Chapter 45: I Did Not Survive This Long To Let Isabella Steal My Soup! 2
Neve crouched in front of her. "I don’t know who you are, and also, your brother. Why are you going to die?"
"Scorpion." She held out her hand. The sting was visible... swollen, already darkening slightly around the puncture. "They said no one survives these."
Neve looked at the wound.
His medical memory moved through it automatically. Venom type, absorption rate, counteragents, and time window. She was within the window. The damage was not yet systemic.
"I can treat this," he said.
She stopped crying and looked at him like he had said something impossible. "You can?"
"Yes, I can. First, do me a favour and stop crying and hold still."
He stood and went to the nearest tree out of her direct line of sight. He needed to work without her watching him pull things from empty air. He opened his inventory through the system, took out the salt pouch and a water skin, and closed it.
He came back.
He cleaned the area first. Then he put his mouth to the puncture and drew. The venom came out bitter and sharp, and he spat it into the snow and rinsed with salt water twice and spat again.
She made a noise. "What are you doing?"
"Removing the venom," he said. "Hold still."
He went back to the tree and opened the inventory again. This time, he took butter herbs, the ones his medical memory had flagged for exactly this toxin profile. He chewed them until the oils released and applied the paste directly to the wound.
She flinched.
"That’s going to work," he said, wrapping the area with a strip of cloth from his kit. "The swelling will reduce by morning. Don’t use that hand tonight."
She stared at him.
"Are you sure? No one from my tribe has ever survived this. Everyone died from it."
"Well, you’re lucky to have met me. You’ll survive," he said, standing. "Tell your people you were the first one and let them throw you a party... I mean, feast."
He started walking.
"Thank you!" Her voice followed him. "I’ll find you. My brother and I will come find you to thank you properly."
"You don’t need to," he called back. "And please, not another word about your brother. I won’t be easy to find."
The last thing he needed was another beastman getting interested in him.
"I can and I will! You’re so rare... your colour, it’s red like the famous—"
"Rambutan," Neve said, without turning around. "Yes, yes. I heard you. Goodbye."
Her laughter followed him out of the trees, and he kept walking.
.
.
The festival was enormous.
He stopped at the edge of it and looked.
He had been expecting something like the village gathering or maybe a large version of that. What he was looking at was an entirely different scale... open land between the tribe territories lit with fires spaced across it, more people than he had seen gathered since arriving in this world, and the variety of it was something else entirely.
The rabbit tribe people near the eastern fire. Eagle tribe with the unmistakable wing presence — he spotted Sorin briefly in his human form, talking to someone across the space. Wolf tribe. Lion tribe. Others he couldn’t place yet.
Booths and displays along the edges — wine in large containers, crystals and stones arranged on flat surfaces, dried goods stacked in neat presentations. Each tribe showed what they had.
Everyone was drinking something as he made his way forward.
Heads turned as he moved through.
He was used to this now. The attention that came with his appearance stat maxed out in a crowd that had never seen a red panda before. He walked through it without slowing.
"Hey there, pretty face—"
He walked past it, ignoring the beastman.
"Is that a male or a female—"
He kept moving again.
"Cute—"
"What tribe is that?"
He found a familiar face from the leopard tribe near the centre... one of the younger warriors he had seen a handful of times in the village.
"Hey! Where are the others from the leopard tribe?" He asked.
The man was about to tell him where the others were when a voice came from behind him.
"I’ll take it from here, Johor. You may leave."
Neve turned.
Isabella and her two friends at her shoulders. She was wearing something clearly prepared for the occasion — animal skin worked into something more structured, jewellery at her throat, hair arranged deliberately.
She was also smiling the way she had been smiling in the cave the other night.
"Hello, Bella," Neve said.
Her eyes sharpened. "You will address me as Princess Isabella."
"Princess Isabella," he said.
She closed the distance between them and poked his chest once with one finger. The gesture was light, but the look behind it was not.
"Where is your contribution to the festival? Everyone else brought their tribe’s offering." She looked around him pointedly. "I don’t see anything."
"I have it," Neve said.
"Where?" She looked at his hair. At his clothes. At his hands. "In your ponytail? Under your weird-looking cloth?"
"I have it with me," he said again.
Her smile grew. "Give it to me. I’ll present it to the gathering on behalf of the leopard tribe." She looked at him with the specific patience of someone who had already built the argument and was waiting for him to make her use it. "A rare secretive breed handing out our tribe’s offering in front of every other tribe at the winter festival — do you understand how that looks? They’ll think it’s suspicious. They’ll think it’s dangerous." She tilted her head. "We can’t have the leopard tribe disgraced because you wanted to play host."
Neve looked at her and the calculation behind the smile. Then, the two girls behind her were ready to back whatever she said next.
He thought about the soup in his inventory. About the hours he had put into it. About the herbs and the salt, and Cael tasting it and going quiet.
He thought about how many shows he had watched where the rival got their hands on the protagonist’s dish and what happened next in every single one.
He smiled back at her, warmly.
’This cunning girl,’ he thought. ’Just how do I handle you?’