Symon had been victorious over his foe, but at great and terrible cost. Not to his body, no, for that was already healed. Nor was it his vitality reserves — in fact, there had been so much that he still had a full vessel even after healing both himself and the slightly wounded Aslan.
The true cost of the battle was to his clothes. His replacement white robe was once again dyed red with his own blood, although by now it was more accurately described as strips of cloth hanging off his body instead of a functional piece of clothing. Apparently, it wasn't common for adventurers to bleed out half their total volume of blood in every fight, but Symon's mother had always said he was special. While Aslan poked around in the creature's nest, Symon wandered off a few steps to open his Ledger in peace. Seeing himself improve always made him feel better.
[ Status:
Name: Symon
Class: Cursed Healer
Strength: 0.82 {+0.01}
Constitution: 1.11 {+0.03}
Acuity: 0.87 {+0.02}
Intelligence: 0.83 {+0.01}
Will: 1.13 {+0.05}
Vessel (Vitality): 18/16 {+3}
[ Abilities:
Idealise (8) {+1}: Consumes Vitality to return a living target to its peak state. This ability automatically applies to the wielder and cannot be disabled.
Seize (9) {+1}: Absorbs Vitality from a target and stores it in the wielder's Vessel. This ability automatically applies to valid targets and cannot be disabled.
Essence Bond (6) {+1}: Permanently bind your essence to that of a spirit's.
Passives:
Pain Resistance (5) {+1}
Poison Resistance (0)
Running (5)]
Not bad for only an hour's work, he thought. The battle itself had only been a few minutes, but tracking down the monsters in the first place took some time. That increase in his pain resistance was appreciated but unexpected — his injuries had hurt, but it hadn't felt too bad.
Furrowing his brows, he stared at a specific line. His vessel size had grown again, but the amount in it had somehow surpassed even this new maximum. He didn't even realise that was possible. What was the point of having an upper limit if you could go past it? This question and more flittered through his mind until, suddenly, the eighteen dropped down to a seventeen. Now he wanted to know where this excess vitality had gone. His awareness of his vessel felt a little more solid, but he wasn't sure exactly what was causing this. Although, this gave him an idea he needed to test.
A few of the smaller monsters that had been knocked out by Symon's club — he'd already picked his trusty weapon back up after he'd thrown it — so he quickly approached one and knelt beside it, the familiar grey threads snapping out automatically once he moved close enough. He felt like the threads were slower than they usually were when it was operating automatically — it still worked, although it felt different. While normally his magic brought to mind the image of a starving beast leaping on its prey and ripping out chunks, currently it felt more like someone had stuffed themselves at a buffet and was slowly trying to cram in another bite of food. Did it work slower when his vessel was full?
As long as he concentrated on the magic and encouraged the draining, it continued at the speed he'd expected. But when he allowed it to automatically do its own thing, it slowed down noticeably — to a little less than half the normal speed.
They'd been planning to just let these unconscious ones go free, considering his vessel was already overfull and they didn't need to hunt them for their meat or anything else, but he needed to test a theory.
He concentrated on the feeling of the vitality entering his body, following along the path of his ability as it worked its way towards his vessel. Only, instead of being absorbed into the storage as it usually did, it bumped off the outside walls of it. Looking closer, he barely noticed a tiny, diffuse cloud of vitality was already surrounding his vessel, this freshly arriving vitality now joining it. The interior vitality was constantly swirling around like water down a drain, but the vitality stuck outside was barely moving, as if it was glued to the outside of his vessel. He quickly stole the last of the creature's vitality as well as that of the final unconscious monster.
Once he was finished, he took stock of what he'd seen his internal energy do. It seemed almost as if it had vanished — neither entering his vessel nor leaving his body. He hadn't even noticed that the amount of free-floating vitality was shrinking until it was almost all gone. But if it hadn't entered the storage, and it hadn't left his body, where did it go? Once more, he opened his Ledger. Only one thing had changed.
Vessel (Vitality): 17/17 {+1}
"Yes!" he said aloud in his excitement, quickly returning to simply thinking his words at Keelgrave. He didn't want Aslan to think he was crazy. "I always wondered what exactly made my vessel grow, and I think I figured it out! Well, partially at least. I just have to try and fill it up with more than it can take, and the excess gets used to increase the maximum. Somehow."
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"Oh? How does that work?" he asked. He knew little about mana, considering he wasn't able to use it.
