Reborn Healer Chapter 60

Nightmare’s Call lvl 4 -> 8

Danger Sense lvl 4 -> 8

Harmonic Awareness lvl 4 -> 8

Split the Shadows lvl 8 -> 10

Nightmare Forged lvl 3 -> 7

My body had not been prepared for this. That much was obvious as my soul underwent the changes affixed to it by the Nightmare, forcibly evolving.

It could have been worse. I had been steadily improving the abilities of my warrior core for quite some time now, and though I hadn’t quite been on the verge of breaking through to Adept, I had been within striking range at the very least.

That said, having an external force advance me forward put an insane amount of stress on my body. Furthermore, the plague wasn’t justdelivering the Nightmare directly into my bloodstream. When Neferi had created this, she had been making an all-out weapon of war, and as such the difference between the plague and the barrier into the liminal space under my house meant that I was still actively suffering damage back in the real world.

The darkness of the Nightmare faded from my vision—or, more accurately, I faded out of the alternate dimension before finding myself in reality again.

After everything I’d just been through, my body and soul had both been run ragged. When I managed to open sticky, burning eyes again, it was with the realization that I was face down in mud and blood. My own, as far as I could tell.

My mana was nearly completely exhausted. The last time I’d tiered up had been within the guts of a slime, and that had replenished so much of my power that I’d been able to survive making it to Matias and thereafter save his life. Why hadn’t the same—

Oh. Duh. I had been actively dying. My perception was still trying to catch up to reality, but it was pretty clear that I’d been rinsed thoroughly by my time in the plague. My mana must have been fueling my body while I’d been struggling to keep my soul in one piece.

The ambient magic in the air was a comfort, reminding me of the world I existed in now. I cycled it through my veins, wincing as they tore through fatigued, cracked channels.

I was so tired I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to move again. Even cycling mana was so much of a chore that I almost gave up immediately, but something warm and bright gave me a second lifeline to hold onto, joining the pitch-black spear I was gripping so tightly that blood leaked from my palm, skin flaking off into the dead dirt beneath me. It was the same as the unfamiliar warmth that had given me some brief respite in the Nightmare.

As my mana returned, so did my senses. The area around me had been entirely blackened, the area effects of the plague killing all the grass and wicking the moisture from the dirt in my immediate surroundings. People were running about, and I dimly realized that they were shouting, running around with panicked purpose.

I then looked up to see that a long, winding line of flowing blood had connected itself to an area just under my heart, arcing all the way back to another group of people. The Federation.

“…where you stand!” Gerald’s fierce voice was the first thing I managed to hear again over the dull roar of my newly reinforced soul. “As of this moment, the Federation in Liaren has ceased to exist! DO NOT MOVE.”

The last word was imbued with some kind of magic, coursing out over the other guild. There were fewer of them than there were before, I noted.

I didn’t particularly care about that at the moment given more prescient concerns. Who had attached this to me? Why?

The thread wasn’t static, and it wasn’t my blood. I would have been able to tell the latter was the case even if all my mana was gone. Years upon years of testing my spells and magic on myself had given me a preternatural awareness of my own biology. Someone else was interfacing with my body and soul.

Blood magic. That rang a bell. Where had I—the World Dungeon. Fighting against Grancrest’s ambush. Had that been part of Sebastian’s plan, too?

Don’t get distracted, idiot, I told myself, trying to focus.

I groaned and placed my hands on the ground, forcing myself up.

All of a sudden, the silence that had spread across the Federation extended to the royal guards or whoever the purple-clad fighters he had with him were actually called—they were stronger than any of the other guards I’d seen in town, at least. Anyway, the point was that they quieted down too, and I got the uncomfortable sense that everyone was looking at me.

The thread of blood that snaked into me stayed with my body as my arms, still weakened from the darkness that continued pulsing through them, failed me. Warmth surged through me, restoring just enough energy to keep myself from falling back on my face.

I managed to bring myself up on my elbows, and the pieces snapped into place.

Mizuki. That was the only person I knew who could use this kind of magic. She’d used a ritual to form a binding vow when I’d met her, though she had only managed to do so on one of my cores, and she’d used blood magic again to sharply increase the power of her whip in the World Dungeon.

I couldn’t see her, but the thread ran off into the crowd of petrified Federation adventurers. A good chunk of them hadn’t counted on running into the Lord Prince, it seemed, let alone running afoul of him.

“There is an elf amongst us,” Gerald said, his voice carrying far beyond the range it should have. “Remain still and prepare yourself to defend against further attacks.”

The Lord Prince, I realized, had a defensive spell in front of him. He cast his eyes at me, a dark expression clouding his face.

