Chapter 28 Steam-Powered Mechanical Power Arm <TOC> Chapter 30 His First Surgical Operation
Translator: SumTLMan
The woman in front of him was dressed in a long brown coarse linen robe, covered in a mixture of solidified black blood stains and congealed scarlet blood that was still flowing.
However, it didn’t look like her clothes fit too well, though her wide robe skirt gave a vague glimpse of deep snow-white skin.
Clearly, the linen garment looked more like it belonged to a man.
But even so, it couldn’t cover up her tall, proud figure at all.
She was barefoot with her ankles covered in blood from the impact of walking on gravel. These delicate feet looked as if they belonged to a pampered noblewoman, not a frequent traveller of the wilderness.
The woman’s face was covered with a thick strip of wet cloth, probably an improvised gas mask, which prevented Rayne from clearly seeing her visage.
A golden cascade of blonde, wavy hair clung wetly to her cheeks, making her look particularly frail.
However, meeting this suspicious lone woman in the wilderness had filled Rayne with a great deal of caution.
Especially… The fact that this woman’s hands were completely covered in blood!
It smelt like the strong fishy smell from a mixture of human and animal blood.
The woman from top to bottom gave him the creeps.
Alone, in the wilderness, drenched in blood, thinly dressed… There was no sign of her being an ordinary person at all.
Legend has it that there are monsters on the Ice Ridge Wilderness called [Wailing Banshees], these demon-infested spirits eroded by the magic fog are fatally dangerous. They would pretend to be helpless maidens and lure passers-by to come and help, then kill their saviour and eat their brains…
Is this a human or a monster?
Rayne didn’t dare make a move.
And the blonde masked woman was frozen in place like a deer in headlights that had burst out of the woods and met a hunter.
…….
The moment their two eyes met, Rayne clearly saw the hopeful light in the woman’s eyes quickly extinguished.
The gaze that seemed to hold a great deal of expectations had suddenly turned back into a gloom of despair.
“Not an Imperial Knight…”
The blonde woman murmured this line with a thin voice while her face suddenly darkened.
She could no longer hold herself steady as she immediately tumbled.
It had taken the last bit of her strength to get this far, and as soon as that bit of hope had collapsed, she couldn’t hold on any longer and finally fell onto the solid ground and fainted.
Ymir felt like her condition was critical…
Can one imagine how exciting it was for her to see the wheel marks appearing in the uninhabited wilderness from the special steam-powered vehicle belonging to the Omagh Imperial Mechanical Knights, given her dire circumstances?
It was still a fresh set of wheel marks and proof that an Imperial knight had just passed through the area not so long ago.
It occurred to Ymir that one of the knights-errant who had penetrated the “Bakaaya Highlands” on their own was probably a very strong knight-errant…
She might be saved.
She couldn’t remember how far she’d travelled in her daze, but the wheel marks were the only hope that kept her persevering…
Then the wheel marks disappeared out of thin air, and the motorcycle rider was nowhere to be seen.
In her desperation, she hears the sound of fighting and sees the light of fire…
Then, with her last glimmer of hope rekindled, she sought out the source.
When she saw Rayne, her hope turned into despair.
It turned out that he was just an ordinary traveller who had lost his way.
This was probably the end of her life.
……
“Dazed?”
Rayne’s brow furrowed, his gaze showing a touch of solemnity and suspicion.
This is the Ice Ridge Wilderness, and the chances of running into a fallen human were as low as being hit by a meteor.
And yet, there she was!
After a long period of observation, the woman lying on the ground still showed no signs of suddenly rising up to bite his neck.
Rayne’s perception, although faint, was that the woman had a heartbeat and was still breathing…
At least, it was a human being and not a banshee.
She had probably really fainted, he thought.
It was already late at night, the dew on the muddy ground had frozen to a white frost, and the temperature had dropped below freezing.
The woman, clad only in a linen robe, lay there quietly. Alone and helpless, she shivered like a wet kitten on a cold winter’s day.
……
This world wasn’t a kind one, and Rayne had felt it deeply during his year in the bandit gang.
He couldn’t imagine how this badly injured and unconscious woman had suddenly appeared in the wilderness.
Was this unconscious woman being chased by someone or something?
Or… Could it be something else?
Rayne wasn’t in a hurry to approach but took a closer look at her from a distance.
