Chapter 1029 (2/2)

Randidly looked up sharply and then smiled. “Ah... you’re the one with the strongest images? I should have guessed, with your-”

“I’m so sorry!” Vye blurted out, bowing at a 90-degree angle to Randidly. She had assumed that Naffur would be the one to award her the reward. But for Randidly to have made the trip out to the Order Ducis base himself…

Vye peaked up at him, then resumed her downward stare toward the ground. Not that she owed him anything… but as her boss, both in Erickson Steel and the Order Ducis, it was simultaneously tue that she owed him absolutely everything. It was exactly because Randidly took a proactive attitude toward the borderlands that she had been rescued and was brought to Erickson Steel.

If Randidly hadn’t worked together with teams working out of the Orchard to help with the expanding borderlands, thousands of people including Vye would be dead.

Vye bit her lips as she looked at the thin green carpet that had been laid out to cover the packed dirt ground. “I… you asked me to come to meet you after your speech, but I simply wasn’t able to. So… I’m sorry if you waited for me.”

“...really, it’s fine. No need to bow. I’ve found that these things… have a way of working out for the best. Choices have a way of panning out so that things happen at the right time.”

Hearing that Randidly’s tone was relatively cool and civil, Vye straightened and looked at the man who was an engine that made all of her experiences with the System possible. Currently, he was sitting in a canvas chair while idly making a small knife dance across the fingers of his metallic arm. In the low candlelight of the tent interior, both the knife and the gleaming ridges of Randidly’s arm reflected small glints of light.

And Randidly was smiling at her, seemingly somewhat bemused. Whether it was at her bowing or what she said, Vye didn’t know, but her secret paranoias had some ideas.

Vye purposefully repressed her urge to flush with embarrassment. Ugh, of course he wasn’t just WAITING for you that night. He’s the busiest man in the world! He was probably spending the entire night working on that new training facility that the Order Ducis leadership keeps whispering about… and it must really be something if they aren’t even willing to tell us the details…

“So,” Randidly said lightly. “If you don’t mind me asking… why couldn’t you make it? If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. I’ll just give you the reward for having the best response to images and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Ah, I don’t mind telling you. It’s just… more strange than anything else.” Vye shrugged. Reflexively, her left hand clenched. “My… hand hurt. Quite badly. There is... a weird scarring, from one of my Skills and it aches now when I use it. But after I met you… I remembered something my grandmother told me. She was the one who… taught me about the Skill that damaged my hand.

“And she always said that everything has a price. So after performing the ritual, there should be an offering to even our debt to the world. I thought I would have time to head back to my tent and do the offering while the festival was dying down… but I just spaced out during the offering. When I came to, four hours had passed, and by that time I needed to go back to training.”

Tapping his cheek with a finger, Randidly studied Vye. “Huh. Interesting. You lost track of time while you were doing the offering? And let me guess; when you came to, the pain was gone and you had gained several Skill Levels.”

Vye’s eyes widened. “...yea. I’m not sure where that instinct came from… but it felt right. Feels right. And I was rewarded for following, so I cannot say I regret missing our meeting. There’s still so much I don’t know about the System, so every time I learn something new, it’s valuable.”

“No, I understand. I would encourage you to follow those feelings in the future.” Randidly cracked his neck. Vye’s mouth twisted; she always got the chills when someone so casually cracked their neck like that. It got under her skin somehow.

It would certainly be an anticlimactic end for Randidly Ghosthound to pinch a nerve and die...

Then Randidly chewed his lip in thought for several seconds before saying. “Before I give you the gift, can I see your hand? Specifically, the scarred place where the Skill marked you?”

Immediately, Vye wanted to say no. Mostly because her hand looked like a leper’s, and no matter how progressive and self-aware Randidly Ghosthound was, it would be hard for him to set aside the sight of her warped and feverish flesh whenever he thought about her in the future. And then another part of Vye snidely asked why she cared at all how he would think about her in the future and a third part of Vye interrupted by pointing out that there was no harm in the gesture.

So she slowly unwound the bandages she had wrapped around her left hand and offered her limb to Randidly. To her surprise, he didn’t touch it immediately. Instead, he leaned over and looked at the inflamed ridges and deep scaring very carefully. His emerald eyes were only a few inches from her hand, but he squinted and studied it with a powerful intensity.

Then Randidly leaned back and rubbed the back of his head. With his human arm, he reached out and brushed his fingers across the scar left by the Ritual. Vye flinched instinctively, but Randidly’s hands were surprisingly soft. It was hard to believe these were the calloused hands of a warrior. After he had traced the entirety of the Ritual with his fingers, Vye felt a flood of warmth to her hand.

At first, she was rather alarmed at the prospect that the touch had caused her to activate the Ritual subconsciously. The last thing she needed right now was to blast Randidly backward with a Reject.

Although, if it's him, will he notice my Skill hitting him at all…?

But as Vye focused on the spot where their hands were touching, she realized that it wasn’t her Ritual that was activating; Randidly’s hand was wreathed in emerald fire.

“I could heal this, if you want,” Randidly said softly. And as he spoke, Vye felt the cleansing warmth drifting down into her ruined hand. “However… you would lose a lot of the power you have now. This ritual… created a space in your hand. Something… isolated from the rest of you. That’s why it's so painful. But it's possible… to heal it, if that’s what you want.”