"Neat. Wait, did you say people? Like, they rip the core out of people's chest?"
"Yeah, I can imagine," Symon said, images of medieval organ harvesting flashing through his mind. Hopefully they wouldn't be interested in his vessel.
Symon barely even had to try and remember, the value quickly flashing into his mind. A sign his improved Intelligence was doing something, he thought. "It had a maximum of seven, the first time I checked." That had only been a few days ago, so it was hardly impressive that he remembered it. Still, it wasn't something he'd consciously memorised, and he'd never had a great memory in the first place.
"Well now that I know how to grow it, I'm going to pack on as much as I can. Being able to store more vitality would be amazing for so many situations. Well, not that we have tonnes of spare vitality to use just laying around, but it's something to keep in mind."
Symon initially felt that Keelgrave was just being paranoid, but the more he considered it the more the grumpy old spirit had a point. If he was alone against the razor stalker, he would have died in a flash. If the Dumosan adventurers had decided they wanted to kill Symon, they could have done so easily. His healing wouldn't have mattered when they were strong enough to cut his head off with a single swipe.
This world seemed much more dangerous than Earth. If you lived outside of the cities, you had to always be worried about monster attacks. If you lived in the cities, you had to be cautious of what were essentially criminals with superpowers. And probably also monsters there was well, if they were as sneaky as the razor stalker had been.
The point was that even if someone wasn't a soldier, monster hunter, or something equally violent, death and danger often still found you. And considering Symon had spent most of his life without the benefits of the Ledger, he was essentially starting from scratch. It was like everyone had a loaded gun pointed at him, and the only reason he was still alive was because no one had fired it. He knew that not everyone would be as nice as the Dumosans, and not every monster as easy to beat as the centipedes and bush ostriches. He needed to use the unique advantage his healing gave him to maximum effect to secure his long-term survival.
"Friend Symon, are you ready to return to camp?" Aslan's voice asked from behind him, causing him to jump. He hadn't heard the man's footsteps approaching.
"Uh, yeah, I'm ready," he said, forcing a smile. Dammit, why had Keelgrave's words gotten to him like this? The adventurers had proven themselves to be good natured people already, and he should have been more than used to ignoring the spirit by now. Plus, if they'd wanted him dead, they'd had plenty of chances to do it earlier. They wouldn't have offered him food, water, clothing, and the weapon of their dead friend if they weren't good people.
He thought he knew why he was feeling like this. It was the helplessness, back to haunt him. In his past life, he hadn't had miraculous healing magic. Instead, he'd been completely at the mercy of fate.
And now that he'd been given a new lease on life, it could all be taken away from him in a heartbeat. Sure, objectively there were some major negatives to this new world, namely all the violence and death, but it was death he was facing on his own feet. A death he had agency over, something he could meaningfully struggle and fight against. Or at least, it would be if he was stronger. The growth he'd managed in three days had been very noticeable, perhaps it could even be called impressive given how little resources he'd been operating with, but he needed more.
If healing as powerful as his was as rare as Keelgrave had implied it was, then he'd be in high demand. Or rather, his abilities would be, and Keelgrave had already shown that not every person this planet was averse to simply taking what they wanted, damn how it affected others. He needed to be able to look out for himself.
"When we get back, how about you teach me how to properly use this sword? I feel like I'm dishonouring Serik by slapping his weapon around like this."
The adventurer awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "It is an... interesting style, friend Symon. I would be happy to give you some pointers.
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Back at their temporary camp, Symon gave Atabek some additional vitality. Five units, to be precise, leaving him with twelve to spare in his freshly expanded vessel. It wasn't even noon yet, so part of Symon wanted to use up all his vitality and start their journey back to the nearby — if you considered a little less than a week's worth of travel as 'nearby' — town, but another part of him felt like he should take his time.
There was no reason to rush, now that he was able to share in the food and water from the adventurers. He had a full belly, a mostly full vessel, and good company. There were dangers out here in the desert and the grass fields, but from how Aslan had described it, the village wasn't much better. His Ledger had progressed well in just a few days, and that was when he was dying of thirst while half starved — both of food and vitality.
He'd already proven to himself how useful his healing could be for training new things, both in a mundane sense and in a way recognised by the Ledger. His Running was a prime example of this, his healing allowing him to push his body beyond its limits over and over again.
With a bit of time, a lot of vitality, and an inhuman amount of effort... just how much could he grow?