Healer Book 5 -- Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Taking the stairs two at a time, Thaden encountered the spot where he’d seen Gen’or’fein being enveloped by the prismatic projectile that had hit him.  He briefly looked for any piece of the poor Aelveen that might have survived, because if even a chunk of him had survived, his Resurrection spell would likely be able to bring him back to life.  It had worked for Corinna, after all, so he figured it would work in a situation like this.

But there was nothing.  There wasn’t even a spot of blood to give him some hope that at least a little bit of the man still existed; it was as if he had been completely erased from existence.

That lack of physical evidence didn’t bode well for what he would find further on.

Stepping past the area where Gen had been annihilated, he emerged at the top of the stairs with Sadia bounding up by his side, and he looked around.  As he had somewhat expected, he was both at the top floor of the tower and the roof, as there were walls that stretched up to the stormy sky above that extended at least 150 feet, but there was also no roof to speak of.  And like the rest of the tower, this final floor was quite wide, leaving a large open space that fully encompassed the tower’s width.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped up from the stairs was that he could see mangled, fleshy remains of at least some of the Aelveen, though who exactly they were was hard to determine because they were essentially just hunks of meat by this point.  There was no sign of any weapons or armor, or even intact clothes, though there were scraps of metal and cloth scattered all over the dark stone floor that was dotted with blood splatters everywhere.  From what it looked like, it was almost as if something had picked up most of the Aelveen and thrown them into an industrial shredder before spitting them back out. 

It was definitely not a pleasant sight and not one that he was sure they appreciated; regardless, it hadn’t been too drawn out, at least based on the short time between them arriving and Gen racing down the stairs, so they likely didn’t suffer.

As for what had apparently caused them to chunkify into random hunks of meat and bone, that was readily explained by the enormous Adversarial monster inhabiting a good chunk of the final tower floor.

Legion Commander – Adversarial Elite

Level 655

The Legion Commander was huge; if Thaden was judging its size correctly, then it was larger than both the Soul Harvester and Nexus Corrupter combined.  Its appearance was hard to take in, because it was so out of the realm of normal that he had difficulty pinning down the right description – mainly because it seemed to morph into something slightly different even as he watched it.  The best he could say was that it was if a giant squid was made of darkness and had 1,000 tentacles that extended out of its body at all angles, and each of those tentacles were tipped with dark blades that easily left gouges in the stone beneath them as they casually grazed against it. 

At least, that was what it looked like at one moment; the next, its tentacles moved along its central body before solidifying into a long tube, as if it was some sort of cannon pointed toward the stairs.  A few seconds later, all of the tentacles were back to being individual appendages, floating everywhere around its central core-like body.   

“Why have you destroyed the Legion created in this Nexus Point?  Doing so greatly sets our plans back until it can be replenished.”

Having communicated with more than one of these monsters, the voice in his head as he emerged from the stairs didn’t surprise him as much as he thought it probably should.  He glanced at Sadia before he responded, but from her expression, it didn’t seem as though she heard the voice in his head. 

Time to see if I can bluff and get more information, I guess.

“Your infiltration of this Nexus Point was poorly chosen,” he began to say, startling his squirrel companions slightly, but she caught on quickly enough and didn’t react more than that.  “Visitations by the, uh, prisoners here are scarce and you are too close to the patrolling routes by who reek of System authority.  Those in command have directed me to cease operations and move you somewhere more in line with our objectives.”  There.  Referring to the people here as prisoners seems in line with what they’ve said before, and hopefully a reference to whatever a Director is will convince it that I’m telling the truth.

“The location of this Nexus Point is the entire purpose behind our objective.  Absence of many prisoners near its location will allow us to release the Legion without their awareness, and without the System’s spies to see them, it will be too late for it to act.

“What are you doing associating yourself with these so-called Wardens?  Is this part of your cover to operate independently?”

The implications of what he just heard were a bit overwhelming, but he put them to the back of his mind as he strived to get more information.  To do that, however, he had to convince the constantly shifting Legion Commander to keep talking – which would require him to answer some questions. 

“It was, but unfortunately they detected you before I could give you warning.  Now that they’re dead, it won’t be long before more come to investigate their disappearance – which is why you need to leave.  I’ve covered for you this long, but I don’t have to tell you that our success hinges upon you, do I?”

