Rescue and Treatment
“Leylin, my friend, you must help me!” At the mention of this curse that was like a maggot hidden in his bones, Bodach put on a painful expression. His huge body laid down on the ground, eyes pitiful as he gazed up at Leylin like an ant. The scene was rather hilarious.
“This… It’s quite troublesome…” Leylin furrowed his brows, as if this was extremely difficult. “Why don’t you try settling this with that Lord of Calamity? He’s currently hibernating, so he probably wouldn’t be willing to offend a foreign being of laws too much, no?” He proposed.
“No, his suolo gems are still with me… Err… No, Bodach didn’t steal anything. I’m being maligned…” The one-eyed dragon confessed everything without being pressed.
“I see…” Leylin turned and left, having no interest in offending a powerful Lord of Calamity for a thief.
“Uh… Wait, my friend. Bodach can help you!” Seeing Leylin intend to leave, the dragon immediately began to panick. Having been tortured by these injuries for such a long time, he knew that this Magus was the only one able to help him aside from that Lord of Calamity himself.
“Oh? Help me?” Leylin halted his footsteps, judging the huge body of the One-Eyed Dragon and his yellow eyes with interest, “You know what I need?”
“No…” Bodach answered honestly, “But Bodach once smelled you near the northern territories of the Lords of Calamity….”
“My smell…” Leylin did not know whether to laugh or cry, but he did know that one-eyed dragons had extremely sensitive senses of smells.
More importantly, they did not just distinguish between the particles in the air, but tracked things down based on the smells of souls. Hence, even though thousands or tens of thousands of years had passed, anything that Leylin had made contact with back then would not be able to escape his senses.
“Yes… It’s a tiny area where some natives work. I once smelt your scent at the very centre… It was rather weak… Whether the tribe, or you back then!”
The one-eyed dragon had a crafty look in his yellow eyes, “I assume… pursuing that friendship in your youth must be one of the reasons that you’ve come to Dreamscape, right?”
‘Seems like he really has once seen Gillian’s tribe…’ Leylin nodded, ‘But… you’re too naive. Did you think I would offend a Lord of Calamity over a few natives?
‘Even with my personal feelings towards them, the value of the natives can’t be compared with what might happen…’ His relationship with Gillian and the rest were just like strangers coming together at best, taking what they needed from each other. Leylin had probably even invested more, and merely wanted to take a look at them on the way.
Taking care of a complicated curse just to obtain information on them, even offending a Lord of Calamity? Leylin wasn’t that foolish.
“I hate Magi the most. They’re all so cool-headed and full of schemes… Don’t you know that in the Ultron World helping others is a great virtue?” Bodach mumbled in his dissatisfaction.
“That’s why the Ultron World was swept into a few great wars, dropping down from a medium-ranked world to a low-ranked world without a name for itself. Perhaps you’re its only remaining being of laws…”
Leylin gazed at him, causing the other party to unconsciously look away, “Did you think that I’d never read the epics of Ultron’s rise and fall?”
“Fine! Your great knowledge makes it such that you won’t ever be at a disadvantage! I’ll need to include this in my reflections about the scent of Magi, and pass it down to those of my race…” The dragon looked crestfallen, “You’ve won. Speak! What do you want before you’ll heal me?”
“That’s the way!” Leylin turned, a smile on his face.
News of a few natives was obviously not enough for him to change his mind, but a rank 7 dragon of laws was somewhat passable.
“Firstly… The Dragon Tribe’s Contract of Alliance from before needs to be amended! Give me news about the natives too… And… even if we’re found by the Lord of Calamity, I’m just a doctor that you sought out and have nothing to do with this. You are to swear all this upon your truesoul of laws, to the astral and river of space and time!”
As a Lord of Baator, Leylin’s ability with contracts was almost comparable to the great Archdevils. Even the one-eyed dragon broke out in cold sweat.
“Goodness… Even the Tieman astral beings, known in the astral world for how harsh they are in their contracts, can’t set up such stringent and harsh contracts…” Bodach lamented, grabbing at his head with his huge dragon claws.
Unfortunately, the ball was now in Leylin’s court. He still needed to get Leylin to solve his problems, and therefore had no way to say no.
After they both made the soul oath using their truesouls of laws, Leylin sized up the one-eyed dragon who was as large as a mountain and frowned. “Your body is too huge. Become like me!”
