Sky woke up from his sleep. He guessed that he had been asleep for around 8 hours as he looked at the night.
Today was a special day. The bright white moon was visible when otherwise it wasn't. Today was a great day for some people and bad for others as today was the day of the 'ravishing moon.' A special day where the moon would be visible for the whole night.
But Sky didn't waste time enjoying the rare appearance of the moonlight like he usually would back when he was riding the white spirit.
Sky stood up, grabbing his sword and observing his surroundings, woke Kyle up.
Kyle woke up, realising that it was time to execute their plans. He stood up with some difficulty and wore whatever armour he could wear that was either wearable or usable.
Kyle stared at the moon for a bit, admiring its beauty just for a few seconds before he spoke, "seems like fate is on our side."
And indeed it was. It was particularly difficult to find some creatures in this wood, especially the foul worm. So it was indeed a blessing that the moon had risen as only during the day of the 'ravishing moon' do they hunt with less worry, hiding less and becoming less hidden as today was the day that most monsters and fiends that could hunt it would rest.
The knight moved out of the cave almost stumbling. As he left the cave, a vile smell came, it was from the crushed black fruit.
Kyle looked at Sky as if waiting for him to leave the cave too, his trust unknowingly and slowly growing as Kyle slowly confirmed the truth of Sky's actions.
"Let's move." Sky whispered to Kyle as he started to move.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Heavy breathing could be hurt as an injured person, standing at round 5ft and covered fully in a dark clothing was limping slowly until he laid down on a rough bed, slowing taking his helmet off and removing his whitish armour that covered him under the black cloth, there his wound in his liver started to open up. He had patched it up to his best when he had first gotten it so it was the only reason he was still alive.
A person rushed into the room he was resting on, holding a small bag in his hand.
The person who rushed in had white hair and dark spots in his eyes. He looked tired and worried.
He sat down beside him and started to stressfully take out a few things for his small bag.
He took out a small round fruit that was green in colour and gave it to the injured man.
The man ate the round fruit with some difficulty and his pain lessened.
The white haired man dressed in a simple brown attire with a black half jacket wore no armour and hurriedly took out what seemed to be a green liquid that he had recently just created.
He took out a needle and after dipping it in the liquid, slowly pierced it around the stab wound.
He did this with multiple needles until most of the small area around the stab wound was covered by the needle.
He then took out some red powder and took out some white powder quickly mixing it together and force feeding it to the injured man.
The injured man started to lose consciousness and soon fell into deep sleep.
The white man took a deep breath and chanted something and suddenly his hand seemed to be cleaner than before.
He took out the needles and placed them down slowly in a small metal plate that he had taken out from his bag and put aside.
He muttered the same thing and took a small clean and sharp knife as a substitute for a scalpel.
He cut open his stomach, carefully cutting it and he kept muttering something, his focus fully on the operation.
He then found the liver injury, it hadn't healed properly and was opening up. He took out some type of contraption to hold the wound open. He slowly and gently moved the man's stomach and flesh, finding the liver that had a stab wound. He gently held the liver together with some care and used a thin and transparent piece of thread and a needle covered in the green fluid and gently closed it up, although the process was slow due him lacking manpower it was steadily closing but as he was 3 hours into the operation, a woman rushed in, wearing light armour and carrying a sword, "We are being attacked by the foul worm and it seems like the target seems to be Robert sunneen, The man you are currently treating."
However the white haired man didn't respond for a while, still focused on the operation.
"We can't risk you getting injured in the crossfire, you are one the original members in this cause and the only doctor so just leave him." The woman spoke to the white haired man demanding him to leave.
"I won't," the white haired man said as he treated Robert. "I won't leave and kill another man just because I was cowardly and quit halfway."
"Doc! We have no ti-"
"Biny, please. I just need another 10 mins before I can close this wound. Please just scare it away or hold it off for enough time so I can save this man."
Biny stood quite and sighed and left the room, silently accepting the White haired man's request.
A sigh left the white haired man's mouth as he spared a glance towards the back of Biny's back before she was gone completely,
"What a mess we have become haven't we old friends" he said to no one in particular as he then shifted his focus back to the surgery.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
A series of clashes could be heard as people pushed the foul worms back.
