Beside one of the distributaries of the great Lorls river, laid a young lady and a young man. They were Sato and the black-haired noble, Layla Arnhaunt.

After confirming her identity, Sato had decided to save the young lady’s life as he felt that she was the key to understanding the entire plot hidden away from him, which also included the reason why Cecilia was so desperate to kill him. Since he found a possible source for his answers, Sato would not let it go no matter what.

In order to avoid an awkward moment, Sato didn’t undress Layla but cut off the piece of clothing that covered her injury. Once he did so, Sato then removed the dressing that protected it from infections. He was then greeted with the sight of a grievous cut that ran horizontally through her abdomen, just a bit above Layla’s belly button.

Despite being properly dressed, the injury was still bleeding quite profusely and was an appalling sight for anyone to see. The cut was so deep that it had almost penetrated her intestines. Even so, the said organs were exposed to the open without the protection of a bandage. A closer look and one would notice that her flesh had patches of purple hue on them. Those were the areas heavily affected by the poison from the attack that had injured her.

Apart from the bleeding cut and poison, the next problem Sato had to handle was Layla’s damaged internal organs.

Unlike the previous two issues that could be resolved, albeit, with a lot of effort, the internal injuries weren’t within Sato’s area of expertise. He could simply employ his first aid knowledge to treat the two afflictions but for the internal injuries, a Healer class individual would be needed. A simple potion like the HP potion might not solve the issue for two major reasons.

One, HP potions weren’t as effective on NPCs as with players. One would need to purchase a  suited potion for NPCs if they desire to use it on them.

Finally, the HP potion Sato had would be even less effective as this was meant for players below level 20.

With each 10-20 levels, players would need to buy a new type of HP potion that would be more effective on themselves as an increase in strength reduced the efficacy of the potion. Hence the need for a new one. Obviously, the cost for a more effective potion was much higher than the lower version but it was worth it.

Layla was definitely above level 20 and not by a minor difference. This was very obvious from the fact that Sato couldn’t get a glimpse of her level as only question marks had been displayed when he used [Inspect]. So there was no doubt that the HP potions in Sato’s hands could do much. It might be able to patch up some of the less severe physical injuries like it did with Cecilia, but acting as an antidote to the poison, healing her internal organs or even patching up the large cut in her body was out of the question.

‘She has roughly 30 minutes left. If I can get her out of here and have Fudo and Katsuo look at her, I can preserve her life at least.’

Fudo was an Alchemist which was mostly the subclass associated with quite a lot of doctors in IR -alongside Apothecarist. As for Katsuo, he was a [Paladin] and was equipped with healing spells. Though, due to the level difference, Katsuo’s healing spells might not get Layla back to shape, it would be able to keep her alive just for Sato to bring her to town for proper treatment.

With a plan formulated in his head, there was only one problem left; getting Layla over to where the others were. Sato couldn’t call the over here as that would take time. The region here was only a walk in the park for the level 18 Sato and not the rest of his teammates. He would have to move over to a safer spot for them to proceed without a hitch.

“Hopefully, you can hold out just long enough.”

Sato poured a bit of HP potions on Layla’s physical injuries while also feeding her some of it. He then took out a piece of clothing and used it to wrap the injury on her body to stop the bleeding. While the HP potion might not be enough to heal the wound or make Layla recover instantly it managed to stop her bleeding.

.  .  .

.  .  .

.  .  .

A couple of minutes ago…

[[ System Notification :

World-wide Server Announcement :

Congratulations to the team, Emperor’s Might, for completing the achievement [First Completion: Regionals], by completing the dungeon [Mole Land].

Rewarding Players…

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…

…

]]

“We did it!!!”

“Yes!!”

“Long live the Emperor!”

Loud noises rang out as the sounds of celebration reverberated around. The ambience was filled with joy, festivity and relief because at that moment, the branch of the famed super guild Emperor’s Might in the Fallen Heart Kingdom, had made history as they were the first to have completed a dungeon in their region.

While this achievement couldn’t compared to its global counterpart, the branch guild never aimed for that since they knew their limits. Rather, they had aimed to dominate the region they were assigned to.

Previously, under Azure Dragon’s command, the future of the guild was unknown and didn’t look so promising. While it was true that they had made a name for themselves starting with the goblin event at Gnorka, taking 4 spots out of the top 10 individual rankings, they had lost to East Crow in the group rankings and failed to secure the 1st and 3rd positions in the individual rankings despite being a branch of a super guild. Things even got worse when they lost a lot of men in their attack against the Kobold Chief, which ended with them dying at the hands of the Kobold King. The fate of the guild finally spiralled out of control after Seven Star Glory took the achievement for slaying the first King-rank monster in the game.

Alongside Battle Wolves, the branch guild was being mocked for turning into a stepping stone for a newly formed club, and as the leader of the branch guild, Azure Dragon didn’t have it easy. There were calls for sanction on his head from the main branch and even some of the elders who looked at him with favor expressed their disappointment.

For this reason, Azure Dragon had mobilised all the forces at his beck and call for this raid. He had been determined to duke it out to the end as he was aware that the dungeon raid was possibly his last chance of showing he was still worth leaving in command of the branch guild. Even though he was up against a newfound club that was supposedly on par with a 2nd tier guilds in terms of elite strength, as well as the main force of a true-blue 1st tier guild, Azure Dragon didn’t step back; rather, he couldn’t. He had to win and take the trophy home.

Maybe it was time for the sun to shine on him or that his ancestors’ grave[1] was emitting green smoke, but against all odds, Azure Dragon’s Emperor’s Might had pulled it off. His raid team had managed to clinch the title of first completion at a regional, and apart from the main branch, he was the only one to have done so so far. It was easy to understand how happy Azure Dragon was at this moment.

“Alright, guys. Let’s pack things up from here.” Azure Dragon smiled as he gave out his commands.

Following that, messages after messages swarmed into his mail box with most of them being congratulatory messages from his peers in the guild(as a whole). There was even two messages from two elder-rank figures on the guild.

“Haha. Who said that we were being overshadowed by some newborns was a fool. Didn’t we achieve what they couldn’t?” A roguish-looking guild member cheered.

Though the words were quite rude, since a few of the main guild members had actually said such, Azure Dragon didn’t silence the man as he shared the same thoughts.

Seven Star Glory? Never heard of them.

This was the era and region of Emperor’s Might; Azure Dragon’s Emperor’s Might.