Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Walking down the dirt tunnel entranceway, Thaden was expecting some more magical torches along the walls similar to the Vogmite Tunnels Dungeon, but that didn’t seem to be the case in The Den.  Instead, light seemed to shine in from random holes in the ceiling, creating spotlights of illumination that seemed to makes the shadows in between darker somehow.  Thankfully, his continuous use of his glowing protective Fields were enough to shed some light on these areas, especially once he was close enough, so there wasn’t too much that was hidden from his sight.

The tunnel eventually opened into an ovoid-shaped cave that had natural protrusions along the ceiling and walls, indicating that it wasn’t carved from the rock or otherwise manmade.  The uneven floor was only made slightly more level because it was filled with dry dirt; in that dirt could be seen many, many different prints of multiple sizes, as if thousands of beasts had passed along there.  They crossed over each other so much that he wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of animal produced them, even if he was skilled enough to tell the difference.  The only thing he could tell was that, at least with some of them, whatever had made them had extremely large paws.

Looking around the cave, there were two things that he immediately noted.  The first, which he assumed was some sort of environmental decoration, were piles of bones scattered around, either pushed up against the walls or standing freely.  Most of the bones were from smaller mammals, but he definitely thought he recognized a few fractured human skulls here and there. 

The second thing he noticed were large, dark recesses along the walls that no light seemed to penetrate, and since he didn’t see any monsters visible, he could only assume that these obscured holes were where they were hiding. 

Before he passed over the threshold from the tunnel to the actual cave, Thaden rechecked his Access Slots to ensure that he was fully prepared for this.  While he traveled, the Lifewarden had spent some time considering all of his available spells, which now numbered 33, and had adjusted his normal repertoire to accommodate some of his newer ones.

Available Spells: (You currently have 0/9 Access Slots available)

Major Repulsion Field (Channeled) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Absorption Field (Channeled) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Cure Physical Affliction (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Cure Mental Affliction (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Regeneration (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Healing Burst (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Stacking Buffers (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Wild Health Leach (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

Major Mana Transformation (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot *

The biggest change was switching out Major Death Ward for Major Stacking Buffers, even though it a slight risk.  The main reason for the change was because the Death Ward spell required two Access Slots as opposed to the Buffers at one, and he needed the extra Slots for his new spells.  The other change to what he normally used was adding to his healing repertoire of Major Regeneration with Major Healing Burst, as the instantaneous healing was something that he’d been lacking for a while, and while the cooldown was annoying even at only 5 seconds thanks to his Ready to Go Advancement, it would pair really well with Major Wild Health Leach.  He had to get rid of Major Health Reduction for the moment because he didn’t want to be without his Cure spells, especially when he didn’t know what he might face.

Lastly, he also had Major Mana Transformation up, as he wanted to be able to change it if it was necessary.  Right now, since he wasn’t running across the Region, he boosted his Physicality to 150, giving him 1,500 Health and a buttload of strength and damage resistance, though how that stacked up against monsters that were likely Level 60+, he wasn’t quite sure.  He was fairly certain he could probably kill one of the Vogmites from the dungeon he started in with a single punch with those kinds of stats, but how that translated to something much stronger, he didn’t necessarily want to find out.

Of course, he could always change some of these spells if it were needed, but he thought that this setup should be able to handle just about anything he came across. 

Before he did anything else, he cast Major Stacking Buffers on himself, and he felt the spell take hold; it was strange how it worked, because he could feel the protection of the spell take hold under his Fields, like a final layer of defense, similar to how Death Ward worked.  It was good to know that it was likely to function even if his Fields failed him for some reason.

With all his preparations out of the way, he stepped inside the room and he immediately heard a low-pitched growling coming from the recesses in the walls.  Expecting to be attacked by bears, as that was what he had seen outside the dungeon, he was curious when they weren’t bears that emerged from the darkness, but a half-dozen sets of glowing eyes that blinked when they stared at him, before disappearing completely.

The next moment, he was surrounded by six giant, raccoon-looking monsters with all black fur, each of which were taller than him even on all fours.  He blinked in surprise as they swiped at him with long, sharp claws that seemed to exude shadowy bubbles like some sort of cartoonish disease.  Each of the claw attacks were repulsed by his Major Repulsion Field, of course, but the dark bubbles floated through as if there was no barrier at all.  When they touched him, his vision went dark, and then disappeared altogether. 

In other words, he was blind.

