novelraw Chapter 163: The Tumor
Chapter 163: The Tumor
It took a while for the drowning feeling to finally fade. All that was left on the wall was a smudged streak of dust and blood.
“Lord… Lord Aldrich…?”
Wilber put every bit of his strength into keeping his voice down, making the rough croak sound humble, obedient, even carrying a hint of careful, fawning fear. Only then did he dare to slowly lift his head and look at the shape standing a few steps away in the moonlight.
What he saw made his eyes go wide.
Aldrich was still standing there, but… stuck to the right side of his neck was a… fist-sized, faintly pulsing, sick, livid lump! The lump’s surface was covered in fine, twisted vein patterns, dark and deep. Under the red moonlight, it looked even nastier.
Even more heart-stopping were the several ugly “veins” of different thicknesses snaking out from the lump’s edge—like they were alive! They dug under the skin on Aldrich’s neck and spread down his collarbone toward his chest like greedy, parasitic vines, sucking the host dry.
These “veins” moved slightly with the lump’s pulse, making Aldrich’s face—already tight with anger—look… like it had a trace of indescribable madness and inhumanity.
But Wilber’s meek call seemed to do something. Aldrich’s body gave a tiny, almost unseen shake. He took half a step back without thinking, his gaze shifting away from Wilber, looking a bit… unfocused.
His hand reached for the big mahogany desk behind him, piled with books and papers. The move wasn’t fast—even a little stiff—but his target was clear. His fingers closed exactly around a plain, dark brown glass bottle on the desk. The bottle had no label. You could just barely see a layer of settled, fine, ink-black powder at the bottom.
Without even looking, Aldrich flicked the cork off with his thumb. He tipped his head back and drank the thick liquid inside—a dark red so deep it was almost black, like old wine, but giving off a weird mix of sweet-fishy and rotting stink—all in one go.
It was… Wormblood Brew.
His throat worked as the stuff went down. Aldrich closed his eyes, took a few slow, deep breaths. His chest rose and fell. Slowly, the green-purple lump on his neck seemed to get pressed down or calmed, and started to clearly… shrink. Its pulsing slowed. The bulging, ugly veins sank back and smoothed out bit by bit, disappearing under the skin.
A few breaths later, the lump had shrunk to the size of a thumbnail, its color fading, totally hidden by his crisp shirt collar. The spreading “vein” lines had vanished completely. Like that terrifying, weird scene just now had been a bad dream from Wilber’s own fear.
Aldrich opened his eyes again. The violence and chaos in them had faded by half, replaced once more by the unreadable calm of a veteran third-ranker… and his coldness.
He looked at Wilber, who lay in front of him like a kicked dog, aura weak.
The study fell into dead quiet. Only Wilber’s held-in, ragged breathing and the faint sound of lake water outside the window.
“Talk.” Aldrich finally broke the silence, his voice even, showing little feeling but carrying a weight you couldn’t ignore. “Today… what actually happened?”
Seeing this, Wilber secretly let out a breath he’d been holding. The burning pain in his neck and the sting in his throat were still there, but at least he was alive for now.
He didn’t dare wait a second longer. Fighting the fresh waves of pain from his wounds, he started recounting the night’s events at the Botanical Garden, keeping it short. His voice was still rough, but his thinking was clear enough.
“At first, I was holding my ground well against The Scalpel and the other third-ranker from the Quarry,” Wilber picked his words carefully. “That they sent two strong third-ranks plus a full assault squad… that was actually… still inside our first guesses. The garden’s value is real. The Quarry wouldn’t just drop it.”
“So, using the nearly completed ritual array’s power, I could more or less fight them, even… get a little edge. A person’s power runs out, but an array’s power is steadier. In a long grind, barring surprises, they’d be the ones to break.”
Besides these aspects consistent with our plans, explainable parts, Wilber also “touched up” the story on his own. Like saying when the two Quarry third-ranks couldn’t break through, they used some costly secret arts or potions to spike their fighting power for a bit, and their push got crazy fierce for a while. And how he “fought for his life,” how he “stood bloody,” even trading wound for wound to just barely hold the key nodes.
That way, it perfectly explained why he looked so wrecked now, why his injuries were so bad—they were marks of his “bravery,” from going all out to hold the Garden.
Of course, in the middle of his telling, Wilber very “naturally” skipped the strange, nearly-fatal trap he’d hit in the old bakery on the way back. Bringing that up would just make him look extra stupid, extra careless—like on top of losing, he was ambushed in such a pathetic manner. Even though he felt a huge rage and killing urge toward that sneaky, low attacker, right now he absolutely couldn’t admit it was his own mistake.
“The other side threw everything they had, but your man held them off desperately, didn’t let them have it easy,” Wilber’s tone purposely carried a thread of tired helplessness, like he’d given everything. “It should’ve stayed that way…”
He switched gears suddenly, his voice dropping, going serious.
“But,” he said, “an accident happened with the most critical ritual array during the fight. The key seems to be a woman.”
Truth was, Wilber hadn’t seen this “surprise” woman himself. His info came entirely from the scattered, scared reports of the underlings who’d escaped the east-side fight. According to them, this woman carried a menacing crimson greatsword. Half her face was covered in ugly scars, like she’d been burned. But the other half… was shockingly beautiful.