ghost flower

Reborn Healer Chapter 62

I was beginning to realize that being important was not a good thing if I wanted to live a peaceful life.

Mizuki had no choice about it, which I understood now more than ever must be an enormous pain in the ass to live with. Unfortunately, it seemed like I had managed to drag myself into the mix, too.

Wasn’t there a curse that went may you live in interesting times? Well, the interesting times were here. I was yet to regret my actions, but I had to admit that I was gett...

Reborn Healer Chapter 61

Soul magic, as it turned out, was not very easy to learn.

There were certain fields of magic that I knew I was just worse at. Any form of offensive magic was substantially more difficult for me to grasp even from a textbook. Spell formations just wouldn’t stick in my head, and even after years of practice, I only had three fire spells and one water spell in my repertoire, and the latter wasn’t even meant for real combat.

I didn’t feel that same innate discord with soul magic...

Reborn Healer Chapter 60

Nightmare’s Call lvl 4 -> 8

Danger Sense lvl 4 -> 8

Harmonic Awareness lvl 4 -> 8

Split the Shadows lvl 8 -> 10

Nightmare Forged lvl 3 -> 7

My body had not been prepared for this. That much was obvious as my soul underwent the changes affixed to it by the Nightmare, forcibly evolving.

It could have been worse. I had been steadily improving the abilities of ...

Reborn Healer Chapter 59

In retrospect, this had been a really bad idea. It hadn't really been a good idea in the moment either, but it was much worse now that it was actually happening.

Doubletime was still active—in fact, it was the only concentration spell I still had active. It gave me just enough time to react to the familiar spike of danger, giving me the space to activate a Dash at extremely overloaded capacity. I had put so much power into the spell that I felt something snap within me, but I didn't h...

Reborn Healer Chapter 58

A full-body chill shivered through me, urging me to move as fast as I could, but my legs stayed put.

My instincts hadn’t failed me yet, but I couldn’t listen to them now. Judging from what they were processing as danger to me, there was nowhere safe to run. This was an entirely different level of threat from what Highmaster Lanaeus had presented.

Lord Prince Gerald Halcyon was the same tier as the Grancrest official, if I recalled correctly, but he had no interest in playing w...

Reborn Healer Chapter 57

I stared down the Highmaster. Just as before, my danger sense was going off at every possible opportunity. A major difference, however, was that Lanaeus wasn’t the only one causing it. In fact, he wasn't even responsible for most of it. That honor went to the plague, or seemed to be very happy to consider other targets in the area but was still primarily focused on me.

The upside of dealing with a weapon that targeted specifically healers: I had a way to guide it around.

Highmas...

Reborn Healer Chapter 56

The path was easier than I thought it would be. The only problem was avoiding the bodies.

On some level, I had wondered if I was going to need to deal with other people who had successfully managed to deal with the plague who were trying to keep an eye out, but that turned out to be a needless worry.

A good number of the buildings that had been present in the village had been outright crushed by the Nightmare rain. I hadn’t seen enough of the courier’s memories to tell the det...

Reborn Healer Chapter 55

In a secluded, heavily restricted section of the Federation underground, Sebastian and a handful of mages specially picked for this task unleashed devastation on the Grancrest guild’s village.

The process was simple, but simple didn’t mean easy. It required a good deal of precision to get the timing right without also letting the plague spread to themselves.

From the Kane clinic, Sebastian’s contact had identified and stolen a box loaded with the amputated body parts of merc...

Reborn Healer Chapter 54

Cale blew his whistle again, urging his men forward.

He’d lost one already. Even after healing, they weren’t in the shape they’d been before they had run into a plague capable of putting the strongest man down with a touch. That had been the kind of job that they would spend weeks if not months recovering from, replenishing his company’s numbers before they took on another.

But not one of them had turned down the call when their whistles had ignited with a distress call. T...

Reborn Healer Chapter 53

I had been correct. Hanging was significantly easier to survive than bathing in acidic slime was.

A few months ago, I had made an incredibly stupid play and jumped headfirst into a Master-tier slime. It had worked out, but in retrospect, it had been completely moronic doing that with zero preparation or understanding of what I was getting myself into.

Come to think of it, it had been a bad idea at the time as well.

Whatever the case, my past poor decisions were paying divide...

