Reborn Healer Chapter 54

Cale blew his whistle again, urging his men forward.

He’d lost one already. Even after healing, they weren’t in the shape they’d been before they had run into a plague capable of putting the strongest man down with a touch. That had been the kind of job that they would spend weeks if not months recovering from, replenishing his company’s numbers before they took on another.

But not one of them had turned down the call when their whistles had ignited with a distress call. They all knew exactly who had asked them for help, and a number of them owed their lives to the boy. Even the minor injuries would have worsened until they were crippled or dead, and health potions only went so far when even the witch doctors in a town weren’t willing to help them.

That wasn’t the kind of debt that could be forgotten in a moment like this.

His group had been on the way out when the other sellswords in the area had noticed what he was doing and had asked after it. Cale had been honest—after all, Ren had been the doctor for the other groups too. They had joined him without further questions. He hadn’t been surprised by that. When it came to the life of earning coin through violence, finding a healer you could trust was worth more than its weight in gold.

Someone had kidnapped the kid and ransacked his clinic, knocking lifesaving equipment and herbs off the walls. Nobody had even been able to tell what they’d stolen.

The problem had come when they’d finally located the source of the whistle after it had vanished for hours on end, leading them to an area he’d had a local guide inform him was guild-held territory.

Pushing against a guild was uncommon, but Cale had done it a few times. They were more organized than the usual criminal organizations or bandit camps they were typically enlisted to destroy, but they were still human. They made mistakes and bled just like the rest.

Granted, he had never even entertained the idea of trying to invade a village held by a guild on the scale of Grancrest, which had roots throughout this entire kingdom and even further north, but there was a first time for everything.

Things had progressed well. As often happened during disputes like this, both sides were pulling their punches. Strength-enhanced warriors turned their blades, mages caught their opponents at the edge of an effect rather than at the center, and they generally poked at each other defenses, trying to find a hole.

Sure, it was impossible to avoid people dying in a skirmish like this, but nobody wanted to engage in all-out combat in the open, especially knowing that it would draw the attention of the much better trained royal military. When those people came out to play, they never went home without leaving bodies in the dirt.

Even under the current status quo, the sellswords were making progress. Grancrest had relocated many people to this village, but they had been preparing for subterfuge and assassinations, setting up defenses for the kind of thing an opposing guild would try in lieu of open invasion. They had assumed that a guild mobilizing would catch the notice of the city.

As they were, there was still a possibility, but Ren was close. The whistles didn’t lie.

Cale was urging the band of warriors with him to move forward when he noticed something strange. Past the open, fortification-laden space they had been steadily making progress through, there were a number of mages and archers on the Grancrest side constantly being a thorn in Cale’s side, but the barrages of warning fire and slowdown effects they’d been plastering down on them had abruptly stopped.

“Hicks!” Cale called out. “Get me eyes on them!”

“Sir!” The scout mage that Cale had been defending drew on his magical focus, a long spyglass that he had to use a bipod to properly deploy. “I’m looking… oh, shit.”

“What is it?”

Hicks looked up to Cale, then double-checked through the spyglass. “Someone’s in their backline. Looks like he got knives off of someone. He’s making them bleed.”

Cale frowned. “Did one of the other bands have an assassin-type? Who is that?”

“You know that kid we’re looking for?” Awe was obvious in Hicks’ voice as he stood, shaking his head. “I think I found him.”

#

Lord Prince Gerald Halcyon rubbed his eyes as if that would eliminate the bone-deep exhaustion that wore at his body. After the last expedition down south, he wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week.

It wasn’t only elves causing problems down there, though of course they were the primary concern. His latest movement had served a dual purpose in pushing back an elven attempt to colonize a scattering of sub-hundred population villages two dozen miles south of Liaren as well as identify potential causes for why they were making a seemingly basic territory grab after over two centuries of total seclusion.

Results on the latter had been inconclusive, but he had a few guesses, none of them good. Something was going deeply wrong in the far south of the continent. Whether it was a Cataclysm, portals to the shallower hells opening, or, fallen gods forbid, a resurgence of Aiken, it could prove devastating to the elves and the other tribes in that unexplored area.

Now that he had returned, it was theoretically a time to rest, but he’d heard reports from the city while he’d been away. Things had taken a turn for the worse here, it seemed, though allegedly not to the point where he would need to step in himself.

I should double-check that. Even as tired as he was, Gerald had improved himself to the point where he could still manage a Grandmaster-tier spell. When he’d first come to this city six or seven years ago, he had been a Highmaster, but if he saw the weakling he’d been back then today, he would have laughed that impudent scumbag out past the city walls.

What was that saying, again? Hard times…

Gerald shook himself out of his reverie, focusing as his carriage made its way back towards the central castle.

“All-Seeing Eye,” he muttered under his breath. By now, he’d gotten fully used to casting it silently, but calling his spells gave him comfort from time to time.

Gerald Halcyon’s awareness expanded as he breathed out, encompassing Liaren, then beyond. Normally, he would have checked further down to the border of the Ayasi forest, but something caught his attention long before that.

