.
“Yes, we have gone for lunch on a few occasions.”
“Sounds nice, anywhere I’ve been… Well, I don’t rember too many of the restaurants where we lived.”
“I doubt it, we went to a slightly expensive place.”
“Oh, I hope you didn’t make her pay then.” I chuckled.
“Of course not, I owned the place.”
“...Not going to lie, I should’ve expected that.”
(“ You are being very friendly today? ”)
I got stuck in space for over a year because I had no friends… So yeah, I want to fix that. And what's wrong with getting familiar with one of the best healers in the universe?
“Well, if you have finished eating, do you have any preference on where I heal you first, or would you rather I do everything at once?”
“Eh, let’s start with the missing arm.”
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