Before he lost sight of the raccoons, he managed to catch the name of the monsters trying to kill him.

Shadowcoon – Maximal

Level 60

The Shadowcoons kept beating on him with no effect, but they were also being hurt by his 50% chance of reflecting 5% of the damage they inflicted by his Field.  He only knew this because there was a small icon at the far right corner of his blinded vision that looked like a shield with a number on it, and that number was rapidly increasing even as he watched.  It jumped from 10 to over 100 within a few seconds, and it looked to keep increasing as more and more damage was applied to the monsters attacking him.

But Thaden couldn’t see anything.  A few casts of Major Cure Physical Affliction was all it took to get rid of the blindness affecting him, though he found that he had to cast it again every other second as the blinding effect accumulated upon him, but if he kept at it, he was able to see again.  With his vision now basically restored, he used his Major Wild Health Leach spell for the first time on the Shadowcoon in front of him.  It glowed very subtly, indicating that it was affected by the Leach spell, and then he cast a Major Regeneration upon it.  The green glow it took on was also relatively dim, at least compared to how it normally looked, but it was also enhanced by the golden illumination of Afterglow. 

When Regeneration and Afterglow ticked and healed the Shadowcoon, she saw the slightly dimmer appearance of its name – indicating that it had taken a little bit of reflected damage so far – brightened considerably, healing it back to full Health.  At the same time, he sensed the Leaching take effect as it attempted to steal Health from himself, and it was prevented by a single Stacking Buffer. 

Nice!  I wasn’t sure if that would count as damage or not; I was afraid it would simply be a loss of Health that I’d have to end up healing. 

It was an even better spell than he thought.

Thaden cast Major Healing Burst on the Shadowcoon affected by the Leach spell next, and this time it randomly leached Health from a different monster, which he indirectly sensed just like before.  Smiling at how well it was working, the Lifewarden got to work.

In between casts of Major Cure Physical Affliction to cure the constant darkness effect, he cast Major Healing Burst whenever it was off cooldown, and made sure to refresh Regeneration and Wild Health Leach whenever they started to run out.  After two minutes, nearly all of the Shadowcoons – other than the one he was healing – were a little past half Health, and he decided to try something risky.  With his Stacking Buffers maxed out at 300, he thought it was worth trying something that could speed it up even faster.

Cancelling his Major Absorption Field, as it didn’t seem like any actual magical effects were trying to damage him, he breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t start taking any damage that his Buffers were nullifying.  He then switched out Major Mana Transformation for the moment and inserted Major Support Sprite in its place. 

Major Support Sprite (Single Cast): Summons a small, invulnerable Support Sprite that hovers around a living target; for each single target support spell cast upon the recipient of the Support Sprite, the effectiveness of that spell is increased by 75%.

Range: 90 feet

Duration: 10 minutes

Casting Time: 5 seconds

Mana Cost: 400

Thaden had never had the need or even the chance to use it before, but now there was a reason to do so.  Since the Support Sprite didn’t need to be cast upon an ally, he was able to target the same Shadowcoon he’d been healing, and suddenly it had an additional 75% increase in the healing done to it.  Switching the Support Sprite out for Major Healing, the channeled spell, he then started healing the monster when a connection appeared between his hand and the Shadowcoon.

Major Healing (Channeled): Creates a connection between the caster and a target that continuously channels healing energy.

Healing Rate: 15 Health per second

Number of Targets: 1

Range: 50 feet

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Mana Cost: 15 per second

Needless to say, the amount of healing he was doing to the monster jumped dramatically as he was now healing through the Major Healing channeled spell, Regeneration and Afterglow were periodically healing – with Afterglow doing quite a bit since it was healing 1% of the Shadowcoon’s max Health every 5 seconds, and whenever the cooldown for Major Healing Burst was up he was hitting it with even more.

It was so much extra healing with the Support Sprite and subsequently the Leach effect that his own Stacking Buffers were taking large hits to their numbers every once in a while as a large amount of Health was leached from him, but it quickly replenished as he did more damaged.  The number of Buffers yo-yo’d up and down, but never really dipped below 200, so there wasn’t too much risk that he’d actually be hurt by what he was doing.

At least until the first of the attacking monsters started to drop, making it much more likely that he would be targeted by the leaching effect.  By the time there was only one left beside the one he was healing, he stopped any additional healing spells and let the ones already active expire.  His Buffers got low at one point as he was taking more Leaching damage than adding to the stack of Buffers, but he never got to the point where he was actually being hurt.

