Chapter 108: Shelter

Nero strode up to Wendy and put his hand on her head.

"This is going to hurt, but tell me when you can't take anymore," he said, then covered her body in blue flames. He was not trying to give her hypothermia, although that would indeed be the result if he kept the flames on for too long.

Instead, he was trying to eliminate any remaining cursed energy that was covering her body, and the sudden drain on his aether reserves told him that there was quite a lot of it.

"Enough," she said hoarsely, before she finally pulled out the purification card from her deck. Nero more or less knew all the generic cards on sale, which is why just a glance at the picture on the card was enough to let him know that this was not a common card. Wendy must have acquired it from someone who had a special recipe.

Whatever it was, using it did not bring her relief. Instead, a few seconds after she used the card, Wendy began vomiting out black and brown sludge. The stench of rotting flesh hit Nero, but he did not so much as twitch his nose as he waited for her to finish, which did not take long.

Wendy was left severely weakened, so much so that her limbs were trembling under her own weight.

"You okay?" Nero asked as he helped her stand and move away from her own vomit.

"The curse around that creature was way too strong!" she said, with a hint of fear in her voice. "My skin felt like it was on fire and my lungs felt like they were being torn apart! How the hell are you fine?"

She might not have been actually asking him, and was just exclaiming, but Nero looked around and saw Henry and Charles coming in closer, observing the dead lemur.

"I'll teach you when we get back," he said quietly.

Wendy was startled, mostly because she had assumed that it had a lot to do with his ability. But if it was something that could be learned, she would not hesitate. She only nodded, which was pretty hard to notice because her whole body was trembling at this point. Even though his flames had helped her, they also left her feeling chilled.

The others also started coming in from where they had been watching. Now that the lemur was killed, their mission was technically over. Adam placed his hand on Wendy's back, and though he himself was still weak and exhausted, began to heal her.

"Do we need to get proof or something?" Charles asked as he studied the corpse. After it died, the static that had surrounded its body disappeared, and the pressure Nero felt being exposed to had reduced, but had not vanished.

"No, the mission is to just kill it. Any body parts it has will be cursed, and we're not equipped to transport cursed items. In fact, considering how strong the curse was on this thing, I don't think we can use its shelter to spend the night. Let's just create our own."

Everyone was curious, so they observed the lemur for a bit, but as soon as they felt curses begin to influence them they quickly left. They could somewhat understand why Wendy's condition was so poor even though she didn't suffer any damage from the lemur - just being close to it was damaging enough.

But the comparison once again brought the limelight to Nero, who was just as close to the lemur as her, but seemed completely unaffected.

Type: Manipulation

Star rank: 0

Ability: [Manipulate the ground around you]

Flavour text: "We are a product of our environment, just as much as our environment is a product of us," Hilary Bouvin

The card was technically quite powerful, since it was a Manipulation type. Getting such a card to be level 0 was incredibly difficult, no doubt, since Manipulation cards let the caster directly manipulate the world around them. But as a result of being a 0 star card, it's efficiency was absolutely terrible.

It took the entire group, excluding Wendy and Adam who were in no condition to help, to raise the shelter walls high enough for them.

But getting the walls up was only just the beginning. Over the next few hours, as darkness began to spread over the forest, they made use of various cards and abilities to ensure that their shelter was well protected from the dangers of the night.

Once it was ready, everyone went in and shut the door. They couldn't afford to keep any lights on outside, as that would attract too much attention, but they couldn't allow themselves to be in the dark. For that reason, the inside of the shelter, which consisted of basically just one massive room, was illuminated by a soft yellow glow produced by balls of light in each corner of the room.

Illusion type cards which could produce balls of light were actually quite aether efficient, so it was not a problem to keep them on the entire night. In a corner, they had also created a basin, where the recruits were once again taking turns using a card called Aqua Dribble.

Name: Aqua Dribble

Image: A small puddle of water on the ground

Type: Elemental

Star rank: 0

Ability: [Produce 100 - 200ml of water that drips from the casters forefinger]

Flavour text: "Once, we were at the mercy of the elements. Now, we play with them in our hands," - Iskunder Macedon

Much like Manipulation type cards, Elemental type cards were a great burden on Neophytes. But when none of them had any water all day, it was a burden they had to bear.