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Healing Incorporated
Chapter 26: Beneath the Church

Chapter 26: Beneath the Church

He headed over to The Dragon's Den and found Mr. Thomas standing by the window, looking out.

"Sir."

"Elijah. Nice to see you," Mr. Thomas replied. "It's been a while. Keeping busy, I take it?"

"Busy," Eli agreed, inspecting his former boss.

Guy Thomas. Human. Level 8 Mage (Fire).

"You've leveled up."

Mr. Thomas nodded and pursed his lips. "Not nearly as industrious as you, Elijah, but yes. The goblins made for excellent target practice."

"Heard HR leaving," Eli said. "Do you know where they went?"

"Most of upper management left with them," Mr. Thomas said. "Other than me, there are only two or three lower-level managers left, and they haven't been above the fourth floor in quite some time. As for their destination, I couldn't tell you. They left in the same direction as the IT department's exodus."

"Toward IT?"

Mr. Thomas chuckled. "I don't see HR and IT coming together anytime soon."

"No, you're probably right about that," Eli said. "IT is not a fan of HR."

"Quite right," Mr. Thomas said, sighing.

"What's wrong?"

"I find myself growing restless in here, Elijah."

"There is a dungeon near the edge of the forest in that direction," Eli said, pointing. "You could gather some people and go there, check it out."

Mr. Thomas gave him a long look, then nodded. "I might just do that, Elijah. Now, If you don't mind, I'd like some time alone with my thoughts."

"Of course," Eli said, taking out the wizard's hat they found on Ephraim's corpse. "I got this for loot. Figured you'd put it to good use."

"This is a remarkable gift, Elijah. Unfortunately, I don't have anything with which to repay you."

"You don’t repay a gift," Eli said. "I’m glad you liked it."

Mr. Thomas nodded and looked away. "A gift."

Eli left him to his thoughts.

Eli: You ready, Samantha? Can I call you Sam?

Samantha: Already told you I'm ready. And no, you can't.

Eli: Alright, alright. Let's get going then.

Eli warped to the bottom floor and cast Warp again, consciously choosing to only bring Samantha along. They ended up outside the graveyard and saw the door standing open to the church in the distance.

"Ready?" Eli asked.

Samantha glared up at him. "Stop asking me if I'm ready. Let's just go."

She cast a spell that made the air surrounding them a little brighter, like a mist with twinkling points of brightness, almost like stars.

"What is that?"

"It's called Spreading Light. It moves with me and I can sort of pick who takes damage."

As she said it, Eli felt a surge of pain throughout his body for an instant, then it was gone.

"See?" she asked.

"Don't do that."

They entered the graveyard and found that zombies fell dead from just touching the starry brightness, and skeletons lasted only a little longer. By the time Eli and Samantha made it to the church, they'd killed a significant number of mobs. Samantha leveled up twice.

Ding! You have reached level 21.

"Spent more than an hour going through that stupid talent list. Finally found Experienced," Samantha said, going up the stairs. "I'll be adding plenty of points to that one."

"Smart choice," Eli said. "In the long run, I don’t think there are any better talents."

Samantha looked at him as if checking if he was being sincere or not, then grunted as they approached the church door. There she stopped, Eli stopping too, giving her a quizzical look.

"You don't think he's respawned?" Samantha asked, nodding through the open door.

A second later, two orbs of light shot through the church to find Efram’s corpse still on the ground.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"He looks dead," Eli said.

"Yeah."

They approached the corpse and found they hadn't looted it completely. 2 gold coins, 15 silver coins, and 200 copper coins were left for them to split. With every speck of loot cleaned from the corpse of Ephraim, it quickly withered to dust and disappeared. Eli was not sad to see him go.

They continued onward to the stairs, and Eli, having better protection, was the one to open the door. The stairs continued on the other side, with the only difference being the stone steps turning into a spiral staircase.

As soon as they began their descend, everyone in the party, except for the two of them, disappeared from the party screen.

Eli: Hello?

Samantha: That's freaky.

Samantha: Messaging doesn't work either.

There was no going back now, so Eli continued downward.

“So you don't like me much,” Eli said as he stepped down into what looked like a basement.

Samantha looked pale, lit by her orb of light. When she spoke, her voice was short and clipped. “Why do you say that?”

“Ever since I got you out of that chair, you've been acting like my presence annoys you. I thought I did you a favor.”

"You did."

"So what's wrong?"

They walked out into a wide, open space with bookcases lining the walls after descending two full turns through the spiral staircase. Sounds could be heard from deeper within, sounds of the undead. The ceiling was low, adding to the place's claustrophobic feeling. A dank smell permeated the air, like it'd been recently flooded with water, but the stone floor was dry.

“I was embarrassed. Wouldn't you be, being taped to a chair? I wanted to get myself out, but no—I know I wouldn't have been able to. They had me taped to that thing pretty good."

