Reborn Healer Chapter 53

I had been correct. Hanging was significantly easier to survive than bathing in acidic slime was.

A few months ago, I had made an incredibly stupid play and jumped headfirst into a Master-tier slime. It had worked out, but in retrospect, it had been completely moronic doing that with zero preparation or understanding of what I was getting myself into.

Come to think of it, it had been a bad idea at the time as well.

Whatever the case, my past poor decisions were paying dividends now. Learning how to continue manually operating my body with mana while I had no access to oxygen all while actively dissolving thanks to the slime covering me made living through my current ordeal all the easier.

After protecting my body from the initial shock with Overheal, I stuck to the same routine I’d used with the slime, using Heals as a substitute for what oxygen would usually provide to my brain.

That had been enough to keep me alive, though not comfortably. As it turned out, actively suffocating at the end of a fifty-foot rope still hurt a whole bunch, especially when I was being further weighed down by the heavy metal contraption binding my hands.

That also meant that other than my healing spells, which were fairly easy to cycle within my own body, I couldn’t use my offensive spells to cut the rope above me. My lifeline was out of reach as well, which certainly didn’t help.

I had been trying to figure out what my next play was supposed to be when foreign mana had radiated through my own body, pulsing outwards from my gut. My harmony with my immediate surroundings told me that the mana wave was extending outwards as if to connect with something else. My ability to read magic wasn’t good enough to tell exactly what it was meant to do, but I had a guess.

A quick Body Scan confirmed my suspicions.

The whistle I’d forced myself to swallow hadn’t gone down well, and its signal had been suppressed while I’d been in the interrogation room, but at some point it had activated again. It was made out of some material that had resisted digestion, and I’d somehow managed to avoid choking on it to the point where it was now a beacon within me.

A shrill whistle sounded as the announcement of an incoming invasion came from above, and I smiled.

That was Cale’s group, no doubt about it. The haunting, ear-piercing whine of the whistle was the exact same as the one 

Erica, still in a state of shell shock in front of me, didn’t make a move towards or away from me. That was a bit annoying. If she noticed that I was doing something, there was a decent chance she would act. Though I was pretty confident I could deal with a bit of poison and keep myself breathing at the same time, she had really potent fast-acting stuff in her darts. If I tried something and she was stuck here countering me, there was a decent chance I’d lose control over what I was doing or be forced to spend the entirety of my magic on multiple Heals per second in order to stay alive, which would mean I’d run out of ways to escape.

In the interest of avoiding that, I spoke again, infusing my voice with the Nightmare’s power.

“Leave.”

The conditions were ideal for Nightmare’s Call to work. Erica was so conflicted and shocked that even a child could have guessed at her emotions, let alone a—okay, I was still a child, but I had an empathy skill that made it transparently obvious.

She blinked vacantly, then swiveled and left.

I hadn’t tested the limits of Nightmare’s Call yet, but I doubted it would be this effective if not for her clear desire to be anywhere but here. Every other time I’d used it, it had only activated for a second or two before my opponent had managed to shake it off, but she just kept going, turning a corner and leaving my field of vision.

Judging from the distance of the whistle, the mercenary group was still a bit of a ways away, which meant that Grancrest was going to be able to prepare a response. I didn’t know what the rules for this were. Guild wars were supposed to be quiet, and this was anything but, which had to mean some kind of trouble with the city itself. On the other hand, Cale’s mercenary group were definitely not guild. Were there different rules for that?

They also definitely weren’t equipped for a Highmaster, as far as I knew, but maybe Lanaeus would hold back because of hte circumstances?

For the time being, I set that aside and focused on getting myself out of this situation.

Priority number one: free my hands. I could only use one or two spells to manage that, since I was primarily focusing on keeping myself alive by Heal cycling.

I attempted to Split the Shadows, but the nebulous skill wording came to bite me in the ass again. The shadow claws were very effective at clearing my way through forcefields and hard barriers, but they didn’t seem to be able to penetrate through restraints that didn’t even give me room to move my fingers.

Okay. Plan B it was, then.

Mizuki’s words came to mind. You have a shocking lack of self-preservation.

I did have a nasty habit of getting myself hurt when trying to save other people. At least this time, I’d be hurting myself in the process of protecting my own body.

Heat Ray slithered forth from my fingers. There was almost no force involved in this spell, which was good. I still needed my hands to be in one piece, and launching a Fireball in the confined space of the metal seal was a sure recipe to lose them.

