Chapter 107
Healing Related Mishaps
Where the demarcation line was for those seeing the dragon was rather simple to identify. There was an almost tangible line of energy that separated the two areas. The line was so thick and prevalent that even Mallory could identify the moment she crossed its threshold.
“Oh,” was all Mallory said, but the way she straightened her back and then stared at me made it so I was certain she knew she crossed the threshold.
“Yes, oh indeed.” I responded.
“You didn’t feel that?”
“I did, I just was prepared for it.” I said, also part of me wanted to keep calm so that I didn’t scare Mallory away. As this was one of the few times when I am not afraid to admit that I needed her powerful presence. I know technically I was stronger than the den of monsters that we were about to enter, but still we were going to a place spoken about in legends alone. We were going into a den of dragons. Worse, it was clear that many of the dragons were injured and likely to lash out in anger and violence at the slightest provocation.
“You could see the difference between the two areas?” Mallory asked.
“Yes, there is a line where the Blight starts making its presence truly known. One where I think most people instinctively know that their chances of getting infected are increased.” I state, constantly moving forward, not wanting to stop for the moment, for I know I might not be able to continue if I do.
Badump, badump.
Oddly, it is not my own racing heart that I notice. I know that my heart rate is elevated, but right now I can tell that Mallory too has her own heart racing.
“You okay?” I ask, as I send out a slight tendril of healing energy towards Mallory.
“Am I okay, this is… this is amazing…” Mallory states, as joyous enthusiasm fills her voice. At that I can’t help but smile and relax, as I feel a smile come to my face as well.
Chuckle.
“What?” She asks.
“Nothing.” I begin, but then I realize one thing, “I just remember how much I appreciate all that you do for me.”
“Me? All I’m doing is going around soaking up your spare experience and seeing these crazy sights. You, you are the one who is doing everything.” Mallory states.
At that, I just chuckle and shake my head, as I realize the sudden tension I had been feeling about going into a forbidden den of dragons, is instantly relieved in my mind.
We make our way to the entrance of the cavern that houses the mighty dragons. That is where I stop, as I cannot in good consciousness heal the dragons of the Blight, only to let them continue to live in this Blighted living space. With that, I stop at the entrance, and drop my Spirit Drift spell, knowing that I will need that extra thirty percent mana back to my pool. I do keep my wings, one because I have grown used to them by now, and secondly, because they are my one way to keep me over my fear of falling off the side of this ridiculously tall tree.
“Everything okay?” Mallory asks, as she peers into the cave that is inside the great tree Yggdraspirit.
I nod, trying to give myself time to do what is likely one of my greatest cleansings to date, for the room that I am proposing to clear is massive. Down just a few hundred feet from the entrance that I have stopped at is a Blighted dragon guard. The once proud looking dragon now seems content to just sit and wait for death to claim it, and sadly this dragon is not the worst of the area. As many more dragons remain inside, one dragon even looks to have had their core shattered by a metal rod that is still impaled within them.
Looking at everything, the entire task seems to be daunting, over two dozen dragons, many with physical wounds as well as the Blight coursing through their bodies, and then the overall gloomy atmosphere of this corrupted living space. An old me would have thought that this would have been a bunch of easy experience, go in slaughter the weak and dying dragons, but I had turned away from that lifestyle a long time ago, and this was yet another test of the system, seeing how committed I was to this pacifist lifestyle.
“You know people could get the dragon slayer title really easily here.” Mallory speaks the exact thought that I had been thinking about myself.
“Well, then we should make it so getting that title is a lot tougher.” I state, then letting the anger of the thought of others slaying these creatures just because they were in such a weakened state fill me with focus, as I place my hand on the left side of the entrance, while I begin channeling Healing energy into the tree.
As I channel energy, I allow my mind to go blank, as I give up my ability to perceive the world around me. Instead, I just focus on my magic, what my magic is telling me about the place we are at, about the Blight that even now tries to destroy the tree that so many call home.
Just like before, I use my energy to surround the most corrupted parts of the tree, and then use my own fresh and healthy body and glowing meridians as bait for the corruption. Bait that the semi-sentient disease easily falls for and lunges for, only to be captured in my cleansing nets of magic.
With so much corruption, I work slowly, creating a void of cleansed area, that I then use to entice the condensed Blighted materials to expand into. With this method I must cleanse the same areas multiple times, but I feel that this is necessary. First, it helps me to break down the condensed portions of the Blight into smaller pockets. Then I cleanse the same large swath, which is basically as far as I can mentally command, namely a few hundred meters around me, then I cleanse the area. Then I let my mana regenerate, while I watch the tightly condensed blight slowly expand itself into the cleansed area, and repeat.
