Breathing a sigh of relief, I realized I still had a job. Even without the benefit of formal classes, I was learning through my own experiments. I opted not to share the details of the nightmare with Kari, and managed to arrive at work punctually. As was the norm, I followed instructions and transformed every elementless crystal into an elemental one. However, I noticed something peculiar.

Kari, who was usually meticulous, seemed to be injuring himself in the most bizarre ways. He would shatter crystals with his bare hands, cutting himself in the process. Nonchalantly, he would grab one of my freshly made crystals to heal his wounds. After witnessing this strange behavior for the twelfth time that morning, I decided to complain.

“Hey, be careful there. Stop hurting yourself on the job. We don’t want to risk contaminating the crystals with blood, do we?” I cautioned.

“Don’t worry,” he dismissed.

“Yeah, but the elementless crystals aren’t infinite. I see we’ve already used half of the supply. Maybe we could avoid using them for personal purposes?” I suggested.

“What’s the matter? We’ve got plenty.” He retorted.

“It’s kind of wasteful, don’t you think?” I countered.

“Fine, I’ll be more careful, Mr. Precision,” he conceded.

As I was about to respond, he accidentally hit a shelf with his tail. The shelf held the dark crystal I had recently crafted. It tumbled down onto his tail, piercing it. A gasp of pain escaped his lips.

 

“Agh, shit,” he cursed, then looked at the wound and realized what kind of crystal it was. He tried to pull it out, but it was embedded too deeply and too far for him to reach. The crystal activated and started spreading a dark smoke that followed the trail of blood on his tail and the crystal itself. Panicking, Kari shouted, “Take it off me quickly!”

I rushed to his aid and extracted the pointed crystal. It remained active, but did not dissolve or change shape, instead emitting more of the dark smoke. Kari grabbed the first health crystal he could find and tried to heal himself. But the crystal didn’t work as expected. In a frenzy, he took another one.

“I think the dark element is preventing you from healing,” I observed.

“Don’t you say? I see it, damn it,” he snapped back.

I stared at his tail in horror. It was turning black and twitching uncontrollably. I asked, “Do you need me to do something?”

“If it doesn’t stop, I may have to cut off my tail and use a lot of health crystals to grow a new one,” he confessed.

“Wait. I have an idea,” I interjected.

I had read about health crystals and how some rare dragons could create them. These dragons could also heal others with their touch. So I moved closer in an attempt to heal him directly.

“Don’t get close to my tail. I’m not sure if I can still control its movements,” he warned me.

Ignoring his caution, I reached for the source of the wound. I placed my hand on it and visualized it as a crystal that needed to be transformed into a health crystal. The thought in my mind was simple: “Be the cure”. This image unlocked a new ability of mine: I could heal a dragon.

His tail began to glow yellow, as if bathed in divine light. Simultaneously, I felt an excruciating pain in my hand. It wasn’t akin to crafting a crystal, but more like being stabbed by one. The pain made me nauseous. My legs trembled, and my shoulders sagged. Each second spent healing him felt like an eternity of agony. However, I was selfless and determined enough to avoid the drastic option of amputating his tail and using more crystals to regenerate it. I believed that he would suffer more from that than I was suffering now.

After several agonizing seconds, he was healed. He moved away from me and inspected his tail. It looked normal again, except for a small scar where the dark crystal had previously embedded itself.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I owe you a favor.”

Unfortunately, our ordeal was far from over. I was teetering on the brink of death. The pain was unrelenting, gnawing at my insides, refusing to subside. I tasted the metallic tang of blood on my tongue and spat out a mouthful of crimson. Blood was seeping from my lungs. My gums felt raw and exposed, and my tongue could probe the roots of my teeth in my skull. The pain was unbearable, and I felt my consciousness fading. Kira spoke, but his words were muffled by my own violent coughing. I splattered the floor with blood and collapsed beside the grisly pool. He reached for me, attempting to lift my limp body, but my strength had deserted me. My vision blurred, my body numbed, and I was left at the mercy of fate.

Kari hoisted me up, dragging me somewhere, perhaps in a desperate bid to save me. But his voice was lost in the ringing in my ears. Maybe they were bleeding too. Then, everything was suddenly shrouded in a white mist. My surroundings turned bright and blank, a stark contrast to the darkness I experienced during the duel at the Kingdom of Aura with Fyrenthos. After that, my mind blanked out. I remembered nothing. Time seemed to freeze for me.

I had acted out of goodwill, but I hadn't anticipated that healing someone from a wound inflicted by a dark crystal could have such dire consequences. This time, my curiosity and benevolence had betrayed me.