Eli cast Light's Seal on one of the approaching cursed lizardmen, immobilizing it and allowing Cruella and Simon to surge forward to attack. Unfortunately, the remaining three lizardmen ignored the two melee classes entirely, dodging lithely to the side before charging toward Samantha and Eli at the back.
Samantha let out a short shriek as two blades were thrust at her. While Eli was busy blocking the attack of the third lizardman, he saw steel graze Samantha’s arm. Suddenly, a blinding light engulfed her, and the weapon passed straight through where she had stood. The light whizzed away toward Simon and Cruella, who had just finished off the immobilized lizardman.
Then, the light took shape again, revealing Samantha, unharmed. The glow faded, leaving her with a quizzical but immensely gratified expression.
"It worked!" she shouted triumphantly.
Eli remembered her mentioning a defensive spell beneath the church. Light Mirage. So this was it. Not bad. This, however, presented a problem as all three lizardmen turned their focus on him.
His Aegis absorbed a few strikes, but shattered before anyone else could make it halfway to him. Eli threw himself back as gracefully as possible, but one slashing attack caught his arm, leaving a deep gash. Blood poured out, and even as Eli healed himself, one of the lizardmen moved far faster than he anticipated, thrusting its crude sword into his gut. The metal felt cold against his pierced insides.
Eli groaned and whimpered as he stumbled back, pressing his hands to his stomach, fighting to stay conscious long enough to heal himself. He turned to retreat, but another strike hit his back. Pain flared as he desperately realized he could cast Aegis again. He did so, healing himself while using his staff to create some distance.
The attackers fully ignored his strikes and stepped forward as one, cutting into him again. Just as Aegis failed a second time, one of the lizardmen collapsed with Cruella’s dagger jutting out from the back of its neck.
Even so, Eli took several more slashes. One struck his arms as he held them up to protect his face. Another drove clean through his thigh. The numbing pain enchantments dulled the sensation, but Eli cried out, feeling sluggish and weak as blood continued pouring from his wounds.
Samantha healed him, but the damage was overwhelming. Even with all the spells at his disposal, Eli couldn’t do a damn thing to save himself from the relentless assault from the two remaining lizardmen. The many cuts on his arms and even his face made Eli despair. He thought he was doomed. Then, finally, his friends saved him from certain death. Simon and Cruella cut down the last two lizardmen quickly, since their focus was entirely on Eli.
Samantha's magic knitted his flesh back together and the sensation of his wounds being forced closed was enough to make him want to hurl. Now he understood what Charlotte had experienced when she stood at the forefront, taking the brunt of the damage. It was debilitating. Eli's damn hands wouldn't stop shaking, even after Simon pulled him to his feet.
"I couldn't do anything," Eli muttered, his voice trembling. "I'm sorry, Samantha. I should have protected you better."
Simon towered over him, looking down with a mix of concern and frustration. "That's not how this works," he said firmly.
Eli shook his head, his voice steadying. "I need to be able to defend myself."
"You're a healer," Cruella interjected, crossing her arms. "You're not supposed to be able to stand up against enemies all by yourself. That's what Simon and I are for—or even Samantha with her badass teleport spell."
The three of them stared at Eli, waiting for his response. He nodded reluctantly, even though he didn't fully agree. Sure, healers in games weren't supposed to handle combat alone, but this wasn’t a damn game. Here, death was permanent.
It was becoming clear to him that heal-bombing monsters while healing himself and tanking damage wouldn’t work in the long term. He needed more tools to deal with threats, something to disrupt enemies or even eliminate them outright. Priest of the Dying Light was a class with little offensive potential unless it was fighting undead monsters, and he had no clue how prevalent those would be in Aryxia.
No, he needed something more.
He resolved to take another long look at his skills to figure out what tools he hadn’t yet acquired. One couldn't always rely on others to save oneself. He was the person supposed to save others—not the other way around.
With those thoughts swirling in his mind, Eli followed behind Simon and Cruella, walking beside Samantha.
"Did you see that spell?" Samantha asked, excitement lighting up her face.
"It was pretty badass," Eli admitted. "Can you teleport whenever you want, or is it just when someone touches you?"
"Hold on." Samantha grinned, turning into a pulsing light that turned into a thousand motes as she swirled away up the corridor to reappear at the front of the group. "I can make it work without someone touching me, but before, it triggered on its own."
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"That's a good skill," Eli said as she fell back into step with him. "I wish Priests had something similar."
"You have Warp, dummy," Samantha teased, using one of Amy's usual jabs.
Eli blinked, her words registering. Slowly, he nodded. "You're right. I do get Warp."
There was no reason he couldn’t use it for shorter distances. Maybe he’d been thinking about it all wrong. It wasn’t just a convenience or transportation skill—it had tactical potential. He’d need to explore that further.
Ahead, the next group of enemies came into view.
Cursed Lizardman Mage. Level 26.
Cursed Lizardman Mage. Level 26.
Cursed Lizardman Mage. Level 27.
Eli immediately cast Silence on the highest-leveled one, cutting off its ability to use spells. A second mage, lower-leveled, erected a barrier that blocked his spell, while the third reacted too quickly. It countered with its own Silence, robbing Eli of his ability to cast spells.
