Chapter 130: Upgrade
The last of the glitching, corrupted data fizzled out, leaving Nox crumpled on the rocky ground in front of the new, dark doorway. He was completely still.
Serian was terrified, she immediately ran to his side, her mind racing with a hundred different horrible possibilities. She knelt beside him but was afraid to touch him, the memory of that chaotic energy explosion was still too fresh.
"Nox! Can you hear me? Wake up!"
He did not respond, he did not even twitch. His chest was rising and falling, so he was alive, but he was completely out of it.
Mela walked over. She nudged him with the toe of her boot and got no reaction at all.
’Perfect, just perfect. The human breaks his brain opening a door, and now we’re stuck with a two-hundred-pound paperweight in the middle of a dungeon. This is his fault.’
"He is useless to us like this," Mela announced, her voice cold and pragmatic. "Whatever that backlash did, it fried him. We should leave him and continue the mission, we can come back for him after we kill the Grave Lord."
Serian looked up at her, her eyes blazing with a fury that Mela had not seen before, it was a look that was pure princess, full of authority and anger.
"We are not leaving him."
’She can’t be serious. He’s a liability. We’re in an active dungeon with who knows what inside.’ "Your Highness, with all due respect, that is a strategically foolish decision. He is incapacitated, we do not know for how long, and we are completely exposed here."
"I do not care. We do not abandon our companions. That is not who we are. That is not who I am."
She turned back to Nox, gently placing her hand on his forehead. A soft, golden light began to glow from her palm as she tried to channel her pure mana into him, to heal whatever was wrong.