Remembering the Moon Army’s officer’s instructions, Hadjar wished his neural network wasn’t still rebooting. There were a lot of scrolls and books from the Imperial library and ‘The Black Gates’ sect in its memory banks. The knowledge was fairly basic, but Hadjar would’ve been glad to have even that much.
He drank a potion with his eyes closed. Wincing at the unsettling taste, Hadjar felt the energy of the World River flowing into his own body much more quickly. This potion was called the ‘River’s Connection Enhancer’, and it had cost Hadjar a quarter of an Imperial coin in the Underworld City Auction House…
“If you live, you’ll owe me,” Hadjar grumbled.
Using his own energy, he ‘touched’ the torn meridians in Glen’s body. As he made contact, he sensed a sharp discord between their currents of power. Hadjar’s energy was like the wind, free and unbridled, while the Baliumian’s own power was calm, bright, and hot.
Suppressing an instinctive urge to recoil, Hadjar followed the instructions he could remember. He imagined picking up a needle. A blue thread appeared inside his mind, created from the energy that had separated from his core. With it, Hadjar, using Glen’s and his own energies, began to ‘sew up’ the torn meridians. They defied him, trying to tear away and spread out, but, bit by bit, inch by inch, they returned to their original state. For Hadjar, such delicate work was real torture. Oblivious to the outside world, he continued his work.
“I didn’t know your friend had talents outside his connection to the Sword Spirit.” Karissa’s voice trembled as she sipped her broth, shivering under the blanket.
Einen looked at his friend. Hadjar had been sitting next to Glen for four hours now, holding the wounded man’s wrist. There were waves of energy emanating from Hadjar, and blue sparks occasionally flickered across Glen’s wound. It gradually closed up, his breathing steadying. Moreover, thirty minutes ago, the Baliumian had stopped bleeding, though he was still very pale.
“Why don’t you give him some of that medicine?” Tilis asked accusingly.
“It wouldn’t make a difference.” Einen shrugged.
The stars were already illuminating the desert. They weren’t like the stars in the outside world, appearing far more bright and colorful, as if a merchant had thrown all their jewels down on a counter and then shone a torch on them.
“What do you mean?”
“If Hadjar doesn’t succeed and restore his meridians, no medicine will help Glen. Not the ones I have with me, anyway.”
Einen turned to Ramukhan. The sorcerer had the sack Paris had given him. It was full of artifacts, talismans, and elixirs the head of the Research Chamber had provided for their journey. Who knew how many of them Ramukhan had decided to keep for himself.
“Let’s wait and see what happens,” the sorcerer replied to his unspoken question, and calmly continued to drink Einen’s medicine.
At the moment, Hadjar was desperately struggling to repair Glen’s meridians. Finally, they reconnected. Hadjar’s work looked very rough to anyone watching: there were plainly visible, lingering tears everywhere, which would certainly affect the speed of Glen’s recovery. But when the choice was either life or death, such nuances really were insignificant.
When he finished with the meridians, Hadjar started healing the nodes — the gates through which the energy from the World River came in. During the time when the meridians had stopped circulating energy through Glen’s body, these nodes had begun to slowly crystallize the energy accumulated inside them. This phenomenon gave Hadjar certain ideas that he would’ve used if he’d had a few hundred thousand practitioners at Glen’s level and no honor, willing to become stronger by any means. Just like the Patriarch of ‘The Black Gates’ sect.
Imagining the needle-thread changing into a small hammer, Hadjar slowly and methodically crushed the energy crystals, clearing up the nodes. This took a lot less time and soon came to an end.
Hadjar opened his eyes and looked at his handiwork. Glen’s wound had healed, turning into a hideous scar. His pulse was almost steady, and his breathing had calmed. The frozen red crust on his lips and cheeks indicated that blood was no longer flowing out of his mouth. His injured lung was probably still in bad shape, but his Technique for Strengthening the Body was working.
“Help me,” Einen said, appearing nearby.
Together, they lifted Glen’s head slightly and poured a potion into his mouth.
“How long will he need to recover?” Ramukhan asked as he approached.
“By morning, he’ll be back on his feet,” Hadjar replied, “but as for fighting... I don’t think he’ll be able to help us in battle anytime soon.”
“Then he’ll have to try his luck with the traps.”
The sorcerer said this with great confidence, as if he were certain that they would encounter various traps in the near future.
“I don’t think you have the right to make such a decision.”
Upon hearing Hadjar’s words, Ramukhan’s face flushed slightly, and his eyes flashed evilly.
“I don’t think you can do anything about it,” the sorcerer replied smugly. He nodded at the blue amulets on their arms. This was yet another example of how the assurance that they weren’t slaves was a blatant lie. Well, they weren’t slaves when things were going well, but as soon as they disagreed or something dangerous came up...
Ramukhan quieted down and returned to the fire.
Hadjar took the stone he’d snatched up in the battle against the sand spirit out of his pocket. Maybe the others had forgotten about it, or maybe they hadn’t noticed him grab it, but no one had reminded Hadjar to share the spoils with them.
“What’s that?” Einen asked him.
“I was just about to ask you the same question.”
Chapter 386
Einen took the stone and placed it in his palm, then froze. He meditated for a minute or so, peering at it through the World River. It was hard to tell what exactly he was doing.
“Hand me the Energy Stone, please,” the islander said suddenly.
Hadjar untied the strings of the wallet where he kept little Serra’s gift and the fairy’s tears. He placed the artifact in Einen’s other palm. The islander peered at it for a while as well, and then laid both stones down on the sand.
“Do these look similar to you?” He asked.
Hadjar thought about it for a moment, then slapped his forehead and peered at them through the World River. Just as he’d suspected, the stones looked almost identical when he did so. The only difference was that the stone given to him by little Serra contained ten times more energy than the one he’d extracted from the spirit.
Hadjar was now certain of two things: first, he knew where to get a much-needed resource in the future. If cores formed inside beasts, then Energy Stones formed in spirits. It was rather logical.
The youngsters of the Empire were probably taught such things at an early age, but to the rest of the world, such knowledge was quite valuable. Admittedly, people in Lidus wouldn’t need to know about Energy Stones and where to get them because they’d need to fight a creature at the Spirit Knight level to acquire them.
The second thing: Serra’s gift was even more potent than he’d thought.