He stepped forward, his knife-cum-magical-focus glittering in his hand, and I had a sudden, sharp premonition as to where he wanted to direct that spell.

The thread wavered slightly, confirming my suspicions.

Wait, I tried to say, but my throat was dry as the desert and so closed up that nothing more than a soft groan escaped it. My vocal cords had rusted like I hadn’t used them in a century. Language would not come to me.

Gerald continued forward, a grander spell forming in the blade. I needed to stop him. I couldn’t let him kill Mizuki here and now when she’d come so far to do… what, exactly? Why had she even come here?

Not important in the moment. Questions could wait till later. Right now, I had to act.

There was so little mana circulating in my body, but the Nightmare slithered out to supplement my will.

My grip loosened almost without me realizing it, and my lifeline flew.

Skill: Control Lifeline

Tier: Adept

Type: Kinetic

Creates a link between you and your lifeline. You can call your lifeline or send it further away from you. Efficacy decreases with range.

I didn’t have the physical strength to throw the spear myself, but even with how little mana I had left, the amount of power I infused into the lifeline surprised me. The spear tore outwards with reckless abandon, following my will perfectly.

Gerald’s people froze as the lifeline streaked through the open air faster than I could have sprinted, traveling past him and coming to a stop right before the Lord Prince.

My target himself paused in his spell formation, turning to look at me.

I crawled forward, using the meager energy I was being supplied to get closer to more accurately control the spear.

My lifeline thrummed actively with the same dark magic that had blown over everyone here, at least partially infecting a good chunk of them by the looks of it. It was only natural that gazes that ranged from wary to outright hostile suddenly affixed them on me.

At least it looked like not too many people had died horribly. My gambit had worked out.

Now I just needed to keep Mizuki’s from failing.

Though my mana was lacking, I could still imbue the spear with power. The advancement had changed my soul in more ways than the others had. There were connections in there that had been deepened, opening new ones along the way. I had no confirmation on what I could do yet, but I suspected I had formed a significantly more direct connection to the Nightmare.

As such, Nightmare Forged flowed into the lifeline easily even though it wasn’t in my hands. At Adept-tier, the skill had evolved such that I could modify the shape of the spear itself. Up until now, I’d mostly used it to provide additional utility for the weapon, but I went further this time, drawing the Nightmare into me and shaping it within my lifeline.

Characters emerged out of the spear painfully slowly, forming words. The fine control required to form small, detailed characters was beyond me, so I kept it simple.

Friend, I wrote in shifting shadow, focusing on nothing but the skill to ensure the new section wouldn’t just dissipate into formless mana.

The Lord Prince turned to me.

“The elf here is your friend?” Suspicion colored his expression. “Are you certain that you are under its influence?”

I couldn’t speak, so I just moved the spear over and wrote in the air even more, the words leaving fading trails of black as energy roiled off of them.

Yes. Ally.

Gerald looked at me quizzically. “The magic could have its hooks in you already, but…”

He trailed off, clearly calculating something behind those cold eyes.

The Lord Prince tilted his head, and Nightmare’s Call, passive as it was, whispered his sensation of understanding to me.

Gerald looked towards me and let out a long sigh.

“Assemble the guild members and process them for conscription,” he said at a normal volume, enough for those in the immediate area but not much further to hear him. “Execute those who do not comply. I have two special cases to deal with.”

It didn’t take a genius to see who he was referring to.

Ah, shit. This wasn’t the worst, but it was pretty bad. The whole reason Mizuki had joined the Federation in the first place was to get away from politics and have someone to protect her for when the elven kingdom came for her head, and from the little context I’d gathered, that wasn’t going to be viable at all anymore.

To be fair, it didn’t seem like operating under Sebastian would have been much better, but this was still the literal failure state she’d been trying to avoid. She had to have known the risks of coming here, and I could tell just from my quick glances that the Federation hadn’t sent even close to everybody they had.

I was the other special case, and I didn’t care as much given my general neutrality towards royalty, but I hadn’t wanted Mizuki to get herself wrapped up in this.

My reaction would change based on hers, I decided. My spear was still active, and there were still ways I could act.

As it turned out, though, she had understood what she was dealing with from the moment she’d stepped into the field. A familiar white-haired girl emerged from the loose crowd of stunned Federation adventurers, walking with purpose across the scorched earth. Blood trailed out of an open wound in her palms and into the very twisting thread that connected to my heart.

“Is this young lady the one you speak of?” Gerald asked me. “Does she operate under an alias?”

“This young lady can speak for herself,” Mizuki replied.

“Blue,” the Lord Prince said.

“Not quite.” The half-elf held her whip-sword out to one side, curtsying lightly. “My name is Mizuki. You were half correct when you said there was an elf here earlier. Believe me, though, there’s no love lost between them and me.”