“Me?  What happened to the others?  The last I heard, we were making progress establishing additional connection points.  Are you telling me that the wretched Wardens really found us all?  The probability of that occurring is statistically low.  What game are you playing at?”

Oh, crap; I’m losing him.  “No game, I assure you; contact with many of our agents has been severed, which is why we need to rely on you to get your objective completed – in a different area, however.  This area has been compromised already, and—”

“Hold on a moment.  I’m receiving updated orders—wait.  What?  You—"

The entire Legion Commander, which had been floating rather relaxing in the air, suddenly tensed up. 

“You’re the imposter!  Why are you doing this?  Don’t you know that we’re here for your own good?” 

Well, looks like the jig is up.  “What the hell does that mean?  You’re the one who’s literally killing people and saying that you’re helping!” he shouted, knowing that his identity had been outed. 

“As you don’t seem to want to see reason or understand, knowledge of your whereabouts has been recorded and transferred to all active rescue agents; even if you destroy me, you’ll only end up hastening our plans to save you all.” 

“But why?  What do you plan to accomplish?!” he shouted, but the connection he felt in his mind with the Legion Commander suddenly disappeared. 

And, of course, that was when it attacked him.  Not only did a thousand tentacles tipped with blades the size of his leg attempt to slice-and-dice him like he was a vegetable and it a world-class chef, but it also applied its Level Compression to the furthest extent it could.  He felt it pressing down on him with extreme pressure, but he had handled far worse and came out ahead.  While he wasn’t debilitated, his movements were a bit stilted as he ran straight at the Legion Commander, trying to get within his spells’ range, and his damage mitigation took a significant hit.

However, given the fact that he was now technically “solo” in the dungeon, his Army of One II Achievement came into play, reducing the damage by 90%.  As a result, even when wading through a thousand blades that attempted to chop him up, he took less damage than he did against the Aelveen when they attacked him.  In fact, the worst thing that happened was he was deflected and pushed back, unable to easily make headway to reach the central body of the Commander, as just like against the Dramolga Voidwhippers, its actual body needed to be in range of his Leach spell for it to be affected.

Seeing that it was doing essentially nothing but delaying the Omenic Drifter as its inevitable death beckoned, the Commander abruptly shifted gears – or forms, to be more exact.  Gone were the thousand tentacles and in its place the cannon he’d seen earlier; he already had a feeling he knew what was going to happen, and as predicted, a large prismatic projectile shot out at him, moving at the speed of a bullet and too fast for him to dodge.

It wasn’t too fast for his mind to perceive it and cast his Incarnation of Protection spell, which he’d purposely let expire so he could call it when he needed it.  He was glad he did, too, as the glowing humanoid form appeared next to him before teleporting instantly into the path of the prismatic, ovoid-shaped projectile.  It obviously magical attack slammed into his Incarnation and expanded, enveloping it completely.

With how many bonuses he had to his defensive spells, as well as it innate damage mitigation, he expected his spell to withstand the attack and be just fine.  Contrary to that belief, with a split-second of it being enveloped by the prismatic projectile, he felt his connection to the spell snap, as it was completely annihilated – exactly as Gen had been essentially erased from existence a few minutes before.

Oh, crap.  I do not want to be hit by that thing.  He wasn’t sure if his defensive spells, which was largely damage mitigation and affliction prevention measures at the moment since the Commander was too high for spells like Protective Barrier and Protective Guards to work, would actually prevent what he saw just happen.  He had Indomitable Aegis on hand for one last-ditch attempt at protection, but that was only a last resort, as it would remove all of his other spells – including ones that would damage the Commander. 

Fortunately, it didn’t seem like the Adversarial monster could rapid-fire a projectile like that; there was likely a cooldown, like most of his own powerful spells.  It morphed back into its previous form with the bladed tentacles and resumed trying to push him back, but by that time it was too late for the Commander.

He – as well as Sadia, who had assaulted from another direction – were already in range. 

“NO!  HOW ARE YOU D—"

The sheer amount of healing that Thaden and Sadia were pumping out, which converted into damage thanks to Wild Health Leach, was incredible.  With his recent acquisition of Recovery State, which increase his healing by a further 500% at its base, they were pumping out tens of millions of Health replenishment by the second, and the damage was much more than that because of his all-spell efficiencies and his Army of .  The Health of the Legion Commander, which was incredibly robust even for a Level 655 monster, took a nosedive immediately when the two entered into range.  It had just enough time to scream at him, briefly reestablishing a mental connection, before it died; it couldn’t stand up to the sheer onslaught of damage for more than a couple of seconds.

