Adventures of the last Wild Dragon-Chapter 226: Olivia’s Past
Silence reigned over the area, only broken by the heavy breaths of the girls as they took several moments to regain their breath from that short but intense batch of combat. Yet that was soon replaced by gasps of relief and amazement when the system made itself known.
[Your group has defeated Acid Elemental lvl 75~90 x87 exp rewarded]
[You have leveled up]
[You have leveled up]
"Hahaha 2 whole levels! That was fun!" Shouted Violet as she stared at the two level up notifications, then at the kill count that their group had defeated in such a short amount of time. "87 elementals." She muttered under her breath in amazement.
The rest of the girls looked to be in a similar state of shock, none of them having expected such an overwhelming assult to happen out of nowhere.
Still whilst the fight was intense, and filled with quite a bit of pain, especially for both Rhyana and Olivia, the gains from that scant few minutes was truly incredible.
It truly did seem like desperation brought rewards, a truly challenging fight with multiple opponents just shy of their level had granted everyone quite the boon.
"I need to rest for a bit, I’m basically out of mana after that." Susan stated as she collapsed to the ground in an undignified heap. "Luna if you have any mana left could you please help heal up these two, I don’t have enough mana to fully heal them?"
Luna gave a quick nod and made her way over to the two front line fighters. Olivia didn’t seem overly injured externally, yet her armour had numerous pockmarks where the acid had burned away at it, additionally several of these marks were present near the seams in the joints. Evidently quite a bit of the acid had gotten through to her skin underneath her protection.
Rhyana was easier to tell where she was hurting. Even with Susan focusing her healing on them both, she still had some nasty looking burn marks on her arms and legs where she had punched and kicked away the elementals.
She gently touched Olivia first, the part of her armour that she touched gaining a thin film of frost as her healing ice slipped through the armour to cover her burned skin.
With Luna’s skill she gained a faint understanding of the kind of injuries that her target was currently suffering from, she let out an instinctive gasp at the sensation she got back.
Entire patches of both skin and muscle had been nearly entirely burnt through where the acid had landed. The simple fact that the girl hadn’t even let out a single scream of pain was astounding to Luna. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂
"H-how are you alright?" She muttered to the human warrior as her magic numbed the pain and regrew flesh and muscle alike.
Olivia let out a small hiss of pain as she replied. "I-I have had... worse, when I was being t-trained." She managed to get out, a sigh of relief still escaped her as Luna’s magic finally covered all of her wounds and began getting to work putting her back together. "T-thank you." She said in a soft tone as Luna was finishing up.
"You don’t have to thank me for this, we are a team remember." Luna said as she smiled down at the shy yet stoic girl before her. "I have to ask though, feel free to not say if you don’t want to, but. What kind of training did you go through for this to not seem like much to you?"
The other girls were nodding in agreement of that, all equally wondering what kind of hell this girl went through to think so.
"M-my family was training me to be a paladin. So put me through some training to ensure that... that I could handle any kind of pain. But thankfully, I think, they then fell into debt and decided to cut my training short."
Her words were spoken softly, not with her usual shyness but with an air of sorrow and pain. Luna who was standing next to the girl pulled her into a firm hug.
"That must have been hard." She didn’t say anything else, she knew that saying empty words would mean less than simply being accepting of the pain she showed at that moment.
Olivia stiffened when the hug was first initiated, unsure of how to respond. Yet she soon relaxed into it, even halfheartedly returning the hug.
Soon Luna broke the hug, sensing that whilst appreciated, Olivia wasn’t one for hugging nearly as much as she was. Still she couldn’t help but ask a follow up question.
"So what is it that you do now? I mean your obviously an adventure but is that all that you are?"
Olivia seemed to take a moment to pull herself back together before she answered. " y-yes I am an adventure. But, I am also an acolyte of the Wild Order." She either didn’t notice when the 4 girls suddenly tensed up when they heard those words, instead continuing on as if she hadn’t noticed.
"After my family fell into debt. I-I still wanted to grow stronger, I could have just become an adventure, but I also wanted to be trained to fight properly. A-and with my nature specialisation, it made sense for me to join the order."
The girls glanced at each other, eyes flickering back and forth between Olivia and each other. Violet was the one to speak up first. "So what made you decide to come on this expedition?"
"No real reason, I-I got a message from an elder that this would be a good opportunity for me to grow stronger. So I decided to join up." Violet was intensely focused on her words, she wanted to trust Olivia, she truly did. The human had been nothing but kind and competent ever since joining their group.
Yet after her experience with Ivy, her oppinion of the order had dropped significantly. She knew instinctively that it was not right of her to judge everyone in an organisation against the actions of a few, yet knowing that and actually putting that to action was two different things.
But as she observed the human before her, she could not sense any deceit or hidden danger coming from her. Plus her mention of simply being told to come attend this expedition could have been a simple coincidence.
Violet strongly doubted that it was a coincidence, but did believe that Olivia personally had no hidden objectives, she seemed like a poor choice to send on some covert operation with a hidden agenda.
Yet it seemed like the silence had dragged on for a touch too long, Olivia was now shifting from one foot to the other slightly uncomfortably, she had looked up and seen the complicated faces that the girls were making. "Umm, is e-everything okay?"
That seemed to snap the girls out of their thoughts and Violet quickly replied. "Yes, yeah everything is alright. We just had a bad experience with the Wild Order, we were a bit surprised to hear that you were a member of it. But it’s alright." She glanced at the other girls to check. "We like you, so we will try not let that effect how we treat you."
Olivia seemed surprised at their words, not having expected them to have had a bad experience with the order. If anything she would have thought that they had a good relationship with them, especially since both Violet and Luna had such a strong sense of the wilds about them.
"R-really? Oh... I umm I thought you were a part of them, t-that’s why I first approached you." Seeing the look of surprise on the girls faces she continued. "You both have such a s-strong feeling of the wilds about you, I-i just assumed that you were a part of the order."
That surprised the girls, having not expected that factor to be the deciding factor for why they had been approached. In fact it actually helped ease their worries quite a bit, Luna even letting out a short laugh of amusement.
"Haha, I didn’t expect that to be the reason. But no, we have that not because we are related to the order, but because we are beasts, not enlightened."
Olivia’s head snapped up at that as she stared at Luna in evident shock. "Eh, ehhh. Y-your a-all beasts?"
"I’m not!" Susan helpfully answered. "But everyone else is yes."
The poor human stood frozen in place then, her mind apparently having gone into shock at that revelation. "Wha, but, but, how?" She eloquently asked the girls.
Violet, sharing a mischievous look with Luna smiled. She did quickly ask the other girls through telepathy her plan, getting reluctant agreements from them. "Well, do you want me to show you?" She asked Olivia.
Olivia seemed to take a moment to process that, yet soon nodded her agreement, her curiosity overwhelming her at that moment. So it was that she watched as Violet took several steps away from the group, then turned around to face her.
She smiled mischievously at Olivia before a flash of purple light emenated from her figure, Olivia closer her eyes against the blinding light, rubbing them to clear the afterimage. When she next opened her eyes however, she was not expecting to see a large dragon towering over her.
In fact she was so unprepared to see that in fact, that she promptly fainted and fell face first to the floor.
"Oh." Muttered Violet in her deep draconic voice. "Opposites."