He found nothing on the woman’s body beside her linen robe that would give away any clues to her identity. No storage ring, no jewellery, no coins, no weapons, no hairpins…
Rayne had studied professional tracking and counter-tracking skills in the bandit gang. Given this observation, his mind instantly made a calm analysis: “There are no personal belongings on her, and even the linen robe isn’t meant for a female, so she must’ve pulled it off some random corpse. She was probably afraid of being tracked down to her location and got rid of everything identifiable on her body…”
He had already decided in his mind that the odds were likely that this woman was being hunted down.
Moreover, with his next glance, Rayne cast his gaze on the fresh blood on the woman’s clothes and confirmed: “She has untreated trauma on her chest, she fled in a hurry, her pursuers should still be looking for her…”
Then when he saw the scarlet under the nails of her hands, his pupils contracted sharply: “There are bits of flesh and blood left behind, and they’re still fresh!”
This made it easy to surmise that whether it was a human or a magical beast, this woman must’ve probably slaughtered some living creature with her bare hands on her way here and gotten these bits of minced flesh and tissue under her fingernails.
The beasts in the wilderness weren’t to be trifled with, and the three weakest fanged rabbits that had come before had almost left him in the lurch.
This woman was unarmed, so how had she made it into the depths of the wilderness on foot?
The only explanation was that this woman was someone stronger than he could handle, even with her severe injuries!
With this judgment, Rayne’s mind was immediately on alert and no longer intended to meddle in her affairs.
He had no intention of getting involved with this stranger who seemed to signal “big trouble”.
……
The woman was now unconscious in his camp. So, Rayne wanted to stay as far away from this trouble as possible, preferably by getting away from her first thing in the morning.
Since crossing the wilderness in the dark was even more dangerous.
It was clearly not wise to give up this safe camp with a campfire and look elsewhere after killing off three fanged rabbits.
“Just… I hope this woman has done a good job of throwing off her pursuers so that they won’t find her for a while.”
Rayne weighed his options in this matter for a moment and was ready to leave the woman to her own fate.
As soon as the sun came up, he would leave the camp at once.
I mean, although he was still a half-assed doctor, he can tell if he left her there alone, this seriously injured woman would definitely not survive the night. Either she’d bleed to death or freeze to death in the cold wilderness.
This is also his most convenient option and won’t bring him any trouble at all.
Besides, it costs more fuel to keep a second person from freezing.
Having made this decision, Rayne ignored her and closed his eyes to begin meditating.
The crackling of the campfire in his ears was particularly clear in the stillness of the night.
Rayne’s senses weren’t relaxed even though he was meditating, as he had to keep an eye open for any movement in the camp.
In this way, he wasn’t clear on how much time had passed since then.
He opened his eyes when the sound of a human voice suddenly came to his ears.
When his eyes fixated again, he found that it was the badly wounded woman who was talking in her sleep.
“My Lord Father, I believe that all men are created equal…”
“What makes humans great isn’t their ability to bully their fellow man, but in their ability to live with dignity in their struggle against this fog-filled world…”
“I dream of a day when all people, commoners and nobles alike, will enjoy the same freedom, opportunity and justice under the sun…”
“I hope that this light is revealed and shines upon our world…”
“…”
The frail voice was broken, but the words bore clearly into Rayne’s ears.
He looked at the seriously injured and unconscious woman, dreaming on her deathbed, and suddenly his face turned strangely pale.
In the year since he had transmigrated, he had seen and became accustomed to the selfishness of human nature, the cunning, the calculating and the cruelty…
And yet, this was the first time. It was as if Rayne had heard something different from all the previous noise.
It was as if, in the endless darkness, he saw a lone beacon of light that shone weakly but penetrated deeply into the depths of the dark.
Rayne hadn’t wanted to pay any attention or listen to her words.
Experience had taught him to stay out of trouble.
However, why was there this lingering feeling in his heart?
Research in his past life had been in-depth that dreams were when a person’s last psychological defences were at their weakest. The vast majority of the time, when the dreamer talked in their dreams, it was with their genuine human voice, without any false pretences.
Although he was reluctant to trust his own judgement, his “Wisdom Brain” had already analysed the results through her micro-expressions and the discourse of her words, going from a “yellow” to a “green” rating!
In his past year in the bandit gang, his “Wisdom Brain” was surrounded by human beings rated as yellow, orange, or red for “evil”!
For the first time, there was a green rating?
In this world, were there still people judged by his system as “good”?
Chapter 28 Steam-Powered Mechanical Power Arm <TOC> Chapter 30 His First Surgical Operation