DOOMED TO BE A VILLAIN

"Since your mana is of the ice element, can\'t you try using the fire elemental mana to try to suppress it?" Melinda had asked after suddenly receiving a flash of inspiration.

"It\'s not a bad idea, but it\'s currently impossible as due to my lack of control over my mana. I won\'t be able to resist the burning effect of the fire elemental mana and would probably die to the flaming mana instead," he answered immediately. 

The icy mana coursing through his body was too potent and also quite plentiful so the amount of fire elemental mana that would be needed to weaken his mana to a considerable level where he could withstand it was way above the level his body could currently tolerate.

"Not unless you\'re trying to cook me with such intense mana," he muttered. 

Letting such mana come in contact with his body would turn him to ashes immediately, especially since he currently couldn\'t use his mana to protect himself… so he\'d rather avoid that situation.

"Is there really no way around that?" Melinda asked with worry, not happy that yet another method to save Davies had vanished before it was even formed.

"Not unless there was a way for the fire elemental mana to directly come into contact with the ice elemental mana that is inside me," Davies said without much thought. 

He didn\'t know any such method and he couldn\'t think of one at the moment, hence his careless answer. His mind was currently working at top power, trying to find other methods to deal with the poison before it was game over, so he didn\'t have time to divert his thoughts into searching for such a method, he felt that it would only waste time if he did.

What he did not know was that the words he had said so harmlessly in passing would be the key to solving this poisoning incident without the use of Reversion.

He may not have known a method that could let external mana come into direct contact with the mana coursing through his body, but that didn\'t mean that no one else did… Melinda happened to be one of those that knew such a method.

She had heard about such a thing once in the past and Davies\'s words had triggered that particular memory, and it had come rushing to become her foremost thought, replaying itself in her head and her face turned blushing red at the embarrassing idea that had formulated from the knowledge that she happened to know.

She suddenly slammed on the brakes, putting a halt to their cruise in the forest as the car tires seized immediately while the car slowly skidded to a stop, aided by inertia until it finally stopped. 

Her sudden actions had stunned and alarmed Davies by quite a bit and now he was looking at her with annoyance all over his face, as his forehead was still aching from bumping into the interior of the car due to her sudden stop, but before he could put his annoyance into words, Melinda spoke first,

"... So, as long as the mana in your body can be weakened long enough to a level you can tolerate, you should be able to theoretically hold on until the poison\'s effects wear off, right?" she asked, her eyes fully on him, and her face red, though he couldn\'t understand why this was so.

"I believe that\'s what I said, yes…"

"Also, it\'s not theoretically, I would be able to hold on till the poison\'s effects disappear," Davies stated, deciding not to speak… yet, on why she had suddenly stopped in the middle of almost nowhere when she should be driving him to his house.

"How long till the poison loses effect?" she asks another question.

"Just over five hours, but since it\'s a double dosage of the poison I was shot with, then I\'m guessing that each dart inhibits my control of mana for three hours each… I think?" he began to analyze while keeping his eyes on her face that he thought couldn\'t get any redder, but he was wrong. Melinda\'s face flushed even redder when he mentioned "just over five hours".

He couldn\'t help but think that something was wrong. 

Why had Melinda suddenly turned into a tomato head? But even though he was intrigued by this, he didn\'t bother to ask what was wrong, as right now, he could not afford to care about how cute she looked while blushing so hard, even though he didn\'t know why she was blushing in the first place.

"So… as long as we can get enough fire elemental mana to directly come into contact with the mana in your own body, then it should be able to directly weaken the mana without causing you any harm, right?" Melinda asked yet another question, dissecting the previous discussion into parts and earning a raised eyebrow from Davies who still couldn\'t understand what she was doing by suddenly stopping the car and asking him all these questions, yet he still answered,

"Yes… as long as fire elemental mana can directly come into contact with my ice elemental mana, then it should reduce the pain and fatality of the situation to something I can handle for the next five hours… though it will still hurt like hell during that time peri-…" he was answering when he suddenly had a thought.

"Wait… Why are you asking me all this anyway?"

"... you wouldn\'t happen to have a way to do that… right?" he asked hesitantly, not wanting to get his hopes up, but there was still a glint of anticipation in his eyes that Melinda could see.

"... Yes… yes, I have a-… uh-… method to get fire elemental mana into your body without burning you to death," she said in a quiet tone, trying to take in the new information that even with the idea she came up with, he would still be in unimaginable pain until his mana returned back under his control.

