Ding! Kill has been made: 1 x Elk, 3 x Tier 2 Silvermoon Direwolves.
Rewards on the upgrade of status only halved because of hostile status.
Host now has 16 upgrade points.
The cave reverberated the system chime, which did not make Logan feel triumphant in the slightest.
In the corner, leaning against the rock-wall, was slumped the red-cheeked and shallow-breathing, yet still stacked, Aurelia. Her small hand, normally so alive, was hanging limp at her side, as a dead leaf blown by the wind.
She was burning up.
The dragon heart in Logan contracted.
What the devil was he to do at a place like this?
Now go out and see if there is medicine?
No time.
A single glimpse of her and he had known,it was not a little fever.
He attempted to burrow through the Black Dragon Memory implanted in his brain and wished to have something useful.
Rather, what came into view was an anarchic mess:
Bloodlust instincts. Breath control. Liberations of what dragons fain would eat...
Then the torrent of the ridiculous, outlandish headings of novels:
The Arrogant Princess and the Dragon Alpha.
My Soft Pink Princess Married a Black Dragon!
The Princess Spoiled and Her Overwrought King of the Dragon.
The feed, which was in his mind, showed:... What the hell?
Where was the magic?
The healing spells?
The primeval, old age wisdom of the dragon-race?
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
He was half spitting a second blast of Acid Breath in his frustration.
Ding! First upgrade points were identified. Subsystem "Shop" unlocked.
According to the current circumstances of the host, a limited-time offer will be proposed:
Willow Bark - 10 upgrade points.
Note: After purchase, will go back to original cost of 100 points.
"Willow Bark...?"
The memory of a voice, or an old, warm voice, and scratchy like old flannel, came to Logan.
The old man had spent his life in the country and loved to demonstrate the herbs that he had picked. One of the simplest natural remedies to fever, said Willow Bark, was one of them.
But that was Earth's medicine.
Did it have even the same plants in this world?
It is not time to quarrel with metaphysics.
Logan took a deep breath. "System, redeem Willow Bark."
Ding! Item materialized.
There came a flash of white light,which reached him only and a small bundle of freshly stripped willow-bark came into view on the floor of the cave. Pale brown, fresh as it had been cut off the tree a few minutes ago.
It was not at all like the dry, hard stuff with which his grandfather stored himself in glass jars,but there is no mistaking that it was Willow Bark.
New difficulty: how did he ever expect to get it down Aurelia's throat?
He pawed the cave out with his dragon claws, and even went through the stack of so-called dragon literature in the corner—that foolery of novels and found two poor little gold-pieces.
That was it.
No tools. No supplies.
Nothing but a hot princess and a dragon with no claws.
He was a type of draconic disgrace.
Frustration microshocked him to lash his tail.
Time was running through his nails, and the breath of Aurelia was becoming less and less audible each minute.
She is on the death-bed—who gives a goddamn what you put in a container....
He cursed, and crawled towards the pool at the back of the cave, washing out the metallic tang of blood in his mouth until it disappeared.
then he took up the Willow Bark and started chewing.
Black dragon teeth were sharp as the razor, and the bite was dreadful. Within seconds, the bark was reduced to a thick bitter paste that made the soul feel as foul as it would have pulled a soul out of its body.
A half of his tongue numbed in touch.
Logan bit his lip, and struggled to keep the entire mess in his mouth.
This was medicine.
She needed it.
The man crawled back to the side of Aurelia and with the other gently lifted her face with the back of one of his claws. He opened her quailing lips with the other one, with caution.
Then—not knowing any better alternative—in the most painstaking way he transferred the unpalatable paste into her mouth, bit by bit, by blowing down his enormous snout.
It was the imposition of life on her, on his own body.
There was nothing in the cave except the dull, damp bite of the medicine going down her mouth.
Logan stood still, staring at her bosom, willing the precarious up and down to calm.
Aurelia even gulp unconsciously. The crude juice flew down her throat and gradually the medicine came to act.
Logan did not stop seeing that she could take it. He flattened the berries he had picked earlier with his dragon teeth, to a smooth seedless pulp. It was only then, when he was confident it could not have any chunks in it which would choke her, that he offered it to her, taking care with it.
He'd done all he could.
Now it was up to fate.
Logan lay down next, huddling his huge body next to her to be able to enjoy the natural coziness of a dragon heart. He opened up his wings and made a gentle and yet solid canopy over them both, keeping her out of the cold wind that was seeping through the cave mouth.
The rain was starting outside, and gently at first, and then quicker, until the drumming sound of it was heard falling steadily on the leaves beyond.
A moment of poor tranquillity was over in a moment.
Then there came to him a wave of pain.
And even worse than the first time he had wakened—shaper, still deeper, as though thousands of icy needles were thrust into all the muscles simultaneously.
The weakness had arrived.
His strength drained away. His vision blurred.
Logan pushed his head up and his eyes popped to the status of Aurelia on the system panel.
The red deep bar with the Unconscious stamped on it was becoming light, almost pale—as though the sun were starting to shine through the thunderclouds.
She was stabilizing.
"You... better wake up..."
That was the final thought in his mind when the darkness consumed him.
...
In Aurelia's dream...
"So hot... so thirsty..."
She floundered in a desert of interminable yellow sand.
This sun was scorching and blind. Her skin was burnt red, and the sweat streaming down her body was in rivers. Their soft fox tail stuck to her legs as well, wet and matted.
It was like she was a shadow being grilled alive and barely holding on.
She knew it was a dream.
But the suffering was also actual,so sharp and suffocating, as a claw cutting at her mind, which would not allow her to escape.
Soon enough, however, she had been in Silverwood Grove, and had been at the end of that Fire Demon.
She remembered it clearly:
The air swept on by the fires, more like razors.
The huge hand which seized her.
The delicate of her body was smashed before she could utter a scream.
And suddenly she found herself in a desert with no sign of vegetation.
"Someone... help me..."
She attempted to make a call, which only a harsh rasp with her cracked lips.
She collapsed to her knees. Her lips were so parched that they were glued to each other. Her mind was like a kite with a broken string.
She thought of her parents.
Her tribe.
The Silverwood Grove was swept down in fire one night.
Those kind memories were ripped to bits—fired, cut by human swords and blown to pieces.
Then the world about her turned black.
She stood alone in the void.
The wind turned cold.
Raindrops started to beat, caressing and gentle, swirling in her ears.
And then—coolness.
There was an insidious, sour flavor in her tongue, and a shiver which quailed along her throat. It had a trace in it of herbs, biting and cathartic.
What was that?
Another flavor came before she could comprehend it.
Sweet. Gentle. As ripe berries molten on her tongue.
She was hungry, and her stomach contracted, and she gulped and gulped, instinctively holding on to the valuable energy.
A hallucination?
Aurelia didn't know.
However,that it was her last moment,that she should have had a clue to the familiar before her death,then perhaps it was the last mercy of the gods.
Something happened that her mind was going back to the dragon.
To the destiny which had sold her as a bait.
Whereever she was, it had always been death.
But that black dragon—
He had stolen her, but never ate her.
Whenever she shivered he had had to awkwardly, yet earnestly, wrapped her in a bearskin.
So he had bestowed upon her the final farewell kindness.
It was not equivalent to the narrations of the elders.
Those were the stories that dragons were vicious, hungry, put on the earth to kill.
But the one she met...
He seemed different.
Almost... gentle.
It was a shame she would never have an opportunity to pay him back.
It was her parting thought, and her consciousness went, as though it were a stone sinking into warm still water... and was lost.
...