Chapter 19 - Fever

“YUMEMI!” “KYAUN!”

We ran to Yumemi’s side. I shook her body and called her repeatedly.

“Kyaun! Kyaun!”

I looked at our party list, and found out Yumemi’s MP reached 0. Not only that her HP is on the red too.

Wait, isn’t her HP gauge keeps dropping!?

“Why!? She didn’t take any damage, though!?”

We’re already in the safe zone, though!?

Is it because she used such strong magic!? Like, of course teleporting the three of us to the safe zone sounds like a crazy thing!

“What do we do… what do we do… Ah.”

I took out two potions I got from the slimes back then.

[HP Potion (S)] recovers a small amount of HP.
[MP Potion (S)] recovers a small amount of MP.

… wait, how do I make her drink it?

This potion is a liquid… and I only got one of each…

I saw her glossy lip… when a sudden thought crossed my mind, I gulped out of nervousness.

“… argh, there’s no time to hesitate!”

Forgive me, Yumemi!

I opened the potion and put it into my mouth.

[Skill Unlocked: Apothecary Lv 1]

[HP&MP Mix Potion (M)] recovers a moderate amount of HP&MP.

I don’t care about the mixing or new skills right now! Wait, it somehow got a better effect!?

I opened Yumemi’s mouth with my left hand while supporting her head on my lap, pushed the potion from my mouth with my breath and transferred it to her mouth. This is to prevent her from spilling the potion, since I only have one of each.

Please, stop dropping…!

“Kyaun! Kyaun!” Kon noticed something.

I saw her HP and MP gauge starting to rise and stopped barely in the yellow zone.

Soon after, she regained her consciousness.

“Yuu…kun…” she let out a weak voice.

I hugged her tight. The relief of her waking up filled my heart with warmth of joy, and the pain of thinking I might lose her at the same time.

“You overworked yourself, baka…”

“That’s my line… baka…” she replied.

>x<

“And *Swung* A HELP notification pops out.

When MP reaches 0, one’ll be put asleep to help regenerate MP. Due to MP Outage Shock, one can’t regenerate MP naturally.

When you don’t have enough MP to use magic, a certain amount of SP will be consumed. If it’s still not enough, a certain amount of HP will be consumed too if possible.

[Critical State] acquired. Will lose HP gradually.

[Critical State] cured.

As far as I remembered, that’s about it.”

She explained to me what she remembered after she snapped out of her drowsiness.

So when one’s MP isn’t enough to cast a magic, HP will make up for it?

But to the point she got to a critical state is just…

“That’s such a dangerous system!”

When you don’t have enough points to do some actions in games, normally you wouldn’t be able to use them!

“But thanks to that, I’m able to teleport all of us back here, safely.”

“It’s not a light matter, you almost died, you know!?”

“May I use the same line back at you, baka Yuu-kun!?” She snapped back at me.

“Huh!? It’s a given for me, the weakest in potential to let you two escape back there!”

“If you’re saying that, the dunce me should be the one to hold that thing back!”

“You are not as nimble as me, you would be an easy target for that wolf!”

“Kyaun…” Kon looked at us quarreling, worriedly.

I think we went for about 10 minutes telling each other how worried we were.

In the middle of us doing some catch ball of words complaining about each other’s actions, she stood up.

“I don’t want to be separa– ah!” She tumbled on her own feet and fell forward.

I caught her by the shoulder, while her forehead touched my collarbone.

“Hey, it’s burning there! You got a fever!?”

“Ah… I mean… it is just a fever… I’ll be fine after some… rest…” She gradually loses the power to support her body from standing.

“Kyau…” Kon whined worriedly.

I didn't waste any time and brought her near the tree, and made her lean on it. I also covered her body with my jacket.

I checked her temperature by touching my forehead to hers.

“Wha…”

“Shut up and rest. I beg you.”

“... okay.”

I tried to follow Yumemi’s method to prepare for boiling water. Spread only a small amount of Glowing Moss underneath the hot pot, filling up the hot pot manually by dipping it in the river, and putting it on the foundation. Since I can’t use magic after all, I had a hard time lifting it up because it is just too heavy...

I took some branches from the tree, and tied them together with one of the young branches. It somehow increases the durability like how I made Kon’s necklace.

“Kon, can you graze this with your magic?”

“Kyaun! Kya…UN!” He immediately understood the task, and let out a fire beam.

His laser only grazed the tip of it. The branches started burning, and I hurriedly put them to light the Glowing Moss underneath.

I tested the water. The temperature is just warm, around 40 degree celsius I think.

I took off my shirt and folded it like some towel, dipped it in the warm water and squeezed the water out since what I needed was just a warm towel.

I then put the warm towel on sleeping Yumemi’s forehead. Great thing she’s resting properly.

I’m glad my mom has told me how to help in taking care of my little sister’s fever… It felt like one of my proudest achievements in life.

Kon, who kept looking after Yumemi by her side, came closer to her and put his tail on her neck to keep her warmer.

“Glad you’re here, pal.”

“Kyaun.”

Now that the chaos is finally over, time to think back about what had happened…

When we’re trying to hunt some Starwing Bats, the wolf who used some digging has come so far to Path A.

“Don’t tell me… Kon,I’m heading out for a quick check. Don’t tell Yumemi.”

“Kya…un?” I think Kon wanted to say yes before he heard I told him to keep it quiet from Yumemi.

I tried to look at path Z for a moment. I went for a quick 2 minute run there, but no monsters sighted.

And as I feared… I found a big hole heading towards path Y.

“So that monster originally belongs to this path, huh?”

I immediately went back to the Safe Zone before that thing could dig some hole back here.

So that thing has already gone through path Z to path A, huh…

Did he purposely dig through paths just to find us but missed us when we were hunting on different paths?

No, I don’t think that’s just the case.

Judging by how some monsters are left for us to hunt, I think that monster never bothered to kill weaklings, since that won’t give it EXP since he’s too high leveled.

I think it has reached path A and decided to stop by to hunt the Stawing Bats since it knew they would be good fodder. Is it just coincidence, or did it let some Starwing Bats escape and lured us further down Path A?

“That slick bastard…”

I had to admit it, that wolf was highly intelligent, and fortunately arrogant enough and gave us the chance to escape by not killing Yumemi, probably because it doesn’t know magic existed.

But by letting us escape twice, I bet it is now targeting us as must-kill objects. If that thing got serious, it would be more dire for us..

“Kyaun.”

Ahh, all that chaos made me forget.

“That thing is your revenge target, isn't it.”

“Kyaun!”

“Once we are ready, let’s kill as many as possible, the monsters that bastard didn’t bother to kill.”

“Kyaun kyaun!” I take that as a yes.

Now that we know how the wolf moved from one path to another, it doesn’t mean that we have a way to countermeasure it. But at least, we won’t be taken by much surprise again.

I dipped the already cold towel in the warm water again, squeezed the water out, and put it back on Yumemi’s forehead.

Her breath is a little bit rough, but her fever has gone down for sure.

“...”

I stared at Yumemi’s face… on her lips… for some time until I realized Kon’s looking at me staring at Yumemi.

He tilted his head, I guess he doesn’t really get why I’m being so restless.

“Still… I hope she didn’t realize what I did back then…”

The next time we meet that wolf while still being underleveled, we most likely won’t make it out alive.

It’s a hard decision to make, but… I’ll give up on EXP farming for myself, and will turn myself into a full support card for them when farming EXP.

“Alrigh. Kon, I’ll be sleeping for a while. Can you look after Yumemi?”

“Kyaun!”