"So this is magic..." he whispered under his breath.
His eyes were fixed on the spikes until they shattered, and a moment later the woman hobbled and fell down, losing consciousness.
"Miss!" he gasped, running to her. Fortunately, he was already just a few steps away from her, otherwise his slow self wouldn’t have made it in time to catch her.
She landed straight into his arms, the movements causing her cloak to slide down, revealing her face.
Finn’s hazel eyes widened a little.
She was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Her features were ethereal, her skin completely free from pores, and her face framed by silvery hair that seemed to reflect all light around her.
He cleared his throat and gathered himself so he could take her to the other room. Sadly, even when the door opened, there seemed to be something invisible blocking his way.
[This guest has not yet registered.]
"..."
To register a guest, the person had to be awake and pay him, and only then would his/her name appear in the Front Desk for checking in.
Finn looked at the pale woman who was still bleeding at this time. He tried to wake her up, but she didn’t, and frankly he couldn’t bear to push her too much in her state.
"Can’t I just ask for payment later?"
"Not allowed, la."
"Can I pay in her stead?"
"Not allowed, la."
He gave the panda a look. The Inn was technically his, why were there so many rules he couldn’t bypass?ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ NoveIＦire.net
"It’s just something automatic, la, even I can’t do anything about it."
Finn sighed, giving up. Fortunately, the sofa was wide and comfortable, and even the public areas of the inn had some regeneration buff.
He gently placed her on the surface and checked her wounds. It was still bleeding, causing another mess on the sofa. The sofa itself wasn’t staining—it must be a characteristic of inn furniture—but he was more concerned about stopping the poor woman from bleeding to death.
His eyebrows furrowed and he whipped his head to look at Pang. "How do I handle this?"
"Why are you asking Pang?"
"You lived for so long, don’t you know about first aid?"
"Pang knows first aid for spirits . For example, if we get weak, just feed us—"
Finn ignored him. He carefully took off her cloak, revealing the unusual patterned dress she had on. That said, he hadn’t seen other people there yet, so he didn’t know if this was the norm.
But this was not human, he reminded himself, and that was confirmed when he saw that her ears were a bit elongated.
She had been injured by something sharp, and the wound extended from the top of her shoulder to just above her breasts. There was a thick dried blood there so it seemed to be a few days old already.
She must’ve been suffering from injury for days, if not weeks.
If he were to guess, the wound opened up lately, probably when she was being chased by beasts. He thought for a while and used a knife from the kitchen to take away this part of the dress so he could clean up the wound, lest it got infected.
Clank!
"...huh." Finn stared at the knife....that couldn’t even cut a single thread in the cloth’s fabric.
He tried again, realizing this was probably some sort of defense equipment.
"..."
For a moment he thought he’d have to undress her, but he remembered that he didn’t even have water to wash the wound, so there was no point to it.
"Anyway, I can only bandage it now, maybe put some of those sunberry leaves..." He knew that they had some healing effects.
When he gathered ingredients, he made sure his little space was full. However, since the actual stuff he needed was limited, he also took whatever interested him at the time, including a handful of sunberry leaves. He used the mortar and pestle to make a rough paste.
The regeneration effects of the Inn were stackable with whatever was going on. So if the paste had some effect, then it would be further multiplied by her just being in the room.
Of course, Finn reminded himself that she was a guest and not the innkeeper, so he should manage his expectations.
For the bandage, he had wanted to rip apart one of the blankets but he couldn’t. He physically couldn’t. According to Pang, Hearth Inn items naturally had high quality, he could only rip those fabric to shreds with ease once he reached the rank above Awakened.
In the end, he could only let it aerate her wound. Anyway, the air in the room should be clean.
He did not leave her side until he saw the bleeding actually stop. He had to replace the paste a few times during this time, and he noticed that the bleeding was indeed reducing, which was hopeful to him. It took about an hour, which was faster than he expected.
"She’s not a Dormant human like you, la," Pang said at the side. "They naturally have faster healing rates."
"I see..."
He heaved a deep breath, the tiredness from the earlier fights slowly catching up to him. Even when he had slept for a few hours, he was still exhausted due to everything that happened.
Anyway, he had done what he could do, considering how limited everything was.
He looked at her face that had grown pale and her eyebrows furrowed from pain and trouble.
Somehow, those moments in his childhood when he was beaten up so badly he had to fall asleep in pain from hunger as well as from the beatings.
He sighed, patting her head. His mother did this to him often to get him to sleep peacefully. During those horrid nights, he would remember this.
"Rest well," he said, voice gentle and soothing even when he himself wanted to just fall down and snore. "Then you will have the energy for the next day."