Chapter 112: The Aftermath of a Skunk

Dion closed his eyes for a second, forcing the system prompts to the periphery of his vision.

The questions buzzing through his mind about beast levels and exponential scaling were entirely useless right now, and no answers were going to fall out of the dark, riaining sky.

He looked down at his trembling palms, where the deep cuts were still slowly leaking thick, dark crimson onto his skin.

'At the very least... it looks like my regeneration is coming back.'

And ultimately, if they asked about it, now that he had revealed his blood manipulation, he could just say it was something he had gained from his class.

The system text hovered at the edge of his vision:

{You have felled a Level 31 Destitute Skunk, harvesting its essences. Your Strength, Agility, Mana, and Magi have been nourished significantly.}

{ Your Mana has been enriched to G++ }

{ Your Magi has been enriched to C+ }

{ You have earned a freely distributable Essence Saturation + }

His legs felt like brittle glass right now, threatening to buckle outward and drop him straight into the filthy puddles on the street.

But there was no time to rest.

'And my mana...' He internally grimaced at how he had burned it down to perhaps twenty percent.

Everyone else lay entirely motionless, their eyes open and either staring at him or somewhere else where they were forced to look from how they had fallen.

The violent noise of their desperate fight had echoed off every concrete building within four blocks, and whatever else roamed these ruined streets was already moving toward the scent of spilled blood.

He forced his stiffening muscles into motion, heading straight for Florence first.

Lifting her and resting her against a car was simple enough, her light frame coming off the boy with far less effort than the heavy canvas bag of medicine they had packed inside the shop.

The unnerving part was her face.

Her eyes darted frantically toward him, then down to Julian, then back up to his face, her jaw desperately trying to move, as the scent of tear salt brushed into his nose.

Dion crouched low, sliding one arm beneath the boy's small knees and his other hand behind the child's neck.

"He's breathing," Dion said, keeping his voice low and steady against the steady patter of the storm.

Julian's eyes had been shut tight, stuggling to open .

"Everything is fine now."

He stood up with the boy, his thigh muscles burning in protest and he move to lay him right next to the woman, whose eyes shimmered with gratitude and relief.

The boy's small stuffed bear remained pinned tightly under his limp forearm, one chewed ear damp with rain.

With them both down, Dion adjusted himself so that he could lift them both up comfortably enough, and he carried them into the nearest building, resting against the wall.

Paris and Madeline came next, their slim frames sliding easily beneath his arms, as he walked to put them inside.

Anton was a completely different story.

The man was built thick and broad, and by the time Dion hauled his dead weight down into the building, Dion's muscles complained once more... it seemed there were still after effects of the paralytic inside his body, because he felt almost like he was just shy of the onset of a cramp.

He went back out for Basil, whose massive frame felt like lugging an iron anvil wrapped in wet leather.

Irvin was the last one left lying in the street.

As Dion hooked his wet hands under Irvin's armpits, Irvin's wide eyes remained locked directly onto Dion's face the entire way across the pavement.

Dion looked right back at him, keeping his expression entirely blank, then eventually glanced away.

He dragged Irvin inside and laid him at the end of the long row.

The seven of them lay stretched out beneath the tall metal shelves like patients in an abandoned hospital ward.

Dion dragged his heavy boots down the building and collapsed onto the cold floor tiles near the front window, his back pressed against the floor and his body sprawled out.

Then he released a harsh sigh.

"Hahh... I'm tired..."

The blood-forged longsword was long gone, dissolved back into his body, leaving his raw palms stinging in the damp air.

The minutes dragged past in agonizing silence.

Outside on the street, litres of his own spilled blood lay thinned across the wet tarmac, slowly washing away into the open gutters.

He couldn't afford to lose that much blood, but he certainly couldn't stand up and draw it back into his body while six pairs of eyes were staring silently at the ceiling. It would demand mana to control the blood, and with how low it was now, he had to conserve it.

Julian's small left hand twitched first.

The boy's fingers curled inward, then relaxed, and a soft, wet gasp escaped his lips.