Reborn Healer Chapter 52

Well, shit. That could have gone better.

At least the new room they had me in was more comfortable, though they had been much more thorough in making sure I couldn’t fight back this time. Rather than have my lifeline across from me like it was evidence or something, they had removed it entirely. I could still distantly feel it, but there were too many barriers between me and it to accurately determine where it had gone.

Naturally, they also had my storage band, which me...

Reborn Healer Chapter 51

“Magic item!” Erica called out.

She wasn’t the only one monitoring this interrogation room, obviously. Though she had reached Adept and comfortably settled into place with her power and was interrogating a restrained pre-teen whose magical focus had been removed from him, there was always the potential of something coming out of the blue.

He should have been entirely harmless. Erica’s memories had supported the information that they’d gotten from the reports, which had b...

Reborn Healer Chapter 50

Well, shit.

Highmaster, and on a human at that. With monsters, we were supposedly supposed to be able to fight a tier up as long as we were able to outstrategy them. People, on the other hand…

Nightmare’s Call didn’t pick up that he was lying, either. Unlike Sebastian, Lanaeus didn’t have any kind of barrier hiding his emotions. Peeking into them was almost worse, though.

He was utterly, entirely sure in his victory. There was a kind of arrogance I’d grown used to ...

Reborn Healer Chapter 49

Sebastian Ferris was winning. That much was undeniable.

It hadn’t even been a week, and his winning trajectory was painted clearly in the stars.

Grancrest might have had stronger adventurers in general. They might even have been able to win an outright pitched battle.

Fortunately for Sebastian and the Federation, guild wars rarely if ever involved those.

What they did involve was a great deal of violence packed into relatively short periods of time. Often, the public...

Reborn Healer Chapter 48

I cast Spare the Dying on Watson one more time, taking assessment of my mana. I was at about three-quarters capacity, since mana regeneration slowed down the closer a mage was to full. After using that spell, I had a minute where I could do other things before I had to tend to Watson again lest he go critical.

Overheal. I knew how much offensive power this bastard packed. I didn’t want to waste mana actively casting barriers, so this would do.

Doubletime. I cou...

Reborn Healer Chapter 47

Fortunately, Watson was by far the worst affected of the patients brough tto me. It seemed like most people who had given the plague a chance to progress had outright died, and the rest of them had attacked their symptoms with reckless abandon. 

Typical combat medical advice, according to Iryn, said that leaving a tourniquet on for more than two hours was a bad idea. From what they told me, everyone except Watson who had survived minor contacts with the plague had kept one on for d...

Reborn Healer Chapter 46

Almost all of Watson's left leg had been affected from thigh to ankle, and it had started to spread up towards his abdomen. It hadn't crossed over to his right side yet, but even as I watched, it was actively growing.

“What happened? When did it get worse?” I asked. All my humor had fled me. This was serious, and the healer most qualified to deal with it wasn't here.

There had been a couple of occasions where I hadn't been able to save someone, but those people had already bee...

Reborn Healer Chapter 45

Because Vallis had already been through here earlier during the same day, I didn’t have much actual healing to do in the medical bay. More time had passed when I’d been in the memory capsules than I’d thought, so I ended up just heading to my lodgings for the time being.

Mizuki was still awake when I got back. She must have made her way to the library as well, because she had a stack of books next to her, one of which she was reading.

“Took you long enough,” she said as ...

Reborn Healer Chapter 44

Sebastian had just about finished with the issues of the day. It had been a narrow thing, but he had always specialized at threading the needle. Guild wars were a tough trick. While they operated on the land of a kingdom, there were certain expectations and exceptions that could be made for them so long as those expectations met.

Case in point: a war could be completely legally waged on kingdom ground without the Halcyon military intervening so long as it was done quietly and didn’t d...

Reborn Healer Chapter 43

Thanks to the librarian’s rather lacking explanation, I hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect when it had come to using a memory capsule.

It was less clear than one of the Nightmare-related visions would be.

Not visions, I corrected myself. What had Aria called it again? Soul wandering? Something like that.

This was similar. Just like the last time I’d wandered out of my body, I was able to walk and move around.

Interesting. My assumption had been tha...

Reborn Healer Chapter 42

I stared at Vallis.

“There’s a catch,” I said. “You wouldn’t be this calm about saying this if you weren’t.”

