Mysterious Companions

On the new day's journey, Sela noticed that her companion was moving a bit heavily, not as lightly as on previous days.

Considering his age, she thought the boy might be exhausted, or unable to adapt to the wind and dew.

The apothecary intended to use mint leaves to help lift her companion's spirits, but noticed that the boy's clothes were stained with blood.

After a moment of hesitation, she stopped in her tracks."I need to see your back."

"Hmm?" It took Keane a moment to notice the blood stains on the back of his shirt.

Sela lifted her companion's clothes and found that the other party's waist was coated with some kind of glue.

As an apothecary, she could tell the composition of the glue by its taste and form.

It was a mixture of chewed sumac, spider silk, and charcoal powder, and it barely sealed a wound.

sela smiled lightly, "Is that what Sanchi told you?"

"Yes.

How do you know?"

"It was I who first brought the sumac back to the village and cultivated them in my greenhouse for the villagers to heal their wounds.

The highlanders are not very good at healing.

Their shaman would only use mushrooms and animal bones to heal people's wounds.

To me, that's more like giving a burial." Sela wiped away the gluey ointment.

Two pinhole-like wounds showed up."These are bites from Fire-cracker Ant.

When were you bitten?"

"Last night, when you left that meeting." Keane's body twitched.

Sela was stunned for a moment; she had expected her companion to be asleep when she left."I...

I did not mean to leave you behind.

You must believe me."

"I believe so." Keane pulled some crystalline stuff with dirt stuck to it out of his pocket, "Is this Fire-cracker Ant venom?"

"Yes." After a long time, Sela continued, "Let me guess what you're going to do next.

You will dissolve it with fire to remove the impurities.

In the future, you will take it with you to take revenge."

"Hmm."

Understanding the mind of a companion does not make Sela feel relaxed.

Pharmacists are not soul healers and cannot heal mental wounds, much less quench those extreme thirsts.

After thinking about it, she decided to say something else."Not all medicines can be purified by this method.

Some medicines will deteriorate under the heat and thus lose their effect."

"Hold it in." Sela squeezed the wound to try to expel some of the toxins, then she shook her head."Doing this now won't help.

You should have told me earlier that you were bitten.

Your body can metabolize some of the toxins.

But it won't heal until the residual toxins are out of the wound.

I'll have to find another way to help you get rid of some of the toxins."

"Sanchi says saliva clears the wound.

After you cut the wound, you should suck out some of the toxin with your mouth.

Unfortunately, I can't bite my own back." Keane took out his pocket knife and made a rare expression of embarrassment.

Sela responded to her companion with an even more perplexing expression, "I'd love to help you suck out the venom, but - I can't." She grabbed the bottom edge of her shirt and let go again.

"It doesn't matter.

As long as it doesn't kill me."

Sela takes out the mint leaves and mixes them with spider silk and mashes them."This will ease the pain.

If there's a puddle nearby, I'll catch a few leeches to clean the wound, otherwise I'll have to leave your wound to septicize." As he spoke, the apothecary re-treated his companion's wounds.

"A leech? What's that?"

"It is a soft-bodied worm that feeds by attaching itself to other animals and sucking blood.

There are no such things in the highlands, where it's too cold.

They like warm places." Sela pulls a notebook out of her bag to find where the leech is recorded, "This is it."

Although Keane couldn't read much, the drawing on the side made him shiver.

"Don't be nervous, my illustrations are larger.

This helps to study its body structure.

In fact," Sela flexes her fingers, "it's only about the size of a pinky finger."

----------

While the two rested at the pond, Sela retrieved two leeches in a bamboo tube.

She pinched up the leech, carefully pinched off the tail tip, and placed it on her companion's injury.

While the leech sucked out the poisonous blood, she used her other hand to gently press on the leech's abdomen, causing the poisonous blood to drain from its tail."This way it will stay hungry until the toxin kills it."

After reapplying the ointment, the two were on their way again.

"Can you throw flames too?"

"No, I don't use that.

It consumes me a lot." Sela responded.

