Climbing the Ranks - Chapter 26 preview (Patreon)

“If we keep meeting like this, I’m going to want a name,” Arthur said, clutching his side. The bleeding wasn’t stopping and he needed to fix that soon. Though maybe making sure Budo didn’t wake up was more important. Or perhaps the girls in front of him.

Damn. Blood loss really was kicking his ass.

“A name… how about I kick your-” the Northern Chinese girl fell silent as the leader held a hand up, cutting her off.

“Daiyu. Enough.” The leader stared at Arthur, looking at his bleeding torso then shrugged. “Sure, why not. I’m Mel. That’s Daiyu. Rina.”

“Arthur.” He offered them a weak grin, then realised weakness wasn’t just in his ability to smile. His legs gave way and to his surprise, Rina caught him and helped guide him down. Before he knew it, she had his shirt pulled up and a gauze bandage pushed against his side.

“Press on this,” she commanded. “Harder. No, harder!”

Hissing as the woman clamped down on his hand, Arthur found himself unable to breathe. Eventually the spike of pain faded, leaving him able to take slow, hissing breaths. The bandage itself was soaked through almost immediately with his blood, but on the ground and the bleeding staunched a little, he was able to focus better.

Not that the math was hard. Women – not trying to kill him.

Budo – tried to kill him.

So, kill Budo.

“Just give me a second. I just need…” Searching along his waist, he finally found the survival knife he kept. A flick of his wrist popped it open, only for his hand to be clamped down upon by the woman who had been looking for a bandage to wrap around his chest.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Rina said, her voice dangerously calm.

Maybe he was a little more loopy with blood loss than he thought. Everything was rather hazy, but he was trying his best. Which meant… “Going to stab Budo. Make sure he doesn’t wake up and finish the job.” A pause, then he added. “Of killing me. Trying to kill me.” Another pause. “Might have succeeded actually…”

He shivered, from the cold more than anything else. Though with adrenaline wearing off, he found himself shuddering more and more, at how close things had gotten.

“Shit. Shock. I need to warm him up. He needs blood too,” Rina spoke up, pointing at Arthur. “If we don’t want him dead, we’re going to have to give him a Blood Replacing pill.”

“No way. Do you know how expensive those things are?” Daiyu snapped. “I’m not paying for it.”

“He did get us Budo. Which means we do owe him,” Mel said.

“Can’t owe a dead man. And he’s about to die.”

“True.”

“You can’t be serious!” Rina said, having released him and finished wrapping the gauze and bandage around his body during the argument. “I know you don’t like men, but he’s done nothing to us. We can’t just let him die.”

“Watch me,” Daiyu muttered.

Arthur, watching the argument felt something flash in him and then he raised a finger and pointed it at the bickering girls. The fact that the hand clutched his knife just helped him emphasise his point, he figured. Also, he’d forgotten it was there till he started talking.

“Look here. Just take him. If I find you, we’ll call it as you owing me one. Got it? And if I die, well – she’s right. Can’t owe a dead man,” Arthur said.

“Why should we deal with you?” Daiyu sniffed.

“Bold.” Mel had a little smile on her face, looking at Arthur. Then she grinned. “Sure. Deal. We’ll owe you one, if you survive. Girls, grab Budo. We got some questions for him.”

“I…” Rina began to protest, only to fall silent as Arthur turned his head to her, giving her a tight grin.

“Look, it’s the Tower. The strong survive, the weak die. So, you get going and I’ll get to showing you all. I’m not weak.”

Rina bit her lip but eventually nodded and stood up. “You need to stitch that wound close, but we don’t have dissolving stitches. And if you do manage to survive, cultivator bodies heal too fast for normal stitches, so you’re just going to have to suffer. It’ll leave a divot in your body, but it should even out. Eventually.”

“Gotcha. Now, shoo…” Arthur waved his hand weakly, continuing to stay slumped against the tree. He stayed in that position until the trio had left, allowing him the peace and ability to do what he really needed to do.

“Not much refined energy…” Arthur groaned, checking his own core. Thankfully, Focused Strike used tower energy, not refined energy so he had not touched his store as yet. That meant all he had to do was focus within, pull it out and begin the process of accelerating his healing.

Except this time, eyes closed, he focused first on dealing with the open wound, closing and stitching together blood vessels and other massively haemoraghing wounds. At least, that’s what he thought he was doing – it was not as though he was pulling skeins of yarn with chopsticks apart. No, that would be easy. This was much more complicated – like picking out different kinds of noodles, badly blindfolded while being colourblind.

On the other hand, just accelerating his overall healing process helped replace some of the blood he had loss which cleared his head. That meant he was less likely to faint, which made the process he was undergoing slightly easier.

Step one. Stop the bleeding. Between clotting, bandages and him finally managing to knot split arteries together, he managed that process. It was not perfect, but it was better than nothing. Next step, and the last partial point of refined energy he had left available was to shore up the wound itself.

After that, he was going to have to cultivate and refine the energy from the surroundings. And hope that no monster came across his body before it chose to eat him.