Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Thaden didn’t get a chance to check his notifications after traveling through the rest of the forest and finding a place to sleep for the night up in a tree, but he certainly checked them in the morning once he wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep while reading.  He skipped over the “monster slain” messages as a matter of course and only concentrated on any Competency increases and possible Achievements.

Support Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 710!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

Support Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 729!

You may now select an Advancement for your Support Spellcasting Competency!

Support Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 743!

Defensive Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 764!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

Defensive Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 798!

Natural Regeneration Competency has increased to Level 39!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

Natural Regeneration Competency has increased to Level 42!

Congratulations for completing The Den Dungeon on Maximal difficulty!

Achievement received: The Den Now Has A Vacancy

Bonus reward: 10,000 PICK (+20,000 from Achievements)

Contender World First Achievement: 40,000 PICK (+80,000 from Achievements)

Congratulations for solo completing The Den Dungeon on Maximal difficulty!

Achievement received: Shadow’s End

Bonus reward: +20% Shadow Resistance

Contender World First Achievement: +10% Shadow Resistance, +10 to all stats, (1) Spell selection choice

Congratulations for solo completing your first Maximal difficulty dungeon!

Achievement received: Lone Wolf

Bonus reward: 20,000 PICK (+40,000 from Achievements)

Contender World First Achievement: When inside a dungeon while solo, you receive +20 to Physicality, Celerity, and Mentality, as well as +30 to Fortuity

There weren’t a lot of Achievements that he gained from completing The Den on Maximal difficulty, but they were still welcome; 30% Shadow Resistance, another +10 in each of his stats, and another spell selection choice (whenever he got the chance to choose one again) was nothing to scoff at.  The extra stats while he was solo in a dungeon was also incredible, as he was fairly sure it stacked with his other Achievements that had the same bonuses.  In addition, from all the monster deaths and the rewards from his newest Achievements, he had gained a little under 250,000 PICK, bringing his total above 350,000 of his 540,000 limit.

Please see a Support Class Representative to receive your Support Class Evolution Assignment!  Until you complete your Support Class Evolution Assignment and then select your new Class, your accumulated PICK up to your current limit (352,127/540,000) will be held in reserve; you will not be able to increase your Level until you receive your new Class.

What that essentially told him was that, while not necessarily a waste, his time would now be better served getting his new Class than delving through any additional dungeons on his way there.  Still, he didn’t regret completing The Den, as it allowed him to experiment with his new spell, and the rewards he received were decent enough to make it worthwhile. 

Before he got up and resumed his journey, Thaden selected his newest Competency Advancement for Support Spellcasting, which would likely be one of his last Advancements he’d be able to choose for quite a while.

Faster Healing – All Support spells now have a 66% permanent casting time decrease

Longer Healing – All Support spells now have a 66% permanent duration increase

Even Stronger Healing – All Support spells now heal or reduce 133% more Health

Group Healing – All multi-target Support spells now have a 66% range increase

Self Healing – All single-target Support spells now heal or reduce 133% more Health

Radiant Afterglow – All Support spells now heal an extra 3% of max Health every 5 seconds for 60 seconds

Extracurricular Toys – An additional channeled Support spell can be cast through the use of a focus stone; all existing Mana costs or other limitations that apply to all channeled spells will still apply

Just like what had happened with his Defensive Spellcasting Competency at this Level, the Advancements were slightly better than he remembered from his last selection.  But what really caught his eye was the newest Advancement to the list, Extracurricular Toys.  If Thaden was reading it correctly, then just by holding a focus stone in his hand, which he was already used to doing, he would be able to cast a third channeling spell – though it would have to be a Support spell.  As he concentrated on the new Advancement a little more, the information he instinctively got from the option was that it would absolutely stack with his Double Team Advancement from his Defensive Spellcasting Competency which already gave him the ability to use two channeled spells simultaneously at the cost of double the Mana cost per second; from what he understood, the third channeled spell would also inherit this double cost.

That was frankly amazing, as he had needed to juggle turning off some of his protective Fields in order to cast a channeled healing spell at times.  The limitation that he had to be physically holding a focus stone and it could only be a Support-based spell was a tradeoff similar to the doubled cost of the Double Team Advancement, but it wasn’t that bad.  Now he just had to decide if it was indeed better than the other options available.

Afterglow had been extremely important when it came to utilizing his Major Wild Health Leach spell, as the constant healing had ended up doing a lot of damage to the other monsters around his healing target.  Radiant Afterglow would bump the 1% of max Health every 5 seconds up to 3%, essentially tripling the amount healed – which was a massive increase.

