Chapter 21 : Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Flesh as the Wager, a Scalpel in Desperate Straits
Behind him, the golden sun formed by the Earth Knight's life-burning sacrifice had already scorched half the sky into ashes.
Caesar didn't look back.
The destructive energy storm, like an invisible divine giant's palm, even across several miles, still slammed viciously against his back.
His internal organs felt as if struck by a sledgehammer, a fishy-sweet taste of iron surging up his throat, only to be forcibly swallowed back down through gritted teeth.
He hunched his body, clutching the scorching-hot form in his arms—so hot it nearly set him aflame—even tighter, borrowing the force of that tremendous push to plunge headlong into the deeper, darker mountain forest.
He wasn't running—he was “falling” downward.
The muscles in his legs had long been screaming in agony from the overload of explosive movement. Every step that landed felt like stepping barefoot onto red-hot nails.
Each expansion of his lungs felt like molten iron sand being poured inside. Even with his dragon blood-enhanced resilient body, he was now releasing wails on the verge of complete collapse.
But he couldn't stop. Didn't dare stop.
That old knight's self-detonation was a gamble with life itself as the stake.
It had bought him time to flee, but it had also lit the clearest beacon for his pursuers.
He had to find a grave capable of burying all traces of himself before the enemy recovered from the shock of that horrific explosion and released their hounds again.
The “cargo” in his arms breathed so faintly it was like a candle guttering in the wind.
Though the abdominal wound had stopped bleeding, a ring of eerie dark bruising was spreading like poisonous vines along the delicate network of blood vessels beneath her skin.
Military armor-piercing arrow, coated with some unknown potent poison.
Caesar's violet eyes swept frantically across the steep mountain walls. His brain, running at maximum overload, automatically filtered out ninety-nine percent of useless information, searching only for that thread of survival.
Sweat mixed with blood plastered his eyes shut, yet he couldn't spare even a blink.
Finally, beneath a rock crevice concealed by massive sword ferns, he caught a whiff of a frigid draft carrying the earthy, mineral scent of soil and stone.
This is it!
He practically rolled and tumbled his way inside.
The cave was narrow and winding, bottomless, completely devouring all light and sound from the outside world.
The heavy earthen smell and the sharp cold breath of stone gave his nearly combusting lungs a long-overdue moment of relief.
Holding the woman in his arms, he groped another hundred meters through the darkness. His feet were tripped twice by rubble, but each time he forced himself upright through inhuman willpower.
Only when nothing remained around him but his own ragged breathing and drumming heartbeat did he finally stop.
This was a relatively dry natural cave.
He laid the woman flat on a reasonably smooth stone platform, then remembered to pull out the three wolf cubs from his clothes—shaken dizzy and nearly scared witless by the jostling.
Condensing a weak thread of black-gold Battle Energy at his fingertips, the glow was dim but sufficient to illuminate this small space.
Under the light, the woman's face was paper-white, two splotches of feverish flush making her look like an exquisite porcelain piece on the verge of shattering.
The jagged broken arrow in her abdomen added a shocking “flaw” to this “work of art.”
Caesar extended two fingers and, without any gentleness, pressed precisely at the wound's edge.
“Mmm…”
Even unconscious, the woman's body jolted violently, a suppressed groan of pain escaping from deep in her throat.
Caesar's brows knotted into a lump.
The arrowhead had barbs. Judging by the depth, it had an eighty percent chance of hooking into muscle or even damaging organs.
Pull it out forcefully—she'd die immediately from blood loss and excruciating pain.
Leave it in—the toxin would kill her within half an hour.
Damn it, what a hot potato.
But since he'd already brought her out, throwing her away now would mean all the previous risks were for nothing.
This was a risky investment with sunk costs already committed. He had to ensure his “asset” didn't liquidate before settlement.
His gaze fell on the blood-obscured pendant in the woman's hand.
He reached out, carefully wiping away the blood with a cloth strip.
This time he saw it completely clearly—the pendant's full form: a silver emblem engraved with iris and lion.
Caesar's pupils contracted slightly.
He recalled a rumor circulating among nobles: the Eastern Territory Grand Duke's wife had once been an imperial princess of noble bloodline. If this girl was their daughter…
A young miss who could make an Earth Knight willingly self-detonate to cover her retreat—her identity was definitely extraordinary.
This emblem practically confirmed his speculation.
Saving her was equivalent to grasping a ticket to the empire's power core, a trump card sufficient to make Baron Anjou and his dear brother Lucius lose sleep.
Enormous risk, but the returns… equally astonishing.
Caesar licked his cracked lips, the calculation in his eyes transforming into a vicious gleam.
“Gamble on it.”
This deal—he was taking it!
He pulled out a small piece of dried meat from the Dimensional Warehouse, tore it to shreds, and tossed it to the wolf cubs who were already so hungry they'd started gnawing on his trouser legs.
Then he skillfully gathered some dry moss and dead branches, using a fire stone to ignite them.
A small, nearly smokeless campfire flickered quietly to life in the cave.
He needed a scalpel, some bandages, and an absolutely calm version of himself.
He stripped off his own shirt—long since soaked through with blood and sweat, stiff as a steel plate—and tore it into several reasonably clean cloth strips.
Then he laid his knight's longsword across the fire, watching that fine steel blade, under the flames' caress, turn from blue-gray to red.
After completing all this, he walked to the stone platform's edge.
With a ripping sound, he brutally tore open the blood-scab-stuck clothing around the woman's abdomen.
Large expanses of snow-white skin were exposed to the air, forming a stark visual impact against that hideous black arrow wound.
