Hours earlier, W and Bloody were wandering the demolished capital. The two were in a pitiful state, Bloody had shrunk to half his normal size and W was delegated to becoming nothing but a part of him once more.
The two blobs had been slithering past or atop the rubble and debris searching for an ideal host to leave the capital with. That made it sound trivial however, with every building leveled there were lines of sights everywhere.
The humans that weren't starving were digging through the rubble for things of value, and if they weren't digging they were looking for someone to beg or steal from. They had to make hide if there were watchers and make sure they weren't dug out if they were hiding.
For this, the blood sense came in handy. Since Bloody could see everyone's blood, avoiding the diggers was easy. But why not just grab someone and go? Why go through the hassle?
Still, after much searching, Bloody and W search finally bore fruits. An ideal target!
The target was even in the nursing ward being cared for! How great! Erm… well how sad!
'It's taking advantage of the injured but…' This was the hand life had dealt him, he had to take advantage of the children! It was willed by fate!
That was right, the injured person appeared to be either a child or of short stature based solely on the blood sense. As for what the reality was… W could only find out for certain after entering the tent.
'But… they are guarded by a couple of knights…' The person in the tent had to have some amount of pedigree. That was a bit troublesome and it made W hesitate.
The blood he was sensing was much brighter and enticing than the others, it was too tempting! From what Bloody could see and subsequently W could see, the blood was filled with mana! It wasn't unlike the blood Eon coughed out in the marshlands.
After thinking along these lines W came to notice an oddity.
'Hm? Why is someone seemingly that strong bedridden?' While W was well aware that the injured person definitely had blood mana levels inferior to Eon, the mere fact that they could be compared was already high praise.
This finding made W hesitate even further but… they were in such a bad state!
After lots of deliberating, W went for it.
'Regardless of their status, I'll snatch them!' The person was bedridden and W was certain he and Bloody could fix them up. The person would be left owing them a debt, it was only natural for them to repay it with their literal body.
With Bloody and W being very small, the knights present were hard-pressed to notice him sneaking in-
"Hm? Something's sneaking into the tent!" A wind magician shouted in alert. W and Bloody would halt if they could hear anything but they obviously didn't have ears.
The small Bloody W mix slithered straight into the bedridden patient before the magician could understand what was happening.
"What?" One of the knights said with a vigilant stare and a hand at the hilt of their sword.
"Where is it?" Another asked also maintaining a wary stance.
"I… I think it went into the patient…" The magician said with skepticism.
The knight shot each other glances before putting on worried expressions.
"I knew that using the sense spell for so long would take a toll on you, why'd you insist!" The knight said withholding some anger. This magician friend of them must have thought magic made their stamina inexhaustible. But as a senior knight, he had learned that wasn't the case with his wife firsthand.
"...let's hope that's all it was" A third knight that heard everything from outside the tent came in and said.
"The last thing we need is for the patient to die under our watch thanks to negligence" They spoke with a solemn tone. Such an event would be disastrous to him and the other knights.
"Have someone check up on them, a magician and a doctor" The knight instructed to have the patient inspected. They couldn't let anything slide!
As for W who was blissfully unaware of the small commotion he and Bloody caused… they were already on cloud nine.
'This is just as great as I imagined!' W thought while examining the body alongside Bloody. The two of them didn't take any control yet since they needed to first find out what was wrong. The person was apparently in a coma and there had to be a reason for that.
After scrutinizing every inch of the person's body W and Bloody were left confused.
'This boy seems to have aged… erratically' There were other things wrong with his body, but this was the weirdest thing W came to notice.
Aging erratically sounded ridiculous! Yet, W couldn't describe the condition in any other way. This was also precisely why he was confused and though unwilling to trust his own findings had to relent.
'Can we fix this?' W instead asked himself. The boy was at least 15, the highest difference in the apparent age of the tissues he found was a couple of years...
'It might be possible' Having some parts of your body younger than others was in itself nothing evidently bad. It was very weird that the body did not age more... Umm evenly, but it was not a death sentence.
Thinking about it again, W came up with a conjecture.
'Assuming he was born with lots of mana, his lack of control over it might have lead to this uneven aging' Mana had the quality of prolonging life but that mostly applied to already developed minds and bodies. For a baby to be born with that much mana could result in a stunted physical and mental growth.
'Which would probably cause them to be under constant health checks thanks to their status' That would mean a lot of staying inside doing nothing and little to no sunlight. The boy's body would definitely grow weak and sickly.
'Hah, if this happened to a poor person they might have instead become the main character in some fantasy book' A poor person couldn't afford personal doctors or anything of the sort. The parents would raise them to the best of their ability but when was effort alone enough?
As the the hypothetical boy grew at a belated rate, they might be estranged and maybe even suffer from bullying. Nevertheless, after a while, they'd find out they have a natural talent for withholding or absorbing mana.
In the end, however, it was worth mentioning that these were all speculations. At least until W confirmed the identity of the boy he couldn't declare the boy's illness came from the unfortunate circumstances of having money. Nor could he declare this person he found was not a potential protagonist. After all…
'It was very fortunate of you to have met me' If it wasn't for Bloody's blood sense, who knew for how much longer the boy would remain bedridden? Or whether he'd even live?
With all the idle thoughts out of the way, Bloody and W began to work on recovering the weakened muscles of the boy as well as trying to fix some of the permanent damage that came from being confined to a bed. The boy suffered from a couple of spinal problems for example.
'This blood element is really fascinating' Some of the healing Bloody and W performed might be hard for even modern medicine to successfully heal. Modern medicine was the culmination of genius from many fields of science!
That said, although the blood element was magical, W and Bloody still had their work cut out for them. It took the both of them many hours to heal the boy to the point where W believed it was possible for the boy to awaken.
***
In the vast deserted wastelands that Ed now resided in, there were no changes to be seen. There were still no traces of living elves and that made sense. Ed ended up devoting all of his efforts to only one individual.
'Happy!' The divine sap tree.
They kept on echoing this gleeful voice into his mind, Ed's mental fortitude crumbled against this raw expression of happiness. It wasn't that he wanted to devote all his effort to the divine sap tree… it was just impossible to resist and have it any other way!
'Sigh…' The actual truth was that as soon as Ed left the vicinity of the tree he would be bombarded with tearful cries.
'How can a sacred tree be such a handful?' It was like a baby, except that it was likely older than Ed himself.
'I still need to explore this floor though' He couldn't babysit. Just because the one city he happened to find was abandoned and dead it didn't mean there were no other cities for him to find.
After much consideration Ed could only come up with one method.
'It's a tried and true method' Ed just needed to send, puppets, golems, skeletons, just anything that didn't have the necessities of the living. All of these creatures also had the added bonus of carrying orders out faithfully.
But Ed was actually leaning towards one of these options more than the other.
Skeletons.
Speaking strictly, Ed was not using the skeletons nearly enough. With all of their traits they were near perfect subordinates.
'Looks like I'll have to bring this city back from the dead' Unfortunately there were no elven corpses to make the thought a bit more literal. Still, having some bony hands to help out would be very useful.
Should he summon new comrades, or should he check his spirit room to revive the fallen?
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