Dwarf In The Future

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Character ListQiao Zhiya: Half-elf, half-dwarf MC.
Chu Rong: Marshal ML.
Zhuang Yu: A doctor in ML’s army.
Chu Yan: ML’s younger brother. Is the same age as MC, currently attending intermediate college.
Chu Huai: ML’s older brother, he’s in politics.
Gu Yan’an: Chu Huai’s wife. She’s a doctor.
Yuan Xiu: Chu Yan’s bestfriend.

After a few mouthfuls of feeding, Qiao Zhiya’s body regained some strength. His magic pool began to fill up, and the severe pain in his brain eased slightly.

Qiao Zhiya’s body curled up, drenched in sweat. He took a few quick breaths and finally felt less uncomfortable. Struggling to sit up, he hugged the flesh of the stone in his arms, and tore it off bit by bit and fed it into Chu Rong’s mouth.

Fortunately, the flesh of the stone would soften quickly after being separated from the body, so it was very convenient to feed. Otherwise, Chu Rong might not be able to be saved. 

The painful expression on Chu Rong’s face gradually eased down, and the black spots floating in the air seemed to sense the threat, and suddenly they all moved towards the flesh of the stone. In retaliation, the mineral seemed able to sense its attack and block these black spots of pollution. 

The fog gradually filled the room, and the black spot became more and more manic and powerful.

As he felt exhausted, his body fell limply on Chu Rong’s. Finally, he realized that he could no longer let the fog drift away like this. With the last vestiges of his magical power, he dragged the fog into his magic pool one after another, and then stretched out his fingers and put it between Chu Rong’s brows. He began to condense the magic power, and at the same time used his mouth to tear the meat in the stone again and feed it to Chu Rong.

‘Hurry up, hurry up, absorb more, force out all the black spots, just force them out…’ This mantra repeated again and again, as he kept drawing the fog into his body while trying to scatter some remaining pollutants in Chu Rong’s spiritual sea. 

Probably because he had been polluted for too long, the deeper Qiao Zhiya went, the tighter Chu Rong’s own spiritual power and black spots were entangled. Gradually, his magical power reserve also ran out, and he didn’t have any spare energy to meticulously separate them – he simply purged them all. The polluted spiritual power was dug out together, and then he guided the power of the flesh of the stone to fill the hollowed out spiritual power.

Time passed painfully slowly, and when there was only the last piece of flesh left in the stone, Chu Rong’s sea of ​​spiritual power was finally cleaned up. The black spots were hollowed out together with the polluted spiritual power, and the lost spiritual power was filled in by the flesh of the stone.

In contrast, there was a thick black fog – so thick it almost condensed into some kind of substance – all over Qiao Zhiya’s magic pool. If Chu Rong hadn’t absorbed a lot of the power of the flesh of the stone during the process of feeding him, Qiao Zhiya might have collapsed long ago.

After completing the most difficult step, Qiao Zhiya withdrew his magic power and closed his eyes to ease the pain in his magic pool.

‘…These things must be purged away, otherwise the White-Haired Monster may be polluted again.’

Thinking of this, he just endured the severe pain and slipped from the sofa to the ground. He got up and drew a defensive and purification magic circle around Chu Rong. He used his dried-up magical power to deliberately “seduce” the black dots floating in the air, leading them to float out of the lounge.

For the pollutants that have lost their spiritual support, Qiao Zhiya’s magic power was both delicious and tempting. It was an immediate attraction, and it pounced onto it. 

After a while, there were only two people lying quietly in the lounge – the almost-unconscious Qiao Zhiya, and Chu Rong, who was protected by the magic circle. There were no more ominous black spots in the air.

Qiao Zhiya led the black fog all the way up, far away from the lounge, and finally fell down on the roof of the battle hall. After closing his eyes and resting for a while, he took out the last piece of flesh of the stone and absorbed its essence. It gave him enough energy to stand up and draw the confinement magic circle and the purification magic circle.

‘—These harmful things will not disappear easily, and I must find ways to get rid of them.’

