"Hey. You still alive?"
Holding a stick in her hand, Wis'adel poked the black slime with it.
"My name isn't 'hey,' you little brat. Is that how you treat your savior? I'm starving to death here, you know?!"
You Yi's indignant voice rang out in her mind, and the pitch-black slime bounced like jelly, as though protesting her treatment of him.
After absorbing a bit of energy, he could now communicate with her without physical contact, as long as she stayed close enough.
It was no longer like at the beginning, when he had needed to leave some of his slime on her body—or touch her directly—to talk.
Wis'adel tossed the stick aside and grinned. "Didn't I bring you food? If you won't eat it, what am I supposed to do?"
Ever since he had saved her a few days ago, she had been dropping by to check on him from time to time. On the surface, she seemed to have lowered her guard a little, no longer as openly resistant as before.
And yet, whenever he tried to push their relationship one step further, she would either change the subject or refuse him outright.
Their relationship hanging in this limbo drove the desperately hungry You Yi nearly mad with irritation.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you? I don't eat human food. What I need is the energy from you!"
Wis'adel straightened up a little and puffed out her very unimpressive chest.
"I'm this skinny already. If you go sucking my energy away, wouldn't that be a disaster? No thanks."
You Yi forced himself to stay patient and reason with her.
"It won't affect you. Look at last time—I only absorbed a tiny bit of energy, and nothing happened to you, right?"
Wis'adel wrinkled her nose. "No wonder I felt weird all over after I went back that day. So it was you. And you still lied and said there'd be no side effects!"
That made You Yi lose confidence for a second.
Could absorbing her stray emotions really leave some kind of lingering effect?
Ever since waking up in this form, certain pieces of information had automatically appeared in his mind.
In theory, once he formed a symbiotic bond, he would only absorb the emotions his host released. He should not affect the host directly at all—otherwise it would be parasitism, not symbiosis.
But theory was theory. He had no real practice. Maybe he had done it wrong. Maybe he had taken too much and caused an adverse reaction.
He would just have to be more careful next time.
"Even if there was some effect, you look perfectly fine now, so clearly it wasn't serious. Compared to the help I can give you, it's basically nothing."
"So—do you want power?"
Wis'adel frowned, looking troubled, as though she might actually be tempted.
You Yi unconsciously held the breath he did not possess and waited for her answer. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, her eyes lit up and she asked eagerly:
"Last time, you told me that story about Great Sage Sun of Yan making havoc in Heaven and getting pinned under Five Elements Mountain by that woodcutter. What happened after that? Did Great Sage Sun get out in the end? He was so strong—he definitely beat the woodcutter, right?"
A wave of dizziness hit You Yi so hard he nearly wanted to slam his nonexistent head into the ground and bury himself upside down.
"You still haven't answered my question, brat!"
Wis'adel brushed him off casually. "Why are you in such a rush? Finish the story first, then I'll answer you."
"That's what you said last time too!" You Yi fumed. "And then you listened to the whole thing, patted your butt, and walked off! You completely wasted my feelings!"
Wis'adel widened her eyes and put on an innocent expression. "Did I? Well, this time, if you finish the story, I'll definitely answer you."
"Like hell I believe that!"
You Yi wished with all his heart that he could grow a fist just to punch that face once.
He really wanted to just find some random host and bond with them instead of going through all this trouble. He refused to believe nobody would accept a powerful cheat-like existence that let them grow stronger at no cost.
Anywhere else, he ought to have been highly sought-after. How had it come to this—being toyed with by a cockroach?
Unfortunately, other than this cockroach and the two Sarkaz she had led over that day, no one else had ever come here.
Back then, when faced with those two Sarkaz lackeys and a far more promising Wis'adel, he had chosen Wis'adel.
Regret.
Utter, overwhelming regret.
Wis'adel crouched in front of him with a cheerful smile.
"So, are you telling the story or not? If not, I'm heading back."
You Yi ground his teeth. "I'll tell it!"
Two hours later—
The sun was already slanting west.
"Brat, you've heard the story. Time to answer my question!"
Wis'adel rose to her feet, braced a hand on her knee, and stretched lazily, her eyes curving into crescents.
"Your proposal sounds pretty good, but—"
"I refuse."
Humming some unknown little tune, Wis'adel sauntered away.
"You little brat! Just you wait—if you ever fall into my hands, you're done for!"
The wind moaned across the wasteland. You Yi felt that the wind blowing over this wilderness had never been this cold before.
Over the next few days, the sun continued to rise in the east and set in the west, and Wis'adel came to see him almost every day.
Sometimes she came to hear stories. Sometimes she came just to bicker with him on purpose.
"If you've got nothing better to do, go bite a bomb and make something entertaining happen. At least that'd give me a laugh instead of wasting my precious time here."
Wis'adel paid no mind to his sarcasm.
The next day, she did not come.
On the third day, she came wandering over as usual. But after sitting down, the first thing she said was not for him to tell a story.
"Hey. I became a mercenary."
Her tone was flat, as though she were merely saying she had found an ordinary job.
You Yi froze.
Before he could fully digest the meaning of her words, she pulled a small cloth pouch out of her clothes and tossed it beside him.
"My first payment. I'm giving you a share."
You Yi stretched out a tendril and probed inside. It was not dried rations, but a small piece of Originium concentrate.
His feelings turned complicated. It gave him the faint sense that all the suffering he had gone through these past days had finally earned him at least some kind of return, that it had not all been for nothing.
The only problem was that it was not what he actually wanted. He had asked for watermelon, and she had handed him a tomato.
"You know I don't eat this, right?"
Sitting on the rock in front of him, Wis'adel lowered her head and looked at him in confusion.
"Don't you need energy? Doesn't this thing have energy?"
"That's different. It's not the same thing at all."
You Yi very much wanted to rub his forehead. He could hardly tell her outright that the energy he needed was emotional energy, and that it was an entirely different concept from this kind.
Some things stopped working once you said them aloud.
Wis'adel clicked her tongue in disgust. "You're such a pain. Too many requirements."
That day, the story You Yi told was The Monkey King Beats the Black Snake Demon Three Times.
After listening to it, Wis'adel did not hurry off as usual. Instead, she asked him:
"Why didn't that bald monk trust the monkey, and instead trusted some outsider?"
You Yi answered offhandedly, "Because he was stupid."
Wis'adel said nothing.
After a while, she stood up and left.
And so, more time passed.
Ever since Wis'adel became a mercenary, the times she came by were no longer fixed.
Sometimes she came in the morning. Sometimes in the dead of night. More often, she simply did not come at all—for several days in a row.
After all, every mission had different requirements, and even she herself never knew what kind of job she would be handed the next day.
Being a mercenary sounded free, but in reality, many jobs were forced on you. Only after earning a certain amount of fame did you gain at least some right to choose.
No one cared whether they lived or died.
Wasn't that what they made their living on?
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My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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