Leaning on the spear, he made his way as far as he could to the feline's lair. He only hoped that the animal had not died yet and that he could use it instead of using his own blood. Luckily for Ikky, the cub was still lying there, unconscious, breathing even weaker than the day before.
Ikky was grateful at that moment for the strong constitution of that beast.
Have you ever tried dragging a dead body through a cave? A body that weighs just under 100 kilos?
Saying it was difficult would be an understatement, and even more so with an injured leg and a useless arm.
With the skins from one of the huts, he created some precarious ropes that he tied around the dying feline, the other end he tied to his own body. In order to exert more force with my only arm, he had to lean on the spear, even at the risk of breaking it along the way.
One meter, two, three, twenty. Come on Ikky, you can do it, a curve... the barricade is in sight, come on just a little further. The boy's inner monologue was a mantra that helped him overcome the pain and exhaustion.
He leaned against a wall to rest while he made sure the feline was still breathing.
Exhausting, agonizing, horrible, but luckily the cave itself was not very big, the distances were difficult because of the weight. It took him hours, but he finally reached the room with the feline dragged along. The animal only had a weak thread of life left.
When he tried to lift the feline's body up to the pedestal, he was on the verge of having a heart attack, a stroke, from the effort. When he moved the animal it trembled, Ikky feared he had arrived too late, but luckily it was a death rattle, death was approaching but he still had a few seconds. He used my body to lift him up, leaning on the spear and causing the precarious stitches he had given himself to sew his leg open and bleed again.
He couldn't waste time, he cut his neck with the short sword and the blood began to flow towards the stone, and from there towards the gem. More than a liter and a half of blood spilled before anything happened.
The gem began to pulse, emitting flashes of light as if it were a police siren. It was a hypnotic effect, which mixed with the weakness and the state of fainting in which Ikky was beginning to be due to the hemorrhage.
The wall in front began to blur, that is the best description, it stopped being clear some phosphorescent green outlines ran through all the engravings.
Data announced the long-awaited ending:
Congratulations player for being the first and only one to discover the third and final exit of the dungeon.
Congratulations player for being the only one to have discovered the hidden piece in the dungeon.
Congratulations player for being the only one to kill all the monsters in the dungeon.
Congratulations player for being the only one to reach level 3 during the second phase of the tutorial...
Congratulations player for being the first and only one to unleash and feel the magic in the second phase of the tutorial
Rewards will be calculated according to performance...
And with a ray of light he disappeared. Luckily this time Data didn't give him the chance to continue, Ikky wouldn't have had the strength to articulate a single word.
"This has been interesting, unexpected but interesting without a doubt..."
"Are you going to start supporting that useless guy too?"
At that strange meeting where thousands of ethereal screens showed the performance of the various players, there were faces for all tastes. Some supported the actions of that clumsy player, others however seemed horrified or disappointed. Others however were reflecting. One of those present seemed especially upset.
"I still don't understand why we have to keep an eye on those idiots"
"We have to make sure that what has to happen happens, there are too many things at stake..."
"And what is the point of all this? We already know that they are the chosen ones, we should leave them to their own devices as always..."
"You are still a fool Arven, if we always do the same thing the same thing will happen again and that is why we have to be here, we have to know who they are so we can act, even if only minimally when the time comes..."
The aforementioned snorted and continued looking at the screens, it was not normal for the gods of Athair to meet to see some simple precursors, the races that came to that world had to forge their own destiny, that had been the case for hundreds of thousands of years.
However, there they were, to mark the present and to ensure that it would not happen again that one of them would challenge them. No one had really ever challenged them, at least they had not lived it, but the warning of the Ilures about this race, about their past, about this present and the other possible ones, and above all about the role they would have in the future were worrying.
Not even the gods had the Ilures' ability to read telluria. Damn it, Arven told himself, he was a neutral god, the god of life, but life as he meant it had to be left to be, not interfered with, this broke the eternal laws of that world for the first time in a long time.