The Silenced debuff appeared beside his health bar, ticking down. Samantha started to cast, but was silenced as well, her eyes widening in shock.
“Damn it!” Eli growled, frustration boiling over.
Thankfully, Cruella and Simon arrived just in time. She struck the first mage down almost instantly, while Simon bashed the one who had cast Silence. The third mage, the one who had erected the barrier, retaliated by hurling a bolt of lightning. It struck Cruella, slamming her against the wall and dropping her to the floor. She convulsed, her health plummeting as a debuff appeared: Electrocuted (Stunned).
Her health was dropping fast, and all Eli could do was stand helplessly, waiting for his Silence to wear off.
Simon roared in anger, slamming his shield into the mage. His crushing force shattered the barrier, forcing the monster to focus its remaining mana on re-casting it. The moment its mana ran out, Simon delivered the final blow, putting the bastard down.
He then rushed to Cruella's side, panic lacing his voice. "I'm sorry! I didn’t activate my skills in time—I didn’t think it would act so fast."
Thankfully, Eli’s Silence wore off just before Cruella’s condition worsened further. He quickly cast a Heal, stabilizing her until her debuff timed out. There was nothing Eli could do to remove them, but at least she was out of immediate danger.
After that second disastrous fight, Eli had enough and figured it couldn't wait anymore. He had often berated himself for not going through the skill list until much later. Finding solutions to problems already behind him rather than pre-empting them with already available spells because he couldn't spare a moment to check his Character Sheet was now unacceptable considering the danger they were in.
To that end, he opened his Character Sheet while Cruella recovered, and opened up the list of available skills. Heal had ranked up again and had changed name to Greater Heal. He opened the skill tree but didn't find anything interesting, so he maxed out the node, adding more health to each cast of the spell, at the cost of increased mana drain.
Warp had ranked up on its own, and he selected a node adding more available locations to his list.
Lastly, having spammed both Agility, Bless and Embrace The Dying Light over and over again in the dungeon, all three of them had reached rank 3. The nodes in the Agility skill tree weren't all that exciting, but he did find one that made it so his spell applied to the entire party right away rather than him having to cast it over and over again.
He also picked a node that increased the buffed person's reflexes before heading over to the skill tree of Embrace The Dying Light. There was a node adding the same damage-over-time effect that many of Samantha's spells inflicted on the target. Picking that one, he also chose a node that made the damage scale with the target's Strength, as well as his own Wisdom. That'd increase its effectiveness by quite a bit. This tree, too, had the option to cast on the entire party at the same time, and he gratefully picked that node with the last point, since it would ease the level of micromanagement he needed.
Bless has a similar one, allowing him to buff everyone in an area around the target. A separate node changed the buff from adding 15 points in Strength, Agility, and Constitution to adding a percentage instead. With two points, he reached 6% stat gain, but it would top out at 9% once he gained a few more ranks in the skill. It was a toss up whether or not the skill improved right away or not, but it would be an unbeatable change in the long run.
Light's Seal and Silence had both reached rank 2, with Silence having very few nodes in its tree. Finding nothing more interesting, he picked the node that added time to the debuff, upping it to 30s.
Aura of Defense had reached rank 3, and Aura of Victory rank 2. With the auras, he could either go with a bigger radius to the effect or increase the effectiveness of the buff overall. Neither node had any numbers associated with them, so it was difficult to tell how much better they became, but any increase was a good increase.
Then it’s finally time to pick out new skills.
He'd already leveled up his Commander class, which thankfully gave him more skills to choose from. The list wasn't very long, though, but two skills stood out to Eli as useful right away:
Aura of Suppression: Aura slows enemies around the Commander.
Aura of Disruption: Aura increases cast time of spells and saps mana from hostile casters around the Commander.
It was time to move beyond simply buffing and healing, he decided. He selected the auras. They were just the thing he was looking for. He’d noticed that even while silenced, his auras had still been active, meaning they didn't count as spells.
“You’re taking too much time,” Cruella complained.
Eli waved her off. “I want to go over the list of possible available talents too."
He’d found one talent useful for auras, Aura Master, which allowed him to use two auras at the same time. Up until now, he’d run with Aura of Defense and Aura of Victory, but with his arsenal now up to four different auras, he would have to activate and deactivate auras depending on the situation. There had to be more talents related to auras. That would be the key in making him, and the party, more well-rounded.
Scanning every row in the list for any mention of auras, Eli found a few, but none that really fit his needs. Small general increases in efficiency or strength of the auras were not enough. Neither was the ability to project his aura on someone else, making them the focal point of the area of effect. That might be useful, sure, but he didn't see how that would help shore up his weaknesses.
Then he found it.
Aura Overload: Allows the wielder to trigger an active aura. Triggering an aura produces a shockwave around the wielder and greatly increases the effect of the aura for a brief moment. Afterwards, the aura is disabled for a cooldown of 2 minutes.
“Perfect,” he said, grinning as he selected the new talent.
As he toggled his new auras of Suppression and Disruption, Cruella spoke up. “What happened to the buffs?”
“I’m trying something new,” Eli replied. “Please bear with me."