บท 13: Unbearable
'Another one?' he thought tiredly.
He didn't even feel angry, just exhausted. So far, each encounter he had with a demon had led to him very nearly dying, and only surviving thanks to the Demonic Grass.
Down here, that safety net was nowhere to be found, and while his Domain told him this demon was slightly weaker than he was – in terms of Majesty, anyway – an animal was an animal, and he hadn't been in this world long enough to confidently declare himself physically superior to even the weakest demons, even if his Majesty was above theirs.
The fact that he could sense the demon's Majesty was little more than an afterthought to Lokus, as he expected to be able to do so once the cloaked woman had explained to him that he could tell the value of demon claws with his Domain.
Rather, his dominant feeling at the moment was just…
Tiredness.
It only now occurred to him that he had run dozens of kilometers over the last day or so, and hadn't slept in at least two. That, plus his exertive escape from the momentum-stealing lake, coupled with the trauma of being eaten alive not once, but twice, and being faced with the prospect of a third, was so much that Lokus instantly felt a wave of lethargy overcome him.
He coughed, hacking out a mouthful of blood and spitting it onto the rocky ground near the tiger demon's paws, but his eyes were almost vacant as he watched it scurry back like a cat trying to escape a bath.
It approached him cautiously, bending down as its snout sniffed at the blood Lokus had spat up.
"Hisssss…"
The tiger hissed angrily, flicking its tail and leaving without another word.
Lokus' gaze flickered to the screen of his system.
[Condition: Sick (Poisoned)]
Lokus let out a small snort through his nose, dropping onto his ass and leaning against the broken wreckage of his sled. 'Guess it doesn't like tainted goods.'
His eyelids drooped, and he stifled a yawn as he scratched at his bare chest. His brief dive into the lake had washed him off the blood and vomit that had covered him previously, leaving him cleaner than he had maybe ever been before in his life.
Bathing had been a somewhat foreign concept to him upon arrival to Evenfall, a concept he was quickly introduced to as he applied for and was denied several jobs. No one wanted a stinky peasant in their store.
Commoners, like him, usually bathed once a month or so. The baths the city provided were fairly expensive, and Lokus only bothered with them to keep his shitty job so he could save up the money to leave.
For the nobles, this time was shortened to a week on average, with some having the seemingly endless wealth and frivolity necessary to bathe every day.
The point being, right now, Lokus felt like he had just finished five back-to-back showers with intensive scrubbing and excessive soap, because when he pulled his hand away and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger, he couldn't find a single speck of dirt.
'Guess that stuff isn't only good for being a death trap.'
Glancing into the darkness where the tiger demon had disappeared, he briefly wondered if it would be safe to sleep here. If the tiger demon changed its mind, deciding it wanted Lokus steak after all, it catching him mid-dream was a recipe for disaster.
But, at the same time, right now Lokus truly couldn't bring himself to care. The fatigue of the last several hours hit him all at once like a freight train, leaving even his sense of danger dulled to the point that if it were a knife, it would be hard-pressed to even scrape butter.
'I'm just going to… close my eyes for a few minutes,' he told himself, already nodding off. 'My Domain will… let me know if something… appears…'
Reassuring himself that this would be the case, which was supremely easy with his current mental state, he drifted off into a deep, deep sleep.
...…
Lokus woke up to a violent coughing fit, falling onto his elbow and vomiting up blood and what little was left of the large plain demon in his stomach out onto the floor.
Shivers wracked his body as his diaphragm worked over and over, pumping on his stomach as if demanding he expel more. For a solid thirteen minutes, Lokus did nothing but vomit blood and sick.
'The grass…' he managed to think in between pained upchucking. 'It's getting worse…'
Never would he have imagined such a miraculous plant bringing with it such debilitating side effects. Why would the same thing that saved him from life-threatening injuries then threaten his life itself? How cruel was nature, to stuff two completely opposite effects into the same herb?
"Hrk!"
Lokus seized, his joints locking up as his stomach flew up and down. At that moment, he looked like a cat trying to throw up a hairball, and it felt even worse than it looked.
"Plwah!!!"
A thick, disgusting globule of congealed black blood left his mouth and plopped onto the ground in front of him, instantly assaulting his nose with a smell several times worse than anything he had ever smelled before.
His head dropped as another wave of vomit spewed from his lips, but this time it had nothing to do with the poison.
He took in a deep, shaky breath when his convulsing stopped, and he pushed himself onto his knees, throwing his head back to look at where the light above had been before.
'Night time,' he thought off-handedly as he caught his breath.
Bringing an arm up to his nose, he took a sniff, only to grimace in distaste.
'So much for clean.'
Sweat soaked his figure, and not an insignificant amount of the blood and vomit had splashed back onto him during its egress, leaving him almost as dirty as when he had fallen down here.
It was so unbearable that for a second, he contemplated jumping into the lake and cleansing himself, but he had to morosely shelve the idea. It wasn't worth the trouble.
Lokus stood and staggered over to the remains of his sled. Now that he knew demons were down here, he wanted to find something, anything to defend himself with.
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