"Recovery!"

"Regeneration!"

"Lifespring!"

A stream of healing and recovering spells showered Orisa who was wriggling in pain on the floor. She moaned and groaned in a futile attempt to stand up, but slumped back on the cold stone.

"Hang on, girl! You'll get better soon, I p-promise," Kanai stuttered in panic. His shaking hands tried to feed Orisa a Stamina potion, spilling half of the bottle in the process. Cursing out loud, he picked their emergency stash of two Mana potions and rushed back to the entrance.

The tunnel was winding left and right to slow potential intruders, but this played against the defenders, too. As Kanai was running up to the surface, he couldn't see far ahead since the tunnel went straight for only five meters at best before making a turn. He had to pray that no Beasts made it inside yet, or they would be screwed.

After making the last turn, Kanai saw something that made him both laugh and sigh in relief - the entire two meters wide and high entrance was blocked by a stuck toad. But the moment he relaxed a bit, the toad shot an icicle projectile in his direction that he could barely dodge. Ducking behind the corner, he used all his buffs to ramp up his chances of survival and carefully peeked at the entrance.

What he saw there was rather nerve-wracking - the toad croaked loudly twice and stopped moving, and its body almost exploded a moment later, letting a horde of soccer ball-sized bugs inside. While Kanai was observing the mind-breaking occurrence with his jaw on the floor, the toad's corpse was completely torn to pieces, and larger Beasts rushed into the tunnel. Psyching himself up, he raised his shaking wand hand and pointed it at the mob:

"Pestilence!"

"Field of Corrosion!" - "Field of Corrosion!"

"Frostwind!"

"Pestilence!" - "Pestilence!"

By stacking several different toxic clouds inside the tunnel and adding a slowing effect, Kanai created another choke point between him and the entrance. What helped him even more was the fact that they were still in a radius of the Lantern which Orisa could maintain active even while unconscious. Weak Beasts died without getting out and creating more obstacles for others, while stronger foes got through badly damaged, letting Kanai finish them off easily. The situation looked manageable if not for his Mana pool - the first potion lay empty on the ground, and the last was missing a quarter already.

Earlier this week, Kanai came up with a method to replenish his missing Mana, but the skill was clunky, risky, and hard to use. There were only three Mana layers in Kanai's possession due to his naturally low Dexterity, and the spell ate away one of them, leaving Kanai weakened and almost helpless in the meantime.

"Frostwind!"

"Pestilence!"

"Field of Corrosion!"

Despite knowing all the downside of the spell, Kanai was out of options. He refreshed the area spells and began to wait for a suitable enemy to appear since there was no other choice anyway.

From the cloud of the toxic mixture came rolling an almost intact armadillo. Its size was nothing compared to the one the squad fought in the Dungeon, but in a narrow closed space, it posed a serious threat. Kanai hid behind the corner of the tunnel again, and just a second later, the Beast crashed into the wall with a deafening sound. The stone around the impact area cracked and quite a few rocks fell off the ceiling, but the tunnel withstood the impact in the end.

"Corrosive Ray!"

Kanai pressed his wand right to the Beast's face and swiftly melted it, leaving the armadillo overwhelmed, disoriented, but not dead yet. That was exactly what was required for his spell to work. Not wasting a single second, he bent on one knee by the wriggling Beast's side, pressed his left palm against its body and chanted:

"Leech!"

The armadillo tried to wriggle but quickly lost the remnants of its power and ceased to exist. The trick to the Leech spell was that its caster was supposed to connect to a living creature before activating the draining effect. After the initial setup, it was possible to drain Mana directly from the core if the contact was maintained, but the first step could only be performed on the active, flowing Mana inside the victim. The output was far from enough either, especially when compared to Orisa's Mana Source, but Kanai had to make do with whatever was available to him.

"Pestilence!"

"Decay!" - "Decay!" - "Decay!"

"Pestilence!"

It was not possible to recast the other two area spells while draining Mana from the body, which led to more Beasts rushing towards him. The only reason Kanai could still breathe was the fact that numerous corpses had been stalling and blocking the advance of the foes all this time, and the longer the fight was going on, the more obstacles appeared.

When Kanai was about to renew all of his spells since the armadillo's corpse had no Mana left, a volley of razor-sharp spikes shot from the entrance. The first barrage turned every Beast still alive into mincemeat and the second followed shortly after.

Kanai was knocked back by the force of impact. Two thorns struck his chest and were stopped by his ribcage, and one more grazed his neck. A spray of blood shot out of the wound, dyeing the wall to his left with red. Led only by an enormous surge of adrenalin, Kanai fell to the right, behind the corner of the tunnel. When his body made painful contact with the cold stone, another volley struck the spot where he had been just a second ago.

