Reborn Healer Chapter 37

“What do we do?” I asked. “I’m just thinking out loud here, but the magma wraiths aren’t supposed to be here, which makes me assume external interference. It seems a little convenient that one of the wraiths is trailing right back to one of the boxes.”

“I was thinking the same,” Mizuki replied, “but that’s the truesteel box. Even if it’s a trap, we can just get it quickly and come back, no?”

I looked at her, then down to the hundred-foot-plus drop down onto jagged stalagmites and what might have been running water down below us. “How exactly do you think we’re coming back quickly?”

She pulled on one of her fingers, a ring materializing. Once in her hands, it expanded in size as she passed mana through it, then filled with the same blackness that Matias’ storage band had. Mizuki reached within, drawing out a long coil of rope and a steel bolt.

“I asked your dad to buy me some stuff after the last time we came into the dungeon,” she said. “Realized I was missing a lot of stuff. In my defense, I couldn’t take all my equipment when I left home.”

“I’m noticing you don’t have a hammer,” I said.

“That’s fine,” she replied, setting the rope down and placing the bolt perpendicular to the ground.

Mizuki sized it up and struck it with her palm, hard. It wasn’t a perfect placement, but it punched partway through the rock. A second later, she did it again, digging it in further.

“Good enough,” she said.

“Impressive.” I located one end of the rope and tied it to the bolt.

Mizuki tossed the rope down and started rappelling down the side of the cliff before it could even hit the ground. I followed her, mindful of any hazards that could be in the rock face. There were a few, but nothing sentient popped up, wary of both of Mizuki’s presence. I could see or sense eyes peering out at us at various points in the cliff, but directing any attention towards them always sent them scurrying off.

The bottom was more treacherous than the cliff face. While it wasn’t too hard to avoid the worst of the stalagmites, which were much less of a threat now that we were closer to them and didn’t risk getting messily impaled on them, they were all dripping wet. A violent river (or creek or rivulet, maybe—I didn’t know the proper terminology) rushed through the chasm, spraying fortunately non-acidic water on us and the stone around us.

With our increased dexterity and skills, this went from obvious suicide to just on the more challenging end of acrobatic exercises. I found myself suddenly very thankful that the magma wraith was fire focused. Even with the brutal training I’d subjected myself to, it was still no easy task jumping from one slick, narrow stalagmite to another without losing balance or breaking what we landed on.

Mizuki led the way, which meant I at least didn’t have to put any mind to pathing out where I was going, but it was still pretty tough even given that. The running water was also a lot wider than I had initially thought. As it turned out, seeing things from a hundred feet up made them look smaller than they actually were. Shocker.

About ten miserable seconds in, I mentally facepalmed.

“Mizuki!” I called out over the rush of the water under us. “Jump!”

“What?”

“Trust me! I’ll catch you!”

“You have absolutely not earned that level of trust!”

“That’s hurtful!” I replied. “But fair! Hold on a second.”

I jumped myself, casting Shield as I did. At Initiate-tier, the barrier-type spell was tough enough to support a few hundred pounds of weight, and cast horizontally, it could act as a temporary platform. I couldn’t shape it as nicely as I wanted to, and the water still made the low-traction surface slicker, but it was worlds better than trying to hop from wet rock to half-submerged wetter rock.

Since I had progressed to Adept, I could now easily hold two or three of these at the same time even though the spell required concentration. I chianed them as I passed Mizuki. She saw what I was doing and hopped on just as I passed her.

“You know, saying ‘I can make a bridge’ would have been enough,” she said.

“Hey, maybe I wanted to see if you trusted me.”

“Or maybe you suck at communication.”

“I’m twelve.”

“That’s not an excuse. Be better.”

We were about halfway across when the barrier-type spell blocking off the limits of the exam zone became substantially clearer to us. As we got closer, the shimmering increased in intensity until it was a near-solid blue wall. Against that dim light, I could just barely make out what Mizuki had been talking about earlier.

Sure enough, at the base of the cliff on the far side, a silver-coated box lay pristine and untouched against the cliff face just next to a pathway that led deeper into the wall. The magma wraith was nowhere in sight, but the slight redness of the stone around the pathway told us exactly where it had gone.

I frowned. Judging from where I saw the barrier start from above, the demonic creature definitely would have run into the limits there.

While I was trying to get a closer look, my Danger Sense flared.

“Watch out right!” Mizuki shouted.

I turned, my perception slipping out of my body as Harmonic Awareness slipped in place. For the time being, I was more than my body. I was the Shield underneath my feet, the water covering it, the damp air around us.

As a barracuda larger than my head leapt out of the water straight at me, mouth glimmering with mana, it became part of what I understood to be myself as well.

I moved with practiced grace, easily sidestepping the charge and the beam of light emerging from its mouth. I let it graze the tip of my lifeline as it passed, tearing it open from jaw to tail before it fell back into the water, trailing green blood.

Harmonic Awareness lvl 0 -> 1

“There’s more where that came from,” I guessed. “Let’s keep moving.