He picked up a small skinning knife he carried, repeatedly searing the blade tip over the flames until it emitted an almost inaudible hum.
His left hand clamped down like an iron vice on the woman's waist, preventing any potential struggling.
His right hand held the knife, wrist sinking downward.
The blade tip descended.
Cold metal touched scalding skin. The woman's body arched violently upward like a fish thrown onto shore.
The sound emerging from her throat was no longer a moan but a heart-rending wail, filled with boundless agony even in unconsciousness.
Caesar's hand remained steady as a rock.
He hadn't held a scalpel in his previous life, but in this life, this skinning knife was his scalpel.
Black-gold Battle Energy coiled like spider silk around his fingertips, allowing him to perceive every tremor of the muscle beneath his blade.
The blade edge, along the wound's perimeter, precisely carved away a ring of blackened, necrotic flesh. Foul-smelling black blood immediately gushed forth.
The triangular arrowhead, bearing two vicious barbs, was biting viciously into the muscle fibers.
At Caesar's temple, finally, a bean-sized bead of sweat seeped out.
He discarded the small knife, wrapped a cloth strip around the scalding sword hilt, and hefted over that red-hot longsword.
He was going to use this makeshift “cautery iron” to burn through those two damned barbs.
This method was crude, brutal, but the only option.
“Sizzle—”
The glowing-red blade probed into the blood-soaked wound. The acrid smell of burning protein and the faint sound of flesh being seared were amplified countless times in the deathly silent cave.
“Ahhh—!”
The woman's eyes snapped open!
They were a pair of sky-blue eyes, pure enough to contain not a single impurity.
Yet at this moment, that sky held only storm-like agony and confusion.
She began struggling violently, her hands flailing wildly, trying to push away this source of pain.
“Don't move!”
Caesar barked, his left arm clamping down like an iron hoop on her shoulders.
He had no time for explanations, much less any mood to soothe her.
This investment had reached its most critical juncture—failure was not permitted!
A vicious gleam flashed through his eyes. He no longer paid any attention to the woman's cries and struggles.
He pushed his Battle Energy to its absolute limit, precisely controlling the scalding blade, bit by bit melting and peeling away those two metal barbs from the flesh.
Every second was purgatory for them both.
The woman's cries went from piercing to hoarse, finally exhausting her strength before she passed out again.
Caesar's back had long since been thoroughly drenched in cold sweat, as if he'd just been fished out of water.
Finally, the sword tip transmitted an almost imperceptible sensation of loosening.
Right now!
He violently flung aside the longsword. His right hand flashed like lightning to grip the arrow shaft's end. With force from his waist and abdomen, he yanked upward savagely!
“SQUELCH!”
A teeth-grinding muffled sound. That arrow, bearing two pieces of charred metal, was pulled out intact by him!
A surge of black poisoned blood gushed forth immediately after.
Caesar instantly pressed the wound with cloth strips, simultaneously fishing out his last healing potion and roughly prying open the woman's mouth to pour it in.
After completing all this, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from him, he collapsed to the ground, leaning against the icy rock wall, chest heaving violently, gulping down great mouthfuls of air.
Even his right hand gripping the sword hilt was trembling slightly beyond his control.
The campfire burned quietly. The woman's breathing stabilized somewhat.
Caesar closed his eyes. He'd won the first round.
This “investment” hadn't become a total loss—for now.
He was just about to circulate Battle Energy to restore his stamina when suddenly one of the wolf cubs at his feet released a whimper suppressed deep in its throat.
It wasn't hungry.
Its little nose was pointing toward the cave entrance direction, all its fur standing on end. Deep in its throat came the threatening low growl—mixed with fear—that only emerged when facing an undefeatable natural predator.
Caesar's heart instantly sank to the pit of his stomach.
He silently picked up his longsword, slowly rising to his feet, concealing himself in the cave wall's shadow.
Wind sounds, dripping water, the cold silence of stone…
Wait.
He heard an extremely faint rustling sound, like something dragging slowly across the rough ground.
That rustling abruptly halted.
Immediately after, from the darkness at the cave entrance, a pair of basketball-sized, ghostly-green light points ignited.
A stench mixing sulfur and rot wafted in simultaneously.
It was a giant cave lizard over five meters in body length, covered entirely in rock-like heavy scales, a forked tongue flicking in and out of the air.
Second-tier magic beast: Cave Stalker.
Strength comparable to a formal Knight.
Caesar tightened his grip on his sword, feeling bitter inside.
In his current state, a direct confrontation meant certain death.
Just escaped the wolf's den, now entering the tiger's lair. Heaven really thought highly of him.
Just as that Cave Stalker locked him as its target and prepared to launch an attack, the Sword-Devouring Dragon brand on Caesar's chest, in sync with his heartbeat, suddenly flared hot.
A pressure originating from the depths of his bloodline—ancient and noble—was not actively released by him but rather, like a provoked monarch, awakened of its own accord, spreading outward like an invisible tide.
The Cave Stalker's massive body jerked rigid. Its ghostly-green vertical pupils were instantly filled with boundless terror.
That battering-ram-like enormous head pressed hard against the ground, prostrating itself, throat releasing a “purring” sound like a kitten acting cute.
Submission.
Caesar froze.
He hadn't expected that his not-yet-fully-awakened dragonkin bloodline would have such terrifying suppressive power over these low-grade magic beasts of sub-dragon species.
This was simply… cheating.
He immediately came to his senses, wild joy surging through his heart.
This wasn't just resolving a crisis—it had opened an entirely new door for him!
A bold plan took shape in his mind.