Chapter 78—I’m Not a Healer |
“Why can’t I get this to regrow?” Yully cursed, hands on either side of Seeyela’s severed leg, a sphere of green energy between them. “This is a foot. More or less. I’m an expert on regrowing feet, but it’s not working!”
“It’s this orange energy,” Wule said, his own heals pulsing across the whole group, though they did very little. “Whatever it is, it’s not letting go, and it’s hindering any attempts to fix the damage.”
“Not just the open wounds,” one of the Bonder healers said from where he kneeled beside Yanily. “It’s laced inside the breaks in this guy’s bones. I can’t even set them right without the energy pushing them back apart.”
“And… it really… hurts…” Yanily groaned with a forced smile.
“Does anybody know how to move this hood?” another Bonder asked beside Gran, while he tried to pull her cloak back. No matter what he did, it didn’t move. And neither did the vampire spread out on the ground.
“I’ve never seen a Runeocerous hurt like this,” a fourth Bonder healer said to a fifth, the pair of them dumping solar energy into Wallop. By the way the Rune-o’s entire side had collapsed in on itself, they had their work cut out for them.
“The leg!” Yully shouted, kneeling beside Seeyela, her attempts to regrow the leg—or even stop the bleeding—having failed completely. “Did anybody grab the leg?”
“Gran did…” Hiral said, head turned to where the vampire lay unmoving on the ground.
“It’s in Shared Storage,” Left said, pulling half-a-leg still in the white boot of Seeyela’s armor out of the interspatial space.
“Wule?” Nivian said, standing next to his brother.
“I don’t know,” Wule said. “This energy won’t go away. None of our heals are getting through it. It’s not a poison or anything like that. It’s more like… intent. Or resentment. Every time I touch it with my heals, it feels like it hates me. That hate is keeping it around.”
“Spontaneous ability evolution?” Nivian said.
“It might be our only chance,” Wule said, mouth tightening as he looked at Seena’s skin going more and more pale on the ground in front of him. “A chance that may never come. I don’t know what else we can do, though.”
“Status!” Osteo shouted, cresting the top of the stairs from the floor below. Within two steps, he paused at the carnage in front of him, but quickly collected himself and marched right up to Wule.
“They’ll figure something out,” Right said quietly to Hiral while Wule and Yully explained the problem they were facing. Additional comments came from the ten Bonder healers—all C-Rank or lower—who’d jumped in to help, but Hiral wasn’t listening to the details.
“Will they?” Hiral said quietly. “Was I wrong to take us into the S-Rank dungeon like that? Too cocky?”
“We all agreed,” Right said. “All knew what we were going up against.”
“Turns out we had no idea at all,” Hiral said. “What am I going to do if they don’t…”
“They will,” Left said, coming over to join them. “Snap out of it. This isn’t the first time any of us has gotten hurt. Wule, Yully, and Osteo are three of the best healers around. They’ll figure it out.”
At the mention of healers, Hiral looked over at Gran. “She saved me… and she died…”
“She’s not dead,” Left interrupted again. “Somehow, she’s not dead.”
“She doesn’t have a head,” Hiral hissed quietly.
“Her name is still in the Party Interface,” Left countered. “And it’s not greyed out. She’s not dead. Or, not completely. I don’t know.”
“Listen to him,” Right said. “Now isn’t the time to panic. When you got hurt, the others didn’t throw up their arms and fall into tears. They did whatever they could to help. Is there anything you can do here to help them?”
“I’m not a healer…” Hiral started.
“You’re not,” Right agreed. “They’re healers. They don’t need any more of them. But is there anything you can do? Something about this orange energy that’s causing such problems?”
“Something… I can do?” Hiral asked, the direct question forcing him to stop. His doubles were correct—as usual—he had been panicking. The possibility of losing any of his friends had made him stop thinking. No, he wasn’t a healer, but that wasn’t what they needed right now. “Thank you,” he said to his doubles, then flared the energy of his pseudo-aspect.
Along the edges of the sixth floor within the Ascender’s Tower, glowing stadium seating rose as he activated Domain of the Sun+. This time, though, instead of a cheering, stomping crowd, the shimmering spectators were silent. Hands pressed together in front of them, they lowered their heads, and a soft chant echoed through the room.
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Every person in the room stopped, eyes wide at the ability, until Osteo let out a sharp yell and got them back on task. As soon as the other healers were back to work, the doctor looked at Hiral, and gave a small nod. Do whatever you can, the gesture seemed to say.
Left’s Banner of Courage joined the domain, adding its healing component, but neither of those things were what Hiral really needed to do. They would help; they just weren’t the solution.
“I take it you have a plan then?” Right asked.
“More an idea,” Hiral said. “It worked okay in Trevallen, and it helped against the Fallen. This time, this time it has to be perfect.”
Right and Left each gave a nod that matched Osteo’s, then stepped away from Hiral to let him get to work.
Hiral’s time runes kicked in, slowing everything to a crawl to give him time to analyze the problem. Not that it took much to figure out the orange energy was the culprit. Why wasn’t it dissipating though? Even after they’d left the dungeon, it hadn’t faded. Was it really the Fallen’s hatred and resentment?