This way, I could rapidly heat the metal, conducting the spell through the entire seal so as to soften it. With its mana overcharged, one cast was enough to superheat it.

Problem: unlike with the rope, which had been snug but not a perfect seal, the thing they’d trapped my arms in had melded itself to be airtight around my skin, which meant I didn’t have the room to cast Overheal.

At least I was used to burning myself by now.

I heated the metal with enough efficiency that the pain came to a head and then abruptly cut off, my nerves dying from the burn. Small mercies.

It did mean I didn’t have the strength to brute-force it open, but that wasn’t necessary when enough flesh was burning off of me to force my arms out from their imprisonment.

The red-hot metal fell to the ground behind me as I brought my arms around, already segmenting my next Heal to get to them as I queued up a Create Water as well, extinguishing my flaming clothes and slightly soothing the burn.

Flesh regenerated in fast motion on my right arm, and a dark strand of plague revealed itself as the darkened, burned skin healed pink, then tan. It had progressed further while I’d burned, progressing past my fingers into the veins in my hand, almost to my wrist.

Not the time to worry about that. My vision darkened around the edges, a reminder that I still had no oxygen in my lungs, and I redirected my next Heal to keep myself conscious.

My arms were nowhere near fully functional, but I had enough strength in my now-freed right to grab the rope above my head and pull. It took more power than the arm had to pull me up. Injecting mana into it with an Enhance Strength worked, but I felt and sensed a tendon tear from overstraining it.

That was enough to pull my body high enough that the noose was no longer carrying my entire weight, though, and I tilted my head back hard.

That left me dangling in the air on one half-functional, overburdened arm, which was a recipe for disaster.

Rather than waiting for it to fail, I just dropped myself, catching myself hard on a Shield a few feet down. Timing mid-air spells while also moving was a lot harder than it was from the ground, but I managed to chain a couple together as I very painfully tumbled to the brick tiled path down below.

Everyone who’d been in the area for my execution had run already. A clock tower was tolling, dire ringing presumably informing people in the village that they were under attack.

I sucked in a long, grateful breath from the ground, not caring that I inhaled as much dust as I did oxygen. Even if I could keep myself from dying, not breathing was deeply unfun.

The ongoing ordeal had sapped a lot of energy out of me, not to mention the complete lack of sleep I’d had, but I forced myself to my feet, utilizing my freed-up mana capacity to more quickly heal my arms.

As I got to my feet, my Danger Sense popped a warning from above me. I leapt sideways just in time to avoid a beam of light piercing down into the ground from the heavens, cracking the brick wide open where it had hit.

I looked up to see Highmaster Lanaeus on the execution platform glowering down at me, wielding a staff with a brilliant glowing orb on the end of it as he prepared another one of his light grid attacks.

“Oh, come on,” I complained, casting Dash as I started to try to get away myself. “You’re still on my ass?”

He had been there to ensure the execution went through entirely, I guessed, but this was just unfair. I had been stripped of all of my tools, leaving me with nothing but my spells and skills. With no lifeline, I had significantly less than I’d been working with the last time I’d fought against him, and I knew exactly how that had gone.

That said, he didn’t have the jump on me this time, and that seemed to make a difference in his ability to cast the entire grid. That could make the difference.

As I full-sprinted through the village, though, I realized that it wouldn’t be enough. My Danger Sense alerted me every half second as another line formed and stayed, not fading as the Highmaster placed deadly spell after deadly spell without pausing. He wasn’t just targeting me directly, either. Lines of hard light formed far in front of me at odd angles, blocking off exits. I didn’t even consider trying to hide inside one of the numerous buildings. Trapping myself in somewhere even less open was the last thing I wanted to do right now.

I rounded another corner straight into a couple in Grancrest colors, their backs turned to me. The man had a wand out, casting some kind of protective enchantment on the village gates at the end of the street, while the woman had a bow nocked and ready.

They were just doing their jobs, I knew. On some level, I wanted to help everyone I could, which also meant harming as few people as I could afford to. These two likely had as little to do with my kidnapping as I had to do with the Federation killing their friends and allies.

But they were in my way, they were going to keep me from getting out of here, and some lives mattered a lot more to me than others.

“Fireball!”

