Chapter 131

[ 1,233 words ]

Vikron’s Point of View

I slowly woke up, my consciousness dragging itself out from a dark void of fever and pain. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my palm, groaning softly as the coarse fabric of my skin scraped against my face, and stretched a little bit.

The ache in my chest made me hiss, but as I forced my head to turn and looked around the silent, clean room, my pulse suddenly did a grateful halt.

Right there, sleeping soundly on the floor directly beside the edge of the mattress, was Deyani. Her breathing was deep and rhythmic, her fingers still loosely curled around her cloak. I let out a long, heavy sigh of immense relief. I looked down at her face, my heart filling with a profound, watering admiration for everything she had done to drag me out of the abyss.

If it weren’t for Deyani stubbornly following me all the way across the borders to save my life, I would have died long ago at the hands of those wolf warriors. I owed her my very breath.

I tried to shift my weight to sit up, but the moment I balled my fist against the sheets, a sharp pain struck through my ribs, causing my thoughts to surge backward into the blood-soaked memories of the past months. I recalled our grueling, top-secret journey to the Evernight Kingdom to track down the iron box.

We hadn’t come blind. I had systematically searched and mapped the vulnerabilities of almost all the packs in the Evernight Kingdom before we even launched our strike. That was exactly how thoroughly prepared I had been to secure the iron box.

“We were so close,” I muttered hoarsely to the empty walls, my jaw clenching as the memory of the mountaintop ambush reeled through my mind.

I had followed the bloody clues across three provinces to track the original vault thieves, but the mission had been a psychological minefield. Along the trail, I had encountered several fake iron boxes—clumsy, decoy duplicates all of which my tracking senses luckily discovered and discarded before our warriors could waste their strength.

Then, my unit finally locked onto a highly secretive, heavily armored team moving near the frontier. We chased them all the way to this frozen, treacherous mountain where we fought seriously for hours, painting the snow in blood. Just as I personally cut down the leader, cracked the canvas wrapping, and finally got the real, genuine iron box into my hands… everything collapsed.

That commander suddenly appeared over the ridge like a ghost from the mist, leading a fierce, monstrous pack of elite wolves. Their ultimate goal was also explicitly to capture the iron box, and they struck our exhausted forces with a crushing military brutality.

During that chaotic, blood-soaked melee, every single one of my loyal wolf pack guards was killed, and I was severely injured by a spear that pierced straight through my chest. Deyani was also viciously injured across her back and shoulders while throwing her body over mine to protect me from the falling blades.

Based on the geographic maps I had memorized, I knew perfectly well that there was lake water directly below the cliff face. With our lines entirely broken, I had decisively jumped off the cliff with her to survive.

That was exactly how everything had happened. I had crossed the borders at the head of a magnificent, highly trained unit of pack guards, but now, only my sister and I had survived.

While I was deeply pondering our defeat, Deyani turned over on the floor and woke up with a gasp of pain, her hand moving instinctively to clutch the fresh, bandaged wound on her shoulder. We looked straight at each other across the gap of the bedpost.

Seeing my eyes look significantly brighter and my aura stabilizing, Deyani’s face flushed with a sudden, radiant hope. She scrambled to her knees. “Vikron! You are breathing normally! Tell me, how are you feeling? Is the fever returning?”

“I am feeling much better, Deyani,” I replied, forcing my voice to stay steady despite the ache in my lungs. “The internal burning has completely receded.”

“Are you certain?” she pressed anxiously, her fingers lightly tapping my wrist to check my pulse. “Do not lie to me just to spare my spirit, brother.”

“I am telling you the truth, sister,” I insisted with a faint, reassuring smirk. “I am significantly better than I was in that shed.”

Deyani let out a long, ragged sigh of relief, her shoulders dropping as she collapsed back against the wood. “Then that mysterious physician Lin did a truly great job, brother. His medicine flushes the blood venom faster.”

“Where are we, Deyani?” I asked, my eyes mapping the high shelves of dried moon-lilies lining the walls. “And where is the rest of our kit?”

Deyani’s expression instantly dimmed, the joyful relief on her face evaporating into a heavy, suffocating anxiety as she looked at her boots.

“We are in the center of the Fairy White Pack’s territory, inside the rear quarters of the Azure Leafs pharmacy. I had to drag your trailer down the mountain tracks after the blizzard broke.” She paused, her voice dropping to a low, trembling whisper. “But Vikron… all of our men are all dead. Only the two of us are left alive inside this kingdom, and I… I am completely unsure of what we should do next to survive.”

I knew in my heart that this wasn’t the right time to press her, not when her own shoulder was still weeping blood through her wraps, but my instincts forced me to ask about the crucial whereabouts of the iron box. I aggressively looked around the empty room, scanning the dressers, the washbasin, and the floor, but I saw no objects.

“Deyani,” I spoke up, my voice dropping to a low, gravelly tone that brooked no deception. “Where is the box? Did you hide it somewhere?”

She didn’t respond right away, her lips pressing into a tight line as she completely avoided my gaze.

I read the tense, terrified room in a fraction of a second, my heart tightening with a sudden panic as my wolf began to growl against my ribs. I leaned forward across the mattress, grabbing her wrist with an intense warmth.

“Answer me, sister! Did the pursuers track you and take it away while I was unconscious?”

Deyani lowered her head completely, her fingers twisting into the fabric of her cloak as she nervously told the truth.

“No, the pursuers didn’t find us. But when we reached the town, your core was completely collapsing from the infection. The doctors turned us away, and Master Lin refused to unseal his shelves without an upfront payment.”

She swallowed hard, her voice cracking with desperation. “To gather the ten thousand taels of medical expenses required to treat your wounds and purchase the pills, I… I had no other choice, Vikron. I have already formally mortgaged the iron box straight to physician Lin as collateral for your life.”

After uttering those terrifying words, she slowly lifted her gaze to me, her eyes wide with anxiety and brimming with unshed tears. She looked utterly terrified, clearly expecting me to tear into her for surrendering the ultimate jewel of the Howling Ashes Kingdom to a physician simply because of my health.

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