“The city has been searching for you,” he said. “I apologize for the… inconvenience.”

Wait. The Lord Prince had been the one searching for Mizuki. Since the city guard hadn’t looked for her after that initial incident where three of them had tried their hand and died trying to kill her, I had assumed that it had been isolated, but if he had said the city was searching for him…

I drew out the characters for the words your fault with my lifeline.

“If you would like to see it that way, then you may,” he said. “This is a matter best discussed elsewhere. I will personally ensure your safe transport to the castle.”

“Of course, your Highness,” Mizuki replied, using the complete wrong form of address for a Lord Prince. “If you’d allow me to check on my friend?”

“Do not make any sudden moves. You have sixty seconds.”

Gerald turned to his people and started managing them further, presumably using a spell to keep an eye on Mizuki as she got closer to me and knelt down next to me, blood linking us.

“You really need to stop getting yourself killed,” she said.

Working on it, I thought.

Before I could start communicating that to her, my Danger Sense flared.

Advancing to Adept in my warrior core had come with a substantial level gain in all of my skills, even the ones with no connection to the Nightmare. The implications of that were obvious, but that was not my concern.

The part that mattered in the moment was that Danger Sense had grown a great deal more sensitive and precise, and it was blaring alarms in a straight line from the small of Mizuki’s back to someone from the Federation.

I caught movement in the corner of my eye, and I acted. I could barely move, but I had plenty of Nightmare to spare.

A newly modified skill caught my attention, and I triggered it instantly, sending the new dark power within me right down that thread of warning I’d caught.

Skill: Siphoning Hex

Tier: Adept

Type: Affliction

Requires concentration. Expends power invested in the lifeline to curse a target. A cursed target will become slower and take significantly more damage. You can draw on the curse to siphon mana and revitalizing energy from the target.

I hadn’t used Curse much, so I hadn’t truly gained the intuition necessary to use it at a fully natural level, but it was easily apparent how much smoother it had grown now, tearing straight through the air at my target.

The skill was also significantly more mana-hungry, but my spear was properly overflowing with energy from the plague bomb, which was more than sufficient fuel.

A second, significantly darker thread than the bloody one connecting me and Mizuki appeared for just a moment before fading. To senses that went beyond sight, the connection was still clear and present.

The person who’d moved flinched back as I drew on the hex immediately. Mana dripped into my parched channels, a shot of energy spiking through me like I’d just downed an energy drink. It was deeply unpleasant, the sensation akin to having the wrong blood flowing in my veins, but it was very welcome in my current state.

Moments ago, I had been so exhausted that it had been a near impossibility just to try to get to my elbows, but with this temporary surge flowing through me, I got to one knee, then to my feet as I called my lifeline back to me.

“Ren?” Mizuki asked, concerned.

That moment of hesitation cost the assailant. He’d been trying to make a move quick enough to slip past detection spells, which had evidently worked well enough given that Gerald’s group was only now realizing he was trying to pull something. Even with his flinch, he might still have gotten away with it, razor-sharp throwing knives flashing towards me and Mizuki with the speed of a very well-trained Adept.

Unfortunately for him, even in my current state, I was better.

My lifeline obeyed my orders, screaming back into my hand as I used stolen mana to cast a Shield in front of me.

I was pushing it on mana usage even with this one spell, I could tell. My head instantly got foggier, only alleviated by further siphoning through the hex, but it was fine. The forcefield shattered, but it slowed the knives enough for my enhanced Harmonic Awareness to catch where they were going and how.

My lifeline moved like the extension of my body it was, shadows flaring out from each side in net-like patterns as I sent it flying and spinning to intercept the throwing knives or whatever they were.

Control Lifeline lvl 0 -> 1

Before they even clattered to the ground, I grabbed the spear—except someone else already had her hand on it.

Mizuki winced as she clasped her hand around a sharp protrusion I’d cast out of the spear. Blood welled from her hand, spreading with a mind of its own and forming a band across the lifeline itself.

“You can control it, right?” she asked, having deduced what upgrade I’d gotten by watching me manipulate it in ways I had certainly been incapable of before. “Let me handle getting it up to speed.”

Without waiting for an answer, she assumed the stance of an Olympic javelin thrower, took one start-up step, and hurtled it.

It was far faster than anything I could have managed without hurting myself in this state. I changed its path as it flew, directing it towards the assailant. Recognizing this, he turned abruptly and dug his feet into the ground, preparing some kind of movement skill.

More of his energy drained into me, so I did the first thing that came to mind.

“FALL!” My voice was scratchy and hoarse, the act of shouting enough to cause teraing pains in my throat, but Nightmare’s Call bridged the distance nonetheless.