'This is weird.' Biny thought as she clashed with the vile worm, its sharp claws clashing with her blade.
"Why are there 3 of them attacking one target?" She said pointing to the weird anomaly in the vile worm's behavior.
The foul worms had never hunted one 'prey' with more than 1 of them and only attacked together when there were more than 3 prey grouped up.
'So why I really wonder, is this a side if the foul worm no one has discovered or was an outside force somehow involved in this predicament' she thought still holding off the beast trying to avoid and get past her to 'hunt' it's 'prey'
As her long straight sword clashed with sharp fangs,both of them almost equally matched, she saw from one corner of her eye that one of the other foul worms got past her colleague and was rushing in their base.
In that instance, something clicked within her.
The monster that was almost equally matching her was overpowered in an instant, being kicked back and forth with a single spinning kick to its stomach. Biny then took her sword and with all her might threw it at an incredible force towards the foul worm approaching the base.
The monster couldn't react in time and was pierced by the blade on its back, the white blade being stained with its black colored blood.
The other vile worm that Biny kicked, seeing its chance, ran towards their base trying to 'hunt' its prey.
Biny, seeing this, quickly tensed up all her muscles and in a flash got behind the monster and pinned the monster down on the ground.
During this time, the monster managed to scratch the cheek of her face leaving a small cut.
As she fought the monsters on the ground, a small black flash was seen from the corner of her eyes but by the moment she looked up, there was nothing and as she tried to get up, the monster started to get out of her hold, which interrupted her and she shifted her attention to the monster.
She had used an excessive amount of her energy in just movements which made it so that the monster and her were now equal in strength.
The other monster that had been stabbed started to run away ignoring its prey.
As the monster was running, one of her companions managed to take the sword out of the running monster's back and as he was about to slash the injured monster down, the monster used most of his strength in a single dash, laughing itself out of his range.
Seeing this, he realised he couldn't catch the monster so he ran to the monster that Biny had been holding down with some effort.
The companion tried to slash the monster but realising the danger it was in, tried to shift his body and used its sharps and hard fingers to clash with the sword but it was struggling due to Biny holding it down. It was clear that the monster was losing slowly.
But just then, the last one of the monsters managed to escape and headed for their head and the companion seeing this, quickly stopping its attack against the monster in front of him to block the path of the monster that was now running towards their base.
Biny kept dodging the monster's lethal strikes and as she was holding off the monster, a realisation just hit her.
'That cleaver' She thought, frowning from irritation.
'The reason why there are 3 foul worms chasing one prey was because there must be some bait around here but how did they manage to put the bait here without getting noticed?' She thought, getting more irritated.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
'The plan went smoothly but my abdomen stings like hell now.' Sky thought, reflecting on the sacrifice he had to make.
"I guess you trust me now?" Sky asked Kyle as they ran together, Kyle still struggling with his injured leg almost being left behind, looked at Sky with a bit of sweat running down his face.
"…"Kyle said nothing in response to Sky's question. Either due to fatigue or because he didn't want to answer.
"I guess I'll take that as a somewhat positive sign that you are starting to trust me a bit."
Sky felt a bit unsatisfied with the lack of progress in their relationship especially after the effort he went to make the plan.
A plan simple in nature. Distract the enemy —>while distracted enter the base and locate the white gem —> quickly escape.
Those were the 3 phases of the plan.
'But one must take precautions even if it requires a small sacrifice.'
And Sky was absolutely firm in his actions as seen from his approach to this plan.
He went as far to hunt 2 salt rabbits(a salt rabbit is a species that is often very difficult to catch for normal people and monsters but tastes very good to the point that sometimes, the foul worms spend 11-14 hours just to find one.) and cut the skin from his abdomen completely Removing it.
He did this due to the nature of how his void worked. While the void could store items it had a very unique aspect that took Sky years to master.
The void could be separated. For example the void that could be accessed through the abdomen and arm could be in a separate storage as if separating items from one box and putting it in 2 boxes to store. This separation could be done on as small or big of a scale as Sky wanted and the only restriction was the void could only be created from his body and not on any other matter or substance.
The only drawback to this method was that the space or rather the size of the void shrank or increased depending on the overall area of the space that the void was created from. For example, the void contained only in his hand would be smaller than the void only contained in his abdomen.
