Chapter 330: Midwife in Beast World
Vara looked up at Ren with a mocking glint in her bloodshot eyes. "What? Do you want to know if the Fox is the father?" she jeered, a cruel smirk twisting her lips. "You already have a white tiger, the King of the Swamp, and a golden eagle. And now you want the fox too? You are being really greedy. Careful, it might cost you."
Ren glared at her, her cheeks flushing with irritation. "Forget it. I shouldn’t have even asked."
She turned to leave the cave for good.
"It was Carik," Vara suddenly confessed, her voice dropping into a venomous hiss.
Ren stopped in her tracks, looking back at her. Vara stared down at her shifting belly with a look of pure loathing. "He is the one who put this monster inside me."
"What do you plan to do with it once it’s born?" Ren asked cautiously.
Vara’s shivering had finally, miraculously begun to subside. The color was slowly returning to her cheeks as the soup worked its magic. She looked up at Ren, her eyes burning with pure hatred.
"I am going to kill it," Vara spat, her voice serious. "Whatever Vex wants with this monster, he will not have his way. I will snap its neck the moment it breathes."
Ren said nothing in response. She kept her face totally neutral, but her mind was racing. She couldn’t let Vara have her way. She had to save Vara’s cub from the feral madness to complete Main Quest 2. It was non-negotiable.
Suddenly, Vara threw her head back and let out a blood-curdling scream.
She collapsed sideways onto the furs, squirming and writhing as a contraction rippled across her swollen stomach.
Ren panicked, rushing forward and dropping to her knees. "Vara! What’s wrong?!" she asked, her hands hovering uselessly over the tiger, having absolutely no idea what to do.
"The cub!" Vara screamed, her claws gouging deep trenches into the stone floor. "I think the monster is coming!"
Ren’s heart dropped into her toes. She had never delivered a child before. Hell, she had never given birth before!
But she had watched a lot of television.
"Okay! Okay, don’t panic!" Ren shouted, more to herself than to Vara, sprinting back and forth across the small cave. "We need hot water! And clean towels! Why do they always need towels in the movies?!"
Since she had no water and no towels, Ren summoned a clean fur dress and her knife from her inventory.
The next twenty minutes were the most stressful, chaotic, and messy moments of Ren’s entire existence. She coached the screaming, thrashing tiger through the contractions, desperately trying not to freak out or pass out from the amount of blood and fluids soaking the furs.
"Push, Vara! Stop threatening to kill me and just push!" Ren yelled over the tiger’s roars.
Finally, Ren saw movement. Tiny, pale hands reached out. Ren was genuinely surprised. She had expected a tiny, furry, monstrous tiger cub of some sort, but the infant was being born in its beastman form!
With one final, agonizing scream from Vara, the baby slid into Ren’s waiting, trembling hands.
Ren quickly grabbed her knife and carefully cut the umbilical cord. She wrapped the slippery infant in the fur dress, gently wiping the fluid from its face.
Because she was so focused on the tiny life in her hands, Ren failed to notice the miraculous transformation happening on the furs beside her. The soup had fully hit Vara’s bloodstream. The sickly gray pallor vanished from the tiger’s skin. The dark bruises faded, and her breathing steadied. She was still very skinny, but she looked infinitely healthier than she had moments ago.
"It’s a boy!" Ren marveled, her voice filled with breathless excitement.
The cub was not at all what she had expected. He looked like a beautiful, regular human baby, minus the tiny, black-and-white striped tail curled around his leg and the small, puffy tiger ears on top of his head.
To be honest, she was kind of expecting maybe three eyes on three heads with fire on his tails. A demon dog of some sorts? Ren realized she was imagining Cerberus.
But there was something very wrong. Babies usually cry when they’re born, but this cub wasn’t crying. He made no sound as he entered the world.
Ren gently wiped his head. The cub’s hair was symmetrically split right down the middle. Half of his hair and one fluffy ear was snow white. The other half was black.
When the silent cub finally opened his eyes, Ren let out a soft gasp. The eye on the black-haired side had a golden iris, while the eye on the white-haired side was crimson red.
He was beautiful.
Ren’s breath hitched in her throat when the silent, staring cub slowly reached his tiny hand up and touched her cheek.
The second his tiny fingers made contact with her skin, the vision hit her. She saw it again—the place she was already beginning to convince herself she had imagined on the verge of death.
She saw the rushing waterfall. She saw the lush, vibrant greenery. She saw the clear blue sky and the brilliant, blinding sunlight.
Then suddenly, the cub was roughly ripped from her arms.
"Hey!" Ren shouted, snapping back to reality.
Vara was standing up. Blood was still streaming down her thighs, but she was standing on her own, her strength completely restored by the soup.
Vara held the silent, staring cub tightly by his tiny neck until she heard a crack.
"No! Vara, stop!" Ren screamed, lunging forward.
But she was too late. With a sneer of pure hatred, Vara wound her arm back and used all of her restored strength to throw the newborn cub out of the cave, hurling him far out over the deep, dark swamp waters.
"NO!" Ren shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Without a second of hesitation, Ren sprinted past the tiger and dove headfirst into the murky, freezing swamp water, desperately chasing after the cub.