Chapter 16: Are You A Shaman?

Chapter 16: Chapter 16: Are You A Shaman?

...Someone grabbed Victor’s shoulder, shaking him hard enough to rattle the ache right out of his chest, snapping him back to reality.

"Milkshake22." It was one of the barbarians who’d caught Jaja, his eyes still wide with panic. "What are you doing? If we don’t help him, he’s going to die!"

Victor blinked. The memory of his mother’s kitchen dissolved, and reality hit. He looked down, Jaja’s breathing had gone shallow and wet.

Popo and the others looked at him strangely after he had swatted the wood pipe away.

One even reached for it again.

Victor snapped upright. "Wait. Don’t suck the poison out. If you do, you’ll get poisoned too."

The young barbarian holding the pipe frowned, genuinely confused. "What do you mean? This is how... it’s always done." He spat, wondering if the bug had gotten to the head of this senior brother.

Victor understood the boy’s surprise. After all, babarians lived in the wild and were known for having a high tolerance to poison. It was in their blood, and passed down from generation to generation. Snake bites, scorpion stings, insect venom.

All they needed to do was draw it out by mouth. Besides, It has always worked before.

"Not this poison." Victor’s eyes were fixed on the black lines still crawling under Jaja’s skin.

"This isn’t a normal snake or a scorpion. It’s from that thing." he pointed at the insect corpse Kiki had killed moments ago.

It’s from a higher floor and a subject of the encroaching darkness.

"—and I don’t know what your tolerance does against something like that. But if it doesn’t work, you’ll just have two men dying instead of one."

The barbarian with the pipe hesitated, glancing to Popo for the final word.

"Trust me." Victor said it before he could think "Please."

Popo’s mouth opened, then closed. He did not have a reason to trust Victor’s words. But no reason to not trust him either.

This was the same brother that fell the Basalt Dragonic Lizard a day ago. Could he actually have a better solution?

Victor could guess what was going through Popo’s mind.

The player’s character was the younger of two boys of the previous king. While the older brother was a charismatic leader, the little brother had been a good for nothing for most of his life, indulging in wine and women.

It was the reason, Kiki always gave him that look. She was looking down on him.

It was also the reason the Player’s level was so low compared to other babarians.

But Popo, his big brother believed in him. Always had, and even now, that believe still shone bright.

"Do it. Whatever it is. Fast."

The sudden decision baffled the others, but their leader had spoken.

Victor’s mind was already racing. His thoughts flipped through a decade of forum threads and wiki pages, and even those patch notes he’d read a hundred times.

Encroaching Darkness insects.(Vashkorath) poison glands. There’s always a counter. There’s always a counter.

He scrambled to the dead insect Kiki had put down earlier, dragging it closer by one folded wing, and started tearing into its underside with his bare hands.

The old Victor would not have done this. Maybe it was all the horror he had seen or just the emergency of the moment. Regardless, this man had saved his life, and called him family. He could not just let him die.

Come on. Come on. It’s supposed to be here. It’s supposed to be here.

The insects chitin cracked under his fingers, and Victor dug past muscle and organ, through something that wasn’t exactly blood, following a shape in his memory more than anything his eyes could actually see in the dark.

Finally, his fingers closed around something soft and pale. It was nestled close to where the thing’s heart should have been.

A gland, small, swollen, and faintly luminous even as the creature was dead.

He ripped it free.

"What is he..." someone started, but Victor was already moving, crossing back to Jaja on his knees.

He squeezed the gland directly over the wound.

Thick, clear fluid dripped onto the black veins.

The moment it touched Jaja’s skin, the spreading stopped.

Jaja’s ragged breathing eased almost instantly. Of course it was not enough to heal him, but he no longer had to fight for every gasp.

The camp went silent. Even the fire seemed to hold still.

They were all stunned.

"This will stop the poison from spreading." Victor said, hearing his own voice shake slightly.

"The bug that produces the poison also has antigens that work against the poison incase of accidents or battles with others of its kind. It’s a kind of safe mechanism by nature."

No one spoke. Every eye in the camp was on him. Victor did not notice but their gazes on him were strange.

He cleared his throat. "I’ll need a blade. And some light."

Kiki was the first to move, pulling her broad sword free and offering it hilt-first.

Victor took it, and nearly dropped it immediately. The weight of it pulled his wrist toward the dirt.

He stared at it, then at Kiki, genuinely baffled at how she swung the thing around like it weighed nothing.

Popo pulled a smaller hunting knife from his belt instead, passing it over. "Use this."

Victor took it gratefully. But he paused, looking at the blade. It was streaked with stain from old use, some of which Victor was sure was dried blood.

Even he paid enough attention in school to know that blades needed sterilization before touching skin.

"This needs to be clean first. Do you have the alcohol from last night? The beer, whatever’s strongest."

A cup was pressed into his hand within seconds. He dunked the blade fully, swirling it, ignoring the confused looks around him. None of the Babarians understood why this mattered, but none of them argued either.

Then he set to work, making small, careful cuts along the branching black lines spreading from Jaja’s wound, opening each vein just enough to let the tainted blood weep out onto the dirt.

Jaja hissed through his teeth but didn’t pull away.

Slowly, steadily, blood, darker than it should have been began draining from each cut, and the black lines retreated as it did.

When Victor finally sat back on his heels, chest heaving, he became aware of the silence again.

Popo, Kiki, and the others gathered close. All of them stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

"...What?" Victor looked between them. Why is everyone looking at me like that?

Popo was the one who finally spoke. His voice was careful, almost reverent. "Milkshake22... are you perhaps a Shaman and has been hiding it this whole time?" He hesitated, then added while massaging his jaw in thought, "Or did you unlock a Healer’s unique class without telling us?"