That didn’t entirely make sense, since they weren’t in the dungeon anymore. The portal had closed, the dungeon had reset, and the Fallen that’d injured them no longer existed. At least, not if he understood how normal dungeons worked well enough.
Which meant, the energy had started with resentment—and that damn glaive—but it was feeding off something else. The orange energy was working the same way Li’l Ur’s Blight did. The Blightfire fed off life. As long as it was present, the fire would burn.
This orange energy… what was it feeding off of?
Hiral reached out with his Runes of Energy, Expansion, and Connection. He got his answer immediately, and it wasn’t a surprising one. The orange energy was feeding off each of his friends’ solar energy. And, since they had Solar Hearts pumping out new energy constantly, the orange energy would never run out of fuel.
In battle, without solar hearts, the orange energy would both prevent healing and solar energy regeneration, and consume the energy a fighter would need. Against anybody with finite solar energy, it was a death sentence. For his party, who produced just enough solar energy to keep the orange from completely fading—and continuing to hinder healing—it was also a death sentence.
Unless somebody snuffed out the source of the fuel all at once.
A direction in mind, Hiral plotted out the equations he’d need to make this work. Even in paused time, the Edicts at his back pulsed with support. They would lend their aid, as they always did. His friends were somehow their friends.
Letting go of his time runes, solar energy clones—complete with their runic commands—peeled off Hiral, then spread around the room. Five, ten, twenty, forty of them took up positions, but didn’t break down into the base equations he needed.
The challenge he’d face would be not draining the solar energy from everybody in the room—the healers still needed to heal—but instead just his party members. The clones were the overall process, mainly leaning on Absorption and Energy to do the heavy lifting. As for the refinement of who the equation would affect, Hundred Handed+ burst from Hiral’s back, energy glowing on his fingertips.
Standing in the middle of the group, every eye that wasn’t a healers’ on him, the hands began to work. First, he started around his friends, inscribing rune after rune in a tight circle around each. This would help focus the drain, pulling it to the larger circle to make sure the orange energy didn’t have any dregs of energy to burn.
In less than thirty seconds, those circles were complete, but he still had one more step to complete. He needed to directly address the Solar Hearts. Which meant he also needed to get to the Solar Hearts.
His answer came from a warmth on his back, and his Hundred Handed went to work. This time, he didn’t etch the runes into the stone floor around his friends, but instead into the air immediately above them. Energy, Connection, and most importantly, Piercing formed a glowing circle. A direct pipeline into the Solar Hearts of his friends.
One more minute to make sure everything was set up exactly as it needed to be, and he couldn’t wait any longer. They couldn’t wait any longer.
With a wave a solar energy, Hiral simultaneously activated all his equation-clones and the runic circles around his friends. Piercing glowed brightly in the air above his party as the system initialized.
Then it pulled.
In the Party Interface, the solar energy indicators of everybody but himself bottomed out in an instant. At the same time, his friends spasmed, their bodies shocked by the sudden exsanguination of their energy.
Luckily, the spasm only lasted a second, and as soon as it finished…
“Heals are working!” Wule shouted.
“Critical injuries first,” Osteo barked out to everybody, then got to work directing each of the healers specifically.
Solar energy and abilities went off one after another, nobody holding anything back as they struggled to bring the party back from the brink of death.
Eyes on his friends, and hands clenched at his sides, Hiral watched. Waited. He’d done what he could—what only he could—and now it was time to trust in the healers.
“It’s reattached!” Yully cheered. “Finally! Connection looks good. Bit of a scar, but…”
“The bones are mending,” the Bonder working on Yanily said. “I’ve got one arm back together. Working on the next.”
“We’ve got lung movement over here!” another Bonder said beside Wallop. “He’s breathing! He’s breathing! Going to need some help with all the broken bones…”
“Seena?” Hiral asked Wule, the concentration on the Grower’s face not faltering for an instant.
“One second…” Wule said, healing energy pouring into the gaping wound that pierced the party leader front to back. “There’s still some of that orange energy in here… but… it’s… it’s getting burned off. Seena’s body is consuming it. It’s just taking a little… there!” As he spoke, a different, green glow suddenly covered the long injury across the woman’s chest.
All at once, Seena took a deep breath, back arching on the floor, and then Hiral was beside her, one hand under her head.
“You’re okay,” Hiral said. “You’re okay!”
“Don’t feel okay,” Seena groaned, one hand going to the tear in her bloody armor.
“Still some healing to do,” Wule said. “That’s just the worst of it mostly patched up. It’ll have to do for the moment. I need to go check on…”
“HOLY HELLS!” one of the Bonders shouted, and Hiral turned to find the man scrambling back from where Gran was sitting up.
The vampire’s cloak had finally fallen back, revealing just her neck, mouth, and nose. The rest of her head was… gone.
“What are you looking at, boy?” the mouth said, before the woman’s signature cackle echoed across the floor.