"Consumption?"

"Y-uh!" A feathered arrow nailed Sela's shoulder without warning.

Due to the close range of the shot, she was knocked to the ground.

The injured arm had difficulty moving for a while.

The ambushers camouflaged around the area showed up, their arrows aimed at the two men.

The group of ambushers were dressed like part of the forest, wearing weeds and leaves on their heads.

Their bodies were light and thin, with pointed ears, and some of their faces were painted with some kind of paint, but that could not hide the hostility in their eyes.

"Elves? You said they were good." Keane retreated to Sela's side.

"Exactly.

Just not very friendly and self-righteous." Sela covered the injury and glared at the elf.

Behind the tree came out an elf from.

He was dressed similarly to others of his kind, only slightly older.

In addition, his face tattoo is not a pattern, but words.

This made him drive like a lord."I knew the intruder was a Son of Night when I saw the carcass of a caribou cub.

you are not welcome here, much less hunting in our forest."

"I killed a deer.

But I didn't desecrate its carcass.

I just wanted to pass peacefully." Sela said.

"Don't think that will make us let down our guard on you.

This is just a warning, or that arrow will be flying at your neck." The elf leader nudged his neck with his thumb.

The elven leader was a bit surprised to see the human boy holding a dagger in one hand and grasping an arrow in the other hand blindly protecting Son of Night."Young human, apparently you are not charmed.

Then why are you with a Son of Night?"

"What? What's Son of Night?" asked Keane, looking over at Sela.

"I'll explain." Sela's voice seemed to come out of her nose.

She turned to the elf, "What do you want?"

The elf ignored Sela and continued to examine the Son of Man."Finally the truth has come out.

So you were kept in the dark all along.

It's not too late to come with us.

Keep following this Son of Night, and you will eventually become her food storage tank."

The elf's words were cloudy, but Keane could hear it as a warning of sorts.

He looked at Sela for a moment and then shook his head at the genie, "I'm not leaving her."

The elves' expressions showed a brief confusion.

"Why are all humans so strange, especially these dead-brained Noahs." An elf chattered.

"I used to have a human apprentice.

She actually chose an old tree as her mate, thinking that would turn her into a tree spirit and breed tree demons.

senovia (the god of forests and rivers in the world of Wissane) manifested ..." another elf responded quietly.

The elf leader frowned, the words on his face slightly twisted and then stretched after a moment."Fine.

Since you are not charmed, we respect your decision.

I hope you won't regret your decision today." He pointed behind the two, "You follow this creek and continue straight as it turns, after that it is no longer our territory."

----------

At a section of the tributary that disappeared into the ground, Keane built a campfire and set the dagger on it again to heat it up.

A shudder ran through him as he saw the inky blue liquid dripping from Sela's wound."Their arrows are poisoned! We should have treated the wound sooner."

"No, don't worry about that." Sela soothed."It's my blood that's toxic."

"Then how is it possible that you're still alive?" Keane stared unblinkingly at Sela, eager for a plausible explanation.

"I'm not even considered alive.

Have you forgotten, I'm a Son of Night," Sela didn't continue to meet her companion's gaze, "what others often call a vampire."

"I should remove the arrowhead.

Arrow wounds usually do not require stitches.

Branding the wound will prevent infection.

Do you need wine?" Keane removed the red-hot dagger with a branch.

"No, don't use that, and don't worry about infection.

Vampires don't like fire." Sela pointed to the stream off to the side, "Cool it down."

Seeing how serious Sela was, Keane had to do as he was told."I saw a miner on Ironstone Town do this when he was helping a passerby who was attacked by bandits." He handed his companion a branch, "Bite it in your mouth, it might hurt."

Although Sela thought she could hold back the pain, she didn't want to interrupt her companion who was talking about something other than revenge for the first time, and decided to go along with it."Tell me about the miner.

How did he do it?"

Keane wiped away the blood spilling from Sela's wound and observed the shape of the wound."It's a triple-edged arrowhead.

The miner handled a triangular arrowhead." He ruffled the wound, "Good thing there's no barbs on the arrow wings."

