Reborn Healer Chapter 24

I emerged from the basement with the sun fully set, a lifeline in my hand, and my system still urging me to pick skills.

Up to this point, all of the skills I had gained had been through intentional practice, as were my spells. I had figured that the kind of system-granted skill that I might have expected in an anime or video game wasn’t how this world worked, but evidently it was different when working with beings of higher power.

If the Nightmare even was a being, that was.

“Mizuki is already asleep in the guest room, so Iryn will be in yours tonight,” Aria said. “Is that acceptable?”

“Not a problem,” I said. I had my own questions to ask Iryn, too.

Before we wrapped up our night, I consulted my system again, considering my options.

Select two 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.

> Call Lifeline [Initiate]

Creates a link between you and your lifeline within a moderate radius, calling it back to you. Higher tiers will increase the distance and change how you call it.

> Nightmare Forged [Initiate]

Temporarily grants shadow power boost to your lifeline. Higher tiers increase power, complexity, and interaction with the Nightmare.

> 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.

I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be the last time the Nightmare offered me boons, but I didn’t want to pick poorly now when I was planning on heading into the World Dungeon soon. Though I was confident in my skills, I really didn’t want to be in a dangerous situation where I regretted picking them.

I was still thinking about it after I bathed and made my way to bed. It was well after midnight now. I’d spent enough time getting into and subsequently forming my lifeline inside of the basement that I had missed dinner by a pretty fair margin. By the time I went to bed, Vallis and Mizuki were both shut in their own rooms, presumably asleep.

Iryn was still awake in mine. As a child, I’d grown used to seeing her asleep fairly early in the evenings. She’d been a heavy enough sleeper that I had been able to train my basic healing spells back when she’d thought I was a demon.

Seeing her waiting for me was a bit of a trip. I hadn’t been ready for her to just be sitting there at this hour, dressed in her usual nightclothes.

“Iryn,” I greeted the red-haired woman. “You’re up late.”

“Later than usual,” she admitted, nodding. “You got your lifeline.”

I still had the double-sided spear in my hand. After it had fully developed, some noticeable patterns had developed in it, small bright lines tracing paths through it. One of the sides was more clearly a spearhead than the other, while the other was just a sharp point.

Already, I could see why it was called a lifeline. Unlike the other weapons I had tried before, this spear felt natural in my hands. That followed logically—after all, I had shaped it out of mana and deep obsidian. It would be more surprising if there wasn’t some kind of attunement.

This went far beyond anything else I had experience with, though. I could pass mana through it like it was my own body, and its presence was almost like that of a third arm. I wondered if it counted as part of me now.

And this was at the base tier.

“I did,” I said, realizing I hadn’t replied to her yet. “You’ve got one of your own, I take it.”

Iryn reached behind her back where there definitely shouldn’t have been anything and pulled a familiar axe out. While the handle was wooden, I realized now that the head was the same black material that my spear was made of.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” she said.

“A hell of a lot,” I agreed. “You’ve seen Mizuki before.”

Iryn raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How did you notice that?”

“I’ve been practicing,” I said. “Though I assume you weren’t as on guard around us as you are normally.”

“No, I keep myself managed well,” she said. “An empathy skill, I assume?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just reached Initiate.”

“Initiate!” Iryn held a hand over her mouth. “Apologies. You must be incredibly skilled to be able to do that with an Initiate-tier skill.”

“Am I?” I hadn’t realized that. “Anyway, the question at hand.”

“Of course. Yes, I have seen her before, but only in passing. I am not nearly as involved in your mother’s activities as she is. I simply happen to have a lifeline.”

“I did notice you pretty much never leave the village. Also that you won’t ever show your face in front of a guild, if I recall?”

“I am… something of a known quantity,” Iryn admitted. “My face and name are known to all seven northern kingdoms and eleven of the top fifteen guilds. Most of them have a kill-on-sight order.”

I hadn’t been expecting that. “Why?”

“Wrong time, wrong place, wrong power,” she said, shrugging. “I’ve made my peace with it. Until I am truly needed again, I was hoping to live a peaceful life for a while. Aria was graciously willing to shelter me, and even her husband was willing to work with me.”

“And how has that been?” I asked.

“It’s been nice,” she said. “Sometimes I miss the thrill of combat, but I spent a lot of time spending every waking hour fighting for my life. Having some time to raise a family, even if it wasn’t my own… it was peaceful.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said.

“Was,” Iryn sighed. “I suppose that’s coming to an end. Getting involved in demon business is never a good idea, but sometimes it becomes necessary.”

“Locke,” I surmised. “You thought he was an Aiken.”

“I know he is, now,” Iryn replied. “Aria is always telling me to treat them like… ugh. It’s not important. You should know a few things about your lifeline. Aria always says it’s better for people to learn through doing, but there are some basics that I don’t think are worth trial-and-erroring yourself.”

“That would be great,” I said.

We spent the next while discussing details. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a specific direction for me to take my skills in, but I did confirm that I was going to be able to add more of them.

“The more deep obsidian you can get, the better and broader your skill pool will be,” she explained. Finding it is difficult. Deep obsidian is a precious and rare material, so you’re usually only going to find it dungeon diving or in nation vaults.”

