"Your sweat smells more fresh than the spell I crafted for you."
"Right." As I answered Verina's tight affection by hugging her back, I noticed that her body got warmer and warmer. "Your temperature is rising dramatically, is this normal?"
"Yep, it's normal," Verina said as her exhaust pipes started unleashing hot fumes into the air. "I'm using this opportunity to stimulate my mind, and then imbue it with a lifeline to empower my consciousness."
As she said that, I checked her Health section of detail screen and found out that her Consciousness skyrocketed to 500%.
There weren't any moderate wounds nor demerit conditions, so I felt surprisingly safer with this youthful veteran becoming more capable than ever.
Verina then mockingly glanced at Lupina. "You want this?"
Lupina desperately nodded.
"Go on," Verina gestured with her eyes.
Hearing that word, Lupina's was invaded by happiness. Without a second thought, she launched at us with arms open.
"GYAAAH!?" Lupina immediately took a backstep, shaking her hand up and down to dissipate the heat. "Your temperature is scalding!"
It seemed like Verina had cast a spell on me beforehand to be able to withstand her overclocking temperature.
While Lupina was crying in jealousy, Verina suddenly had this smug aura emanating from her, even though her facial expression was the same as ever.
Tahlia had no comment for this situation.
"Narcissus, can I grope your thick ass?"
"No."
"How about your thighs?"
"No negotiation."
At this point, it was clear.
I genuinely didn't expect Verina to be this gradually perverted.
Before we do anything outside of staying alive in this hole, I urged both Lupina and Tahlia to donate their blood to fill up what was left of Verina's Potion of Lifeline.
I also did the same. Albeit not as much, since I had already sacrificed most of them when making the Fortcracker.
I missed the Fortcracker…
Regardless, the chances of being injured are increased drastically at this moment, and it would be better for their blood to spill on the potion's container instead of being absorbed by the soil.
"Can my blood even be used though?" Lupina asked. "You know, I went through this 'enhancement' procedure that added some sort of helpful tiny tools into my bloodstream that allowed me to heal faster than normal.
"My blood might still be infested by it, so I never thought of donating my blood for Verina to use as a lifeline."
Right, she did have that as an enhancement.
—
—Enhancements—
[Rapid Regeneration: Minor wounds heal in half the usual time]
—
I couldn't interact with it like how I could open the detail screen of an equipment however.
Not to mention, the description didn't do the enhancement justice.
I fractured Lupina's arm when I first met her, and the fractured status on her arm went from 'moderate' to 'minor' in less than 5 hours, and would probably heal in less than a day if not for the blessing of the Bleeding Tree.
A normal fractured arm would heal in six weeks on average…
That was, until I checked the absolute no nightmare that was the Info section of Lupina's detail screen.
Turns out, Lupina's beastly lineage also came with a greater innate regeneration than the average human.
"Can you use Lupina's blood as a lifeline?" I asked Verina.
"I can use it fine, I think." Verina then shrank her gaze. "In the first place, using a lifeline like this is rather vulgar, so I didn't even think about bleeding someone and putting it into a container like this."
Vulgarity shouldn't be a factor to be considered when it comes to survival.
At least according to my mindset.
As much as I tried my best to put myself in others' shoes, I tend to forget that I'm not normal.
Maybe it was true that I'm a psychopath, just like what the system implied…
"Now that you mentioned it, how is this 'enhancement' procedure of yours work?" I asked Lupina.
"True, I haven't really heard much of this procedure of yours," Verina added.
"Well, it did happen before I met you, after all, ahaha."
Lupina then proceeded to explain how she found a ruin filled with Theotechs when she was still with her old adventuring group.
What is Theotech?
Just like how a Calamity Object used to refer to the entities that manifest under the ordeal, Theotech is a term to refer to a mysterious item or existence of the past that are capable of unfathomable physical and psychic feats.
The mysterious surrounding Theotech was enormous, to the point that the info dump I got for it was only about how hard it was to procure and how powerful they are, not where they came from, who made them, and what their purpose in this world.
"We struck ourselves a treasure trove filled with all sorts of Theotech goodies!" Lupina narrated rapidly, waving her arms as her ear twitched in excitement. "But before I was able to choose one, everybody had already nabbed their portion, and it left me with a single otherworldly advanced metal canister.
"When we arrived at civilization, I took the Theotech I got to an expert and had it appraised. As we open that bad boy, we are only greeted with a small grain of extremely soft silver sand!
"Of course, we believed that this sand must be something powerful or special! It's a Theotech after all!
"After further investigation with a different kind of expert, it's concluded that the soft sand are actually inactive tiny stuff that will reactively repair any kind of damage to its familiar vessel of environment."
"And so you proposed to have these nanites injected into your bloodstream," I chuckled.
"Yep! Wait, what is ne-night?"
Huh, despite the people of this world having an extensive vocabulary for modern language, it seemed like not all of them were known here.
Just like how Verina was uninformed nearly all of the chemistry buzz words.
"Say, if you inject those Theotech sands into your blood, won't you lose them the more you lose your blood?" Tahlia asked.
"Well, after the enhancement procedure, I was told to come back to them after half a year for observation, and they found out that the Theotech thingies are replicating themselves when they deteriorate, using the fats and nutrients in my body as resources!"
To clarify further on how time and calendar works in this world: A year in this world is 182 and a half days, with the months of the real world being conjoined together in a weird naming sense.
As such, there were only 6 months in this world: Januafeb, Marchapril, Mayune, Jugust, Septober, and Nocember.
This makes the year in Carcosa to match the real world in a sense.
"That is amazing!" Tahlia exclaimed. "Can you share these repairing Theotech sands to others, since it can just replicate."
"Apparently, the Theotech sands have already biocoded itself to my body," Lupina wryly smirked. "We already tested it. It didn't work."