After defeating the manticore, a massive wave of experience came rolling in.
But Xue La had no interest at all.
As a veteran player, she knew this precious experience was meant to be used for building her class system.
Getting her build done early and graduating was the most important thing.
Life skills… those trivial little tricks could wait until later!
But now, Xue La didn’t want to see Luo Yi suffering so much.
She couldn’t really explain why.
Even though they had only known each other for a few days.
Was it because he loved her? Unlikely.
Was it because he saved her? Perhaps.
Without Luo Yi’s decisive strike, Xue La would have… really been deleted from the game.
She didn’t have time to analyze those feelings… they were external things.
The key point now was that Luo Yi was a teammate who had helped her take down the manticore.
He couldn’t just die for nothing.
Ideals and reality aside.
After experiencing the crisis of being killed by the manticore’s claw, Xue La seemed to understand a lot.
Because life was precious.
So Xue La searched through all her skill panels and chose the “First Aid” auxiliary skill.
She needed to learn how to stop bleeding, bandage, and handle poison.
Luo Yi’s vision was blurry, but he still saw this scene.
Xue La abandoned the reserve expected of a noble young lady and actually took off her sky-blue dress, exposing the white undergarments to view.
Every detail of the lace trim, he could see clearly…
“Are you getting a nosebleed?”
Xue La approached, holding a pile of blue fabric in her hands—pieces she had just torn from her dress.
What was a dress compared to this?
She was going to turn trash into treasure, using simple bandages to save Luo Yi’s life.
“Probably the poison,” Xue La said as she pulled up one of Luo Yi’s arms and hoisted it over her shoulder.
They were so close that Luo Yi could smell the unique fragrance of a girl.
“Why is the nosebleed getting worse?” Xue La muttered.
“Luo Yi, drop your sword—it’s too heavy! I need to move you to a safe place and bandage you!”
She signaled Luo Yi to lie down next to a large rock, then under the dim light of the cave, she began to treat his wounds.
“Lady, you don’t have to…”
“I just… did what a brave should do—even though I’m not a brave, but I…”
“You already are, you idiot!”
Xue La’s eyes glistened with tears.
It was the first time she had cried for a strange young man.
“Don’t talk anymore. The wound is what matters…”
It had to be said, Xue La’s fingers were quite nimble.
She made two knots with the simple bandages, one to cover the wound, and the other to tighten around the calf, preventing the poison from flowing to the heart.
Otherwise, Luo Yi really would have…
Xue La barely calmed down—she opened her panel and saw good data.
Luo Yi’s status was “Bleeding (Treated), Poisoned (Alleviated).”
The only drawback was that Luo Yi’s “Weakened” status hadn’t disappeared.
After all, the manticore’s poison…
As time passed, Luo Yi’s forehead was clearly burning up.
‘Final rally?’
Xue La thought with anxiety.
‘I have to bring down his fever, or he won’t make it!’
During this time, Luo Yi had hardly spoken a few words to Xue La, just responding with “mm-hmm.”
Terrible, just terrible.
Were hope and despair coexisting?
But this was life.
Xue La, for some reason, remembered her previous life on Blue Star.
Back then, she was just a fledgling apprentice at a Western restaurant, living a hard life, only happy on payday.
So this was life.
Luo Yi raised his head with difficulty and saw Xue La, flustered and at a loss.
The red-haired, gray-eyed young man smiled bitterly and struggled to pull out from his pocket a pile of things that Xue La had seen before.
Plant roots—Luo Yi had tried to share them before, but Xue La hadn’t accepted them.
This stuff was bitter and hard to swallow!
Far inferior to Xue La’s cookies.
But this stuff could keep you alive.
“Xue La…”
“Just take these… You guys won’t die… These can help you survive a few more days.”
Xue La took them, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Lady…”
“I’m sorry, my dirty hands soiled your—your hand is so cold.”
At that moment, Xue La seemed to understand something.
‘Yes, there’s no ice or water source here.’
‘And Xue La herself, because she is a girl, is the best ice!’
So the girl no longer hesitated and simply hugged Luo Yi.
Forehead to forehead.
“If you die, I don’t know what I’ll do about the future.”
That was the last thing Xue La said to Luo Yi.
In a sense, it was true, after all, Xue La hoped the brave would survive to defeat the Demon King, so she could become a noble young lady who kept out of worldly affairs…
Then, accompanied by fear and exhaustion, she also drifted off to sleep.
She forgot to check the panel one last time.
But it wasn’t a big deal.
The first thing was that Luo Yi’s abnormal status had been removed.
The second thing was that, without her noticing, a new panel had appeared…
But Xue La just didn’t know.
The last thing was that, on the party interface, Luo Yi’s affection level for Xue La… had maxed out.
After all, no man would refuse a girl who shared life and death with him.
A soft touch enveloped Xue La’s whole body.
Hmm, it seemed she had been deleted from the game.
Game over, meow.
But when she opened her eyes, she saw a bright, clean lady’s bedroom.
She was lying right there.
Just half a day after Xue La and Luo Yi fell asleep in each other’s arms, waiting for death—the search party organized by the nobles finally arrived.
Briang Lind sat at his desk, listening to the report from his knight, Kai Luosi.
At least, his daughter had returned safely.
That was a terrible thing, wasn’t it?
House Linde wasn’t some great family.
It was just a pious family in the countryside focused on harvesting wheat, herding sheep, and logging, not ranking high in the vast Kingdom of Norsenia—some noble names were sung in the court, but House Linde was the other kind, their names exchanged in the bakeries and wool merchants’ gossip of the royal capital.
Just an ordinary family.
And then, during a festival celebration, they ran into that damned manticore!
He wanted to summon the guards to protect his family, but he had missed his only daughter, Xue La, who had strayed out of sight playing, and was taken by the manticore along with other lowborn children.
Briang tried to order the guards to deal with it.
With a volley of crossbows and a rain of arrows, they could surely kill that beast of a manticore!
But the guards couldn’t do it—they thought the manticore was mixed in with the crowd, and blind shooting would only hurt the innocent and further disrupt order.
Even Count Briang himself couldn’t argue against that…
So he could only watch helplessly as his beloved daughter was taken by the monster.
Should he blame the incompetence of his useless subordinates?
But Sir Kai Luosi… had redeemed himself.
“…And that’s how we retrieved Lady Xue La Linde…”
Kai Luosi said.
This man had golden curly hair.
After being knighted by Lord Briang, he could afford to style his hair more flamboyantly with beeswax and castor oil.
However, that also increased his expenses, and his knight’s salary… didn’t seem enough.
So Sir Kai Luosi often found excuses to ask for rewards.
Even Briang thought it was too much.
“Though the scene I witnessed in the cave was heartbreaking, my men can all testify…”
Kai Luosi said.
“That manticore is dead, cut in half by a heavy sword—and beside the manticore’s corpse was only my son, Kai Dong’s remains…”
“Therefore, I have every reason to believe that my son died a heroic death protecting Lady Xue La!”
Kai Luosi took a deep breath and squeezed tears from the corners of his eyes.