Swallowing the pill, the pill dissolved the moment it hit his stomach.
The effect began as a warm, spreading pulse from his abdomen, the same pattern the Bone-Tempering Pill had produced, but redirected. The Nine-Turn Restoration Pill did not temper. It rebuilt.
Stan’s bones began to knit. His torn abdominal wall began to close. The muscle fibers wove back together in slow, deliberate weaves that his body’s ordinary regenerative processes could not have produced in months.
The blood that had pooled around him drew back into his body, the system’s regeneration medicine reversing the fluid loss with methodical efficiency.
His shredded face began to reconstruct itself layer by layer. Skin. Fat. Muscle. Skin again. His cheekbone, which had been exposed to open air, disappeared under a fresh growth of tissue.
The vampire’s crimson eyes narrowed as she watched.
"...A spatial treasure," she murmured. "Then now a regeneration medicine capable of restoring a severed limb."
Her voice carried the tight, controlled fascination of a woman who had just added a second item to a mental list she had been keeping since the moment Stan had reappeared in front of her.
"As expected. You have even more interesting things on you." She tilted her head, watching his chest wound close before her eyes. "How does a normal human get his hands on such treasures?"
She smiled. "You are even more interesting than I thought you are."
[Camilla Dragomir: Favorability +10.]
[Camilla Dragomir: Favorability 10.]
Stan’s mind, still lucid despite the physical trauma, caught the notification.
’She has a favorability counter.’
’If she has a counter, then the system considers her a valid target. Which means, if I can raise it high enough, the same protective dynamics that keep Sophie and the others attached to me might work on her.’
’If I can survive her for long enough to get there.’
His body finished healing.
The wound in his abdomen closed completely. The torn chest sealed. The abraded face regenerated. The blood that had painted the snow around him was gone, reabsorbed into his circulation. His bones knit. His muscles rewove. Within twenty-five seconds of swallowing the pill, he was, by every measurable standard, whole again.
He drew a deep, clean breath. The polar air stung his lungs. He was alive.
He sighed, ’I actually survived those brutal werewolves, unbelievable’
He sat up slowly, testing his body. Everything worked. His mobility was back. His strength was back. The exhaustion of the fight was still there, the pill had restored his structural integrity, not his stamina, but he could move, and he could think, and he could speak.
Across from him, the vampire watched with quiet, dangerous attention.
He rose to his knees.
She spoke before he could fully stand.
"I should drink you," she said calmly. "Your scent tells me you’ve consumed a great many superior treasures. Your blood should be of considerable benefit to me."
Stan cursed inwardly.
Her favorability was at ten. Ten was nothing. Ten was the number a stranger held for him after five minutes of conversation. Sophie had been at ten in the middle of his first live-stream to her. Ten did not mean protection.
Ten meant she would drink him the moment the entertainment value dropped.
He had watched her lick her lips as he had healed. He had seen the small, involuntary swallow she had made as his flesh had rewoven itself. She was hungry, and she was interested, and she was interested precisely because she was hungry. Her hunger made her observe him more than normal which made her get those minor details that made Stan even more interesting to her...
Hunger and Interest, these two impulses were braided together in whatever ancient, complicated psychology governed her kind.
He needed to give her a reason to keep him alive that was bigger than her thirst.
He did not beg. He held her gaze steadily and spoke with the calm, unhurried composure of a man who had negotiated with worse things than her in the past twenty-four hours.
"If you truly wanted me dead, I would have died the moment you saw me."
She was silent.
Then she chuckled, a low, rich, genuinely amused sound.
"You’re smarter than you look."
[Camilla Dragomir: Favorability +5.]
’That raised her favorability?’ Stan noted the increment with a small internal frown. The system’s mechanics were, he had long suspected, occasionally quirky. Sophie’s favorability had risen through kindness. Amelia’s had risen through rescue. Vivian’s had risen through domination. Camilla’s, it appeared, was going to rise through cleverness.
Which was a bit strange, what he said was something that was pretty obvious, it wasn’t too special at least that’s what he thought...
Anyways the vampire liked wit.
He filed that away.
His mind ran through the tactical possibilities with cold, focused precision.
He needed leverage.
He needed something the vampire wanted more than his blood, something he could offer her that she could not simply take by killing him.
The Spirit Pool. The werewolves had spoken of it. She had come here for it. Every hidden faction in the world was, at this moment, converging on it.
That spirit pool ks a treasure, but back then when he jumped from his private jet, the werewolves didn’t go after it but went after him.
He thought that they might have came for him just because of their hunger for human blood and flesh, but what if they came for him not only because they wanted to eat him but also because they couldn’t track the spirit pool...
It was a bit absurd but there was a chance and Stan was willing to take that chance..
’If she can find it herself, I have nothing to offer her.’
’But if she can’t find it, if the Qi convergence caused by the spirit pool in this region is too broad for even a vampire’s senses to localize the pool precisely, then I have something no one else can give her. I have the system’s map.’
He took a breath and began; "I know why you’re here."