Luckily, Zerra had everything prepared in inner space. Otherwise, it would be unknown whether he could be saved or not. Healing ability could help someone recover faster, but it wasn’t omnipotent. It would still need time and worked best on physical injuries. If someone was poisoned, the wood power could still help them somehow. It depended on the type of poison. A slow-acting one was still possible. They could do long treatment to deal with it, but... for a poison with instantaneous effect, the person would still die in most cases. Of course, Zerra guessed that at a high level of power, they might be able to heal poison. For now, it was impossible. Unfortunately, Derek was also poisoned. It was a sure fact. His face was slowly turning bluish and purple. She could help him with his external injuries, but his poison needed a little more care. It didn’t seem to be a deadly one. However, if it were combined with his severe injuries, it could indeed lead to a fatal outcome. The poison made her treatment less effective. "Ugh..." and she heard a groan. Oh, he had woken up, and thus, she couldn’t use her wood ability to treat him anymore. Derek was very weak right now, and it was unknown what he had gone through to have so many wounds all over his body. She guessed he might have been fighting against some kind of beast. "Derek...?" She called out hesitantly. The man slowly opened his eyes. He squinted, unable to adjust to the light, before slowly opening his eyes wide. When he tried to rub his eyes, he let out a hiss. His hand was injured. "Be careful," she said quickly, checking his bandaged hands. Thankfully, his wound wasn’t reopened as she didn’t see fresh blood there. "Zerra," he croaked hoarsely. Zerra took out a bottle of water and let him drink. He took a few deep breaths, closing his eyes. His face twitched in pain as he regulated her breathing. "Where are we?" He winced. "Inside a cave...." Zerra said slowly. Derek opened his eyes. The glasses he sometimes wore were gone, making him shed his usual fragile and scholarly aura. He resembled a college student more based on his slender figure, the kind one would see in a campus drama. However, although he seemed to be a genius, he was much older than he looked. "A cave..." he trailed off while clutching his head, which was also bandaged. Zerra had put a lot of bandages because of the extent of his injuries–on his four limbs, stomach, chest, and forehead. A moment later, he seemed to realize something. "You... How can you be here?" Zerra pursed her lips. "I-I fell from a cliff." She racked her brain, trying to find a plausible excuse to explain why she was still alive. "Luckily, a mutated plant caught me before I landed, so I am still alive." "Oh, I remember it. I was fighting a tiger before the landslides from the cliff happened." Derek squinted his eyes. "A tiger? Where is it?" She infused a nervous tone into her words, as if she were afraid of the tiger, but her heart was brimming with anticipation. The tiger might be the ticket to get out of this forest if it were the familiar tiger! "It must have run away. I almost got trapped and buried alive, but luckily... thank you for saving me." Derek said earnestly, staring at Zerra before withdrawing his eyes. His gaze was a little thoughtful. "Were you here to hunt mutated animals?" Derek suddenly asked. "Yes, before the earthquake happened, I was with my teammates," she explained. In a bewildered tone, she still inquired curiously, "What about you? What are you doing in this dangerous forest all alone?" He couldn’t be one of those scoundrel scientists who were conducting inhumane experiments, would he? This place, where humans rarely ventured. "Don’t look at me like that." Derek smiled, letting out a small chuckle. "Whatever you think it is, I am not such a person." She scratched her head. Was it so obvious from her face she was condemning him? She coughed to cover her embarrassment. Waving her hand, she hurriedly told him, "No, it’s not like that..." "Isn’t it weird that you are here all alone?" She narrowed her eyes at him. Her gaze moved somewhere else, eyebrows knitting together. "Or is it something confidential that you can’t tell me?" "It’s not," Derek answered. "I stayed here because I was analyzing some mutated plants." Google seaʀᴄh novel•fire.net The suspicion in her heart didn’t lessen with just those words. Staying in the middle of a forest filled with mutated animals? "Actually, the Research Institute had developed some kind of scent to repel mutated animals. It’s still not perfect, but I still use it to venture here..." Derek added. Zerra was taken aback. Her eyes widened a little. "Do you know that a group of mutated animals often went out of the forest and invaded people’s houses..." she trailed off. Was it because of Derek’s so-called scent? "It’s not because of me." He tried to hold his hand up weakly in surrender, but he winced and ultimately didn’t do so. "There were not many mutated animals when I came here. It’s the territory of a tiger... so, I also had to hide sometimes to avoid it." Most beasts were territorial, like the tiger, and they wouldn’t like other animals invading their territory. "We are at the heart of the forest if this place isn’t far away from the cliff." Derek frowned. Zerra still had her guard up against this man. After all, he came from the Research Institute, and her interaction with him was still limited even if he often helped her find Isryn at the Research Institute’s garden. "How long have you been here?" She asked again, tilting her head. The mutated animal attacks started more than half a month ago, so if he was telling the truth, it was indeed not because of him. "Then, do you know a way out of this place?" Her eyes sparkled a little. Derek took a deep breath, his face twisted. It gave her ominous premonition. "Uh... I don’t think I know how to get out of this forest. I was looking for a way out when the tiger found me and attacked." He had a rare look of embarrassment in his face. Zerra’s heart crumbled.