Even Stronger Healing was also an option, as it would increase the amount he could heal – or reduce, in the case of Health Reduction – by 133%; the upgrade to his previous Advancement was significant, and he’d already seen that it stacked with Afterglow, so it would essentially be boosting that by 2.66 times the healing at the current 50% increase from Stronger Healing.  It wasn’t quite the same tripling of healing that Radiant Afterglow provided, but would strengthen all his healing overall.

Then there was Self Healing, which increased all single-target healing by the same 133%.  The difference there was that the 50% increase in healing from Stronger Healing still applied, so single-target spells and effects would essentially be boosted by 188%; it really came down to whether he wanted to focus on area healing or single-target healing.  Based on this last dungeon and his current spells, he was leaning toward the latter, but then again having access to another channeled Support spell in addition to his protection would give him more choices with which to heal.

For the first time in a while, the decision of what to choose for his Advancement was difficult.  It was basically down to whether he thought extra healing was more important than having an extra channeled spell at his fingertips.

In the end, what decided him was consideration of the close calls he’d had over the last few days, and what would work better to let him survive being nearly killed again.  Yes, stronger healing spells would’ve helped significantly, but what he’d been lacking was a powerful way to heal himself constantly while taking large amounts of damage that couldn’t be prevented – such as when he had nearly melted into a puddle in the Magma Dungeon.  And that healing was in the form of Major Healing Wave. 

When he had upgraded the spell earlier, he knew that it could potentially be just the thing to help heal him in a pinch, as it had a base healing amount of 270 Health per second, but if it was something he could keep active all the time, then it would be very difficult for him to ever die.  Not impossible, but just extremely difficult if he was constantly healing himself for what was essentially 405 Health every second with just his Stronger Healing Advancement at work, plus any other healing such as Regeneration and Afterglow at work.  If he wasn’t boosting himself with Mana Transformation, his max Health was only 600, so he was restoring two-thirds of his base Health every second.  If he used a Support Sprite to increase the healing even further, that number jumped from 405 to 608, which was basically his entire base Health pool. 

With the choice to also use his Major Healing spell against any Leach targets without having to sacrifice his protection, the choice was obvious.  Yes, stronger healing would undoubtedly work out to be more effective with Leaching, but the added ability to keep himself alive with what was essentially going to be a fifth layer of defense after his two Fields, Stacking Buffers, and Death Ward, he wanted that extra protection.  He privately acknowledged that he was a bit reckless and impatient at times—or most of the time, really—and this would hopefully help him stay alive when he did something extraordinarily stupid again.

 He tried not to regret the extra healing he was giving up as he chose Extracurricular Toys as his newest Support Spellcasting Competency Advancement, but it was hard.  At least until he brought out his Lesser Defensive Focus Stone and cast Major Healing Wave on himself while maintaining both of his Fields; when they were all running simultaneously with no problems, he felt nearly unstoppable by that point.

With all of his notification review and choices done, Thaden got on the move on again.  He was determined not to let anything distract him from reaching Rageharbor, where he could see about whatever he had to do to obtain his newest Class, as his development was currently stalled. 

Boosting his Celerity and pleased with the outcome in The Den, the Lifewarden smiled as he ran extremely quickly across the landscape, only stopping every hour or so for a few minutes to rest and eat something because he was expending a lot of energy to keep up his pace.  He passed through grasslands dotted with random stands of trees, a large arid plain filled with scrub vegetation and random piles of stone that appeared out of place, and finally a stretch of gently rolling hills that had his calves burning as he ran up and down them at his swift pace.  At the top of one of the larger hills, he was able to stop and look out ahead of his location, where he could spot a large splotch of white and blue in the far distance, between a large pass in between what appeared to be a ring of mountains.  Based on his mental map, and how the landscape had largely matched what he remembered of the terrain, what he was seeing was the massive sea named after the turbulent waters inside of it, The Ragewater.  The entire sea was ringed by a mountain range that had multiple passes leading through it; Thaden might have to search its shores for Rageharbor, the city that was his destination, but he hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to find.

If he’d stopped at any of the towns he’d made a wide circle around on his run there, he might’ve had a better idea of where exactly it was, but he wanted to avoid people for as long as possible.  While he had his Hood of Obscurity on, he didn’t have to worry about being recognized, but he’d still made sure his name had been changed to Christopher and set his Level to 20.  He didn’t want to be targeted by other Contenders yet, and it was inevitable that he'd run into them in the city; he’d just wanted to put that off those kinds of confrontations until the last moment, if at all possible.