Together with Orisa, they had practiced various disaster plans and techniques that were supposed to help in case of emergency. Among them was the ability to swiftly cast spells without chanting them. While in theory it was the easiest thing possible since everybody started exactly with that, the reality was quite different. To cast a spell without chanting, its caster needed to recreate all commands and Mana manipulations manually, just like he did to memorize the spell's work in the first place. The problem lay in speed. They had to practice most life-saving spells to be able to cast them as quickly as possible without any voice commands.

It took Kanai four seconds to activate Blood Blockade spell and five more to use pain-killing magic. During this time, three more volleys of spikes crashed into a nearby wall. Kanai's head began to spin from the initial loss of blood, but he forced his wand against his chest and began with the hardest spell of his arsenal, Lifespring. The most difficult part was not the spell itself, but maintaining it long enough to produce the required effect.

An approaching noise interrupted Kanai's third attempt at healing his wounds, so he went for an easy but weaker spell instead - Regeneration. A relatively small ant made its way through the tunnel and jumped onto Kanai without any hesitation. Its jaws sunk into his right leg and brought an immense pain even through the pain killing spell. Another ant showed around the corner.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Corro-."

Kanai tried to cast but began to cough violently instead. It was beyond hopeless to try and use spells normally with such damage to his throat. Instead of trying to recreate any of his spells manually, he blasted a simple Mana explosion out of his palms, pushing both ants back a little. The explosion was too weak to do any significant damage and also hurt his own legs, but it was still better than being eaten.

Two more Beasts appeared and rammed the ants at full speed, making Kanai's face even paler than before. One of the foes was about to attack when Kanai touched the closest Seal that was half a meter above the floor. His Mana went inside, making the Seal glow for half a second before a meter-long electric blade came out of it and pierced the first Beast. Kanai channeled more of his reserves while feeling his Mana pool growing dry with staggering speed. An empty potion bottle rolled to the side after the last bits went down Kanai's throat, and he activated the Seal three more times.

While using his right hand to activate the Seal, Kanai was also pressing his left palm to his neck and sending the simplest type of healing Mana into the wound. He tried to heal it directly without wasting resources on his legs or ribs, and this effort bore fruit: while not completely closed, the wound got smaller and was no longer interrupting his speech.

With the little Mana that was left inside, Kanai pointed his wand at the heap of Beasts partially cut by the Seal and was at the beginning of incantation when the blood ink all over the tunnel finally glowed red.

All Seals activated almost simultaneously, some of them producing electric blades while others launched short flame or ice bursts. Explosions, squeals, sounds of crushing stones - everything turned into one giant deafening mess.

Five seconds later, the glowing stopped only to resume ten seconds later. Kanai tried to crawl back to the room, thanking Orisa's foresight not to place any Seals at ground level, but something heavy dropped and pinned his waist and legs to the ground. Immobilized, almost suffocating due to all the explosions and smoke, Kanai could only wait and slowly heal the injuries on his neck and chest. Luckily, the Blood Blockade spell prevented his wounds from reopening.

Time and time again the sequence repeated - Beasts rushed into the tunnel, drawn by the abundance of Mana inside, the Seals activated to decimate them and add more burns and cuts to Kanai's ragged body. Flashes of red flame and blue lightning mixing with each other reminded him of something that he preferred to stay forgotten. Ten long minutes later, the flow of Beasts finally dried up. The tunnel was literally smoking, piles of dead bodies covering at least half of its height and creating a horrible yet promising picture. The fact that Kanai could think about the amount of Mana cores they would harvest afterward made him question his sanity, among other things.

A worrying thought visited his mind five minutes later - for some reason, nobody came to save him or check if he was alive, at least. Knowing Orisa, it could only mean one thing. Kanai doubled his efforts of escaping the heap of dead bodies, cursing out violently since not only his old wounds opened up from all the friction, but he managed to cut himself several times on sharp claws and naked bones of Beasts. The effects of the painkilling spell wore off a long time ago, so the pain was all over his body and tormented him with every move. He finally got out of the trap only to find that his left ankle was sprained.

"Blood Blockade!"

"Regeneration!"

"Major Balm!"

"Recovery!"

The emergency course made him feel better, although each step was still taking a huge toll not only on his body but on his willpower as well. Another worrying thought appeared in his frantic mind, reminding him of numerous infections that could have gotten through his wounds. His hand moved subconsciously:

"Major Disinfect!"

And only when Kanai had felt the spell's effect he remembered the downside - it was a taxing spell that would knock off a weakened target to perform a thorough cleaning of their blood. Realizing his mistake, Kanai sped up, ignoring the muffled but still present pain in his ankle. Leaning on the wall, he stubbornly moved his legs even when his eyelids became heavy as dumbbells.