"Right."

Samantha sighed and her face softened a little. "Look, I'm sorry and thank you. Alright? I didn't mean to come off as a bitch. But to be fair, you are kind of annoying.”

“Apology accepted?"

“The whole trying to be a leader thing just rubs me the wrong way. You're a secretary. For Christ's sake, we're both secretaries."

"Administrative assistants," he muttered.

"Shut it," she said, stepping farther into the room. “You keep telling people what to do. You're a secretary, for Christ's sake. Not like you were management or anything.”

“Yeah, being in management is such a good thing here, right?”

“No, obviously not. But you know what I mean?” She waved her hands. “I mean, who put you in charge?”

“I don't really see it like that,” he said, continuing out across the open floor. “I mean, it's a collaborative effort. Part of my job, well, our job, used to be to point our managers in the right direction by giving suggestions and, honestly, kind of manipulating them into making the right call a lot of the time."

Samantha equipped her wand. "Well, I'm a secretary too."

“Yeah, of course. That's why we should be working together."

"Why do you think I'm here?” she said, her voice coming out a little too loud.

Skeletons came into view, and Eli placed a Sigil of Light on the floor, inspecting them.

Skeleton. Level 18. Undead.

He healed the ones coming out of the sigil spell still alive, not doing nearly as much damage as he would've liked.

"Good thing I have some new spells," Samantha said with a smirk, holding her hands out in front of her. A continuous beam of light shot out from her palms, almost as wide as she was. It looked a lot like a powerful flashlight seen from a distance.

Samantha's spell did a little more damage than his Heal, but not much. Still, together, they made short work of the approaching skeletons before a single one reached them.

Together, they made short work of the mobs. Both of them leveled up once.

Ding! You have reached level 22.

Samantha leveled up twice as well, reaching level 12.

“Maybe I should be the leader,” she said, glancing at another door at the end of the room.

“Go ahead,” he said, waving for her to take the lead.

She glared up at him. “Just saying,” she muttered, going up to the door side by side with him.

There was another sound coming from this new narrow hallway, and a pair of red spots at the other end of the corridor glowed menacingly. When it moved, it was with the telltale jangling of bones, but the gait was different from the other skeletons they'd faced. Both of them shot out their orbs of light down the hallway, and Samantha’s winked away when it touched a huge skeletal creature taking up most of the width of the corridor. Eli’s crashed into it and got stuck in-between two bones in its shoulder.

“What is that thing?” he asked.

“Looks like a rhino or something,” Samantha replied, bringing her hands forward to use her beam again as it lumbered toward them, picking up speed with each step. The weight of the skeletal beast made the whole chamber shudder, and Samantha’s beam of light barely did anything at all to its health.

“Maybe we should close this door again,” Eli said, taking a step back.

“Good idea,” Samantha said, hurrying—no, more like fleeing—back out the door. Eli put down his Sigil of Light and then closed the door, stepping to the side. It didn’t seem to care about a stone wall separating it from them, and the crashing of stone and other debris as it powered through made Eli jump into the air.

Eli cast Heal on it again and again, but its health bar barely dropped. The motes of light Samantha had shown before returned. Eli cast another Sigil of Light on the floor under it as the huge thing shook its enormous body to get the falling stones off itself. Neither of them were doing much damage at all. Eli inspected it.

Skeletal Hound. Level 24. Undead.

“How is that a hound? That's no dog,” he complained.

When he spoke, it turned and faced them, its red little eyes staring right at Eli. Samantha punched his arm. “Smart move, Oh, Great Leader. Let’s talk, so it knows exactly where we are.”

Eli tried casting Warp, but the system did not let him. Then the hound attacked them. Eli didn’t have much time to react to its surprising speed. He wrapped his arms around Samantha and braced himself for the charge. The hound broke his Aegis easily, and the impact threw them both to the side. Eli lost about half his health, and all the air in his lungs. Coming back up to his feet, he couldn't stop coughing like crazy.

Samantha's health was still full, and she got up, her face red from the impact. “Don’t do that again, just—”

“What, save your life? Stop bitching. It’s coming again!”

He cast Heal on himself, then Aegis, once again annoyed at his inability to target others with the protective barrier.

“You have Aegis?” he shouted, throwing himself to one side to avoid the rampaging beast.

“No!”

Samantha threw herself in the other direction. Both avoided the attack, if barely, but the thing was turning again.

“Well, what do you have?"

"I’m only level 12. You’re almost double my level. What do you have?”

Well, what did he have? Eli ran to the side, desperately opening his skill list. He scrolled through a bunch of different skills available to him due to his specialization, but didn’t find anything until it turned up. How could he have forgotten about this one?

“There!” he said, grinning wildly. “Turn Undead.”