-5-
Her breathing was steady but light. I was worried. She’d lost a lot of blood and was probably in shock. I looked into her eyes, seeing if she was awake. Tara blinked lightly, she was awake for now, but I could see she was fighting not to pass out.
“I’m sorry in advance. If this works, it will hurt like hell.”
She looked at me confused but looked like she prepared herself for the worst. I ignited the heightened sense mode I practiced, and suddenly all the xin in the area lit up like fireworks. I saw her core, but also… white veins, spreading from her crystal all over to her body. I started to understand, this was probably used like blood vessels to spread xin everywhere in her body she needs. I should start looking into this as well.
“You look much better than when I last saw you.” She croaked and immediately started coughing heavily. What a nice compliment, I no longer looked like a corpse.
“Don’t talk, stupid! Try to relax, I need to focus.” I scolded her. She needed to conserve all her energy for the recovery. Anyway, I need to concentrate.
I put two fingers on her chest, where her crystal was. I tried pushing in my xin slowly, and in small amounts. She groaned, but the foreign magic wasn’t rejected from her body, and reluctantly it accepted it. It struck me again, that sometimes xin looked and felt like it was alive and conscious. Right now, her core didn’t even try to purify my xin, just accepted it. Filling her core to around halfway, I pulled it from her core to the stump what was once her right arm. I used the xin veins, and it moved easily from her core, quickly as well.
I pulled my xin through her body to the surface of the wound, and once there were enough gathered there, I ignited my recovery skill. Her eyes immediately rolled up, her mouth agape in a silent scream, and not even a second in Tara was out cold. Well crap. What was interesting and completely unwelcome, that I was feeling the pain as well. Not as bad as Tara probably, but it was still hard to think straight.
Regardless, her stump grew a centimeter of bone and various vessels and muscles started appearing on it as well. The burnt wound started opening up again, but there was no bleeding, as the flesh knitted itself to the bone, and skin crawled up encasing it safely. Her crystal was running empty after not even three centimeters of regrowing the arm. I kept my hand on her core and kept supplying more and more xin from my own. I was around 40 percent full, so I was confident I had enough for this, based on progress so far, but it was a bit disconcerting emptying it after so painstakingly filling it up halfway.
It took hours of hard work and pain to get to her hand. Cold sweat was dripping from my head, my core was almost empty, and both my arms were burning due to the flow of this much xin. I really need to develop those veins soon. But as I was thinking about that, I saw two faint lines coming from my core and going toward both my palms. I felt it channeling the immense amount of xin through it, and although it was small and weak, I knew it was helping.
I was at around 10 percent, or more like 8, when I got to the fingers. I made her thumb first, then moved on to the rest. Bone, growing millimeter by millimeter, tendons, a bit of fat, the nail and skin wrapping around it. It was honestly pretty disgusting, but more so exhausting.
Not only my core, but the immense concentration of guiding xin in someone else’s body, and using a skill at that, it was not easy. My right hand also felt the pain of every part of Tara’s new one being constructed, every bone, every bit of skin and all the muscles. It was like being dissected and put back together.
Finally, the pinky was covered in light pink skin, and the process was over. I collapsed next to Tara. She was lucky she wasn’t conscious for this one, it would’ve drove her mad probably. I knew how bad this can hurt, and although I haven’t grown back entire limbs, I healed pretty ugly injuries. This was probably much worse. Healing and fusing broken bone together were one thing, creating completely new one was another matter entirely.
My core was sucked dry, I had two or three percent at most. I needed to gather a bit, so I don’t faint. I was still in the heightened state I used to manipulate xin on an advanced level, so I could just command the xin around me to fill me up. A few streams appeared and started marching into my empty crystal. Suddenly the carcass of the snapping turtle started glowing brightly like a beacon. I’m an idiot, how could I forget?
I hurried over on staggering legs, with my knife in my hand, and after strengthening my body I started carving. It was easy knowing where to dig as I could see the glowing crystal through its flesh. It only took fifteen minutes of digging around until I got it, it was buried deep. The crystal was glowing even without the xin sight. I started retrieving the massive amounts of xin from its crystal. I settled down next to Tara on the ground to keep watch, and after a while when I gathered some, I used the recovery skill on her once again to check if there were any other injuries. Immediately I felt like I was run over by a car as it started to heal her broken ribs.
The pain was intense, but nothing compared to growing back an arm. It only took a few seconds to mend her bones back together, and I felt her breathing falling into a steady and healthy rhythm. Maybe I should’ve started with this? Whoops.
I squeezed my hand under her back and legs and picked her up. I carried her over to my improvised sleeping bag made of leaves and put her down gently. I closed the leaves on her and settled down in front of the small hideout. I was exhausted, but we couldn’t be both asleep at the same time.
I took out the crystal from my pocket and started to absorb the xin again. It was like a massive wave rushing over me, it was hot and violent, but full of energy. I had to hold it in both my hands and use the emerging xin veins that looked so sad and weak. But while absorbing this crystal, they grew stronger and more complex every hour. The progress was small but noticeable.
When the sun came up, I only emptied half of the crystal from the turtle. I was almost full too, so it was a bit puzzling. Aren’t my xin reserves supposed to be like, massive? So why am I almost full? I decided to stop for a moment and enjoy this much magic flowing through my body at once. I’ve never felt this good since waking up from that damn glacier. I checked up on Tara, she was still sleeping. She will be probably hungry when she wakes up, so I should go hunt for something.
I was reluctant leaving her here alone, but this hideout was pretty good, looked natural so even I’d have a hard time noticing it if I hadn’t made it. I started augmenting my body in a thick layer of xin, and suddenly I got very light. This was also different from before, with much better results. I decided to dial it back for a while, I don’t want to mend any more broken bones today. I started running towards a thicker part of the forest. I dodged the trees while looking like a speeding bullet.
I spotted a yellowish white blob glowing ahead of me, changed my direction slightly and I jumped from the trunk of a thick tree with such force it cracked beneath my feet and started collapsing a bit. I smiled and using my feet and arms, like swimming between the trees, went after my prey. It was a smaller roe type thing, probably also had some deformation, but I didn’t have time to look for it, and didn’t really care anyway.
With a final push and another tree destroyed, I found myself next to the animal, and with a firm punch I killed it instantly. It tumbled for a while as we were going quite fast, but eventually came to a stop. I used some rope made from dried grass to tie its legs together and put it on my back like a backpack. I hurried back to our hideout in the same fashion, it felt fantastic going this fast.
The wind stung my eyes and face, my fingertips were scratched by the twigs. The colors and shapes of the forest melted together, and I felt myself flying in between the trees. I felt a sudden urge and using some thick twigs I shot up above the trees. I was now running on top of the few leaves of the canopies. Now this truly felt like flying. The small deer creature was hitting my back pretty heavily, so I decided to stop destroying the forest and move at a more modest pace.
I was still running like a maniac, but not at breakneck speed and I didn’t have to worry about breaking the sound barrier. After a few minutes I arrived at our little camp and put down the deer. I started processing it, I’ve gotten quite good at it lately. I also started a small fire and started roasting the meat. I cleaned off the crystal and put it to the side, Tara will probably need it later. I have the turtle’s anyway.
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