With my own injuries healed, I turned to Fay. She had several scratches on her face and body. Her arms were in particularly bad shape. She had used them a lot to block attacks from Demon Beasts, which resulted in them taking quite the beating. There was also a large and nasty gash on her torso; that would need to be disinfected before I healed it. My control still wasn’t good enough to remove all impurities from a wound.
Standing up and being careful not to make any noise, I eyed my surroundings, but then realized it was too dark for me to see anything. I channeled the lightning element into my eyes. It wasn’t quite as good as the light element, but it did help illuminate the area around me.
It looked like we were in a room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all the same uniform shade of gray, but I could tell this wasn’t a cave or anything of the sort. Caves weren’t this geometrical. The floor was flat as though it had been sanded down, same with the walls and ceiling, and the room was also shaped like a rectangle. Nature never made something with perfectly flat plains and sharp angles like this.
There were two exits, one in the far back that looked like an archway, and one that looked like someone had created their own exit by destroying a wall. Light spilled in through the larger entrance. However, it was the light of the stars, which meant nighttime was upon us.
For just a moment, I thought about going back to sleep. I shook my head. Not only did I no longer feel tired, but I wanted to do something about Fay’s wounds—and also, I was really hungry.
Gggrgggllee!
I held a hand to my stomach as it let loose with a soft groan, basically demanding I feed it. Looking back at Fay, I watched her for any signs of movement, then moved toward the exit when I found none. With luck, I would return before she woke up.
The first thing I needed to do was find a source of water, which wasn’t easy considering the area I found myself in upon leaving that room was the same desert landscape from before. I wandered around for a few kilometers one way. Then I had to turn back. There was nothing over there. I, fortunately, discovered a small oasis in the other direction. It was nothing but a tiny pond with water trickling into it through several cracks in the mountain; it was surrounded by gentle greenery and the water looked pure. Sadly, there weren’t any fish swimming around inside. This pond was too small.
When I returned to the room, Fay was awake and on the verge of panicking. The moment I stepped inside, her face went through a myriad of emotions before settling on relief mixed with anger.
“Eryk! You’re awake! Don’t just run off like that!”
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” I said as I stepped into the room and walked up to her. I grabbed her hands, which seemed to embarrass her because she turned her head to look away.
“It’s fine,” she mumbled. “Just… wake me up next time if you’re going to leave like that.”
I smiled but didn’t comment on that, instead choosing to change the topic. “I’d like to dress your wounds. There’s a pond not far from here where I can clean them.”
Though Fay looked about ready to tell me not to worry about her injuries, she paused just as she was opening her mouth, and then looked down at herself. A slow hiss escaped her lips as she became aware of the nasty cut on her side.
“Okay. If it will ease your mind, I guess we can go and clean my injuries,” she said as if they weren’t a big deal.
I didn’t let on that cleaning her injuries wasn’t the only thing on my mind. Leading her out of the room, I took her over to the small pond, which I’d say was barely a meter across both ways. I wasn’t even sure it could rightly be called a pond. It reminded me of the fountains back in Nevaria.
The first thing I did was take the fronds growing around the pond and create a soft bed for Fay to rest on. I spread the large leaves across the ground, making sure they were not only even, but that there was also enough padding underneath for her to be comfortable—as comfortable as I could make it, at any rate.
“Relax right there, please,” I instructed.
Fay sat down and crossed her legs. “Like this?”
“Yes, that is fine for now.”
There were two more steps I needed to complete. The first step was gathering water, which I did by manipulating the water in the pond. I sent my Spiritual Power into the water, grabbing hold of it and bringing it out of the pond with my will. The spherical ball of water undulated as I maneuvered it over my hand under the watchful eyes of Fay. Next, I used some of the dryer fronds to start a fire and heat the water until it was boiling.
It was possible to boil water with Spiritual Power, but that required a deep understanding of the concept of using friction to heat water. It was currently outside my capabilities.
