Suddenly, the boy unwrapped a faded red bandana from around his head to reveal a scar of sorts. “Wait, just hear me out! Y-you have a secret, and yes, it’s a big secret, but it’s the same for me! I’m,” he hesitated, “I’m a healer.” His open palms kept up in surrender. “If anyone finds out, they’ll kill me. That’s why those adventurers were chasing me. And from the looks of it, you have to kill anyone who knows you can use skills and spells, but, not me, okay? Trust me, I can keep a secret! I kept secrets my whole life. J-just spare me, please!”

I spent an absurdly long time just staring at the boy. Come on, Deidre! I lit myself on fire. The last time you trusted someone, you ended up in a shithole with a bright future as a slave. What messed with my gut even more was the fact that I could no longer tell when someone was lying because that bitch Niran took away my powers and basically forced me to start as a newbie.

He begged once more, as he probably thought I wasn’t yet convinced, and stated that all he ever wanted was to escape to Reuland. That caught my shattered attention and brought me back to the present. “Reuland? Do you know the way?”

“Yes, but, all the best passages are guarded tightly by knights. There’s only one path that not even guards bother with, and that’s Death Mountain Pass.” He shook his head. “But that’s suicide for a healer like me. It’s suicide for anyone.”

“How’d you plan to get to Reuland then?”

“Makeup,” he said without a sliver of jest. “If I can cover this,” he pointed at the scar on his forehead, “with makeup, they might let me through one of the border passages.”

“What’s that, anyway? Did you commit some crime and get branded?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. You really aren’t from Skaljorn, are you? In this trash country, if you have inherent affinity with healing spells, you’re branded with this. It shows that the person is a healer, and it strips them of their rights. Killing a healer isn’t seen as murder by the law, and if murder is okay, then everything else you can imagine is okay.”

Holy shit, that’s messed up. That’s what happened to Sam, right? But, I rubbed my chin, he wasn’t branded. “I know a healer from Skaljorn who wasn’t branded.”

“Then that person was lucky. If a healer is exposed and only their family sees, then the family will just abandon them, and exile them. They have a better chance at life that way. But if a villager or someone else sees, well, they get the death mark.” He kept looking left and right, unable to maintain his focus on me. “We should leave this place.”

I looked back. The charred corpses couldn’t be Consumed, but the wizard I just killed could. It irked me, but the boy knew Skaljorn better than I did, and he didn’t seem to be having an amazing time by himself either. A team-up would make a lot of sense, but my cannibalism was a problem, and I’m sure his death mark wasn’t the only secret he held.

But still, he was my ticket to Reuland. If what he said about most passages to Reuland being guarded, then I doubt I’d be able to get by as a fugitive with a bounty on my head. We crossed the valley and stuck to the walls so that Mr. Chimera wouldn’t roast us alive. Finally, we found some sparse forest area. I didn’t know when it happened, but the forest began feeling like home to me.

The blazing skylight calmed itself as it rested in the west. The night denizens came forth and sang the song of their people, and some drove the darkness away by illuminating their butt. Ah, it would be perfect for a nice hunt, or at least to relax, but I couldn’t do either. The boy’s eyes were glued to me. Not really, but he never let his guard down, every few seconds, he’d watch my way as if expecting an attack out of the blue. I felt sympathy towards him, yet I was just as much on edge as he was. We both expected the other to betray us.

Ugh, this is dumb. I can’t stop my training just because of him. Consume was something I definitely needed to keep under wraps. “Alright, this is stupid. Look, I have no motive or intention to harm you, and I want to assume it’s the same for you. So how about we get the threats out of the way, hmm?” I leaned forward and cast Conflagrate to get a fire going. “If you try to attack me, rat on me, or tell anyone I can use spells and skills, I won’t hesitate to kill you.” I gave the fire a light breeze to have it catch properly. “Your turn.”

His glare at me kept worsening, but he laughed at the end. A lot of tension was released thanks to that. “I’m a healer, a natural one. We have particular trouble using offensive spells. Since a healer is basically a wizard, I can’t use skills. So, me threatening you is one of the dumbest things I can do.” He sighed. “Besides, because of those invalids, I lost all my equipment running away from them.”

I sighed and gave him the sword I kept as a backup. “I’ll go get food.” With that, I finally left. My hunts were rather successful. I ate a few raccoons and a cougar that strayed too far from the mountains nearby. But by far my greatest kills that day was an uncanny combination of raptor and anaconda. The raptor wasn’t too much trouble, I did him in and only sustained a few shallow scratches. The danger noodle however, was another story.

It was way faster than I thought, and the strikingly bright blue colors of its scales made me focus way too much on avoiding its bite because I thought it was venomous. But I got caught in its squeeze because all I tried to do was dodge its fangs. Thankfully, with a skill, the Shadowsiphon dagger was the sharpest thing in the world. It squeezed itself to death, in a sense.

The raptor? Easy food. The snake? I, just couldn’t. Even cannibalism was easier than eating that disgusting thing. Without even taking a bite, I began to puke up the raptor I ate. There was no way I could stomach that snake even if the Consume ability made me physically capable of doing it. I returned with a goat from the mountains. Of course, I gutted it and ate the parts no one would want, then brought the legs and stuff back to the campsite.

The next morning, I woke up to the boy screaming his lungs out.