Reborn Healer Chapter 49

Sebastian Ferris was winning. That much was undeniable.

It hadn’t even been a week, and his winning trajectory was painted clearly in the stars.

Grancrest might have had stronger adventurers in general. They might even have been able to win an outright pitched battle.

Fortunately for Sebastian and the Federation, guild wars rarely if ever involved those.

What they did involve was a great deal of violence packed into relatively short periods of time. Often, the public would be wholly unaware that one was even occurring. There would be a few more mysterious disappearances than usual, some unexplained accidents in the World Dungeon and maybe the odd building burning down, but it was a gentleman’s war with customs. Failing to adhere to those meant attention from the military, and that was always bad news.

Disrupting the balance between a guild and the kingdom it was operating in rarely resulted in good outcomes. Usually, it meant that a certain guild would cease operating in said nation, but there had been numerous cases where kings had fallen in the aftermath.

So far, the casualties amounted to only a handful on the Federation’s side. On the other end, eighteen Grancrest adventurers were dead, many of them Master-tier. At least twice that had been injured enough to require long-term healing. Slow-acting, multi-stage poisons ensured that it would be a long, expensive stay for them.

The other guild had caught on to what was happening. Around now, they would be realizing that trying to beat Sebastian in a game of subterfuge or the Federation in one of logistics was a bad idea. Similar to what the regional commander had ordered, most of Grancrest was now staying inside their own headquarters.

They wouldn’t last forever. Unlike the Federation, which had any number of ways to reach the outside world, Grancrest only had two points of entry for supply drops, both of which could be easily intercepted.

However, Sebastian knew that waiting them out wasn’t the best idea. There was too much tension with the elves and the new weapons in the south for him to risk having those intersect with his own plans.

As such, he had decided he needed a catalyst. There were two ways to win: by force or by setting Grancrest up into a position where the kingdom would be forced to make a move on them.

His two youngest initiates would pave the path to that. While Ren was still a probabilistic void, Sebastian’s spells could work around that, relying instead on the people around him. Mizuki, on the other hand, had no such defense. With the situation slowly growing clearer, he now had a very good estimate as to what she was.

More importantly, he knew her potential value to Liaren. Using her as a direct bargaining chip would be pointless given the type of man Gerald Halcyon had forged himself into, but he had many, many indirect methods.

Methods such as feigning the amount of stress placed on his guild’s mail system, thus encouraging an upstart young master to share the information he’d acquired about the daily habits of a certain healer who had registered as a combat magician. Methods like modifying that mail to give away further details about the half-elf. Add in a suspicion of blood magic here, a deep connection to her healer companion there, and Grancrest would see opportunity.

Sebastian didn’t even need to prod Ren into exposing himself. While he had no ability to scan the boy’s past thanks to his strange nature, the young healer had a nasty savior complex that would serve Sebastian well. An overdeveloped sense of duty was one of the easiest things to exploit.

The pieces were in place. All he had to do now was wait.

#

Nightmare Forged -> Nightmare Forged [Adept]

Temporarily grants a shadow power boost to your lifeline. This shadow can now be shaped to temporarily change the form of your lifeline as well as stun enemies. It now also has full coverage over your lifeline.

Unlike my other skills, all of which had changed names when they had advanced, Nightmare Forged retained the same identity as it had before. The new details were sparse, as per usual, but I could feel the difference in strength already.

I drew on the evolved skill. Shadows even darker than the already lightless lifeline flickered into being just around it, the lengthened spear humming with power. It was much more malleable than it was before, I felt. While the shadow power had been great at increasing the offensive power of the spear, it had largely been a one-trick pony that I hadn’t had much influence over, sort of like tipping the end of it in poison.

Now, the mana infusing the lifeline felt as much a part of me as my limbs and the spear did.

I experimented with it, trying to influence the mana to change shape like I would with a spellform. It didn’t take nearly as easily as a spell would, but that was something that would come with time, practice, and advancement of the skill.