I could have also used the lightning element. That would not be advisable, though, unless I had perfect control over my element.
“I don’t have a rag to clean your wounds with,” I muttered as a new problem suddenly presented itself to me. I looked down. “And our clothes are too dirty to be used as rags.”
“You didn’t think about that, did you?” asked Fay.
“No, not really,” I admitted. After glancing at myself for a moment, I grabbed a hold of my barely held-together shirt and took it off. Fay squeaked like a mouse and looked away, but I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as I dipped the raggedy clothing in the pond and used water manipulation to purify it. While this didn’t fix the damage, it did clean it off. “This will have to do.”
“You’re… going to use your shirt?” Fay asked.
“Is that a problem?” I asked in return.
“No. It’s no problem.” She looked away. “It’s just… well, it’s a little embarrassing.”
“You think so?” I frowned as I put out the fire, held the shirt underneath the boiling ball of water, and let it slowly sink into the fabric of my shirt. “I don’t think it’s that embarrassing. Anyway, please take off your shirt.”
“Do I have to?” asked Fay.
“It would make cleaning your wound easier.” I frowned at her. “Also, what is there to be embarrassed about now? I’ve already seen you naked.”
“I… suppose that is true. I guess it wouldn’t be a big deal… if I bared myself to you again.”
After admitting this, Fay reluctantly grabbed the hem of her ruined clothes. The first thing she grabbed were the remains of her blue coat, which she slid down her shoulders and off her arms. The undershirt was also destroyed. Given how little of it remained, it could scarcely be called a shirt. Even before she had taken it off, I could see her breasts and inverted nipples. She flushed a deep scarlet the same color as her hair but removed the undershirt as well.
With her torso now exposed, Fay’s embarrassment seemed to reach a peak, but I couldn’t let either of our feelings bother me right now. Cleaning Fay’s wounds was more important than how we felt. I took the rag, steam wafting from it, and began going over her injuries. The first one I cleaned was the one on top of her left breast. It was the worst looking out of all of them, and I didn’t want it to scar. While I cleaned the wound with hot water, I sent the water element deep into her wound and began healing it, slowly closing the wound up until not even a scar remained.
“I am always impressed by your ability to heal people,” Fay said, having gotten over her embarrassment enough to hold a conversation.
“I used to get caught up in a number of dangerous situations,” I explained to her. “Similar to how I learned to refine alchemy pills by necessity, I needed to learn how I could heal my own injuries. Of course, by learning to heal myself, I also learned how to heal others.”
“That does make sense, though now I’m wondering what kind of situations you got into that required you learn how to heal yourself.”
With the wound on her chest healed, I shifted to the ones on her arms, wiping them off and healing them with the water element. I discovered another located on her back, so I moved behind her and pressed the remains of my shirt against what appeared to be
four long claw marks. How did I miss those?
“I hope to one day tell you that,” I admitted. “I feel like you, Kari, and Lin deserve to know more about me, but for the moment, would you mind if I kept it a secret?”
“I don’t mind.” Fay shook her head as I stared intently at the closing claw marks as the skin was knit together, waiting until the skin fully healed before checking for more injuries. “So long as you tell us eventually.”
“Thank you.” I moved back around to her front and began checking for more injuries. It didn’t look like there were any—wait. There was a cut on her leg.
“E-Eryk!” Fay squeaked when I went to clean up her wound.
“What? Your leg is cut.”
“I-I can do this one myself.”
“But… you don’t have the water element,” I pointed out. “The whole reason I’m the one doing this and not you is because I can also heal the injury as well as disinfect it.”
“That… yes. You are right. I’m sorry.” Fay’s shoulders drooped as she resigned herself to her fate. “Please heal this too.”
“Is it really that embarrassing to have me heal you?” I asked as I placed the rag against her leg and gently wiped off the blood.
