Kidnapped to Another World

KTAW Chapter 18 Part A, revised

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Chapter 18 Part A

I woke up to a start. I shot up, realizing I'd fallen asleep and worrying about how long I'd been unaware and not watching. Stupid! Stupid, Stupid! I'd let me guard down! That was a bad thing to do with these girls and Rina near me. If something were to happen to any of them I'd be in hell.

But I'd been so exhausted also. After struggling to survive your body needs rest.

The last thing I'd remembered was trying to pour more "Cure" magic into Rina to the limits of my strength, but then I think I'd exhausted myself. My head hurt a bit. Perhaps I'd pushed myself too far?

The sun was up and shining, but it was still pretty early, early enough for dew to form still but not yet evaporated. I could smell the fresh dew in the grass around us. Frantically I looked around.

Near us about a hundred yards away one of the ranger job class students were still acting as sentry over the plain that led to the orc fortress, which was still too far to be visible but not far enough away that they couldn't find us soon. He was doing something to look and peer over some rocks and trees that he was using for cover. It was a lookout position.

The other students weren't very close to us, since Asakura Sensei had chosen this spot away from the boys...although some of them had seen me jealously with them, but it was only because Rina needed me. Most the time Yumi blocked them and told them to go away, since the girls were so good looking that a lot of them had wanted to be near us the past few days. Yumi did seem a bit too protective sometimes, but it'd actually made life easier for us.

That was my first sigh of relief, but not the last.

Its also interesting to that Asakura is hanging onto helping me and Rina. At first I think she'd done it to help Rina. Then she saw I was a decent guy. Then it seems she was often watching me and hanging onto being with me after discovering I have the heal skill.

And so far nobody else has a heal skill! I was lucky. My advantage was huge.

And many people still hadn't unlocked any abilities yet. We were still working on that.

I breathed in quietly and slow. At some point I'd collapsed while watching over Rina and Asakura Sensei, both sleeping. It was late when we finally got to share a nice fat fish between us delivered by the rangers; as they'd raced through camp delivering them quite late in the night. It was the only food we'd had yesterday.

Then I checked Rina's pulse and listened to her breathe. It was weak, but still a bit stronger than yesterday and more stable. I checked it again to be sure, on one minute counts each time. I had to account for fluctuating and variance.

"Cure!" I tried it again, and the small blue spark hit her. Good it was working, but it still felt kind of shaky and unstable. I'd need to practice it some more. I repeated it a couple of times, but it made me too weak to do more than the third time in a row. Each time the worsening fatigue was more painful than before, and even made my legs feel heavy just trying to walk around. I huffed just taking a few steps.

I was tempted to wonder about the costs in fatigue of using magic. But I was probably overthinking it.

Why had it weakened me so much?! And the gain was like nothing. I'd felt the blue spark go into Rina to boost her life force, but it'd felt like the spark itself was so tiny compared to how much she needed. To call it a spark really was how small the gain was.