Reborn Healer Chapter 11

The difference between creating a core and advancing one was a little harder to quantify given the circumstances. While Locke hadn’t been the most effective at teaching me about spellcasting, there was a lot he’d been able to explain to me about the theory of magic. 

With every increase in a core, it would measurably change. Lower-tier spells would be stronger since my core was now stronger, and my mana capacity would be higher, but those were just the most obvious ones. 

There were other concrete effects that would come with an advancement, but those weren’t always consistent. I wanted to test what my new core could do, but I wasn’t really in a position to do that at the moment.

Interesting point: skills evolved when or after they hit level 10. I’d heard about that in theory, but this was my first time seeing it. Obviously, the same wasn’t true for spells, which I had to learn myself if I wanted a higher tier. I had gotten some informal training for my skills from Aria, though I wasn’t sure whether or not she was aware of the fact I had them or had just assumed that my skills were part of any fighter’s abilities. I hadn’t learned anything about skill evolutions, at least.

The difference between Internal and Flowing Harmony was like the one between my vision without and with glasses. The effects were mostly the same, but they were much more intense now. Not only could I make out the threats with Reactive Instinct and understand where my body was, I also had a pretty good idea of the forms and shapes of the spiders in the area just around me, even if I couldn’t see or feel them myself.

My skin crawled both literally and figuratively. God, I hate spiders.

Power flickered through my body, warming me from the inside out. I felt on top of the world, the sensation so overwhelming that even the pain from the spider bites had disappeared.

But it didn’t change my situation. Good feelings alone weren’t going to get me out of this.

With the core upgrade came a much needed refresh in my mana. It was like my magic and body had been reforged and rebooted, freshening up my mind and restoring the power I’d spent so much of. I had much more of it now as well, easing the burden.

I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination at first, but it also seemed like the spiders were having a harder time getitng through my skin, and the poison hurt much less than it had at the start. The latter might have just been because I was either getting used to the pain or my body had started preparing itself for more of the venom, but from the confused skittering of the spiders, they might have actually started encountering more resistance.

That was interesting. Had I gained more physical resistance from the upgrade?

Any precise experimentation was going to have to wait. Now that I was no longer in a desperate fight to manage my resources or die, I could think a little more on what else I wanted to do.

Locke clearly wasn’t coming at this point—or, if he was, I was way too lost for him to find. I was going to have words with that kid when I got back, but that would have to wait until I got out.

Okay. Assume help isn’t coming. Now what?

I had no weapons, not that I would have been able to reach them anyway. I had a strength-enhancing spell, but it was Beginner-tier and it wouldn’t be enough to struggle my way out of full-body bindings.

Theoretically, I could just spend however long it took these spiders to get bored of me just hanging around here healing myself until they left, but that still left me in a shit spot. These spiders had baited me in with a wounded bear—what was to say there weren’t bigger, more dangerous monsters deeper in this cave that I hadn’t seen yet? If I was still stuck in this web six hours from now, I couldn’t trust that it would only be these spiders I had to deal with.

That left me one option. Not one that I really liked, but it was what I had. In the months I’d spent with Locke, I’d only managed to cast one offensive spell without guidance.

Firebolt, I willed. Even with my mouth sealed by webbing, I could cast this one Beginner-tier spell without speaking. The fire manifested in my bound hands, a spot of light igniting the dim cavern for just a moment before fizzling out, smothered by the webbing.

That figured. The spell was at the bottom of Beginner tier. It didn’t have the power to do much of anything yet.

The good news was that I had plenty of mana to experiment with now. I added Firebolt into the cycle of spells I was keeping myself alive with, using it right before my healing spells. With my increased durability and better healing spells, even Mend Wound was enough to counteract the large spider bites.

Basic Heal did still prove to be necessary. Though I couldn’t ignite the webbing with Firebolt, repeated usage of it did heat it enough to cause very painful burns to my hands.

Note to self: acquire pain relief spells ASAP. Even though I could continue healing them back, the process of healing hurt almost as much as the wound itself did. I could stomach it for the time being, but it sucked shit.

Firebolt lvl 0 -> lvl 1

…

Basic Heal lvl 6 -> lvl 7

Firebolt lvl 5 -> lvl 6

I could feel the spell getting more powerful each time I cast it, the heat lasting longer and burning brighter as I grew more used to Firebolt’s spell pattern. It still wasn’t nearly as intuitive as the healing spells, but it was workable. Unfortunately, that did also mean the burns got worse each time. The spiders were growing significantly warier as well, all but the adults backing off from the heat.

Eventually, the heat proved to be enough, and a blaze of heat exploded out from the front of my hands, piercing through the thick, sticky webbing.