He cracked a tired smile. “You think like your mother.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Am I right?”

“Somewhat. Your soul, you may have realized, is not quite normal.”

Twelve birthdays of mind-rending agony flickered through my memory.

“I noticed,” I said drily. “There’s two of them.”

“It is more complex...

Reborn Healer Chapter 41

Oh, it’s this guy again.

“Congratulations on completing the examination,” Sebastian said. “Rest assured that I have heard your concerns with regards to Grancrest operatives present in our examinations. This is a grave matter, and I cannot extend sufficient enough apologies that our defenses were breached. They will be dealt with.”

“Sure,” I said, eyeing him. Sebastian was good enough with his emotions that I couldn’t immediately read what he was thinking, ...

Reborn Healer Chapter 40

I was happy to see that Flare was alive. From our brief bout during the earlier phase of the exam, I could tell that she was competent without being arrogant, and with her bright blue hair and double wand setup, she was easily recognizable enough for me to pick her out of a crowd.

She was looking at me like I’d grown a second head, though. Maybe it was the whole being significantly more competent than she’d thought I was from said bout, or maybe it was the killing business. Two of h...

Reborn Healer Chapter 39

Mizuki spat out the chunk of flesh she’d bitten out of Terrence’s neck. The bloody mess splattered onto the ground beside her. She’d gotten something like half a mouthful of Grancrest adventurer in that one bite.

I rushed to his side, casting Body Scan to confirm just how properly fucked he was before I pumped a healing spell into him.

As a healer, I had grown very proficient at dealing with a number of conditions. Illnesses and infectious diseases were the hardest by far an...

Reborn Healer Chapter 38

This was an awkward time to have a skill evolution force me to make a decision, to put it lightly. Before I could even read what my options were, the adult magma wraith launched itself toward us, each of its steps sinking it up to where a knee would be on a normal humanoid being. Its steps melted the stone surface, and it barreled its way through the rougher parts of the terrain.

I threw up a Shield spell, but it broke through that with ease, black flame briefly wreathing it.

My l...

Reborn Healer Chapter 37

“What do we do?” I asked. “I’m just thinking out loud here, but the magma wraiths aren’t supposed to be here, which makes me assume external interference. It seems a little convenient that one of the wraiths is trailing right back to one of the boxes.”

“I was thinking the same,” Mizuki replied, “but that’s the truesteel box. Even if it’s a trap, we can just get it quickly and come back, no?”

I looked at her, then down to the hundred-foot-plus drop down onto...

Reborn Healer Chapter 36

I cast Heat Ray as I practically leapt back, calling my lifeline to my hand as I did. The data on the spyglass was useful but incomplete, and I had no clue how the magma wraiths would attack when provoked. I wanted to make the first move.

True to the description, my Heat Ray didn’t seem to have the biggest effect on the foremost wraith. I targeted it directly at the center of its head, but all it seemed to do was aggravate the jagged lines that covered it. It crouched slightly, then s...

Reborn Healer Chapter 35

Waiting for the group phase of the examination took significantly longer than my similar wait for the one-on-one combat mage segments had been earlier. The guild had planned for this, it seemed, providing a long table stocked with various kinds of local snacks and even proper food and all types of drinks for those of us who’d finished early.

Given what I now knew, I was a bit hesitant to grab any of the food they’d laid out. That said, even if they had somehow laced the food, there ...

Reborn Healer Chapter 34

Thaddeus fired immediately. He had no interest in continuing the chatter beyond his confusing declaration, which I was actually annoyed with.

His spell was only visible for a moment, dark, shadowy magic bursting out of the tip of his staff before vanishing into the ether. Danger Sense gave a warning indicative enough of its location for me to dodge it, while Harmonic Awareness meant that I was aware enough of my immediate surroundings that I could make out what that spell was.

The...

Reborn Healer Chapter 33

The brightness of whatever spell Sebastian had triggered blinded me even with my eyes squeezed shut. With it came a sense of magic pressure, though interestingly not any of the Danger Sense-induced adrenaline that I would have expected for an offensive spell.

I guess it didn’t really make sense to have someone in the higher Master tiers like Sebastian presumably was to straight-up attack a room full of Initiates and Adepts. Those upper tiers were the kind of people that legends were w...