I kept two Shield-platforms up at a time, now adding a third Beginner-tier Barrier to our right as well to at least delay the impact of anything else that might hit us.

The barracudas weren’t even deliberately trying to hunt us, as far as I could tell. They just lived here, and we happened to be tasty-looking fleshbags in their way. 

It was much smoother sailing this way than otherwise, though, and we reached the other end without getting knocked off once. One of the fish did slam face-first into the Barrier, punching through it in a dazed enough state that I could just kick it back into the water, but that was about it.

We got down on comparatively dry land, approaching the box. Both of us were on high alert, but nothing jumped out at us as we got close to it.

“Well, that’s us passing,” I said. “Can you fit this in your storage ring?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Mizuki replied, popping it off her hand again. “Check inside to make sure it’s the real thing.”

I did. The box was easy enough to open, though it had a whole bunch of clasps that were kind of annoying. Set inside it was a single metal ingot that looked rather unimpressive but for its subtle, otherworldly blue tint. I showed it to Mizuki.

Her eyes widened. “This guild has some serious coin. You could buy a house with an ingot that large. They do this for tests every season?”

“Maybe?” I shrugged. “I know their tests aren’t always the exact same kind.”

Mizuki frowned, inspecting the box. “Something about this feels off.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But hey, if we get to keep it then all the better for us. Do you sense the magma wraith, by the way?”

She closed her eyes, focusing on her other senses, then shook her head. “I don’t know where it went.”

“Okay, then does that pathway next to us just branch off really hard?” I followed up. “The barrier is right next to us.”

“That’s a good question. Can you see the barrier through it?”

I activated one of my light trinkets, shining it down the path in the wall where the wraith had vanished.

My light wasn’t very bright, but it was enough to see the shimmering barrier deeper down. It was all-encompassing, present both above and inside the rock. Except—

“Hold on a second,” I said. “You see that?”

Mizuki leaned over, looking down the hallway. “Shit.”

The barrier was only almost all-encompassing. Down the hallway, a roughly circular chunk of it was simply missing, leading to a further tunnel that my light didn’t shine down.

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but that looks like someone drilled a hole through the border to me.”

“Then the wraith was likely summoned as well,” Mizuki said. “We should get out of here.”

“Yeah, let’s,” I said. “Get the box in the ring and I can start ferrying us back across.”

She nodded seriously, lifting the truesteel box and dropping it in her storage ring.

As Mizuki put her ring back on, adrenaline pre-emptively alerted me to something approaching from the direction of the hole.

Danger Sense lvl 0 -> 1

I startled, drawing my lifeline as a shadow burst out through the tunnel, snaking through the entire path the wraith must have taken before swirling to a stop on the drier part of the rock near us. It materialized into two distinct shapes—a bird-like feathered creature flapping four wings to stay afloat and a bearded young man in a red and white cloak.

Two other shadows followed shortly after. I tried to block one of them with a Shield spell, but it snaked around it easily and materialized next to the cloaked man, taking the form of significantly larger magma wraiths than the ones we’d killed earlier.

“A pleasure to meet you, Blue,” the man said. “Red as well, I take it? You’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked. I squinted. “Hold on. Are those Grancrest colors?”

“I’m Terrence,” he introduced himself. “You have a good eye. I’m a diabolist for Grancrest.”

“Grancrest?” Mizuki whispered.

“Local guild,” I said. “They’re active mostly only in southern Halcyon, but I think they also have a Leyeril branch. I didn’t pay much attention when Iryn was explaining them to me.”

“The fastest-growing guild established in the last fifteen years, and the only one pushing deeper into the frontier,” Terrence said, clapping his hands. “Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“What is this?” I asked, fists clenching tightly around my lifeline. “Let me guess. You want us to come with you?”

“Got it in one,” he said. “Well, the girl, really. We just have a few questions to ask her.”

I snorted.

“What, something funny?”

“You know, you’re the second one to say something like that to me,” I said. “At least the first guy was honest.”

Something larger was at play here, and I suspected we’d just found a clue to the source. Grancrest had a pretty sizable amount of influence in Liaren. If they had learned a clue as to Mizuki’s real identity, maybe they wanted her for some kind of leverage?

It was hard to figure, but it also wasn’t my first priority.

I really did need to get something like Mizuki’s spyglass or a spellbook that containned something for assessing opponents. I could make a guess as to what kind of firepower I was going up against by way of how my Danger Sense reacted to them as well as some measure of my increasingly acute understanding of mana, but it was nowhere near as good as knowing what someone’s tier was right off the bat.

“Adept,” Mizuki whispered.

“I can hear you,” Terrence said drily. “Yeah, I’m an Adept. I’m sure you think you’ve got a chance against me, but rest assured, I’ve got a lot more where these guys came from.”

We had two options here: stand our ground and fight or run and take the battle defensively instead.

Technically, there was the third option of agreeing to Terrence’s demands, but that was akin to suicide, quite possibly literally in Mizuki’s case.