Even with the resistance to my will, I could sense the lifeline bending to it. Just before the spear-tip, a long, curved spike formed, jutting out to the side and back towards me in a sickle shape. It glimmered with the shadow power placed into it, flickering threateningly.

I grinned. Though I didn’t have anything to test the stunning effect on, I could already see the potential in the skill. The base power had increased sharply alongside everything else, too.

Select one of the following skills to gain.

> Conceal Lifeline [Initiate]

With effort, you can render your lifeline invisible. At higher tiers, this may allow for spontaneous demanifestation of your lifeline.

> Siphoning Terror [Initiate]

When this skill is active and you hit an enemy with your lifeline, a small portion of the damage you deal to them will be transferred to you as healing.

> Channel Darkness [Initiate]

Expends all power invested in the lifeline in a short burst, sharply increasing your speed and power as well as infusing your next blow with the gathered shadow energy.

> Curse [Initiate]

Requires concentration. Expends power invested in the lifeline to curse a target. A cursed target will become slightly slower and take more damage.

Interesting. It looked like the lifeline skills I had available to me included the choices I hadn’t taken last time, but they’d filled in with some new ones. It was also apparent that they stuck at the same tier as my warrior core.

Note to self: get to Adept before adding more deep obsidian to the lifeline. Though I didn’t mind grinding the skills up from Initiate, I would much rather have them already ready to go.

Conceal Lifeline looked a little more tempting than it had last time, but it was still unnecessary given my skillset and the fact that most people either thought my spear was my magical focus. Siphoning Terror, of course, was useless given my primary magical affinity.

That left Channel Darkness and Curse. The former seemed better at a glance thanks to its lack of concentration and generalized usage, but it also burned all the power invested in the lifeline. Also, it overlapped with Doubletime and Enhance Strength, not to mention Nightmare Forged’s new ability.

While it was definitely a good idea to be able to reinforce one part of my fighting style, I wanted more breadth at the moment. The bulk of my magic was still in defensive and healing applications, and my offenses were still a touch lacking.

In the end, I picked Curse. It was a bit strange, since it seemed more like a spell than a skill, but I figured I would understand the details of how it worked when I actually went and used it.

“You look excited,” Mizuki said.

I looked up from my spear to where she was leaning against a wall, watching me.

“Got some upgrades,” I said, testing the feel of the spear. It was definitely different now, and it was a bit more difficult to twirl given that it was now taller than I was, but it still felt natural in my hands. “Looking forward to trying them.”

“I get the feeling,” she said. “You should get some rest, though. You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

She was right, though. I was tired.

I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow.

My next morning started in the healing ward, but I didn’t spend too much time there. Whatever developments had progressed in the guild war, they had resulted in fewer casualties on our side.

Rather than instantly go to the clinic, I spent some time training with Lena. With how chaotic things had been, I’d nearly forgotten that we’d made a deal. In exchange for me hopping on some of their quests as an active healer, she had promised to train me in offensive spells.

Obviously, she hadn’t gone on any normal quests because she and Arthur’s team had only been assigned to stuff related to the guild conflict, but now that she had some free time, she’d wanted to work with me.

The Federation headquarters was a small subterranean city in and of itself, I was steadily realizing. I could probably walk this place for a month and not reach everything. Today, we were in a small firing-range-like area where pre-programmed runes could be infused with mana and triggered to create pillars of stone, ice, wood, and various other materials.

It wasn’t supposed to last very long, which was why I’d accepted it in the first place. As soon I was finished with this, I planned on getting to the clinic and also see if I could track Vallis down.

Lena instructed me to show her my offensive spells, which I did. I couldn’t blast apart the pillars with just the three I knew, which was a bit embarrassing, but I wasn’t supposed to be supplementing them with my other spells and skills, so I didn’t.

After a few minutes of whaling on the pillars, I had successfully melted the ice one and set the wood on fire but hadn’t made much progress on stone or metal, neither of which looked much worse than a bit charred.

“You have a good foundation,” Lena said. “Better than most who learn from a textbook.”