He tripped, and I directed the spear straight into his back, the lifeline corkscrewing straight through leather armor, flesh, bone, flesh and armor again, and ultimately earth.

Only then did I turn to see Gerald just staring at me.

I was suddenly dizzy, the overuse of my mana when I’d been running on empty already catching up to me. I coughed into the dirt, spitting blood as I did.

Thankfully, the energy I’d assembled from Siphoning Hex was enough to keep me from collapsing immediately, but I did drop to a knee as I looked up at the Lord Prince.

“You couldn’t have intervened?” I asked.

“I would have been too late if you hadn’t used your shield,” he admitted. “I have gotten sloppy. As to afterwards, you had it under control and I was curious of your capabilities.”

I gave him my best glare, which couldn’t look very threatening at the moment. “Asshole.”

To my surprise, that actually got a chuckle out of the Lord Prince.

“It is as you say,” he said. “Parisa, please dispose of the body when you have the chance.”

The body. They weren’t even going to try to save him. Another human being to add to the list I’d made. I didn’t even come close to feeling bad this time, I realized, and I couldn’t be bothered to moralize over it.

“You two are coming with me,” he said, pointing at the carriage he’d dismounted from.

The Lord Prince and his group had sequestered their horses and other forms of transportation away from themselves after they’d disembarked, which meant none of them had gotten hit by the plague bomb. That was convenient for us, whom he escorted inside a vehicle substantially nicer than the one Vallis regularly hired out. The seats had proper plush cushioning, and a charm of some kind regulated the temperature and airflow within, magic shielding lining the walls around us.

There were three rows of seating. Mizuki and I sat in the second row, the Lord Prince simply acknowledging us and sitting ahead, either completely confident that neither of us would try to assassinate him or that even if we did, it wouldn’t even be a contest.

The latter was more likely. Neither of us had even tried to break away from him. I was pretty sure both of our skills that we used to assess danger had told us the exact same thing: don’t even try.

I turned to Mizuki, who still had a thread of blood connected to me.

“I still can’t believe you stood and fought,” she said, shaking her head. “You were dead when I got there.”

“Was I?” I raised an eyebrow. “I felt pretty alive. Like shit, but alive.”

“We made a binding vow, dummy,” she said, flicking my forehead. “That doesn’t just mean the bond. Some of my blood’s in you. I felt your core struggling, and then when I got there, I felt it die.”

Huh. I hadn’t noticed anything particularly out of place, but then again… would I have? I had been so deep in the Nightmare that not even death or life had held any meaning for me.

Also, wait, hold on.

“You’ve been tracking me?” I asked.

“Can you blame me?”

Considering everything coming after her, I really couldn’t. The fact that she’d apparently played a pivotal role in keeping me alive completely killed any semblance of an argument I could muster.

It did raise another question, though.

“Why did you come?”

Mizuki had been pursued by people from the moment she’d stepped foot into Liaren. The whole reason she’d joined the Federation was so that she could find a group that could protect her from the elven kingdom that had chased her out.

I knew for a fact she wasn’t on the team that had come to get me. All of the fresh initiates had been kept back in the locked-down headquarters inside the town. She would have had to sneak out herself and… what, join the strike force? How had that worked out?

“Quid pro quo,” she said, the words sounding strange on her tongue. “Something for something, right?”

“Using my own words against me is a low blow.” I grinned nonetheless. “Still… it was a big ask, given, well, this.”

I didn’t want to say it directly, but Mizuki had explicitly been trying to avoid this outcome.

“I weighed the options,” she said simply. “This isn’t a failure state, and I’d rather take this outcome than stay safe and wind up with you dead.”

“Careful there,” I replied. “You’re going to make me think you care about me.”

She snorted. “Just looking out for my healer, that’s all.”

Our back-and-forth faded as exhaustion set into me again, made smoother by the warmth of whatever magic Mizuki was establishing through the blood bond. At some point, I drifted off to sleep.

I did not dream.

When I woke up, it wasn’t on the carriage. I found myself in an uncomfortably soft bed, rich covers draped over my body.

My mana and strength was back, but I wasn’t at my best. I could still feel lingering fatigue wandering through me, and the aftereffects of the plague were not kind to me.

Harmonic Awareness caught my surroundings before my eyes did, and I practically jumped up.

“Easy there,” Vallis said from beside the bed. “Your soul is still wounded.”

“You should really stop getting yourself hurt,” Mizuki told me, right beside him. “At least the hospital’s nicer this time. We made it to the palace.”

“The Lord Prince will want to speak to you soon, but until then, I have a different suggestion,” Vallis continued, smiling slightly. “Congratulations on fully reaching Adept-tier. Shall we begin your education in soul magic?”