Chapter 211 - Frenemies

"Petunia?! Please stay! I know you're still there! Hang on," he said while trying to wake Petunia up.

But instead of waking up, Petunia's nose just started to spew more blood than Lei could even imagine. 

"Should I cover your nose? But you'll have a hard time breathing. Ahhh, what should I do?" Lei said to himself while looking around to see if he could spot a healing potion from the variety of potion ingredients around him.

But instead of a healing potion, Lei recalled the cold potion that he accidentally pulled from Petunia's neck and recovered it from the sea of blood on the floor with his shaking hands.

"Please work," he whispered and popped the vial open, recalling that time when Fily first used the potion on Petunia and did it again as he recalled.

"Two drops to the temple and spread it out, please come back to me Petunia. Stay with us," he said, taking a deep breath before calmly closing the lid of the bottle and trying to put it back in Petunia's neck while waiting for the magic to happen.

"Please come back, I know I haven't been treating you the best lately but I promise I'll change for you, just come back, okay? We still have a lot of things to do together, for instance, the Flight potion.. You promised me we'd do it together, you can't go now. Not yet, not ever. We need you, Petunia, don't leave us. Don't leave me," Lei cried to himself and buried his face to his knees after almost a minute of waiting, and still nothing happening to Petunia and that potion.

"Did I do it wrong? Why isn't it working? Please don't tell me she's already dead… No,  this can't be. This is all my fault, I failed to protect her…" Lei cried even more to himself and buried his face against his knees, trying so hard to convince himself to just wait and see what could happen next, but the longer he waited, the more he lost hope about the Potion and Petunia's situation as a whole.

She was just laying there against her Gummy cloud that resembles a bed of flowers a lot.

"Is this really the end for her?" Lei thought and glanced at Petunia's peaceful face again with high hopes of the potion finally working, but still, nothing. Just the silence, darkness, and the gummy cloud's faint glow against Petunia's fine silver fur.

[Venedette: We found traces of Foerus and black lily on the hallway, we'll get back to you guys as soon as we can but we have to clear this out first!] a message from Venedette popped in front of Von but because of her teary eyes, he could not read the message nor see Petunia clearly anymore.

And just as Lei was about to accept the horrible fate of Petunia down in this basement, a sharp gasp was heard and Petunia just suddenly rose up from her vegetable state against her Gummy cloud which she even unconsciously wrapped around her body to create a purple dress that she had never thought of doing with the Gummy cloud before.

"Gahhh I'm fine!" Petunia shrieked and jumped in front of Lei who thought that she was just a hallucination from his guilty conscience.

"God that was suffocating! I almost died!" Petunia said and even slapped Lei's shoulders from the rush of it all which made Lei's face look even more puzzled.

"Petunia?" Lei said with a doubtful voice, finally getting the motivation to rub the tears out of his eyes only to see a taller and bubblier version of Petunia with that long glowing purple dress in front of him.

"Yeah? It's me. What's wrong? Did you cry?!" Petunia laughed and offered a hand to Lei who was just dumbfounded by her reaction to that near-death experience earlier.

"I'm fine! Thank you for reacting very quickly, you saved me!" Petunia said and then offered a hug to Lei, trying to console him for thinking that he almost lost her back there.

"I-I thought you were… You almost-" Lei said and paused while struggling to get his words right.

"Died?" Petunia said while still hugging Lei. She could even notice the difference in her height before and her height now which was almost the same height as Lei, only smaller by a few inches but just enough to reach out to him for a hug.

"You scared me!" Lei exclaimed and pouted even though Petunia could not see it, he even refused to wrap his arms around Petunia's new human form just to prove a point.

"I'm sorry, my senses just suddenly blacked out and the next thing I knew there was blood coming out of my nose. I didn't know what to do with it so I just tried covering it with my paws but the blood spread to my head and… it was just so painful and hard to breathe. I'm sorry for scaring you. But thank you for saving me!" Petunia exclaimed energetically before suddenly shifting into a more serious tone the more she recalled about what just happened to her.

"Why did your senses blacked out?" Lei said after removing himself from Petunia's embrace.

"I smelled something sharp and very strong, it almost felt like a sharp knife slicing through my nostrils, I don't know where it came from but it's probably that guy's doing…" Petunia said while glaring at the empty hallway.

"Venedette said they're cleaning up the traces of Feorus and Black lily from the hallway. He probably left the basement a while ago before we even came in or else we should have encountered him escaping through the stairs since it's the only way in and out-"

"Or there could also be a possibility that he knows another way in and out of this basement and he just left after sensing us here, didn't you sense his presence earlier? I'm sure it was him who sent that scent bullet to me," Petunia asked with a serious face while staring at the mess she created by her own blood on the floor.

"Scent bullet?" Lei asked.

"Let's just call it that, I didn't get to differentiate the ingredients he used because it was too strong for my super sensitive senses, but hey, at least I survived, right? Thanks to this…" Petunia said and caressed the cold bottle that Lei wrapped back around her neck with a spare string beside her collar Stat-hut.

"We don't even know if it was really his fault that happened or if it was a side effect of that potion."

"This potion has no side effects, my best friend made it."

"Yeah, your best friend who just mysteriously disappeared after giving it to you," Lei said while dragging Petunia back to the stairs, somehow getting annoyed by Petunia's innocence and impeccable amount of trust to those people she considers as friends.

"And… Now we're back to being frenemies. Great," Petunia said with an obvious amount of sarcasm while following after Lei.