“Is that because I didn’t?” I asked. “Please don’t tell me that little shit was right.”

“Learning from first principles means a deeper understanding of the magic you’re using, but you’re missing a lot of structure that a normal offensive mage would,” she replied. “You still have a lot of progress to make, but it’ll be easier to train this than it would for you to relearn the foundation of the spell.”

Rather than demonstrate her own spell right away, she pulled a sheaf of papers from a pocket, handing them to me. They were spell diagrams, but more complex and precise than the ones I had learned healing spells from, not to mention the notes scrawled in every open margin.

“I don’t expect you to memorize all of this, but these are good starting points,” she said. “Try it out for a bit.”

I did. Trying to keep the complexities in mind while I formed spells that I’d gotten very used to casting was tough, to say the least, and it ballooned the amount of time I needed to get the spell formation finished before releasing the magic.

When I released my Fireball, though, I could sense the difference in the density and structure of the spell. It slammed into the stone pillar and detonated, its force more focused into the target itself rather than wasting its power in the air. Though it still wasn’t as effective as I would have liked it to be, it cracked the pillar where my previous efforts had done nothing more than char it.

Fireball lv 2 -> 3

“Well done,” Lena said. “You learn fast.”

“I try.”

From start to finish, the session hadn’t even lasted half an hour. Both of us had other things to get to, so it ultimately worked out fine.

I went to the clinic afterwards. I’d left Cale, Locke, and Watson there, and to my surprise, only Cale was still here.

Just like yesterday, there was a healthy crowd gathered around the clinic. Or, not quite—there was a pretty large number of people. People didn’t come to get healed if they were perfectly healthy.

Cale and Matias were amongst their number, the latter continuing to act as a sort of a manager for the people who were trying to get care while the former was just waiting around.

Once again, there were a number of unfamiliar faces.

“More mercenaries?” I asked Cale after I managed to push my way to the front door.

“Other companies,” he confirmed. “Looks like we weren’t the last set of sellswords here. That isn’t promising.”

“And Watson? What happened to him?” I beckoned Cale in, looking around to get the clinic in order.

“Healed,” Cale said. “I nodded off at some point in the night, and when I woke up, your friend was gone and Watson was in one piece again. Still missing a leg, though.”

I frowned. “You fell asleep?”

“…or something like that. I’m not sure.” Cale seemed a bit uneasy about it, too. “I just know that Watson’s fine. He’s recovering at an inn a couple streets over with the rest of my crew.”

I blew out a breath. I could guess at what happened given the sequence of events and the context I had gathered. Odds were good that Locke had transported the comatose man to wherever Vallis was healing people or had gotten the man to come over himself. I couldn’t think of any other healer who could have fixed that.

As I was setting up, re-cleaning the operation bed and double-checking my tools and tinctures as well as the amount of each.

Inside my toolbox, someone had left a note.

You felt that I owed you. Now we are even. Hold onto the rock for me. I know how to find you. Remember what you promised.

It had no name, but I knew who this was from.

“What a weird guy,” I muttered to myself.

I was definitely going to see Locke again, it seemed. If I had a say in things, I would have much rather never met that creepy possibly-demon again, but it didn’t seem like he was going to give me that luxury.

I was half-tempted to just use the rest of the deep obsidian now out of spite, but I also didn’t consider myself the type of person to renege on my word. We did have an agreement, and I did intend to honor it. The Federation was looking pretty shady, and that aside, I had already gotten the critical information I’d been searching for. I supposed there was plenty of magic to study, but there were a whole bunch of ways to find magical knowledge.

For the time being, I put that aside and stored the remaining chunk of deep obsidian in my storage band.

I paused as I went on my way to tell Matias we were good to open for the day..

“Um, why are you still here?” I asked Cale. “Everyone from your group’s been treated now, right? Did I fuck something up?”

“No, everything has stayed well,” he said. “I thought you would want to hear what happened with Watson, and I wanted to thank you again. I never got the opportunity to pay you, either.”

“Oh, right. Twenty silver for Watson’s treatment, please.”