With the help of the flesh of the stone, the magic circle was drawn smoothly, but the pain of the dried-up magic pool almost tortured him to the point of madness. The pain was throbbing, it was sharp, it was nauseating, it felt like his body was being destroyed and remade at the same time. His body was like a filter, a sponge used to soak up all the pollutants – and he used the flesh of the stone’s energy as the flowing water that cleanse the dirty sponge. 

First, he used his magic power as bait to attract the moth into the flame. Then, the confinement magic circle around him was used as a prison. Finally, the pollutants would be destroyed by the stone-powered purification magic circle. 

As the sky got brighter, the flesh of the stone was almost fully consumed. He drew the last stroke of the purification magic circle. He watched the black spots crazily rushing towards him from the ceiling. With a small smile on his lips, he forced out the last bit of his magic power to activate the magic circle, and slowly closed his eyes.

‘Please, please hold on for as long as possible…’

 There was a faint sound of familiar footsteps from the stairs. He wanted to open his eyes, but he was so weak that he didn’t even have the strength to lift his eyelids.

‘It hurts… so tired… so… sleepy…. It’s fine if I rest my eyes for a little bit, right?’ 

The first ray of sunlight penetrated the clouds and filled the world, but it couldn’t shine into the ominous blackness that seemed to be bound by some invisible thing in the center of the rooftop.

Chu Rong’s eyelids fluttered. Without the pollutants in his body, he slowly recovered.

He woke up, and found himself lying down on a sofa, surrounded by Qiao Zhiya’s array. As his blurred vision gained clarity, he saw a small figure lying alone inside a massive magic circle. 

His beating heart stopped for a few seconds. A semblance of herculean strength was enough to power him so he could step forward and gently pick the unconscious youth up. In panic, he tapped Qiao Zhiya’s arm gently.

“Qiao Zhiya.”

The dwarf boy lay obediently in his arms. His head lolled to the side, his complexion was deathly pale, and his short platinum-blonde hair was disheveled. If he wasn’t breathing, Chu Rong would have thought that the youth had died. 

“Why are you disobedient…” The Marshal trailed off. His grip tightened, and his voice sank.

After discovering that the pollutant’s radiation in the air suddenly began to weaken, Zhuang Yu acted immediately. She prepared various instruments first, then put on protective clothing. She didn’t let anxiety bleed into her voice as she commanded: “Get ready to go in! The radiation has weakened, the Marshal should be awake, or consciously suppress the pollution. Now, hurry up!”

The people who had been waiting all night like stone sculptures were startled back to their senses by this command, and quickly started to move.

Chu Yan immediately stood up and said, “I’ll go with you!”

“Boy, leave this to professionals!” Zhuang Yu refused sharply, and said seriously, “The pollutants’ radiation is not a joke. You will only add to the chaos if you go. Come on!”

Chu Yan clenched his fist unwillingly, wanting to be willful for a while, but his reason told him that what Zhuang Yu said was right. He turned his head and sat down resentfully, and raised his hand to grab his hair.

‘It’s been so long, Qiao might have…’

“Zhuang-jie! The radiation value suddenly began to drop sharply! Reporting: seventy… forty… thirty… oh my God, it’s dropped to zero, what’s going on?” the assistant who was monitoring the instrument suddenly exclaimed, unable to believe it.

Everyone was taken aback when they heard the report. Immediately, they rushed to the instrument together.

Before they could digest the news, the old butler who was guarding on the other side suddenly said, “The video came from the surveillance of the main house, and a thick cloud of black fog suddenly appeared on the roof of the mecha battle building, just like… like those things floating out of the black hole…”

Black hole?

Surprise followed by fright, the atmosphere froze for an instant, and even Zhuang Yu stopped moving.

“Go in and see the situation!” Chu Huai, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly opened his mouth. With a firm resolve, he ordered, “There is no point in guessing! since the radiation has weakened, we must go in!”