When Kanai finally barged into the last room, he saw exactly what he was expecting - Orisa was lying on the floor amidst an improvised Seal control scheme. Blood was oozing from her nose, eyes, and even ears, and it created a tiny red pool around her head which looked especially pale on this crimson background.

"Major Status!"

"Major Condition!"

The scan revealed severe overexertion that led to a surge of her blood pressure and made Orisa faint in the end. No longer surprised and mostly used to such scenes, Kanai calmed down a bit since there was nothing in Orisa's condition that some healing couldn't handle. The only problem was his heavy eyelids. He had to crawl towards Orisa as his legs gave away, but tenaciously moved closer and directed his wand at her body:

"Regeneration!"

"Recovery!"

"Lifespring!"

One last thing he did was to lock and activate sealing bracelets on them both. Two seconds later, Kanai fell asleep by Orisa's side.

---

---

Kanai woke up to an intense rubbing going all over his face. He found himself resting on Orisa's lap while she was wiping his face with a wet towel. The fact that she was as dirty and bloodied as a half-rotten corpse but still preferred to take care of Kanai said a lot about her priorities.

"I can't say I dislike this activity a lot, to be honest," he mumbled, the sound barely escaping his dry throat.

"Kanai! How are you?!" Orisa jolted, involuntarily kicking his head upward.

"It was fine until you decided to hit me in the head," he got up, gave Orisa a long look, and took the half-red towel from her shaking hands. "Just look at yourself! I was away for a mere twenty minutes, and you managed to get yourself into this state again. God, you are beyond help."

"Kanai, I'm so sorry! Another of my plans almost got us both killed, and this all just because I forgot about one fucking detail... I'm extremely sorry, please-."

"Oh, shut up. I agreed on this, didn't I? And two people forgot about your barfing habits if I recall correctly. At the end of the day, it worked, right? And we are alive."

"I don't deserve you..."

"Oh, you are so damn right, girl," Kanai grinned and began to clean Orisa's face. "So, how was the control scheme?"

"Well, it felt horrible. Imagine having seventy hands instead of your usual two, and to move them you need seventy times more effort and determination. I should have practiced before launching this whole shit fest. But now I don't even know what to do..."

"Oh, don't cry, pussy. We'll figure something out."

"You are surprisingly positive, bro. Can't say I'm not glad that you aren't angry, but it just feels strange to see you like that."

"Never mind," he mumbled with his cheeks getting slightly red.

"Oh? Spill it! What is it that you are hiding?" Orisa poked his cheek. It was her time to grin as she began to suspect something. "Come on, say it!"

"Okay, screw you. I'm just happy that you are okay. Now get lost," Kanai threw the towel into her face and turned around with a giant pout on his face.

"Aww, so sweet! Me too, bro. I'm happy for you and also thankful for your help. You protected me and stalled long enough for me to recover." Orisa became silent for several moments before continuing in a serious tone: "I mean it, Kanai. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that we are here together."

"Yeah-yeah, sure. I'm amazed that you can say those embarrassing lines out loud."

"Count me shocked as well!"

After a light and hearty laughter, they both jumped on top of their sleeping bags to rest a bit.

"Honestly, I was slightly scared," Kanai suddenly said and turned to face Orisa. "Those lightning and flame Seals gave me a horrible flashback, so I'd like to refrain from staying inside the tunnel in the future if you don't mind."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. In the end, I still think it's better to die from fireballs or Beasts than thanks to that fucking truck. Man, it's so pathetic, I even joked about being hit by a truck, and here I am..."

"Yeah, no shit. Imagine, I was escorted here by the almighty lord truck-kun, too. I'll never forget this police car siren. It was so loud I thought I would turn deaf."

"You don't say, dude when I think about these red-and-blue flashes... Wait, what?"

"Um, Kanai? What's up with you?"

"Police car? Did you die near the police car? Was it in the evening? Were you alone?" Kanai grabbed Orisa's shoulders and squeezed them tight, his palms were sweaty.

"Okay-okay, chill, man. What's up with you!? Yes, the truck hit me when I was talking to the police. Some random degenerates chased after me and my friend when we were walking in the evening. We tried to run away after splashing them with pepper spray, got to the police car and then the big bang happened."

With an unreadable expression, Kanai was looking at Orisa, his mouth agape. He opened and closed them several times, his lips trembling and eyes wet from all the emotions swirling inside. He touched Orisa's cheeks with his shaking hands and looked her in the eyes, before one single name came quietly out of his mouth:

"Satoru..?"

"Um, how did you..." Orisa's pupils instantly enlarged and almost overtook her iris in a sudden realization. "Mirai?!"