And without any further fanfare, the Legion Commander who had chopped up or wiped from existence a Party of Aelveen not too long before, plummeted from the air and slammed into the top floor of the tower causing it to shake from the impact.  As he caught his balance after the original reverberations ran through the structure, he realized that the shaking wasn’t stopping.

Uh, oh.

Looking around, he saw the exit to the outside world on the far side of the tower, and he instinctively took a few steps toward it.  He stopped, however, as he realized he was leaving something—or more precisely, somethings—behind. 

“Sadia!  Help me gather up the, uh, chunks!”

Racing toward the top of the stairs where most of the chunked remains had been found, he pulled off his cape and used it as a makeshift bag, tossing in gobs of bloody flesh and bone inside of it.  For Sadia, he imagined her having a pouch in the front of her body like a kangaroo, and she immediately started shoving the same nasty-looking stuff inside without a complaint.  Again, most of it was unrecognizable as being an actual body parts, but he did find a couple of random fingers and even a half an eyeball, so at least he was reasonably certain that he was picking up the deceased Aelveen.

Unfortunately, the state of the tower was becoming worse by the second, as massive cracks shot up the walls, and large chunks of stone broke off the top of them, plummeting inside the top floor and threatening to squish the two hastily gathering individuals.

“GO!  We can’t afford to be stuck here if this thing collapses!” he shouted, and with one last fistful of meat, he ran with Sadia toward the exit.  Thankfully, the portal out of the dungeon wasn’t flickering as wildly as it had in the last one he’d been in like this, but the few flickers that he did see made him assume that it was a matter of time before it shut down completely.

It only took a few seconds for them to reach the exit because of their speed, and after Sadia jumped through first, without any issues, Thaden was right on her heels.  He half-expected it to flicker out of existence when he passed through at full speed, but luck was with him as he next found himself propelled out of the exit, as he twisted his body to avoid slamming into one of the dehydrated trees that formed the semi-circle around the original entrance.  Rolling to his feet, he looked around and found Sadia, looking back at where the exit had been a moment ago, seeing that it had disappeared; glancing around further, he found the original entrance and discovered that it was opaque in appearance, as it was shut down while it internally collapsed and then set itself back up with its normal functions.

“This… is disgusting,” Sadia said, reaching into her front pouch and pulling back a hand trailing blood and entrails.  “They had better be damn appreciative for us doing this.”

Collapsing against the nearest tree, Thaden slid down it until he was sitting on the ground.  His original sigh turned into a disturbed chuckle as he plopped down his cape and watched the gory pieces spill out all over the ground.  At the time, he hadn’t had any other choice but to rapidly collect all the body parts inside the dungeon, but as he stared at his blood-covered hands, the sight and physical handling of what used to be people was getting to him.  He'd seen plenty of deceased people before, of course, and had deliberately caused the deaths of more than a few of them, but this was more visceral than anything he’d seen before.  Even the pure destruction of the Coalition Meeting Hall following the appearance of the Soul Harvester hadn’t been as bad; then again, he had been quite numb to everything by the time he had to go around Resurrecting people, so that probably had something to do with it. 

“Yeah; you’ve got that right,” he told his squirrel companion, even as she began emptying out her front pocket with some seriously nauseating sounds and plopping them down on his now horribly blood-stained cape.  He was fairly certain the cape would clean itself over time, but he couldn’t imagine putting it back on until it did.

“It seems like I’m constantly bringing these guys back from the dead,” he couldn’t help but point out.  “Are you sure they’re supposed to be strong.”

“Compared to you, no.  Compared to everyone else on Tarth, yes.”

He grunted, taking her word for it.  “Alright, let’s see what we’re working with here.” 

By concentrating on each chunk of flesh, he could somewhat determine who it belonged to, though with them so mixed together, their nametags overlapped each other to a degree that it was hard to make out.  What became unfortunately clear, however, was that there was one name that was completely missing.  It was still possible that a piece of the missing Aelveen might be under some of the other portions, but he wouldn’t know until he started the whole process.

“Ready?”

Sadia nodded. 

Here we go again.  “Let’s just hope this is the last time I have to do this.”

Chapter 22: https://www.patreon.com/posts/120483347