When I woke up, the sun was already setting. Sitting up, the dizziness and pain in my arm hit me. I was afraid to look, but after turning my head, I found my hand mostly intact. A few scratches and light gashes in a spiraling pattern remained, but at least I could move it. This will definitely leave a scar, I thought. At least I was alive, probably thanks to Patrik.
After assessing my situation, I looked for the others, who I found pretty quickly. Patrik was lying down, sleeping, Tara next to him, unconscious. Milo noticed I awakened, and his gaze landed on me. I slowly got up, blood dripping from a freshly opened wound on my arm. The dead beasts lay in a circle around us, all of them had a deep, precise cut in their chests. One has been skinned and the meat cut off, Milo probably started to process it for food.
I walked up to them and started a conversation: “Will they make it?” He looked at me and nodded. Tara had a large cut on her stomach but it was almost completely healed already, probably thanks to Patrik. She had a few smaller hashes all around her body, but they weren’t life threatening.
“Patrik is xin depleted, he won’t wake up for another day or two. Tara was cut by the alpha pretty bad, but she will wake up tomorrow. They will be okay.”
“That’s good to hear. Sorry about all this, they came probably because of me.”
“Nah, don’t sweat it. These are dangerous parts after all, we have to deal with these kinds of situations often. You don’t have anything besides your clothes, right? I’ll give you some basic survival equipment, one sec.” He climbed inside his tent and searched for some stuff for me. A bag, a nice knife with a flint rod to make sparks with, some dried meat and a water pouch. He tossed a small orb to me; made of the same milky glass material he conjured in battle. A xin crystal, I recognized. “This came from the beast you killed, so it's yours.” I caught it and looked at it closely.
“Thanks.” It would be indeed difficult to survive without anything, so I was grateful. The knife was an awesome piece as well, a simple blade made of black steel, with a wooden and leather handle. I put it all in a leather backpack and kept it close.
“I saw you tried to use some body augmentation earlier. I can teach you some basic stuff, I’m pretty good at manipulating mana.” He said a bit shyly.
“That would be awesome, thanks! I’m pretty beat up though, is that okay?” I was a bit worried he’d make me train when my arm was one step away from being ground meat.
“Don’t worry, I’ll just teach you the very basics first, you don’t even have to move a muscle.” He assured me.
“Alrighty then, teach.” I smiled at him weakly. He seemed like a kind man despite his enormous build.
He talked me through all the xin manipulation basics, how I can maximize my attack, how to allocate the xin properly, stuff like that. It was a bit hard at first, but after a while I was getting quite good at prolonged enhancement. I could hold it for almost a minute without much difficulty. Xin moved a bit sluggishly in my body, and he said I’ll soon develop channels like veins to guide it more easily.
I was getting more and more tired, and Milo started to cook up some dinner after it got completely dark. I was still running on a basically empty stomach, and I had to eat the meat slowly and steadily not to throw up again. My stomach churned and complained again, but it finally accepted that I needed to eat for me to survive, and I felt satisfied for the first time I woke up. When I was as full as I dared to fill my stomach, a comfortable tiredness took over me. I asked Milo if it was okay if I went to rest, he said he’d watch over the camp for the night. He must have been tired as well, but I had to rest.
I had a good night’s sleep, and woke up to the sound of birds chirping happily. One of them was screeching loudly and I had to get up to check what the source of the sound was. When I climbed out of my tent, I looked up, and saw a giant eagle lazily drawing circles above us. It was far up, but its loud screams pierced my ears. When I looked around, I saw Tara sitting next to the smoldering fire pit.
“Hey! Are you alright?” I asked her as I walked closer.
“Morning. Yeah, I guess I’ll live,” her voice was grouchy, she was most likely in a lot of pain. “I heard Milo started teaching you some stuff?” she asked with a bit more enthusiasm.
“Yeah, basic xin control, body augmentation and he even suggested me a workout routine so I can gain some muscle.” He really was kind, and I desperately needed all this information so I absorbed it all like a dry sponge.
“Good. Since he’s sleeping right now, I can help you. But first, let’s have breakfast.” She pointed to the metal pot that sat in the middle of the smoldering coals left from the fire. An amazing smell was coming from it.
“Thanks.” I sat down next to her and started eating. She updated me on things while I stuffed my head with the meaty soup. Patrik was still out, but his xin levels looked better, Milo was exhausted for not sleeping for 24 hours, and so when Tara awoke, she took over the watch.
“Poor Patrik. Can’t we give some of our own xin to boost his levels and wake him up quicker?” I asked.
“Nah, unfortunately, when you absorb xin, your body purifies it to your bodies wavelength, or your signature. It’s fine when you use it and it gets absorbed back into the atmosphere, but when giving it to another person who has to purify it and align it with their signature, you get almost nothing transferred.” So that’s why he’s just left there out in the open to slowly charge up.
“That’s a shame. What about the beast cores then?” I wondered, since it was the same process, converting from one signature to another.
“Yes, it’s the same thing. We can only gather a small fraction of the xin stored within a beast, but when you pull xin from a crystal, you basically destroy it, and that releases so much power that the small fraction is still a significant amount. So, if you want to destroy your core, feel free to give it to Patrik.”
“No thanks, I think I’ll pass on that one.”
Suddenly another screech came, and this one was much louder. The eagle beast was close. I looked up, but it was too late, it was right above me, and came at us at a speed even Tara couldn’t match. It wrapped its massive sharp claws around my torso and lifted me up. In a heartbeat, we were so far away from the camp I couldn’t even take out the shape of the tents anymore.
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