Active conflict. That on its own wasn’t that odd. He’d seen into the World Dungeon many a time, and there were constantly guilds and independent divers clearing out contracts there. There were always minor issues with gangs in the night and individual acts of violence, but it wasn’t his responsibility to deal with problems so beneath him.

This, though, was a step past that. It strode straight into the realm of a real, small-scale war, and the center of it included one of the notable blanks, as he termed them—people who caused All-Seeing Eye to register nothing but a person-shaped void. Even if that blank hadn’t been involved,  no Lord Prince could ignore something on this scale.

“Stop,” he ordered, the words carrying towards the magically engineered horse dragging it. What it lacked in intelligence it made up for in its ability to follow orders. “Take me to the Grancrest guild village outside of Liaren.”

As he ordered the horse, he started working on another spell. He needed to call his forces.

It had been a long month, and it didn’t seem to be close to over yet.

#

Sebastian grinned alone in the dark of his office.

Everything always went to plan. When it deviated, all he needed to do was build better plans.

Keeping eyes on Ren Kane had been easy. The boy took some slight precautions when it came to keeping himself hidden, but they were entirely insufficient. While trying to fold Ren into his plans was a near impossibility, modeling Grancrest activity was not, and that had proceeded roughly according to his predictions.

After brief observation of his clinic, it had been clear that not only would Ren provide a perfect excuse to manipulate Grancrest into an unlosable situation, he could also solve the issue entirely on his own.

He had also provided Sebastian with access to samples of the Nightmare plague. No Federation members had been sent far enough south to contract the disease, and he had refused all attempts by the city to try to get his forces supplementing the mercenary squads that had gone that deep.

After all, it wasn’t just guild hegemony he was trying to establish here.

The Federation had identified threats, and with them they had found key cities that they could use in order to counteract those dangers. Liaren was at the top of the list.

Sebastian’s latest actions had once again positioned many pieces right where he needed them. Gerald Halcyon was a brilliant combat mage, but not a leader. Impairing him in just the right way could ensure that he was usable as the former while he gave up his incompetent role as the latter.

He closed his eyes, the magic implant in his left socket giving him farsight into the toolbox he’d had an associate of his steal under the guise of a Grancrest member.

Inside that innocuous box were several pounds of dead flesh carrying temporarily inert samples of the plague.

He snapped his fingers, and his door opened.

“Have Ethan prepare the portal,” he said, his voice carrying just far enough to reach his assistant outside. “He knows where it’s supposed to go.”

#

If I thought about it too hard, today was a pretty bad day for me morally.

I remembered thinking to myself at some point that I wouldn’t kill even though I was getting the tools too. I was a healer, after all, and that meant that I should be able to keep anyone I hurt from dying, right?

A number of events had convinced me otherwise, but nothing had reinforced that more strongly than today.

I’d considered trying to use a bow again, but I had no illusions about how I would do in a one-on-one against someone who had trained their whole life to be an archer. Instead, I’d snuck up on the furthest bowman, concealing my presence by perfectly threading the needle between the areas my Danger Sense said were no-gos, then lifted his knife and slit his throat.

That hadn’t gone without notice.

“Miss!” I called out.

Nightmare’s Call lvl 1 -> 2

Danger Sense lvl 2 -> 3

Whether or not that usage actually worked, the mage’s aim flickered just enough as I sprinted at her, and the incoming cloud of sickening green poison was just slow enough that I was able to transfer my momentum and cartwheel to the side.

I didn’t give her time to call for help or retreat. She was an area-of-effect mage, and I had movement speed from my spells and perfect battle sense from my skills. I danced towards her, avoiding a sloppy, desperate attempt to engage me in hand-to-hand combat with an admittedly cool-looking staff, then planted an already bloody knife in her gut. A second later, I reversed my grip, yanked it out, and did the same to her chest.

That made what, three now? Four?

Wait, add two to that. I had almost certainly slain the first two Grancrest adventurers I’d seen.

I couldn’t bother feeling bad about it. This was necessary. They had literally executed me not twenty minutes ago; I’d just refused to die on the rope.

More of them were starting to notice me, though, which was a problem. Up until now, I had been taking advantage of their preoccupation with the oncoming waves of mercenaries, but I had become enough of a problem that the group as a whole was noticing.

Naturally, the mercenaries took advantage of that, but as a dozen alarms sounded in my mind, I realized I might have made a slight mistake by trying to cut my way through this entire area on my own.

“Ah, fuck this,” I said, throwing up two Shields, one atop the other. 

Neither held when dark, fast-moving arrows traveling quick enough that only Harmonic Awareness was enough to identify what I needed to pay attention to, but they slowed the projectiles sufficiently for me to get out of the way.

After the first couple came a dozen more, though, and my attention narrowed down solely to reaching that combat flow state, keeping myself alive. I couldn’t make any progress like this.