Still, this is a slow process, but right now it is the fastest I can go. I need to come up with a better solution. I either need to train more people in the use of these spells, or I need to come up with a way that I can get a patient to be healthy enough to continue fighting off this disease, even after I am gone.
Sitting here watching the semi-sentient parasite, I can’t help but be impressed with it. In a world of magic, this creature, or something like it would naturally have to exist. In a world of magic, there would have to be something that could break down the residual magic of the world and cleanse it. Everything from a blocked crystal of mana in the body of a caster could be deadly, if left untreated, and this parasite fixes that problem. The only issue is that it constantly expands, even now it notices a void in a magically cleared area of a being with magic and it immediately seeks to fill and devour that essence.
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At this time my mind goes back to science class, where I learned about soap. Yes, soap with its hydrophobic tail and its hydrophilic head, essentially making it so that it is a polarized item that will dig down into the pores of clothes, using its tail to work the dirt free, so it can avoid the water. My mind instantly thinks I could do something similar with magic, you know create an item that has a magically repulsive tail, and a magically attractive head, but then I wonder what good such an item could do, unless I used it as some type of odd phishing lure. That is when I had one of my many punch-drunk ideas on how to solve this problem of the Blight.
Magic lures? Magic soap lures? I don’t know, I am tired, and this process is taking forever to complete. Still, I know that the Blight is a lot easier to deal with when it is out in the open. Thus, I want to take my idea of the magical soap particle, and tie that to a thread that I can then use as bait to lure out a large segment of the Blight. Then my mind races and I realize that there is one problem, fortunately before I can get too far with my thoughts, I realize Mallory is still there.
“Mallory, your class wouldn’t happen to have a fire spell?” I ask.
“I have Holy Purification, which is a Light and Flame-based spell.” Mallory states, a bit of confusion in her voice.
“Oh good, that does sound pretentious enough to work. Stand by.” I say, holding up my free hand and holding up one finger. Unfortunately, the finger and my entire body wobble at the movement. I am still tired from my partial bloodline advancement, and from having spent the past few hours cleansing out part of this tree, only to make minor improvements in the tree itself, thus drastic actions.
Focusing my mind, I begin with the idea of creating the ultimate blight lure, a magical compass if you will. One side is dense in magic, doing this I make sure to compact and weave together condensed strands of Spirit, Life, and Nature magic into the one end, then I attach a long magically reinforced tether to the other end. The minute I manage to solidify the construct, at which point I am met with a new system message.
New Spell: Conjured Magical Spirit Orb [Tier IX] (C): A spell designed by Cassiopeia Spiritlight that creates a highly compact magical construct that is infused with Spirit, Life, and Nature magic.
Fwoom.
The minute my mind comes up with the basics for what I want to be in the spell, is the minute a small glowing translucent orb appears. Then mentally I move it around, and am almost surprised to see that it moves easily, that or I am so used to moving things with Telekinesis, that moving this small orb is child’s play to me.
Once I am satisfied with my ability to move the orb up and down at will, I then hold my breath as I try the next task. Moving the orb, I first move it to a still open section of the tree, and then push it through the thick wall of the tree. As I had suspected, the Spirit magic allowed it to have that ability to be somewhat incorporeal. Then I held the spell there for a moment as a mass of Blight came towards the brightly glowing ball that just magically appeared.
And like that, I realized I was not quite ready for this, as I didn’t expect it to go this smoothly to begin with.
“Oh shit.” I say, as I begin moving the ball around, trying to get a large portion of the Blight to follow the glowing ball of magic that must be like catnip for the feral entity.
“Wait, what do you mean by oh shit?” Mallory asks, her body tense as she is clearly worried about my comment.
Realizing that I first need to work on my cursing, and second need to work on telling others my plans, I begin speaking. “Get your fire spell ready.” I say.
“What?”
“Right there, focus on the spot right above my hand,” I say, as I begin luring more and more of the Blight out, and then notice the moment the Blight recognizes me, and the outlet I am creating by casting magic into the structure of the tree.
“What now?” Mallory asks, but I am already focusing on my next task.
Then I quickly pluck the magical lure from the wall, sending it high over my head in an arc, as I try to give Mallory enough time and space to cast her spell.
What happened next was a bit of a miscommunication, yes we will go with that word, versus the other derogatory words that came to mind.
For immediately after the orb left the confines of the wall and was set flying freely in the air, the semi-sentient Blight, that had been on the proverbial heels of the orb also shot their way free of the tree, taking the same exact flight path that the orb had.
