Chapter 124

“OW! OW! GAHH! STOP!” Red desperately tried to fumble for the bandages but Lyra slapped his claws away and continued bundling his leg in reams of clean white cotton.

“This is for your own good Red, I can’t have you bleeding out all over the place before we find a healing potion.”

“Don’t be sad, Ketchup Man, Pickle help!” said Pickle. The tiny goat child was standing next to Red who was slumped on the floor against the base of his bed. She had a bowl of chicken soup carefully hugged in one arm and a wooden spoon laden with said soup in the other. She moved the spoon toward Red’s mouth with determination.

“N-nNo- I don’t want your stupid ssou-grAhbrGhl!” said Red as Pickle jammed the spoon into his mouth with an adorably innocent smile.

The goat girl had been woken by all the noise they had made after Bean and had come to investigate. She had found Red rolling on the floor clutching his bleeding leg and with a gasp she had gone running for bandages, a lot of bandages, she had returned with a spindle of the stuff half the size she was.

She waggled the spoon around in his mouth.

Rain tried to ignore the gurgling choking Kobold as best he could. He was sat cross-legged on the remains of his bed, his eyes closed, arms resting in his lap. In his mind’s eye he flipped through his leveler’s menu.

He had of course leveled substantially after he had taken Lyra and killed the porcupine-spike covered bear like monsters, that was just the nature of killing strong monsters when low leveled. He had been a bottom of the barrel level three, the kind of leveler that would normally take on things like goblins and slimes to level up ... yet he had killed nearly fifty of what seemed to be a pretty strong monster, albeit sharing with Lyra. He had more than doubled his level in an hour, going from level three to a startling level seven and what felt like the very edge of reaching level eight. That kind of growth was unimaginable for all but the luckiest of low levelers, ordinarily it would take hunting and killing hundreds and hundreds of weak monsters to level like this because the porcu-bear monsters were far outside the ability to kill for a low leveler. However with a monstrous body like his...

That said he had been more than a little bit disappointed with the Skills he had acquired ... Which was maybe for the best as he hadn’t needed to struggle to hide any glee on his part from Lyra at the time.

His efforts had gifted him two new basic Skills, Skills that he was now looking over in his mind’s eye. First was Accurate Throw, a Skill that allowed him to throw things accurately. Which really wasn’t that exciting since he was very accurate without the Skill, able to throw rocks or objects with consistent accuracy on target. He hadn’t even bothered to activate it when he had thrown the pillow at Bean, he was just that confident in his own accuracy unaided.

But maybe he was giving it short thrift and it was better than it seemed, he just hadn’t had a private moment to test it.

The second Skill he had acquired could have some very narrow usage. The Skill was called Feather Fall, and was described as: ‘Survive falling from great height.’

He knew one perfect usage for this Skill, Erin, that greedy succubus. If she still lived he would just love to see her try and fly him up into the sky and drop him now. He would land, and be completely fine, and she would be the one to suffer the damage of the fall. He could create a trap within a trap, and for a second he almost wished she would come for him. The look on her face seeing him float to earth while she went splat on the paving would be utterly glorious.

But no, as much as he would derive satisfaction from seeing that disturbing demon fall it would be best if she stayed away, far far away, ideally sealed in a box, wrapped in chains, in a cave, under the ocean, on the other side of the planet.

Still, nearly destroying the staircase in coming up here had given him an idea for another use of the extremely situation-specific Skill.

He cracked an eye and peered at Red and Pickle.

Pickle had her shoulder under Red’s and was trying valiantly to lift him to Red’s great distress.

“Ketchup Man rise!”

“I don’t want to rise, my leg is ruined!”

Yet somehow he managed it, his tail helping in his reluctant climb to his one good foot.

The Kobold was left essentially balanced on one leg as Pickle’s leaning on him was more hindrance than help. His other leg was raised, so many bandages wrapped around it that it looked like a sphere of white cotton had swallowed his shin.

The Kobold wobbled for a moment, genuinely surprised he’d managed to get upright.

But then he started to fall, the weight of an over enthusiastic Pickle dragging him down and unable to stretch out his injured leg to catch himself.

“C-catch me! Someone catch meeee!” he wailed as he was slowly felled like a lumberjack’s chosen tree.

Pickle dove to his front, hands palming his abdomen, determined to stop his collapse. She slowed his fall only fractionally and Red continued to tilt toward the floorboards.

“Ketchup Man nuu!”

Lyra stepped forward and with a flick of her wrist her wool washed black. The Kobold’s mouth opened in shock, but he could do nothing as he flipped over the top of the diminutive Pickle and flopped into Lyra’s side, the wool of her leg and arm blooming out in a cloud to catch him.

And just like that he was gone, leaving a stunned Pickle behind.

She looked at Lyra’s wool in dismay.

“Sheep ate Ketchup Man!”

“Er,” said Lyra, “I magicked him to a secret safe place to rest and recuperate, like a hospital, or something.”

Pickle looked up at her, her mouth an ‘o’ shape.

“You have secret place?”

“Uhhh,”

Pickle dove for her wool and Lyra yelped, jumping back to avoid her.

“Y-you can’t go in there Pickle, it’s not a place for children!”

Pickle ignored her and put her head down, tiny horns locking on as she charged forward after a skittering Lyra, desperately dancing back from her, hooves clattering across the floorboards.

Lyra made her wool wash back to white as quickly as she could, but that didn’t deter Pickle in the slightest.