He furrowed his brow. “Are you sure? You—“

“We’re not having this conversation again,” I said. “Successful treatment is twenty silver.”

Cale handed me the coin without complaining again, but it wasn’t just silver he pressed into my hand.

“This is a whistle,” I said, opening my palm and looking at the item he’d not-so-subtly given me.

Oh, this was a perfect time for me to use the item I’d gotten from Quill and Jeremy at the forge. I drew the rod they’d gifted me from my storage band and tapped it to the off-white, roughly shaped item they’d given me.

Item: Bone Whistle

Tier: Adept

The following is an approximation of what this item may do.

Produces an ear-piercingly loud sound. Connects to nearby whistles of its like when activated.

“It’s a bone whistle,” Cale explained, a little late. “Got these from a tribe up in the northern wastes. It’s got our signature in them. Blow one of these when we’re in the area and we’ll know where you are. We owe you.”

“You really don’t,” I said. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Take it anyway.” He grinned lopsidedly. “We have extras.”

I held the whistle up, inspecting it, then shrugged and put it into my storage band. “Thanks. I do appreciate it.”

“No worries. If you’re ever in trouble and we’re in the area, we’ll be there.”

With that, he took his leave.

From there, the day proceeded fairly normally. The new mercenaries all had similar stories to Cale’s. Fewer of them had been lost to the plague this time because of warnings spread by the other groups, but there were still a few who’d been hit by it. They had taken the warnings serious enough that there were no Nightmare plague survivors whose condition had progressed nearly as far as Watson’s had.

I cleared them the same way I had before, amputating tourniqueted fingers and toes. Also as before, plague continued to jump to my spellcasting hand. The accumulated burden of it was beginning to hurt, creating a constant buzz of pain while I was working, but it didn’t spread further up my hand or, more critically, to any of my patients.

Despite my worries that something would go wrong, I was able to get everyone sorted out without incident.

The next day preceded much the same way. I trained with Lena, did some sparring with Mizuki, and went to the clinic.

Fireball lvl 3 -> 4

I checked in at the forges with Jeremy and Quill before I left.

“Bucklers are pretty much done,” Quill said boastfully. “Just need to finish cooling. We’ll have them for you by nightfall.”

“Old man’s still got it,” Jeremy joked.

“You need to learn some manners,” Quill replied in kind.

“I look forward to it,” I said politely, seeing myself out before they could wrap me up into their antics.

Of course, I could only avoid trouble for so long.

It happened when I was returning to the guild after a day spent at the clinic. Because of the increased activity in the south, I had a fair number of people who had traveled into the city. Aftereffects of magical combat were widespread and long-term enough that people were getting bones shattered and diseases applied by any number of offensive spells employed by both sides of the conflict there.

The nights had been startlingly peaceful, even given the supposed guild war that was supposed to be going on. It was almost to the point where I would suspect that the Federation was exaggerating or even entirely falsifying the situation just to maintain control over us.

As such, I was a little less careful than I maybe could have. I called a driver to get me to the bridge over the rifer, at which point I walked the rest. I walked a path that mostly avoided the noisier nightlife districts of the Northside. Since tthis area was largely safer than Southside, I didn’t mind going on paths less tread. They weren’t the dark alleyways where there was an even chance some hooded guy with a knife was going to try to yank even a kid’s coinpurse, so I had figured it was fine.

I was walking through a wide street that passed mostly through administrative buildings and the like when my senses practically started screaming.

Danger Sense lvl 1 -> 2

I shifted into a state of harmony immediately, awareness expanding to encompass the area around me. Shortly afterward, sensing the presence of crisscrossing lines of mana, I rolled out of the way just as an intersecting grid constructed of long white beams manifested on the street.

Lights illuminated a figure on the roof of what I was pretty sure was the equivalent to a sewage treatment plant. He had his hands spread, red and white robes making it clear as day that he represented Grancrest.

“I am Highmaster Lanaeus Crescent of Grancrest,” he declared. “Come quietly, Red. It will make all of our lives easier.”