“So I’m only going to be able to expand my lifeline-associated skills that way?”

“I wouldn’t say only, but that’s the most universal way. I do have to give it to Aria—she is right when she says that everyone’s connection is different.”

Iryn did, however, clear up one of my worries about having a lifeline, which was having to pick Conceal Lifeline or be identified as someone using forbidden magic. Deep obsidian weapons were used, though usually by upper-tier adventurers or nobles. Someone like me having one would raise eyebrows, but not to the extent that an inquisition would be called on me.

Eventually, it was time to go to bed.

I dreamed of fire and blood.

#

In the end, the skills I decided on were Call Lifeline and Nightmare Forged. Siphon Terror was a very tempting possibility, but I already had my mage core and all my associated proficiencies in healing magic to handle recovering during a combat. Conceal Lifeline was similarly unnecessary assuming Iryn’s assessment of having a lifeline was correct.

I realized belatedly that maybe trusting someone who hadn’t been in Liaren in over a decade when it came to matters of what was socially acceptable might not have been the best play, but given that Aria hadn’t explicitly warned me against it, I figured it would be fine.

Mizuki was up early the next day, already present at the breakfast table by the time I was down.

“Sleep well?” I asked her blearily.

“Like the dead,” she said, so brightly I wanted to find a pair of sunglasses and block out the sun that had appeared in front of me.

Come to think of it, did sunglasses exist here? I resolved to invent them if they didn’t already so I could be less dazzled by morning people. That would have to come after coffee, though, which we also didn’t seem to have in this world.

“You eaten?” I asked, slogging my way to the kitchen and trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes.

“A little. I wanted to help, but—“

“Don’t let her near the kitchen!” Iryn called.

“You don’t need to yell,” I groaned. “I’m right next to you.”

There were signs that Iryn had already been cooking for a bit, but I helped her finish the rest of the setup, cleaning up after her and frying up whatever she hadn’t finished. Though I’d been a mediocre cook in my past life, Iryn had seen fit to teach me how to handle myself around a pot and heat—“so you can get a wife some day,” she’d say sometimes, though at others she claimed it was for more effective dungeon diving.

“Thin pork, eggs, and nightrose,” I announced, delivering plates laden with food to the table.

“I made more than usual,” Iryn said. “It’s rare that everyone is here. Rarer still to have a visitor.”

Aria and Vallis arrived not long after, taking their plates and uttering a thanks.

Mizuki tore into her food with reckless abandon, barely managing to keep up the most basic table manners. I was half-convinced she was going to forgo utensils and hands and just tear into her meal with her face alone.

“How do you eat like that and not get your face dirty in the process?” I asked, only halfway through my own plate by the time she’d wiped hers clean. “Or anything, really.”

Mizuki had changed clothes, borrowing a shirt and trousers from my mother while the magic-infused outfit she’d been wearing yesterday dried outside.

“Talent,” she said. “And practice.”

I shuddered to think what practice could mean in this contet.

“You have an adventurer’s appetite,” Vallis joked.

“Would the young lady care for another plate?” Iryn asked politely.

Mizuki’s eyes lit up.

#

At length, everyone was ready to go their own respective ways. Aria had another unmentionable mission to go to, and Vallis had no specific duty with the nobility today so he was going to come and start putting the clinic back together.

Vallis, Mizuki and I all took the same carriage, which let me get a much better look at the whip-sword, which she had laying on her lap now. It gave no hint that it could switch forms, and it was composed of what looked to be a fifty-fifty split between steel and deep obsidian. Now that I knew the value of that, I found myself wondering again how important this woman really was.

Though I’d been a little concerned about taking the lifeline with me through city security, even the heightened security didn’t do a more thorough search when Vallis presented his identification.

The city guard had long since left the street that our clinic had been on, their investigation moving elsewhere or sputtering out entirely. They hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves, and both buildings were still in a wreck.

To my surprise, we weren’t the first ones to the clinic even though we were there at the same time as usual, when we were typically alone. In fact, something of a crowd had formed in front of the wreckage of the clinic.

There were more people here than we usually served on even the busier days. Typically, clinic days meant healing interspersed with a lot of downtime where we made medicines, chatted with the patients, or went out to do other various tasks. If we had to treat everyone who was lining the street right now, we’d barely have time for a lunch break.

They noticed Vallis and I as we stepped out of the carriage, which had to stop earlier than usual thanks to the number of people gathered around.

A rough cheer rose as we emerged, which confused me. Did they think we weren’t going to show up?

“There’s a lot of people here,” Mizuki said, nervously trailing behind us. “Could be hostiles in there.”

The uncertainty in her voice told me that no skills were pinging to actually warn her, which corresponded with what I was feeling. Given the fact that she clearly had better surveillance skills than I did, I figured it was just an understandable anxiety.

As I made my own scan of the crowd, checking just to make sure I hadn’t missed something, I recognized a few faces in the crowd.

No, not just a few faces—damn near the entire crowd, dozens upon dozens of them, were patients we’d treated.