In a short 4 minutes, every Shadowcoon but the one he was healing was dead and the heal-over-time effects on the monster were wearing off.  Toward the end of the Regeneration and Afterglow effect his Buffers were actually all used up and he ended up taking a little over 200 damage, which he was able to heal immediately with Major Healing Burst.  He took note to be more cognizant of the lingering healing in the future once monsters started dying; it might end up taking a little longer to kill everything, but it would be much safer.

By the time all the healing was done with, he was left with a fully healed Shadowcoon that continued to attack and blind him, though it took nearly 5 seconds before he became blinded by the little shadow bubbles on its claws.  At this point, he had two choices.  First, he could wait until the monster killed itself with the reflected damage from his Fields.  Based on how strong it was and what kind of damage he was already seeing, he thought that it would take at least 15 or 20 minutes for it to die, even if he switched out a spell to reduce its maximum Health.

Or, what he ultimately decided to do, was to take the Shadowcoon with him.  Now, he wasn’t going to do anything too dangerous such as running through the entire dungeon like he did the first time he ran through the Magma Dungeon, but he also didn’t want to spend hours upon hours fighting his way through.  As such, he figured that it might be worth it to progress to the next cave and potentially drag all of those monsters with him to the third, where he would begin the healing and leaching process again.  Besides, with more targets around him to be randomly affected by the leaching process, the less that Thaden would be hit by it. 

But he wasn’t just going to bring the Shadowcoon with him.  No, he was going to double down and allow it to do even more damage as it Leached from other monsters.  How?  Well, with Major Health Augmentation, of course.

Major Health Augmentation (Single Cast): Increases a target’s maximum Health.

Number of Targets: 1

Range: 50 feet

Duration: 30 minutes

Magnitude: 15% of maximum Health

Casting Time: 10 seconds

Mana Cost: 180

It wasn’t something that he’d ever contemplated before, increasing a monster’s Health, but when he paired it with Afterglow, the difference could be significant.  Already, with the Stronger Healing Advancement, he could increase its Health by 22.5%; when it was surrounded by a Support Sprite, which he tested on himself to get an accurate number, he would be able to increase it by an additional 75% of its base Health augmentation, which equaled another 11.25%. 

In other words, if the monster had 1,000 maximum Health to start with, he could increase it by 337.5 or 338 rounded up, totaling 1,338.  With Afterglow’s 1% of maximum Health as its healing effect, it would go from 10 Health healed every 5 seconds to 13; that might not sound like a lot, but when the Shadowcoon likely had 10,000 Health or more, those numbers changed a lot more dramatically. 

In fact, the Major Support Sprite had proven so successful that he took another look at its counterpart, Major Defensive Sprite.

Major Defensive Sprite (Single Cast): Summons a small, invulnerable Defensive Sprite that hovers around a living target; for each single target defensive spell cast upon the recipient of the Defensive Sprite, the duration of that spell doubles, any charges are increased by 2, and any damage mitigation is increased by 50%.

Range: 90 feet

Duration: 10 minutes

Casting Time: 5 seconds

Mana Cost: 400

It had never really been a factor in his defense before, but now that he was using Stacking Buffers for extra protection, having a doubled spell duration and an increase of stacks from 300 to 302 still wasn’t excellent, but the 50% damage mitigation increase certainly was.  Each Buffer would now protect against 14 damage instead of 9, which boosted their efficiency significantly, as it would mean he would be able to be hit by a random Leaching and not have it affect him as much.

It was a lot to juggle, especially considering that he still had to keep himself from becoming blind every other second, but if he managed to keep everything straight, he could make a ton more progress in a shorter timeframe.

Before he went anywhere, though, he extracted the loot from corpses of the five Shadowcoons that had died.

Extraction complete!

Loot obtained:

60 Silver, 25 Copper coins (Reduced reward for Level discrepancy)

5 Shadow-touched Fur (Uncommon) (Reduced reward for Level discrepancy)

10 Shadowcoon Claws (Common) (Reduced reward for Level discrepancy)

After that was done, he turned to the Shadowcoon still clawing ineffectually away at him and waved for it to follow him.  “Come on, little guy, let’s go see what else this place has got.”

With the giant raccoon following him, Thaden proceeded down the tunnel – which he checked to make sure was large enough for the Shadowcoon to fit through – while ensuring that both his Fields were both active.  He was still venturing into the unknown, after all, but he was feeling better and better about his abilities with every step he took.