I could, however, buy time, so I did. I wove through tiny gaps between arrows, using Shields as walls to kick off of or slightly redirect spells so that I could avoid the worst of their area of effect.

Not everything was dodgeable, unfortunately. Though there was nobody more powerful than me on the scale that Highmaster Lanaeus was, there were a number of spells that were just too wide-area for me to avoid. The most annoying of them was a gravity effect that made me and everything I wore and held weigh what felt like twice the normal weight, restricting my movements and making it much harder to continue avoiding everything.

Thanks to that, I ate an arrow to the shoulder, sending me spiraling to the ground. I adjusted my movement so that said spiral would at least ensure I ducked under one that would have been a killing blow, but I couldn’t stop myself from htiting the deck.

Face down in grass and coarse dirt, I had to rely on Harmonic Awareness, but that only extended a few feet out from me. I couldn’t see what happened when thunder cracked down near us.

I did, however, feel the gravity effect loosen, which I was sorely grateful for. I paused a half-step, ensuring that I wouldn’t step up straight into someone’s line of fire, then rolled to one knee.

Worrying about still being the focus of the attack proved to be unnecessary. From a different direction than the one I’d come from came a dark aura. Looking that direction, I saw a living shadow twice the height of an adult man, flickering and sizzling in the morning sun as it caught spells, arrows, and other projectiles alike.

Thunder clapped again, and another Grancrest adventurer fell to the ground.

Locke.

I broke out into a dead sprint, aiming for him. As much as I hated the guy, he was also the closest ally to me. A couple arrows came my way, but they were incidental. Everyone else was aiming at him.

Locke didn’t fire any further bolts of lightning as I got within earshot of him, trying to find what little cover I could to avoid the errant shots aimed towards me.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I said. “But, uh, why?”

I could swear the shadow cloud around him stopped to look at me. Though Locke’s emotions were typically muted to the point where Nightmare’s Call barely registered anything from the guy, a single sharp spike of irritation along the vein of are you serious right now was clear as the sky above us.

“You should leave,” Locke said, an eerie, hollow echo accompanying his voice presumably as the result of one of the spells he was juggling. “The Highmaster is dealt with for the time being, but my method won’t hold him forever.”

“Care to explain?”

“No.”

Fair enough.

I took the opportunity he’d opened to take off just as he’d suggested. With the distraction he provided alongside the bodies he’d created, there was now a wide swathe of open area that looked like they would be much safer to cross than they had earlier.

With how much more of a threat Locke was compared to me, the Grancrest backline started to fold, beginning to beat a retreat as they folded under the simultaneous pressure of someone who was clearly at least Master-rank and possibly significantly greater than that.

It was looking like I was going to get out of here free and clear, which was perfectly fine by me except for one tiny detail.

My lifeline was still locked up somewhere in the facility where I’d been executed. I could sense it waiting for me even through the walls and violence between us. A deep, nagging sensation of wrongness itched at the core of my being, urging me to go back for it.

For the time being, I ignored that desire and kept leaving. Priority number one was to stay alive, and that meant not going back towards an area filled entirely by enemies including one presumably very pissed-off Highmaster.

It looked like I was going to be able to achieve that goal, at least. With Locke’s sudden appearance, the field had tilted sharply in the favor of the mercenaries, all of whom had seen the opportunity our disruption represented and were now pushing forward.

This could have gone worse.

I just had to think that.

Whatever cosmic forces had transported me from Earth to this world must have been laughing at me, because my Danger Sense lit up.

Usually, that skill gave me a very good idea of what kind of threat I was facing and a near-perfect one of where it was coming from so I could at least try to work my way around it. This time, it came from all ends. There was nowhere safe—at least, nowhere near me.

The worst of it came from above.

Some of the mercenaries and Grancrest members must have possessed similar abilities, because I wasn’t the only one who looked up. For a moment, a solid third of the battlefield stopped fighting. Everyone who noticed this on both sides considered it a threat of greater scale than their enemies in front of them.

I cast Doubletime both so I could hightail it out of here faster and so that I could actually get an idea of what I was looking at.

It took a second, but I finally spotted one of the many reasons I’d been feeling so off about this whole situation.

A circular portal had formed out of thin air, facing directly down. The rough, uneven sparks delineating its edges were the same ones I’d seen in the Federation portals that they’d used to ferry us between their inner-city headquarters and the training facility somewhere outside city bounds. It was hard to judge just how far away it was from me or how big it was, but I could make out that it was quite a distance away.

It wasn’t directly over me, either. Again, telling distance and angle was a bit tough because it was just hanging in the cloudless sky with no points of reference in the air, but if I had to guess, I would have said it was directly above the Grancrest village.

For a breath, nothing happened.

Then the portal finished forming, and a few dark objects dropped, too distant for me to see clearly.

They were followed by brightly colored capsules. Potions on a larger scale, if I had to guess. Said potions burst over the dark spots, exploding in red, purple, blue—except those colors lasted for only moments before a signature Nightmare black enveloped all of them.

The plague began to rain down on us.