“I don’t know why I feel this way myself,” Fay admitted. “It’s just… ever since you began courting me, I’ve felt strangely self-conscious. Even when you aren’t with me, I can’t help but feel this way. I’ll see some clothing in a store and catch myself wondering if you’d like to see me wearing it, and then I would wonder if I’d even look good in it. I’m not a traditional beauty like Kari. I don’t have her refined appeal or charm, so I feel like I need to try even harder to impress you, but I don’t know what to do. Sometimes, I wonder what you even see in me.”
I listened to her as I finished cleaning her injuries. The one on her leg wasn’t her only one. She also had an injury on her foot, which I found because I used the water element to scan her body for blood. I took off her left boot and sock, set her foot on my lap, and placed the rag over her blistered toes, massaging them as I slowly healed them. It was only after I had switched to her right foot that I spoke.
“I hope you don’t think I’m courting you out of pity,” I said.
Fay quickly shook her head. “I know you better than that. You aren’t the type to do something out of pity.”
“Mm.” I slowly pressed my thumbs into the pads of her foot. Her toes wiggled underneath the rag and Fay bit down on her lip. “Then you should also know you don’t need to try harder to make me want you. I already want you.”
Fay hesitated before asking, “Is that true?”
“What reason would I have to lie?” I asked. Her foot was healed, so I set it on the bed of fronds, got onto my hands and knees, and crawled over to her. “I want you, Fay. I really do. You say you aren’t a traditional beauty like Kari, and that might be so, but you have a beauty that she doesn’t.”
“I want to believe that, but…”
I wondered what happened in her past to give Fay such little confidence in herself. There had to be more to her inferiority complex that I wasn’t seeing. This problem seemed to be rooted in something deeper than simply feeling inferior to Kari, but without knowing what that something else was, I couldn’t really do anything about it—and right now wasn’t the time to try and resolve emotional issues.
However, there was one thing I could do right now.
“Fay?”
“Yes?”
When Fay looked up, I leaned down and stole a kiss. It wasn’t long, and I moved away immediately after, but it was enough that Fay was now staring at me in shock. I smiled at her. It was probably a bit mischievous. Then I leaned back down and kissed her again.
Fay looked like she didn’t know what to do, but as the kiss continued, she closed her eyes and kissed back. During that time, I pushed her onto the fronds while keeping our lips locked. I let my hands roam over her bare stomach and chest. Her inverted nipples grew stiff when I rubbed my fingers over them and her stomach was twitching. As I pushed my tongue into her mouth, eliciting a moan from those sweet lips, I let my hand drift lower and lower until I was cupping her sex—
“W-wait!” Fay suddenly shouted. I stopped.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
We… we can’t do this,” she muttered, out of breath and panting.
“We can’t. Why—ah.” I glanced around and nodded. “This isn’t a good place to do something like this, is it?”
“That isn’t… really it.” When all her words did was make me stare at her in confusion, she averted her eyes. “I… wouldn’t really mind doing it with you here, um, b-but we already have a pecking order.”
“A pecking order?” I didn’t get it.
Fay nodded. “The night before we left for the Demon Beast Mountain Range, Kari, Lin, and I talked about who would get to, erm, sleep with you first. We all agreed that since Kari was the one you loved first and is going to be your Primary Wife, she would be the first to share your bed, so…”
“I see.” I nodded and thought about what I should do. Truth be told, I did want to take Fay right now, but I also knew she wouldn’t like it if I forced the issue, and I didn’t think I could forgive myself if I pushed her into something she didn’t want. I took a deep breath and removed my hand from her warm, moist lips. “If that’s how it is… then that’s how it is.”
“Thank you,” Fay mumbled.
I nodded and sat up. “We should probably get dressed.” I looked at how her bare breasts jiggled when she sat up, and then turned away. The light pink of her nipples and the way they were inverted made me want to see if I could coax them out. “I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to control myself for much longer if we stay like this.”
My words caused Fay’s entire face and even a little bit of her chest to turn a bright shade of crimson as she hurried to get dressed.
