The moan led him to a small, muddy clearing near the base of a lightning-blasted oak. The scent of blood and something else—a sharp, coppery tang like ozone—hung thick in the air. Chen Mo crouched at the tree line, his Keen Eye scanning.
A figure lay curled on the ground. Human, or close to it. Female, dressed in dark, travel-stained leathers that might have been fine once, now torn and muddy. A deep, ugly gash ran from her shoulder down her back, staining the leather black with blood. An empty sword sheath was at her hip. A few feet away, a beautifully crafted but now broken shortsword lay in the mud.
What drew his eye, however, was not the wound, but the reaction around it. The air above the injury shimmered faintly, like heat haze on a summer road. Tiny motes of pale gold light, almost invisible, flickered around the torn flesh. As he watched, the bleeding seemed to slow, the edges of the gash faintly pulsing with a weak, internal luminescence. It was healing. Magically. But far too slowly; she was still dying.
[Entity Detected: Humanoid (Wounded).]
[Physiological Analysis: Severe blood loss. Life force depleted. Detecting low-level autonomous cellular regeneration. Source: Unknown/Internal. Threat Level: Negligible.]
[Arcane Analysis: Ambient mana interaction detected. Entity possesses passive mana-reactive physiology. Caution advised.]
Passive mana-reactive physiology. That explained the shimmer. She was, in the system's terms, likely an "arcane-conductive material" herself. The Protocol didn't claim living beings, but the warning was clear: she was different. Touching her wouldn't trigger the debt, but it might attract other attention.
He remained hidden for a full minute, listening, watching the woods. No signs of pursuit. The attack that felled her was likely hours old. She'd crawled here to die.
Chen Mo weighed the variables. A wounded stranger. Capable of magic. Hunted, given the violent wound and missing pursuers. Helping her was a risk of monumental proportions. It could bring her enemies down on him. It could expose him to whatever power she wielded or opposed.
Leaving her felt like turning a corner into a colder, harder version of himself—one he might need to survive, but one he wasn't sure he wanted to meet.
The woman stirred, a low, pained sound escaping her lips. Her head turned slightly, and for a fleeting moment, her eyes, glazed with pain, seemed to look directly at his hiding place. They were a startling violet, bright even in the gloom. They held not a plea, but a resigned, weary defiance.
It was that look that decided him. Defiance he understood.
He stepped into the clearing, his movements deliberately loud to avoid startling her. She tensed, a weak hand scrabbling for the broken sword.
"Easy," he said, keeping his voice low and calm. He kept his distance, showing his empty hands before slowly gesturing to the waterskin at his hip. "Water?"
She stared at him, her violet eyes trying to focus. She said something in a musical, flowing language he didn't understand. He shook his head. She swallowed, then switched to a heavily accented, guttural version of the common tongue he'd heard the guards and slavers use. "No... pursuit?"
"I don't see anyone," he replied. "Just you. Can you move?"
She tried to push herself up, cried out, and collapsed back into the mud, the faint golden light around her wound flaring erratically. "No. Leg... broken. I think." Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. "They used... silvered iron. Slows the... healing."
Silvered iron. Specific anti-magic or anti-regeneration measures. This was a targeted hunt.
"I have a camp. Sheltered. Up there," he said, pointing towards his outcrop. "It's not safe here. The blood will draw more than men."
Her eyes flickered with calculation, assessing his ragged clothes, his sharp bone blade, his wary posture. She was judging his value, his danger. "Why help?"
He gave the only honest answer he had. "Because I was in the mud once too."
A faint, pained twist of her lips might have been a smile. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. "Alena," she breathed.
"Chen Mo."
Moving her was an ordeal. She was taller and heavier than she looked, all lean muscle. He fashioned a crude drag-litter from two spears and his blanket, careful to touch only her clothing. Every jolt drew a hiss of pain from her, the shimmer around her wound flickering. By the time he hauled her up the slope to his rocky shelf, he was sweating and she was unconscious.
In the firelight, her condition was clearer. The gash was terrible, the bone in her forearm was indeed broken, and she was covered in deep bruises. Her gear, however, was of exceptional quality. The leather was supple and reinforced in key places with thin, flexible scales of some dark metal. Her boots were sturdy. Her belt pouch, which he didn't open, was intricately tooled.
He knew nothing of healing magic. His Basic Wilderness First Aid Guide (which he now sorely wished he'd purchased) would be useless against this. He could only provide basic care. He used boiled, clean water from his waterskin to wash the wound, the mundane act feeling absurd against the magical injury. He set her broken arm as best he could, using splints from his woodpile and cordage. He gave her small sips of water. He covered her with the boar hide for warmth.
All the while, the system was silent. No prompts, no suggestions. It was observing.
As he worked, his Keen Eye noted details. The subtle, elegant points of her ears, slightly longer than a human's. The fine, almost silvery tracery of old scars on her hands. The way the tiny golden motes seemed to coalesce more strongly near a simple, braided leather cord around her neck, from which hung a small, closed locket.
She was Elven, or something like it. A being of a race he'd only read about. And she was carrying something important.