His experiment with being a little more personable and attempting to blend in with the general population in Forgestone hadn’t exactly worked out the way he had originally planned, so he was rethinking his strategy.  If he could swing it, he would be in and out of the city in less than a day, and he planned to avoid as many of the obstacles that had impeded him in Forgestone, such as the Vice-Leader of the Coalition branch singling him out in front of everyone in the lobby.  He would get inside the city, get his business done before anyone could question who he was or where he came from, and then be gone.  The only hiccup he could foresee was if the Support Class Evolution Assignment thingy forced him to stay in the city for a longer time, but he would figure out how to deal with it at that point. 

For now, all that mattered was getting into the city, figuring out what he had to do to obtain his new Class, do it, get his new Class, and then go hunting for the specific Anchoring dungeon from his main Quest.  That should be simple enough, right?

The gently rolling hills eventually gave way to grasslands once again, but Thaden barely looked at them as he was just glad for the flat ground that allowed him to run faster without tripping or running into anything.  After a few more miles of that, the only thing stopping him was the mountains stretching to the east and west, where it would eventually curl around to encompass the entirety of the Ragewater Sea.  The sea was apparently freshwater instead of saltwater, and dozens of large rivers flowed into and out of it at different points around its circumference, which was why there was a city situated along its banks; despite the turbulent waters of the sea itself, it acted as a hub of trade for nearly the entire region – or at least that was what he remembered from the brief description he read about it in his studies back at Forgestone. 

How ships or boats of any kind could handle the aforementioned unsteady waters was something he didn’t know, but he’d probably find out during his visit.

Rushing toward the pass between the mountains, he found that it was largely filled with a river that cut in from the east somewhere, as it flowed into the Sea further ahead.  While it took up about two-thirds of the passageway through, the other third – along either side of it – was relatively flat ground, and he headed for this portion at a slower pace so that he didn’t accidentally fall into the rushing waters of the river.  About a half mile away from the pass, as he was moving at the speed of a jog instead of a flat-out sprint, he began to see signs of trampled grass, footprints in the dirt and mud along the banks of the river, and even what appeared to be cart tracks.  He wasn’t an expert, but he thought that they appeared relatively fresh; whether it was from a few hours before or a week, though, he wasn’t knowledgeable about it to be quite sure.

“Huh.  Must be a popular route for foot traffic,” he muttered, looking around for any other signs that people were nearby.  He didn’t see anything specific other than the tracks, though he did see that they led to the southeast, away from the route he had traveled to get there; in the far, far distance he had seen a town somewhere out that way, which coincided with the map in his head, but there were also a number of dungeons out that way, as well.  The Lifewarden figured that whoever had traveled this way could’ve been heading to or from either type of destination; if that was the case, then it was more than likely that there were Contenders around… somewhere.

He took his Hood off in case he met anyone along the narrow pathway through the mountain pass, as it would be more suspicious at the moment if they couldn’t see his nametag.  Still keeping at jog, he moved into the pass, which was partly shadowed because of the time of day and orientation of the mountainsides, but for the most part it was relatively open and clear.  He was approximately 90% of the way through the pass, where he could see it open up and the Ragewater Sea became much clearer to him ahead, when he heard shouting and the unmistakable sounds of pain off to the east.

Nope, not getting involved.  Thaden was about to turn on the jets again and take off toward the blurry shape of what could only be Rageharbor far to the northwest when his kryptonite burrowed into his ears.

“No!  Leave us alone!  HELP!”

It was, of course, a woman screaming for help, and he didn’t think it was a case like it was back in front of The Den when he discovered Armas screaming like a little girl. 

He stopped, gritting his teeth as he tried to convince himself to ignore the plea for help, but it came again followed by a blood-curdling scream of pain, and he closed his eyes and shook his head.

Crap.  This is stupid, and you know it.

He did it anyway.  Flipping up his hood to keep his identity hidden, Thaden started running toward the ongoing commotion, which seemed to be coming from behind a large pile of shattered rocks that appeared to have come from a landslide at some point in the past.  When he was close to the pile, he slowed down and crept up the side, his Celerity high enough to help him agilely pull himself up the piles of rocks.  He didn’t want to go rushing into whatever was happening, which he thought at least showed that he’d gained at least a measure of restraint from all the stupid things he’d done in the past.

Edging his head over the side, doing his best to blend into the environment, he looked over the edge of the rock pile to see what exactly he was planning on involving himself in.