Chapter 8
Demon Beast Mountain Range - Part VIII
After getting dressed again, Fay and I went in search of food. We hadn’t eaten in a long time, and while a Spiritualist could survive for days or even weeks without food, there was always a limit. Even the strongest Spiritualist would die if they didn’t eat anything within a week, give or take. That went doubly so for water.
There weren’t any lakes located within this desert region, so we could only get water from the small pond. However, some strange animals had burrowed into the ground. They looked like rodents. I thought they were squirrels at first, but they were thicker and fatter, and their tails were short and stubby. I believe they were called gophers.
We caught a few of them using a combination of fire to draw them out of their holes and my water blade to kill them. After returning to the room where I’d first woken up, the two of us lit a fire and cooked the gophers on a pair of makeshift skewers.
I sighed after swallowing my first bite. “These taste so bland without proper seasonings.”
“You’re really big on having food taste good even when you aren’t in Nevaria,” Fay said with an amused smile.
“That’s because I’ve tried the rations that other people eat when they go on expeditions.” I shrugged as I tore into the gopher because, despite my complaints, I was starving. “Most people who go exploring like this eat dried jerky and hard bread. It’s absolutely atrocious. I told myself after being forced to rely on it for the first few times that I would never eat such awful food while out on an expedition again.”
“Well… I suppose I can’t blame you,” Fay muttered. While I was eating like Lin, with little care for manners, Fay ate her food in a more dainty and refined fashion, as I would expect from a noble, even one from a minor family.
We finished the rest of our meal in silence. I leaned back against the wall after satiating my hunger and placed a hand on my stomach. The clothing I wore was so torn that my palm came into contact with skin. I felt a moment of lamentation as I realized this outfit was no longer usable, which honestly saddened me because
this was the outfit that Fay bought for me so long ago. It had a special place in my heart.
“You said before that you have an idea as to why the Demon Beasts suddenly attacked us like that,” Fay began as she scooted over to me. She was just close enough that I could feel the warmth from her thighs. “Would you mind telling me what you think caused this now?”
Now was the best time to explain what I saw, so without further ado, I told Fay about how I’d felt a strong Spiritual Power while I was arguing with Marko, how I had followed the power to its source, and discovered a group of people. Of course, I mentioned how a man dressed in a black cloak had been enacting a strange ritual using a rune array with Dyr in the center. I held nothing back. By the time I had finished, Fay was biting her lip hard and clenching her hands.
“So,” she muttered, “the Leucht Family and somebody in a cloak were using Dyr in a ritual, and you think this ritual somehow attracted these Demon Beasts and caused them to attack us?”
“I don’t think the ritual caused them to attack us.” I paused and put my thoughts in order. “I believe the more likely scenario is that the ritual attracted the Demon Beasts to our location. You know as well as I that Demon Beasts are violent, to begin with. Once they locked onto Dyr’s Spiritual Power, they followed it, discovered us, and attacked en masse. What I’m surprised about is the range of the technique. It even managed to attract Pteranodons from the Pteranodon Valley.”
“Do you think they were hoping to kill us with this?” asked Fay.
“More than likely.” Nodding, I explained my theory even though I was sure she had already guessed the same thing. “I’m pretty sure the Leucht Family knows about what happened to Grant. They were probably hoping to kill us in a manner that made it seem like they had nothing to do with it. No one could blame them if we died in a Demon Beast attack.”
“Then that first time we traveled into the Demon Beast Mountain Range…”
“They had likely used Dyr to attract the Giant Svart,” I said with a nod when Fay trailed off. “I don’t think they used the ritual that time, which is why they only attracted that one Demon Beast.” I lowered my head and frowned. “The ritual they used was a type of rune array. It’s a type of ritual technique called Runic Spirit Magic that combines multiple runes together to create a variety of different effects. You activate it by channeling Spiritual Power into the rune array. If I had to take a guess, I would say the rune array that cloaked man used expanded the range of Dyr’s special ability.”
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