"Barbels?"

"We'll talk about this later.

I need to concentrate on the arrowhead.

If it is not handled properly, it will affect the wound healing."

Seeing that her companion was talking a lot, Sela did not interrupt.

In fact, as a vampire, Sela did not worry about wound healing.

But there was a moment when she was really hurt.

The reason is that the boy's strength is smaller and the force is not too crisp.

Keane finally snapped the arrow shaft.

He then plucked the wound with his fingers and with his other hand grabbed the remaining arrow shaft applying a slow force in the opposite direction of the arrowhead piercing his body."The miner said that once you see the widest part of the arrowhead, it's a big success." With that, he pulled out the arrowhead violently.

The pain continued as Sela put a ball of spider silk on it, "Keep telling me about the barbs."

Keane handed Sela a triangular arrowhead that he had built himself and pointed to the barbs on the wings of the arrowhead, "These barbs pierce the target and hook into the flesh like a fish hook.

When removing this arrowhead, it can re-injure the person who was hit if not handled properly." He picked up the elven arrowhead, "I think a triple-edged arrowhead with a barb would be deadly.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to build such arrowheads."

"Beware.

The arrowhead is dipped in my blood.

Don't get cut by it.

Our blood and saliva contain toxins, at least for ordinary people.

Those infected with this toxin will become one of us." Sela took the arrowhead, "I will return it to you when it is disposed of."

Keane seemed to understand all of Sela's earlier abnormalities."So you can't help me suck out the toxin."

"Yes, that will poison you." Sela exhaled a long breath, looked into the fire and continued."This so-called toxin ensures that we don't age, which means immortality.

I'm not going to excuse the vampires for all their evil deeds, but it's just a bloodline, like the rest of Wissane's pack."

"You don't like fire, so you never throw flames.

Yet you still use fire to cook.

It's no different than anyone else who doesn't like to be burned by fire."

"Our spells are called 'blood magic'.

This is because our mana comes from our own blood, which means that driving any spell energy requires the consumption of our own life.

Of all the spell energy, flame energy hurts us the most.

That's why vampires won't power flame energy if it's not a matter of life or death."

"You reject the men who make advances to you to protect them."

Sela looked like she had been stabbed by something."Refusing someone's solicitude? Who told you that?"

Keane fell into silence.

Sela had already guessed the answer, and she could still recall Betty's face when she talked about the trivialities of the village.

After a moment, she picked up where she left off, "It wasn't just to protect them, it was to protect myself.

I'm a young vampire, but I'm pretty old for any of them."

"Does turning into a vampire make a person strong?" Keane fiddled with the fire.

"It depends on how much blood they suck.

The more blood they suck, the more powerful they will be-" Sela paused, once again guessing what the boy was thinking and regretting a little for saying too much before."Yes, I have the power to turn you into a vampire.

But I don't want to do that."

Sela turned Keane toward herself."You cannot yet understand what this bloodline means.

Like those elves, there are many people in the world who think all vampires are evil.

Some even think we are evil and make a career out of hunting us.

But we are only the undead.

From the point of view of life, who is to say that our immortality is not a curse ..."

Sela's words were beyond Keane's comprehension and he could not respond.

It was like he couldn't understand why Killian (the Wissane world's god of martial arts and war) would have so many daughters but no sons.

Sela wrapped her arms around her companion.

Years of loneliness were soothed this night, and finally someone was listening to her.

The two leaned toward the tree trunk and Keane pulled out the arrows with the symbols carved into them, reliving each clue."Sela, what does it feel like to die?"

"My death came calmly, like a baby sleeping in a cradle." Sela looked at the green smoke slowly rising into the canopy, "After I woke up, I had the joy of being reborn, but that didn't last long.

Soon I felt hungry and thirsty, but no kind of food or drink could satisfy me until I drank sweet blood for the first time."

"Why would I find it so painful for them to die?Betty, Mirei, Farrond, and the other villagers."

"Probably because I chose to die and they didn't have a choice."