"What is it?" Davies couldn\'t explain his relief at hearing her words, though he did think there was something a little off with her right now, he didn\'t care much for that as long as there was a method that could solve his problem so that he wouldn\'t have to use Reversion and snap the last thread of sanity that was holding his mind together right now.

"H-H-Have you h-heard about dual cultivation?" Melinda stammered out embarrassed at the words coming out of her mouth right now.

"...!"

"What?!" words could not explain Davies\'s loss of words at the moment as he stared at her with the blankest stare in his \'looks dictionary\'.

"Dual cultivation!"

"Don\'t make me say it again, have you heard of it?" Melinda shouted as well. It was obvious that she was embarrassed by the words that were leaving her mouth, but she also knew  this wasn\'t the time to be ashamed.

Davies\'s life was at stake… or so she thought, and in a way, she was right.

"I didn\'t know you read web novels," in the end, Davies couldn\'t resist asking.

\'Could it be that the famous \'Flaming Winged Enchantress\' read smut in her free time?\' He couldn\'t help thinking with an eyebrow raised suspiciously as he looked at her questioningly.

"That\'s beside the point!"

"Do you know about it or not?" she didn\'t deny it and instead cleverly deflected the question with her own, confirming Davies\'s thoughts that she definitely read some of "my little brother" and "Duke Asmodeus\'s" books.

"Yes, I know what dual cultivation is," Davies finally gave the reply she wanted to hear. 

As a man of culture, how wouldn\'t Davies know what dual cultivation was?

He had studied the chronicles of smut and knew what the go-to for every harem-type cultivation novel was.

What he didn\'t know was what it had to do with his current situation.

"Dual cultivation is the exchange of yin and yang between a man and a woman in order to cultivate and temper themselves… to be perfectly clear, it\'s sex, but with an added bonus,"

"What\'s more… it doesn\'t exist in this world… I think… so I don\'t see why you bring it up," he finally explained and spoke his mind.

"The thing is… it does exist, but it\'s not exactly the same, neither is it as exaggerated as it is in those web novels," Melinda began to explain, not aware that she had given herself away with her words.

"Hold up, hold up… Dual cultivation actually exists?" Davies was stunned.

\'Why didn\'t somebody tell me?\' he thought tearfully.

"Wait… even if it exists, what does it have to do with this whole situation?" he still asked, not seeing where this conversation was leading to.

*ISSSSHHHH*

*PHEWWW*

Melinda first took a deep breath to regulate her breathing and compose herself,

"I know a dual cultivation method…" she began.

"... Nooooo," immediately Davies heard her words, everything clicked and his answer to that was immediate refusal.

"With it, I can send my fire elemental mana directly into your body without hurting you," she ignored his refusal and continued speaking.

"Nope… I\'m not letting you do that," he still rejected, even though he had no reason to, but he had a plan and she was the one jumping the gun instead of him taking advantage of her. 

The situation was too strange.

A heroine like her wanting to give herself to him in an effort to save his life even though he had inadvertently saved hers was too much of a strange occurrence.

As long as rivers didn\'t flow backward and mountains didn\'t grow from the sky, this was never a situation that he would ever expect, so he immediately refused it, feeling that it was too sketchy, but in Melinda\'s eyes, he was rejecting such a deal because he cared for her and would not want her to do something like that just to save his life. This made her touched and even more determined to save his life.

The situation wasn\'t easy for her either as she had never been this close to a man in all her 37 years of living, but she was determined to save Davies irrespective of the cost or she would regret it forever… after all, he had saved her life first.

\'What was wrong with using the life he had saved, to help him save his?\' these were her determined thoughts.

If Davies knew what she was thinking, he would think that a woman\'s thoughts were indeed scary and confusing, but right now, he was trying to reject Melinda\'s attempt to \'save\' him.

"Just let me-…"

"Nope, I can\'t take advantage of the situation to do something like that," he spoke righteously, but his thoughts were going haywire.

He constantly refused her every method to persuade him, adamant about not falling into this honey trap, even though he would have willingly jumped into this situation if it were under any other circumstances.

In the end, after constant refusals where it felt like she was trying to convince an innocent kid, Melinda could no longer stay patient as she knew that every second counted if she wanted to save him, so she did like every heroine in a story would do…

She surprised him with her lips smashing onto his and making him lose himself in her taste.

\'Those web novels were right,\' she thought after seeing the effectiveness of her kiss.