“That’s easy…” Bodach agreed, body shrinking and melting into a purple light as he turned into a middle-aged man with long purple hair.
Perhaps it was the difference in their races’ aesthetics, but Bodach had a single eye in this form, a yellow vertical one. Numerous red blood vessels bulged everywhere, making him look somewhat frightening.
However, Leylin did not mind that much. After all, there were far too many strange beings in the astral plane similar to humans. Dreamscape was a region with even more creativity in this area, which was why there was nothing strange about strange life forms similar to humans here.
“But…” Leylin took a look at the back of Bodach’s hand, arm and shoulder. There were still purple eye marks there, stubborn and not disappearing.
“See for yourself… It’s so troublesome…” Bodach pinched and broke a purple eye, and large amounts of yellow pus dripped to the ground, corroding into it further to leave a deep dark hole. A new circle of eyes appeared around the purple eyeballs, even more slender than before yet still possessing the same immense hatred and malicious intent.
‘You stole someone else’s possessions and still dare complain?’ Leylin rolled his eyes inside, speechless. However, he knew that what he’d done was more infuriating than that, and besides he was making use of the dragon. He wasn’t in a position to criticize Bodach.
“I’ll need some time to remove the malicious intent…” Leylin extended his right hand, swiping up some pus with his index finger. The corrosive liquid obviously could do nothing against Leylin, and was burnt to ashes by some green phosphorescence.
Traces of black gas appeared above the green flames, converging to form a few wailing faces that gradually dissipated.
“This person’s knowledge on souls is not too bad. It’s an expert…” Leylin nodded, motivation and fervour evident in his eyes.
“Leylin, my friend. Based on the contract, you need to remove a portion of the curse to prove your abilities before it can be effective…” The middle-aged cyclops that Bodach had become gazed at Leylin with anxiousness. Desire and thirst were evident in that single eye.
“Though I can’t remove the curse immediately, it shouldn’t be a problem to interfere with his tracking you. Wear this.” Leylin rummaged through his item-storing magic artifact and found a silver hoop for the head, tossing it to Bodach.
The hoop was completely silver and had strange crimson lines on it, similar to a human’s veins as it squirmed slightly.
“Hm? Leylin, have you gone to the Shadow World before too? The Towa people there like this style of accessories a lot…” Bodach examined it again and again, and even sniffed at it with his nose carefully.
At the end, probably after determining there was nothing with it and perhaps from faith in the contract, he chose to wear it.
“Hm? I sense that the malicious intent that seemed to be on my back has finally disappeared…” The moment the one-eyed dragon the hoop, he immediately sighed in relief. He’d been afraid of the Lord of Calamity tracking him down before, which was why he’d been fleeing like a stray dog when he bumped into Leylin. No matter what he did, there was no way to stop the tracking from the curse. However, this feeling finally disappeared from his bones.
“Great! This is great…” Bodach cheered, his sound so powerful that the dust in the surroundings vibrated.
Leylin waved his hands and spoke stonily. “Alright. Bring me to the place you felt me connected with last, and be quick about it!”
“No problem,” Bodach patted his chest in guarantee, before looking at Leylin with worry, “It’s at the boundary of the River of Annihilated Sighs. We need to pass through regions where three Lords of Calamity are sealed. Leylin, my friend, does this thing really work?”
“Don’t worry. Let’s go!” With how Bodach was acting, Leylin knew that he must have offended one of these three Lords.
However, he was rather confident in his concealment. Besides, while Bodach had been discovered and was being pursued, the fact that the two of them were existences of laws would still strike fear in the other party’s heart. When the time come, Bodach could hand over that suolo gem or whatever it was, and the other side would not put too much pressure on them.
‘And… a Lord of Calamity?’ That would be an evil god native to Dreamscape. Between two existences of laws, with one possessing the Nightmare Absorbing Physique, who would have the upper hand?
Leylin’s eyes flashed, and he suppressed the fervour in his mind.
……
The old one-eyed dragon was an experienced treasure-hunter after all. He was extremely familiar with the regions in Dreamscape, especially the special underground passages.
Under his lead, Leylin passed through the regions of the three Lords of Calamities without any dangers and arrived at the depths of the northern region. Life in this area was much more abundant, and according to Bodach’s information Gillian and her tribe had most likely relocated to this area, and seemed to be doing pretty well.