I Dashed after my own spell, narrowly avoiding the arcing beam of light that Lanaeus had sent to follow me around the corner. Just before my spell made contact, I cast a Shield in front of me, letting it shatter to tank the impact of it as I jumped after the female archer. The smoke hadn’t dissipated yet, but I could guide myself with Harmonic Awareness well enough that I didn’t need my eyes to see.

The shimmering protections that the man had put up vanished. Both of them had been knocked to the ground, though their protective gear seemed good enough that they hadn’t instantly died. With nothing flammable in the area, they would have been fine after they regathered themselves.

I didn’t give them the chance.

At a glance, I had to guess they were at the higher end of Initiate or partially through Adept. Anyone better might have been able to recover faster.

As it was, the mage had no defenses cast on himself and had no quick-recovery spells. The archer did, but she was still an archer. At range, I was sure that she would be able to dominate me a hundred times out of a hundred, but I had caught her by surprise while in near-melee range.

She still had pretty good presence of mind, throwing her bow aside and reaching for a hunting knife at her belt, but I was faster.

After tearing my right arm freeing myself, I’d focused my healing efforts on my left, and it was now intact enough for me to grab her wrist. As an adult dealing with a pre-teen, she should have had the upper hand, but I had an Enhance Strength and years of warrior training on my side.

I kept her from accessing her knife just long enough to get my knee onto her stomach, stopping her from trying to spring back up. With my bleeding, burnt, plague-infected right hand, I pressed two shaking fingers to her throat and cast Heat Ray.

To my surprise, though her skin and blood superheated, nothing indicated that she’d been burned or even that adversely affected by it.

I recalled MIzuki being able to step into a burning building without even balking. Resistance skills.

“Freeze,” I ordered. The command didn’t take as well as it could have, but it caused her to flicker in strength for just a moment, which was enough for me to steal an arrow from her quiver.

Healing my muscle fibers just enough to regain my strength, I dragged the broadhead’s tip across her throat.

Blood sprayed me in the face as the strength left her limbs.

I couldn’t miss a beat. I’d gained some time, but my Danger Sense was already letting me know that Lanaeus had found me and was lining up his next attack in a way that would cut me off even further if not immediately kill me.

Or worse, not kill me. Despite the fact that I’d been due for execution, I felt like if a Highmaster had truly wanted me dead, I would have already been gone by now.

Calculations running through my mind, I snatched the discarded bow off the ground, nocking it with the blood-painted arrow.

This wasn’t my first or even fifth choice of weapon, but I’d practiced with everything under the sun under my mother’s tutelage. The draw weight on these bows was high enough that I needed to cast an Enhance Strength on myself in order to even properly draw it, and the weapon was way too large for me, but I made do and shot it.

At the same time, I folded my mana into a Curse, drawing from the lifeline even though it was too far for me to call and slowing the mage.

I was off target, but not by much. Rather than the heart, I just hit his center of mass. He fell back to the ground.

Curse lvl 0 -> 1

My Danger Sense flared again and I used a Dash to throw myself back, once more narrowly avoiding a winding bright beam that lingered even after it finished expanding, cutting off the exit that the pair of Grancrest members had been defending.

Why even have them do it if you could do yourself?

I turned on my heel, looking up towards the source of the magic coming towards me. Lanaeus was a few buildings behind, leisurely jogging across rooftops like he was doing this for fun.

“Your execution is finished,” he called out. “The priests have done their duty. When I get you again, you will be properly mine. There is much to learn from the living body of a deviant like you.”

I shuddered, the Highmaster’s slimy words sending a chill down my spine.

This was bad. I could hear spells and voices mixing amongst the clash of steel on steel a distance away, but nothing close enough for me to use. In a direct one-on-one, I’d already proven that I couldn’t win. I could try to stall, but with what?

Lanaeus formed another spell at the tip of his staff, this one a brilliant blue rather than the sheer white it had been before, and I braced to do what I could. My skill-aided instincts were going haywire. There were no safe points around here.

“Shit,” I muttered.

There were only a few things I had left to try.

“Fail,” I shouted, imbuing my voice with Nightmare’s Call.

Lanaeus paused for the slightest fraction of a second, so briefly it could have been nothing more than a fragment of my imagination, and the spell continued.