Matias stepped forward from amongst them. Despite how rough his life seemed to be, he was one of the wealthier people in this area thanks to his frequent exploits in the World Dungeon. Completing city-issued fetch quests did pay decently, if not amazingly, and he sometimes kept a chunk of the loot he found. That combined with his physically imposing stature and good nature seemed to have earned him the status of a local authority, even if he had no political power.

“Docs,” he said, addressing the two of us. The self-styled dungeon diver tipped his hat at Mizuki, who wasn’t quite cowering behind Vallis but definitely didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing. “And the lady.”

“Matias,” I replied in kind. “You assemble an army?”

He chuckled, bending down to ruffle my hair. I dodged him, my reflexes now much more refined than they had been, and the chuckle became a full-throated laugh.

“You watch yourself,” Matias mock-warned me, wagging a finger. “We’re here to help.”

“Help?”

“‘Course. Everyone in this district knows where the best healers in town are. Y’think we’re just going to let some guard assholes ruin that for us?”

“Matias,” Vallis said. “Language.”

I snorted. “He’s said worse.”

“No I haven’t,” Matias fired back immediately. “I’m a right proper man, I’ll have you know.”

“Of course,” I said. “You want me to repeat what you were telling me about Northside girls last week?”

The dungeon diver’s face reddened, and he cleared his throat loudly. “Like I was saying. ‘Ev’ryone here’s got somethin’ they can help with. Half the guys at crystal mine called today off to come and put this place back together.”

Vallis’ smile was soft and genuine. When he spoke, it was to the entire group.

“Thank you, everyone. I am humbled to have earned your respect and support, and I hope I can repay it back in kind.”

A chorus of replies came back, warm and encouraging.

“So this is the kind of power a healer cultivates,” Mizuki murmured, just loud enough I could hear it.

I nodded, quietly agreeing. While my mother possessed an unnatural danger to her stemming from what I now knew was a high-tier connection to the Nightmare, Vallis had this. His power came from people.

Though Matias had been the one to assemble this workforce, Vallis spent the day managing them. He had a real gift with people, finding which role each person would be best in and utilizing them without burning them out, rejuvenating people with healing spells regularly.

Mizuki and I also helped. She had changed back into her normal clothes, but she also had an extra plain cloak wrapping her body and roughly hiding her appearance from anyone who might be searching for someone matching her physical description.

When we took a break for lunch, I tracked down Matias, who looked a lot less beat-up than usual thanks to the fact that he hadn’t entered a dungeon last night.

“How’s my favorite solo diver doing?” I asked him between bites of a sandwich.

“Been better, been worse,” he replied. “Just happy to see you’re all okay is all.”

“You should see how the other guys made it out,” I said.

Or didn’t, I thought.

After a full day, I still didn’t regret killing two people. I’d learned eventually that the cuts I’d made to stall out the armored guy waking up had resulted in him bleeding out, and though it wasn’t a fate I wished on anyone, I didn’t think I was going to lose much sleep over doing what I had to do. I would have preferred him alive, but I preferred this state of affairs over me and Mizuki dead or captured.

“Heard what happened,” Matias said. “‘Course, I know you weren’t there, but I hear there was a little healer boy who’d be a right terror even to Academy-trained soldiers.”

“Did you now?” I chewed, pretending to be contemplative. “You know, I’ve been thinking about trying to expand my horizons. See more than just the one city. Live life a little.”

“Mm.” Compared to my mother and Iryn, Matias was an open book. I could tell without even trying all that hard that he had a good guess as to where I was going with this, and he wasn’t too happy about it.

“So I figured my best option was a guild,” I said. “Life has thrown a whole lot of unexpected variables my way, and I want to at least know what kind of shitstorm I’m walking into.”

“Language,” he said.

I stared at him until he broke, looking away embarrassedly.

“I want to join you on one of your dives,” I said. “Mizuki, the girl that came with me, is a pretty competent fighter. She also wasn’t here yesterday, but I’m sure you heard about the Adept-tier who was holding off three fully geared up guards at the same time.”

“No way in the seven hells,” Matias said flatly. “I can’t—“

“I know what your justification is,” I interrupted, “but it’s not going to work on me. You’re not going to protect me by refusing to take me with you. I’ll just end up going in on my own or with Mizuki, and then we’ll have nobody familiar with the World Dungeon to guide us. I’m confident enough that we’ll be able to make it out, but we will be at more risk without you.”

That gave him pause. 

“There's no changing your mind?” he asked. “Y’need to be ready to do anything in there. Kill. Sacrifice. Die.”

“If everything goes well, we won't be doing any sacrificing or dying,” I said. “You haven't died yet, and I intend to keep it that way. And when it comes to killing, can you look me in the eyes and tell me that I don't have what it takes?”

We made eye contact. I didn't know what I looked like, but I did my best to project the same kind of eerie confidence that Iryn, Aria, and Mizuki all did. I did have a body count now: three people, two of them Liaren city guards and the last one a former member of the late Southern Star Guild. People with lives and families who would never get to see them again.

Definitionally, I was a killer. Whether or not he believed me was a different matter.

Matias relented. “One time. You will come with me one time.”