He edged closer and closer to the entrance. Deliberately slinking away, as a snake would do; but his folly had been entering the cave in the first place. Renodet was not stupid. He had planned everything so far and losing the last piece of this drama due to discussions was not in his plan. He had already orchestrated everything, and he had place one of his men by the cave entrance.

It would be a stupid idea to not have someone watch the cave entrance in the first place, because any beast that found it would be able to walk in without any problems. But this diligence was also the saving grace for Renodet; He did not leave loose strings.

That night was the end of Jackal, who was hung outside the entrance by the merchant and his men. All sharing in the death of an innocent caught in the webs of the merchant. The merchant had his body taken down, and upon making sure he was dead, his body was placed in one of the preservation cupboards meant for food, which were all empty by now

Renodet, exhilarated with the success of his plan, could not show any emotions on the outside. He knew that the Academy would question him and his men in an effort to find the killer of a potential student, and he wanted to make sure that there was no way he was held responsible.

Acting as if it had taken a toll on him, Renodet sighed, and addressed his men.

“We are out of food now” He said. “And we don’t know when we will be able to move again. I am willing to give up one more beast, but we must be on the move.”

The men were still numb over the death of one of their former comrade but had no recourse other than the merchant. They agreed with him. That night they dispatched the second Tuatara and feasted upon it. They packed it up in the one remaining wagon and left their shelter. It was not difficult for Renodet now since he only had one Tuatara to feed, and only about 10 men left. They had plenty of meat after killing the Tuatara, and they had gotten respite from the hordes migrating towards the dungeon break.

They took a different path than the one they had originally taken, and continued towards Rine; For all roads lead to Rine.

Unbeknownst to the merchant, El was still hanging on to life. This was the result of the level three skill he had gotten and had not used yet. The thing about skills is that they were received depending on a lot of factors, but mostly relied on what the wielder of the skill wanted to do. For instance, [Recall Memory], the skill El had received at level one was a rare skill. However, it was not of much use in this world, and skills were given depending on their use. If a skill was necessary for a certain class, hat skill would become harder to get, and there were some skills that were almost guaranteed once you reached a certain level in a class.

[Recall Memory] was a necessary skill for {Ministers}. They must be able to remember laws and their applications and it was also necessary for {Teachers}, for they must recall knowledge they had read. But in both of these Classes, the skill was known to come after level 20 at the least, and [Ministers] often needed until the 30’s to obtain the skill. El had gotten it because of his want to remember. Unknown to him, if he had a class, it would have been very hard for him to receive that skill so early, and it would not be known under any existing class for someone to receive both [Recall Memory] and [Prosper in Nature].

As El lay there, bleeding to death, the passive skill [Prosper in Nature] had started to show its effects. El felt the mana in his body start to move without any input from him. It was almost impossible for him to actually move mana himself, but the mana in his body seemed to have a mind of its own as it rushed towards his chest, towards the ribs that had been stabbed, and started to heal.

It was a painful process, healing. you would often hear about great magi that could heal great wounds in the middle of battle and continue to fight. There were warriors that could reattach limbs after it had been severed as if it was nothing, but there was no mention of the pain one experienced.

It was the same process of all kinds of healing. You could look at a physical wound and say “aww, that must hurt!” and go on with your life. But the type of healing you could not see was usually the worst type of healing.

El with his broken ribs was healing physically, and it had its moments. As the mana went from his body to his ribs and started to heal, he was in excruciating pain. But his skill was actively helping him, as he felt mana from the earth itself migrate into his body. He could not control the mana no matter how hard he tried, and he felt himself start to get tired as a result of the excessive mana usage. He lifted his left hand, and lifting the right had would have agitated the wound on his right inter-coastal areal and attempted to crawl towards the shade of a tree. The more he attempted to do this, the more he started to feel. Being too tired to continue trying he slumped to the ground, his mind exploring options to defer his impending doom.

As he tried to move again after some rest, he noticed that as he moved his hand, the mana flow from the ground would diminish in that area. To experiment, ignoring the great pain, he lifted one of his feet from the ground and found the same results.

Seeing that his process of moving was actually a hindrance to his movement, he stopped attempting to move and spread himself out on the ground so that the maximum amount of surface area was touching the ground. He could feel that his hands were receiving more mana than the rest of his body, and upon further consideration he reached the conclusion that direct contact with the ground resulted in a greater amount of mana transferred to him.

Upon noticing this, El started to remove the garments he had on his body but found it a challenge to do so. After many minutes of fumbling around, he managed to take his tunic off, and used it to press on the wound. Falling face down had been a boon in disguise for him, as his won body weight applied pressure on the wound and prevented it from bleeding too much.

He had not removed the dagger in his ribs, and after using his tunic to press the wound, started to slowly remove the dagger. It was basic knowledge that you don’t remove any objects that result in bleeding from your body until you can get professional help, as the removal of said object would result in heavier bleeding. In El’s case, it was not possible for him to see anyone, and the dagger might have interfered with the working of the magic to fix his wound.

He removed the dagger slowly from between his ribs, thanking all the gods that existed that it was his right side that had been stabbed. He had been forced to hold his breath right after as well in order to fool jackal when he went to check his breathing so as not to let him know that El was still alive. Once the dagger was removed, El wrapped the tunic around his body, and tied it to apply constant pressure to the wound.

Moving was not a possibility at the moment. Any movement would have agitated the wound and removed contact with the ground, resulting in a loss of incoming mana. He had guesses by now that the mana coming in was the result of his level three skill, and that it required constant contact with the ground. The mending of his body was a slow process. While he was physically hurt, he was also hurt mentally. He had trusted Renodet to be good to him, especially after having given him the recipe for something that would have made him a lot of money.

While Jackal had been the one to stab him, El knew that the merchant was behind it. Once he thought about it, he realized that of all the people the merchant could have sent out to hunt, sending El was a stupid decision. It was his first time out in the wild and he was only level three. Any sane person would have concluded that it was unsafe to send a level three individual out to hunt in the wild, let alone with a dungeon break in progress.

After rationalizing this, El was angry. He realized that he had been set up to have this “accident” and that it was probably a planned event. He did not have much time to dwell on this at the moment, as he had to make plans for his own survival.

One day passed and it was evident to El that his healing was going to be a long process. The wound was not closing. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound showed no signs of closing up soon. El also realized that the mana in his body was being used up in order to do the healing since the mana from the ground wasn’t enough. He had some energy now because of all the food he had eaten and his recent level up, but it was running out soon. If he were a magus, he could manipulate the mana in his body, but at the moment, he was unable to do that. In order to survive, he needed to get his priorities straight.

While lying in the same spot, El made a list of priorities in his head. The first thing he needed to do was find water to both drink and clean the wound. Afterwards, he would need food. Shelter was also a lesser concern, but a necessary one as the temperature would fluctuate greatly during the nighttime. He had managed one night in the freezing cold, but many more day would not be possible, especially since all the mana seemed to be going towards healing his wound and not keeping his body warm. Fire was also essential. He had observed the merchant using [purify] to clean the water they had gotten from a river, meaning that water from a random stream might not be safe, especially so in a world full of magic, where any creature could reside in water.

Trying to keep his body as still possible in the ground, El thought of ways to make fire. There were many ways; flint and steel, hand drills etc. but these were not ideal for his current situation. The Bow drill seemed to be the most plausible method for him at the moment, especially since he needed to preserve strength in his body.

He dragged himself to the nearest tree. The blood that had pooled in the spot made staying there was dangerous, since any animal that found him would be able to defeat him. Just moving his right hand was painful, and so to minimize the movement on his right hand, he dragged himself using his left hand.