Beside him, Florence's whole body shuddered as her nervous system fought against the lingering chemical residue.

She strained toward him, getting nothing for her effort except a sharp twitch in her upper arm.

Then the feeling returned to her in a sudden, uneven tide.

Hands began to move first, then arms, and she dragged herself the last of the distance on her elbows to pull Julian against her chest.

"Thank you... Dion... thank you so much..."

She held him tight, and the boy finally broke into quiet, muffled sobs against the wet fabric of her coat.

Dion didn't say anything back to her, but silently he thought to himself, 'Is it becuase I put my blood into her body to help her heal earlier that she was able to recover so quickly? And Julian himself...'

There was certainly a lot more going on with Julian, at least, than he was currently able to understand. It was good, though.

It meant they could get back on the road soon.

The rest of the group began surfacing one by one shortly after her.

Considering how potent the skunk's power was, even for the others it was somewhat of a surprise that they were able to recover within the fifteen to twenty minutes that they did.

And silently, resting he wondered to himself about it.

First of all, pehaps it was beause, the creature was dead; if the paralytic toxin had been sustained by the beast's active mana, that feeding stopped the exact second he killed it.

Whatever remained inside their nervous systems was just a the residue of its mana burning itself out against their natural metabolism.

Second, there was the rain itself, saturated with rich prana that had been soaking through their clothes and skin for days now.

If that ambient energy was altering the wild beasts outside, nothing said it wasn't changing the way that their bodies were interacting with mana and by extension, something as invasive as a skunk paralytic.

"How," Anton rasped, his voice dragging heavily over the word as if his tongue was still thick and swollen.

He had propped himself up against the metal shelving, looking out through the empty window frame at the dark bulk lying in the crossing with the rain coming down on it.

"How are you standing, Dion? That... blood thing... that must... be your class. Did it give you... some paralysis resistance?"

Dion said flatly, keeping his tone casual. "I held my breath through most of it, and yes, technically, it did."

Florence's eyes came up from Julian's hair.

Whatever the nurse in her thought of that simple answer, she looked at him for a long, silent moment over his head.

Then she looked away and said nothing at all.

"That thing walked right through all of us like we were furniture," Anton said, his jaw tightening as he kept his eyes fixed on the dead beast.

He let out a ragged breath that rattled in his broad chest.

"If you hadn't been here..."

He didn't bother finishing the sentence.

Nobody finished it for him, and the sound of falling rain filled the quiet the way it filled everything now.

Madeline had drawn her knees tightly up to her chest where she sat, shivering in her wet clothes.

Irvin was on his feet already, testing his hands by opening them and closing them into tight fists.

He hadn't said one single word since his voice had returned to him.

"We should move the moment everyone's legs are fine," Anton said at last, pulling himself up.

"We got what we came for."

Anton turned his head toward Dion who still lay silently looking at the ceiling, and some of the heavy weight that had been present back in the stairwell returned to his eyes.

"And just like we agreed, we'll split up back at the cars."

"... Yeah," Dion said softly.

"Florence," Anton turned to the nurse. "If you write out for us how the medicines should be given, the doses, then even without you there..."

"I can... record a voice note for you before we part. My hands right now arent stable enough to write." she said, her voice steadying.

She brushed a strand of damp hair away from her forehead.

Anton nodded once, looking noticeably older than he had in the parking level.

Then he pushed off the shelf and stood on his own two feet.

"Then we're settled; we rest until our legs work, and we go our two ways."

"I'm going to head out with them."

The deep voice belonged to Basil.

He was still sitting against the wall, his forearms resting over his knees, the CZ pistol lying flat on the floor beside his hand.

He had been so entirely silent through everything since his voice returned that the sudden sound of it turned every head there except Dion's.

"The people back there are in as good hands as they can be with you guys," Basil said quietly.

His thumb moved once along the seam of his damp trousers, and his eyes came up.

They went not to Anton, but directly to Dion.

"I'm going to Novamed. I have someone to find there."