And lastly, the most interesting fact about this part was that this could be used on parts of himself that had been separated or cut from his body for a short amount of time and the size of the void could be temporarily increased by using a bit of his soul's power or in other words, his life force.
After cutting his skin from his abdomen, he cut the skin into 2 almost equal halves and used his power of the void on it and put the meat bones and blood of the salt rabbits that he had cut up into small pieces in it and used his tread to maintain that void's size and power.
After this, it was as simple as just waiting for one of the vile worms to run over to their base and starting the plan.
'I went in the other direction with a bit of blood from the salt rabbits I had caught to find more foul worms to lure them and Kyle followed the only monster to their base and used his shadow like ability to hide and throw the skin in their base and pull the string to notify me to open the void to put the flesh out for the other 2 foul worms that I had left trails of blood to chase.'
When Sky saw their base, he was truly shocked. They had built a wall around a cave. The wall had a few guard posts and inside the wall were a few small houses and a lot of tents that were worn out. The cave was completely mysterious to him, well 'was' would be the better choice as they slipped past the guards and were heading towards the cave.
"So when you were tasked with the placement of the bait, how did you put it there? Did you just get close to the large wall and just throw it over the wall?" Sky asked Kyle as they were approaching the cave.
"Pretty much" Kyle responded, stopping for a bit resting as his ligaments were still not fully recovered.
They had stopped at the entrance of the cave where the white stone could be visible. It wasn't covered up and there weren't any guards guarding it.
'Probably because the white stone was recently brought here and they didn't think that we'll find their base so quickly so they probably hadn't put much time in the construction or development of the area around the white stone.' Sky thought and quickly ran up to the white stone and grabbed it putting it in his void at his abdomen.
"Let's mov-" at that moment a dagger flew past him grazing his cheek.
The one who threw the dagger was Biny. This meant that they had somehow managed to scare off those monsters already, seeing that Kyle and Sky began to sprint at full speed towards the tall walls.
Sky ran ahead of Kyle and stopped kneeling down and putting his hand together indirectly telling Kyle to step on his hand and jump and Kyle did so.
As Kyle stepped on his hand and jumped, Sky pushed his hand up at the same time allowing the injured Kyle to jump and land on top of the wall.
Sky then using his threads joined them together to create a strong cloth and threw it up and backed up a bit and began to run.
Kyle grabbed the cloth and held it and as Sky jumped up and grabbed the cloth and got up, he let go of the cloth and jumped down and Sky soon followed him, the cloth splitting into threads and being absorbed back into his body.
Sky used his thread to catch Kyle and also used his thread to grab the branch of one of the tall trees swinging.
The strong branch was shaking a bit for a while due to the weight and Sky's hand was feeling a bit numb but it wasn't much of a bother and so he pushed though getting some distance and once they landed back on the ground, they began to run quickly.
Sky could feel their bloodlust getting weaker and weaker implying that they were getting away but Kyle was actually really tired now as running with an injured body was difficult. The only reason he was able to keep up was due to his Soul's interpretation.
It was better if they took a small break and then moved.
It was also fine if they rested in the middle of the forest even if they were monsters they would be warded off due to the stone's effect but Sky still felt a bit worried.
'If the white stone really did ward off monsters why did our plan work? Why didn't the monster run away? Did this run out of energy? Was the range too small for the monster to be affected? Or did the function of the white stone change to adjust to its smaller power? Like does this white stone instead of warding off monsters make them ignore the place where the white stone influences? Does it invoke the feeling 'I know that it's there but I don't wanna look at it or focus on it.' Well it doesn't really matter though, I think I can take Kyle's words for the function of the white stone at its full and proper complete state.' Sky contemplated for a while while they rested and finally finished his thought after a while.
As they were resting a weird feeling rushed over him. A feeling that he had recognised. it was bloodlust or killing intent as his friends had once referred to.
This feeling was rather strong and was approaching their location at extremely high speed.
"Kyle! Stop resting, we need to run right NOW!!!" Sky exclaimed, shocking Kyle back into his feet.
Sky ran without looking back, not sure if Kyle was catching up or not.
He ran like this because he wasn't sure if he could beat the thing that was chasing him even with the help of Kyle or using all his weapons or any cheap tricks.