He sighed – if this little bastard hadn't taken the car Malin gave him and gone out, he probably would have been a goner by now.
If the assassin had been a Transcendent, then Joe would have been dead for sure. But from the assassin's perspective, killing an insignificant half-grown kid with no great transcendent talent, who was still just an apprentice, didn't justify deploying a Transcendent as an assassin.
As for Joe, although he didn't die, the crossbow arrow had barbs and was aimed directly at his heart – a strike meant to kill. Lucky for the boy, he shifted just in time, and the arrow pierced through his body, puncturing a lung. When he was rescued from under the car, he was already in a dying state. It was said that Malin had given him a potion, and the people accompanying him poured the medicine into his mouth, which pulled him back from the brink of death.
Because of this, Goethe even specially thanked Malin in their correspondence.