Zhuang Yu glanced sideways at the various data displayed on the instrument. She bent down and picked up the medicine box that had been prepared on the ground, took the lead in heading out, and said in a raised voice, “Take the instruments, let’s go!”

Chu Yan hesitated, got up and followed — since there was no radiation, the only reason to prevent him from going in was gone!

Seeing this, Chu Huai and Gu Yan’an looked at each other, and followed quickly without stopping.

Everyone rushed into the battle hall together, entered the lounge first, saw nothing, then climbed up to the roof. But there, they only saw a large black fog that seemed to be trapped by something. Chu Rong and Qiao Zhiya were nowhere to be seen, so was the supposed black hole. 

“What’s going on?” Chu Huai frowned.

Thinking of a certain possibility, Chu Yan turned pale. He mumbled to himself in fright, “Could it be… Erge and Qiao were swallowed by the black hole…” There have been cases in history where black holes swallowed human beings.

Everyone’s heart skipped a beat when they heard this possibility. Gu Yan’an’s knees buckled and she almost fell to the ground.

Just as everyone felt hopeless, Zhuang Yu’s suddenly communicator rang. She had no intention of caring about it at this time, and was about to turn it off, but quickly withdrew her hand after seeing the caller’s name. With record speed, she accepted the call request, her voice was pitched high in excitement, “Sir, where are you? How are you? I—” 

“Come to my room,” Chu Rong said coldly without any pretenses. He looked at the unconscious Qiao Zhiya, who sometimes moaned in pain, and his anxiety managed to bleed over to his perpetually-calm voice: “There is something wrong with Qiao Zhiya.”

Before everyone could be joyed by Chu Rong’s voice, they frowned again because of what he said.

The smile on Chu Yan’s face froze. He suddenly turned around and jumped off the roof, and quickly ran towards the main house after jumping between the buildings.

A large pile of medical instruments quickly filled Chu Rong’s room. All original furniture except the bed was removed. The purification and isolation settings were turned on, and the huge restoration instrument was removed from Zhuang Yu’s private laboratory as quickly as possible. All these expensive instruments and medicines were shipped here without caring of the exorbitant costs. 

Zhuang Yu flipped through the results of the examination, her face gradually getting more grim. With a hint of frustration, she told Chu Rong her findings, “The only thing I am certain about is that Qiao’s power has been polluted. However, because his power cannot be detected by any of our instruments, I… cannot quantify or monitor it. I can’t even figure out the state of his spiritual power – of what the equivalent of his power is. Without these data points… I can’t treat him.” 

“First use the purification liquid to stabilize his condition,” Chu Rong said as he kept his attention on Qiao Zhiya, Qiao Zhiya who was still weakly struggling in the instrument. His expression looked calm, but his body language was tense. He continued with a trembling whisper, “At least… we must make him able to rest peacefully.”

“I-It’s all been used,” Zhuang Yu also looked at the healing pod with red eyes. She tried not to cry. “But it’s useless… the damn expensive medicines are all useless! Qiao’s strength is not strong, and the degree of pollution is unknown. If we can’t do targeted therapy soon, he probably…” 

She didn’t say the rest, but everyone present understood.

If the spiritual power was polluted and cannot be treated and controlled, then there are only two outcomes: going crazy, or dying from pain.

Chu Yan began to pull his hair anxiously again. Chu Huai frowned, thought for a while, and said, “Maybe…” 

“Bring as many emerald jades here,”  Chu Rong interrupted them suddenly, keeping his eyes on Qiao Zhiya. The healing pod he was in faintly exuded spiritual power. He continued, “The more the better, the higher the quality, the better.”

Not long after, a large pile of emerald jades was transported into the Chu family’s main house.

Regardless of Zhuang Yu’s dissuasion, Chu Rong carried Qiao Zhiya out of the healing pod. He placed the youth on a bed, surrounded by a huge pile of emerald jades. He then laid down next to Qiao Zhiya, and embraced him close. 

The others had no choice but to stand silently outside the room, hoping that Qiao Zhiya would get better soon.