It promptly caught fire, which illuminated the room enough for me to make out the spiders’ bone-chilling forms. They clearly weren’t regular spiders, judging from their size and the odd glow in their eyes, but they feared fire just like any other animal.

The flame worked even more effectively than I’d hoped for. Though it had taken a while to catch, it spread like, well, wildfire after it did. The massive web lit up in bright flame, the mummified bodies catching not long after.

Web integrity failed, strands snapping silently as the fire chewed through them, and I tumbled to the ground in a heap, head-first. I was free of the web.

Problem: I was still wrapped up in silk, which was now on fire. Probably should have thought that one out more.

I hadn’t really ever thought what it was like to burn to death, but I was getting a crash course in it now. 

To put it succintly, ow. Even with my heal spells pumping to keep my burns from getting too bad, it hurt like a motherfucker. Also, there was way more smoke than I expected—breathing was getting harder by the moment.

The silk did start to soften and weaken, giving me more freedom of movement until it broke entirely, but then my clothes were on fire instead.

Pain was less of a problem than it normally would be because I was healing my burns before they could get too bad—and of course, it couldn’t really compare to the sensation of my cores splitting—but it was still blindingly bad.

Flowing Harmony lvl 0 -> 1

I was surprisingly functional even with smoke and fire messing with my senses. Even if my physical body was going haywire, my warrior skill was orienting me and providing me with information about my surroundings. It seemed to be providing me with more constant information while I was in danger.

Good to know. If I ever went blind, all I’d need to do to regain some form of sight was set myself on fire.

Speaking of which.

What was it they told us to do again? Stop, drop, and roll, right?

I hit the rocky ground and rolled, coughing as I inhaled smoke and dirt. Something crunched under me as I moved, which I tried my best to ignore, and I got to my feet, brushing off flaming spider corpses.

One positive of all of this was that being on fire made the spiders hesitate much more to approach me. The larger ones were actually actively scurrying away.

I turned in the opposite direction from them and promptly realized the next problem with my poorly-thought-out excuse for a plan.

When I’d been dragged in, I had been unconscious. Saying I was lost was putting it lightly. If I had been near the surface, following the light would have been a possibility, but as I looked around, patting out the remaining embers on my now-ragged clothes, I realized the entire cavern had about the same level of illumination and no fewer than three exits.

“Well, look on the bright side,” I muttered to myself. “You’re not on fire anymore. That’s something, right?”

I wondered if there was a way to track how I’d come in. The dirt had been disturbed in a number of areas by the spiders and the prey that they’d dragged in or otherwise caught, but there were some that looked deeper and less disturbed—aka more recent—than others. I followed one that looked roughly five-year-old shaped, hoping that nothing more recent than me had been caught.

To keep myself from getting lost with no way back, I marked the walls at regular intervals the only way I could. My impromptu practice with the Firebolt spell had given me enough insight into it to manipulate some of its parameters like I could with healing spells, though the flexibility still wasn’t that high. I used a shorter-ranged version of it to blast scorch marks into the cavern walls, grateful that the spell didn’t create a conspicuous sound that would send every hungry monster within a hundred miles screaming after me.

One small grace of this place was that I didn’t need my own torch. Whether it was bioluminescent fungi, shining gem-like materials that seemed to carry their own brightness, or simply an area where there was no source of light but the surroundings were still visible, the entire place seemed lit enough for me to make my way. I pocketed a piece of each of the former, hoping I’d be able to examine them more once I was out.

I didn’t see much other life along the way, but I heard signs of it. Hissing, growling, heavy footsteps, the works. Definitely not anything I wanted to get involved with.

Unfortunately, it looked like I was deeper in this cave system than I had thought. My trail faded after a while, overrun by other footsteps and natural dirt movement, and I was forced to operate off dead reckoning.

Now that I was out in the open, I wanted to be much more careful. Even with my harmony and instinct passive skills keeping me hyper-aware of my surroundings, I added on my Initiate-tier Augment Perception, heightening my senses. It did nothing for the paranoid fear of another monster ambushing me out of nowhere and being a fair bit more lethal—though I didn’t think that was all that paranoid, given the circumstances.

My instincts pricked up as something I could only describe as a presence washed over me. It wasn’t sight or sound that I noticed, more a sensation akin to that of the one I’d had when I’d had the vision-like dreams before.

I waited for it to go away, but it only grew stronger. I tensed as the energy seemingly focused on me, gathering my magic in case something much more dangerous than the spiders had found me.

At the very edge of my perception, I heard a voice. From this distance, through however many twisted turns of the cave were between us, I heard a woman’s voice.

“Ren!”

That confirmed it. That feeling of sheer presence had only come when I’d heard that voice at the same time.

My mother.

What was she?

“I’m here!” I called out.