Unlike the orb however, the Blight was almost immediately affected by gravity. Meaning I had a dense black stream of corruption flowing over me, with nothing to keep it up, and as Newton so aptly noted, what goes up, must inevitably come down.
Splash.
I was coated in a dense black film of muck that instantly tried to penetrate my skin. Fortunately for me, all of my buffs, Titles, and other abilities that I gained along the way made it so any Blight particles that did manage to enter my skin were promptly destroyed.
It was at this point that my lovely assistant began assisting me.
“Oh shit.” Mallory stated, as she moved her hands into place and began channeling a densely golden flame at the still flowing malignance.
This caused the Blight to burn, while continuing to fall on me. This had the benefit of burning away the remaining Blight that was soaked into my clothes, while also making it so I was coated in burning waste that quite frankly stank to high heavens. It was at this point that I wished I had come up with a holding your breath spell, or one that rather than letting me convert mana to food and water, I could convert mana to oxygen. Instead, I was forced to breathe in the burning refuse of flame broiled Blight.
Whoosh.
Only once Mallory’s purifying flames ended, did I realize that the entire thing was over. Or at least my first time using the new spell was over.
Silence.
There was complete silence between the two of us.
Gentle breeze.
Cough, cough.
The silence was short lived however, as a gentle breeze came by and blew some of the acrid smoke and particles directly into Mallory who began coughing and choking almost immediately.
As for me, well I was covered in the baked in ash and soot of Blighted remains.
Oddly enough, the burned remains were highly infused with magic. Well, actually that wasn’t so much of a surprise, given what the Blight was, and what it did. Kind of like forcefully creating nitrogen to add back to the nitrogen cycle, apparently burning Blight would be enough to add highly concentrated mana back into the mana cycle.
Hidden Quest Found: Purposes for the Blight: You have found one of the secrets behind the purpose of the Blight, continue your discovery to identify more potential uses for this strange substance. Rewards: Experience, variable.
Experience Gained: 500 / 500.
While the experience was nothing to write home about, it did sort of make sense, as I was likely not the first to burn the Blight, and surely another scientist likely noted the increase in mana. It just happened that my Angel’s Sight made it so this discovery was a lot quicker and easier to obtain. Still the idea that there were more secrets to the Blight was intriguing to me.
“Oh Gods, you stink.” Mallory stated, drawing me out of my personal contemplation.
At that, I made it a point to open my eyes and look up at her. I imagined my ash covered face opening up to reveal two glowing green eyes, eyes that hopefully expressed how little I liked this situation we were in as well. Seeing my condition, Mallory paused and took a half step back.
“You, know, maybe that was me.” Mallory stated.
At that, I shook my head. “No, it was me. I jumped in without a clear plan, and that caused you to miss your cue, and for me to do something extremely reckless.”
Just thinking about what we did, I realized that there were multiple better ways to do everything, first I could have told Mallory beforehand what I was doing. Then I could have pulled the orb out so it went horizontally away from me, and not over me. There were multiple ways to improve what had happened, but glass half full the plan had worked.
Realizing that another moment of silence had been built up between us, I filled it with my thoughts. “Honestly I would give that whole thing a C,”
“A ‘C,’ as in the letter grade?”
“Yes, an ‘A’ for the plan itself, of creating a lure that the Blight couldn’t resist and then would doggedly follow. And an ‘F’ for my execution of the plan. Thus a ‘C’ as my overall score.” I admit honestly.
“I could see that. So what now?”
“Now, I clean up and try again.” I state, then pulling out one of my water pouches I open it up, and then let the magical water taken from the roots of Yggdraspirit wash over me. There is a moment when I feel cleansed and refreshed. Then the next second I felt an odd magical reaction as the highly magical properties of the water, began coating my body and began reacting violently to the magical ashes of the burned Blight.
Pain.
There was an intense burning sensation that coursed throughout my body as for a second I felt that I was subject to Mallory’s Holy Purification spell, only after a second did I realize that this was the residual nature of the energy used to burn away the Blight residing within the ashes that remained. Ashes that now coated me, ashes that were burning away the outer layer of my skin.
I began casting a Healing spell or expecting my already maxed out Regeneration to help with this, but nothing worked. Then after a moment I received a system notification about what had truly happened.
Hidden Quest Complete: Legendary Bloodline Awakened: You have managed to find the final component needed to start your bloodline evolution…
That was as far as I got, before a white-hot burning pain engulfed me and consumed me from the outside in.