“A bold endeavor, but fruitless,” he declared. “If your kind could affect me in this manner, I would not be standing before you right—“

From the brilliantly blue, cloudless morning sky above us came a bolt of lightning. It crashed down onto Lanaeus, a deafening thunderclap following it a moment later. The smell of ozone wafted past my nose as I stumbled back in shock. My Danger Sense hadn’t warned me about that at all.

When the afterimage of the flash of electricity faded, Lanaeus was still standing, a pale golden dome surrounding him, but the spell that he’d been forming was gone.

There was no way in hell that had been a natural phenomenon. I’d heard of dry lightning and mana hurricanes, but this was too specific and too targeted to be either of those. Someone had cast a spell at Lanaeus.

My suspicion was proven right not ten seconds later as a midnight-black beam coiled its way through the air, arcing directly into Lanaeus’ dome. Flecks of golden light tore off the shield, sucked into the twisting magical effect.

Who—oh.

I could be wrong, but I could only think of one person who had affinities with both lightning and what I assumed had to be death magic.

Locke. That little piece of shit had actually come for me.

I took advantage of the distraction and ran, aiming for the direction I felt the bone whistle in my stomach connecting towards the most. I had to double back a couple of times when my path was blocked by Lanaeus’ beams, but they weren’t actively moving anymore now that he was actively engaged in combat with someone else.

Not everyone had sheltered yet, it seemed. There were a number of people still hurrying about in the streets, ushering children along. They wore Grancrest colors but weren’t actively wielding weapons or magical focuses.

When they saw me, they alternated between panicking, freezing on the spot, or, in the case of one woman with particularly low self-preservation instinct, picking a brick from the ground and hurtling it at me.

I caught said brick, staring her down for a moment. Sensing no threat from her, I decided not to shed any unnecessary blood.

“Go.”

There were Grancrest members everywhere, too. That made it significantly harder to get around, since there were a good portion of them that had retreated to fortified positions, inasmuch as a gated village could be fortified.

Still, they weren’t perfect. Unlike Liaren proper, their village had no proper walls, and there were gaps in their coverage. Using my Danger Sense as a compass, I navigated to a point that was barely watched over and snuck out under the cover of the tall grass native to the area.

Once I got outside, said sense started flaring intermittently. I trusted my instincts, dodging randomly every time I got a signal. The first one was followed by a stray arrow tearing through the grass, planting itself right where I’d been standing.

It was hard to pinpoint its origin given the fact that I was crouching at a shorter height than the tall grass itself, relying on my Harmonic Awareness to guide me rather than my sight, but it seemed like it had come from ahead of me.

The tall grass started to grow scarcer and thinner the further I went, so I upped my pace. I wasn’t sure if I’d been spotted leaving the Grancrest village, but the sooner I was gone from it, the better.

Unfortunately, the direction my allies came from was the same direction where the bulk of Grancrest’s firepower would be concentrated.

I saw the truth of that as I pushed my way through the thicket I’d hidden myself in.

I hadn’t been sure what I was expecting to see, but somehow, I found my expectations to be a bit different from reality.

Rather than a head-on conflict, it looked like both sides had spread out some. Across the hilly, sparsely-wooded area between Grancrest and Liaren proper, several dozen people were engaged in combat in loose pockets of activity.

From right where the thicket ended to about a quarter mile away, guild members in Grancrest colors held defensive positions, denying space with archery and spells while heavy armored personnel drew the attention of now familiar mercenaries further ahead.

Speaking of mercenaries, I had known from the whistle’s reaction that Cale’s group was here, but there were more people than I’d expected on their side. I recognized his signature furs, but there were also small bands of men in full plate as well as a group of mages providing protective spells to everyone on their side.

The other sellsword groups had come too? Why?

Focus, I told myself again. I took stock of where I was. Between me and the mercenaries, there were at least twenty or thirty Grancrest members who’d been deployed on quick notice. They hadn’t noticed me yet, focused as they were on their offensive defense.

Call it thirty people. A quarter of a mile of moving through that many enemy forces didn’t sound particularly fun, especially given the relative lack of cover other than a few boulders and deciduous trees along the way.

On the other hand, I was in a unique position to backstab the Grancrest forces.

Violence it was, then.

As I prepared my scant few offensive spells, trying to path out a way to get to someone unnoticed and steal their weapons, something pricked my mind at the edge of my consciousness.

Something was off with the mana in this area. Something was about to change in a way I’d seen before, but I couldn’t quite tell just what.

Hundreds of feet above me, a portal began to take shape.