She woke with a start just before dawn, her violet eyes flashing in the dim light, hand going to her missing sword. She saw him, sitting across the fire, sharpening a bone dart with his Tusk. She relaxed minutely, assessing her splinted arm, the cleaned wound.
"You... cleaned it," she said, her voice raspy but clearer.
"Tried to. The silvery stuff is still in there. I couldn't get it out."
"Poison. For my kind." She shifted, wincing. "Thank you."
He nodded, poking the fire. "Who were they?"
"The Blackstone Watchers. Zealots. They purge what they don't understand." She said it with a bitterness that spoke of long experience.
"Purge? For what?"
She looked at him, her gaze intense. "For what I am. For the blood in my veins. For this." Her hand touched the locket at her throat. "They think it is a key to damnation. It is just a memory."
Chen Mo didn't press. Her secrets were her own, and they were clearly lethal. "Will they track you here?"
"Perhaps. The poison in the wound... it muddles my scent, my essence. But they are relentless." She looked around his camp, at the smoking meat, the barriers, the crude tools. "You are alone. You are skilled to live here. Or lucky."
"Both," he said. "You need better healing. I have nothing that can counter that poison."
"I have," she said. She fumbled with her good hand at her belt pouch, gritting her teeth against the pain. She withdrew a small, crystalline vial, no larger than his thumb. It was filled with a liquid that glowed with a soft, internal sapphire light. An Arcane-Conductive Material if he ever saw one.
The moment it was fully in her hand, the system blared in his vision.
[WARNING: High-Grade Arcane-Conductive Material Detected within 1-meter radius: 'Moonwell Essence' (Refined).]
[Material Debt Contract: Claim cannot be executed. Material is bound to another entity's life-force.]
So. The contract was aggressive, but it had rules. It couldn't steal something already soul-bound to another. That was crucial information.
Alena didn't seem to notice his internal revelation. With trembling fingers, she uncorked the vial and drank half of it. The effect was immediate and visible. The shimmer around her wound solidified into a mesh of golden light, knitting flesh together at a visible, accelerated rate. The dark, silvery tinge at the edges of the gash receded, pushed out by the vibrant blue glow of the potion. Color returned to her face. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"The bone will take longer," she said, her voice stronger. "But the poison is broken. You have my debt, Chen Mo."
He shook his head. "You would have healed eventually on your own."
"Not before the scavengers or the Watchers found me." She studied him again. "You are not from these parts. Your accent is... strange. Your methods are practical, but you lack basic knowledge. A traveler from a far land?"
"Something like that," he evaded. "What will you do?"
She sat up, moving with much greater ease. "I must reach the Whispering Glen, north and east of here, beyond the river's source. My... people are there. I have a warning to deliver." Her eyes grew shadowed. "The Watchers are not just hunting me. They are mobilizing. They smell a change in the world, and their answer is always fire and steel."
A change in the world. Chen Mo thought of the Multiverse Growth Protocol binding itself to him. Was he the change? Or just another symptom?
"I can't cross the river here," he said. "And going near Blackstone Outpost is too risky for you."
"There is a place," she said. "A day's travel upstream. An old stone bridge, forgotten, mostly ruined but still crossable. It is not on the Watchers' maps." She looked at him, an offer forming in her eyes. "Guide me to the bridge. Help me cross. In return, I will give you something more valuable than gold. Knowledge. A map of the true ways through these woods, and the location of a place where a man can find what he needs, away from the eyes of Watchers and slavers."
It was a trade. His local knowledge (such as it was) and protection for her specialized information. It was also a direct path into deeper conflict. But the reward—a safe haven, a secret map—was exactly what he needed to outmaneuver both the slavers and the grasping terms of his own Protocol.
He looked at the contract timer. 29 days, 12 hours. He looked at Alena, her will to survive mirroring his own.
"Alright," he said. "We leave at first light. But we move fast and quiet. And you tell me everything you can about these Watchers, and what to expect between here and that bridge."
As dawn broke, painting the sky in streaks of crimson and gold, Chen Mo prepared to break camp. He packed jerky, water, his tools. He left the heavy hide cached in a crevice. He kept the Sovereign's Tusk at his side and his crude bow across his back.
Alena stood, testing her weight on her injured leg. The potion had worked miracles, but she was still weak. She moved with a predator's grace nonetheless, her eyes constantly scanning the treeline.
Just as they were about to descend from the outcrop, Chen Mo's Keen Eye flickered. Downstream, at the very edge of his visual range, a tag appeared. Not yellow for resource, but a pulsing, dull red.
[Multiple Hostile Signatures Detected. Movement: Methodical search pattern. Distance: 800 meters. Approaching.]
[Entity Match: Presumed 'Blackstone Watchers'. Threat Level: High.]
They had been found. The hunt was back on.
Alena followed his gaze, her face hardening. "They track the residue of the poison," she whispered. "It calls to them like a beacon now that it's been purged."
No time for stealthy travel. It was now a race.
"Change of plan," Chen Mo said, his voice cold. "We run. Upstream. Now."
The foothold was abandoned. The quiet struggle for survival was over. Now, he was in a war between powers he barely understood, with a wounded elf for an ally and a pack of fanatical hunters on his trail. The forest, which had been a prison of solitude, suddenly felt far too crowded.