Running was also going to be a bit dicey. Trying to forcefield-bridge back across the river was a much less attractive prospects when the diabolist had multiple summons he could throw at us.

Fighting didn’t look fun, either. We were in a horrifically unfavorable position against an enemy who could utilize all three dimensions against us.

Unable to think of anything off the top of my head, I decided to go with the old-fashioned tactic of chatting shit until I could formulate an idea.

“You’re awfully confident for an Adept,” I said.

“You’re a defensive mage,” he replied. “And you’re tiny. Even if you’re skilled, you’re not going to be killing me any time soon.”

Your info is bad, I thought. Given that he was calling us by our city-registered names, I had to assume that his source was basing their information off of the after-action report Matias and the Federation team had filled in after the slime incident.

Had none of them reported our—hmm. Actually, on second thought, none of them would have wanted to report that their archer had not only had the audacity to take an aggressive one-on-one against a twelve-year-old healer but had also lost.

“And her?” I asked, nodding towards Mizuki.

“Warrior,” he said, dismissing her out of hand. “Adept, so not even one with a class. No warrior can keep up with me at this tier.”

Classes. I’d been so focused on getting information about Neferi and getting myself to Adept that I hadn’t even started to think about the Master tiers. One of the major differences between the basic and Master tiers was the presence of system-assisted specialization presenting itself in the form of a class.

“You fight Masters a lot?” I asked, still scanning the area for anything we could use.

“Work with ‘em, yeah,” Terrence said. “Fight? Only in sparring. This is my first formal non-dungeon venture, and monsters don’t get classes.”

Theoretically, we could run out of the bounded area through the same hole that the diabolist and his demons had come in through, but that was a no-go. The timing of this had been too good for this to be a hack job. Whoever had planned this must have done so meticulously.

A thought to came mind. He was wearing guild colors. Grancrest’s. This operation must have been officially okayed by them for him to do that. If it wasn’t, he’d be risking immediate expulsion from the guild and subsequent trial under regular criminal law at best.

“Any of those Masters with you today?” I asked. “Or is this the only breach?”

“Oh, the breaches are all over the place,” Terrence explained, practically lounging on top of his flying summon. “You know the nice thing about fetch quests? If you can learn where the targets are, you can control where the people doing them go.”

My eyes widened slightly, though I did my best to control my reaction.

Assuming he wasn’t bullshitting, Terrence had just admitted to a large-scale operation dedicated to capturing Mizuki. Why would Grancrest do this off of so little information? What had they learned that was missing.

And more importantly…

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

Terrence shrugged dramatically. “Oops.”

Mizuki tensed. “This is bigger than just me.”

“Oh, the girl’s smart! No wonder the higher-ups want you. Well, anyway. Red, was it? Yeah, we have people positioned at every destination of this inane scavenger hunt of yours.” Terrence’s exposition was lacking in passion, as if he was reading from a script. “Such a shame that you learned our plans now. I can’t be leaving witnesses now, can I?”

About halfway through his monologue, it had clicked for me the same way it must have for Mizuki.

She was a target, but so were the rest of us. I wasn’t well-versed enough in guild politics to know exactly why Grancrest and the Federation had a quarrel with each other, but I was at least aware that the Federation was generally not well-liked by the other guilds in town.

The entire time, I kept Empathic Insight focused on him, narrowing my focus in on his words to see if he was bluffing.

There was the slightest sense of unease in some of his words, but most of what I got through the noise of the unreadable demons was blinding confidence. He was sure that he could take us, or maybe he was sure that the plan was going to work.

As a result, at his last word, rather than let him take the initiative, I hurled my lifeline at him.

A note of alarm broke through Terrence’s facade, but he reacted fast enough to have the four-winged demon dive to the side. The dodge came just in time, my spear clipping two of its wings and sending it spiraling towards one of the larger magma wraiths. 

Terrence shouted a command word, causing the wraith to collapse into a red-black ash. He didn’t want to touch them either, it seemed, and the winged monster managed to recover, dipping Terrence in the running water as it did.

“Fucking bastard!” he cursed.

I seized on the sharp threads of emotion that burst out of him with that line, searching for a weakness. The numbers still favored him even with one of his wraiths dematerializing, and the remaining one looked a lot more difficult to fight than the young ones, looming over us at a good seven feet tall. If we were going to fight, I didn’t want it to be fair.

Terrence’s emotions were a potent mix of anger, adrenaline, and challenged pride—everything I would expect in this situation. There had to be something I could use. Some lever I could pull on.

I dug deeper, refining the skill and digging deeper. I could empathize with people in the moment, get flashes of what they were experiencing. In the past, I’d dug into someone’s subconscious by accident. Could I replicate that on purpose?

Something clicked into place within my soul.

Empathic Insight has surpassed level 10 and is evolving!

Like the last few times I’d had a skill tier up, I could feel a distinct change in my soul as part of it grew more complex and powerful. Unlike the last few times, though, it split. 

Empathic Insight has two possible evolutions. Select the skill it will become: