I looked at Anise, Felix, and Anise’s parents, all of whom were semi-conscious and in no condition to move. I frowned.

To be honest, I had nearly forgotten that diseases existed. My runes enhanced my Fortitude to the point where I would basically never get sick from regular diseases, and in our previous world, Sallia and Felix had been in the same situation. In this world, Sallia and I were still effectively immune to disease, and Felix and Anise had dodged anything worse than a cold in years. Seeing people I cared about semi-comatose from illness caught me completely off guard.

The fact that their skin was turning a bit dark was probably a sign that the black sun was adversely affecting them, but the illness of the black sun didn’t cause coughing and sweating.

My best guess was that exposure to the black sun weakened people’s immune system, in addition to whatever other damage long-term exposure to the black sun caused to the body. We had done our best to take precautions against the black sun, covering up our bodies as we moved from one place to the next and spending some time out of the sun each day. However, almost everything on the surface was tainted by the black sun: the soil, the air, the scraggly patches of grass that sometimes decorated the wastes, and everything else we interacted with on a daily basis. It was basically impossible to avoid exposure to the black sun.

And since everyone’s immune system was compromised by the black sun, it probably made it easier for normal diseases to slip in and start causing damage.

I frowned, feeling a little nervous.

“Ella? What do we do?” I asked, eyeing the patients. At the same time, I tried tossing a bit of healing absorption essence at Anise, since she looked the sickest.

It did seem to help a little bit. Some of the black tint in Anise’s skin disappeared, and I was pretty sure her coughing got a bit less violent. However, whatever the black sun had done to Anise’s body also made it harder to put it back together correctly. It felt like my healing ability was trying to push through gel as it worked to fix Anise’s body: it wasn’t enough to stop it from working, but enough to slow it down and weaken it.

If I spent all of my alteration essence for the day, I could probably make Anise somewhat healthy again. However, then I would be missing my strongest combat ability. And most importantly, we still wouldn’t be mobile, since we would still have four patients afterward.

I felt a gnawing frustration grow in my heart. My healing ability that I had derived from my attunement just never seemed good enough. Extinguish had come into its own as an incredible combat ability, even though it was a little expensive, and could kill or seriously weaken most enemies we could plausibly fight. However, the healing side of my attunement was greatly lacking in comparison. It hadn’t been able to treat Jonathan’s shattered arm, and now it couldn’t treat Anise, Felix, and the parents either.

Once we reached Silver City, I felt that I needed to redesign the healing aspect of my attunement. My current healing ability was okay, but I needed something to match how useful Extinguish was. But we needed to reach Silver City first.

Ella dragged my attention away from my lackluster healing abilities when she sighed.

“Fuck. I didn’t think we’d been exposed to enough of the black sun yet to have any real problems. Usually takes at least a week or two for people to start getting sick.” Ella sighed. “All we can do is shack up and wait a bit. I was hoping to be in Silver City before anything happened, but if we wait for a few days, they should get better. Most creatures that roam the wastes don’t bother checking small caves like this one, so it’s pretty normal for adventuring groups to spend time in hidey holes like this while looking for old mage towers and labs. The problem is mostly supplies.”

I nodded, and checked my backpack. “Sallia and I have stronger bodies, so it’s harder for us to get sick, and we can look for a few supplies.”

Ella frowned, looking closely at the two of us, and seemed to think about it. I decided to push her a bit.

“How are our supplies looking overall?”

“We still have about seven days of food and water,” said Ella, who was thoughtfully looking at us. At my question, she also quickly started sorting through our food and water. “We’ve restocked a bit as we moved, but we’ve mostly spent our time traveling. If they recover in three days, we should still be fine. Based on my map, we should be around four days away from Silver City. But that’s only if nothing else goes wrong. I was really hoping we would have a little more leeway, since that would give us time to hide for a day or two if we ran into something like the devourer we saw yesterday. We still have enough supplies to wait three days and still make it, but…”

I nodded. “We need a bit more in case of emergencies?” I could understand that. There was no guarantee that we wouldn’t run into other problems before reaching Silver City, and having some reserve supplies would make things less dangerous for us.

Ella sighed, and nodded. “We passed a stream about half a day back the way we came from, but that’s too far away to scavenge safely. And I’m not sure if there are any other big water sources nearby.”

I paused, thinking about my abilities, and frowned. “I’ve learned to create a steam ball or a small ice dart using magic so far. I can probably modify ice dart enough to avoid shooting it after creating it, so we just need a way to collect it and melt it a bit. Would that work for water?”

Ella paused, and then looked thoughtful. After a few moments of thinking, she nodded. “That would work. We wouldn’t even need to purify it. No taint from the black sun at all. Bit of a waste of spellcasting essence, but since you don’t know any of the more specific spells for gathering water from the air and condensing it, it’ll do in a pinch. How much water can you get per spell?”

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I shrugged. “Let me try modifying the spell a bit,” I said, and got to work. I mentally pictured the five magic symbols that comprised an ice dart spell. The center of the spell was filled with one magic symbol, and the second circle of the spell was filled with four magic symbols. Each magic symbol was further modified by several sub-symbols, each of which looked tiny in comparison to the five major magic symbols. I started using my mind to look over the sub-symbols, which told the spell what to do with each magic symbol. I quickly started removing anything that told the spell to move in any direction, and after a minute of concentrating, I grinned. “I think I have something that could work,” I said.

“Will the spell be safe?” asked Ella. “I know that spellcasters can accidentally blow off their limbs or turn themselves into charcoal with a badly made spell. I don’t want you to hurt yourself just to give us a little extra safety margin. Food and water would be nice, but it’s definitely not that urgent.”

“I doubt it’ll be as dangerous for Sallia and I to experiment,” I said. This was something I had been thinking about even before we fled the city. “You know how sturdy Sallia and I are. Even if I mess up, I doubt the spell will do much more than bruise a bit if I get it wrong,” I said. “There’s a reason Orukthyri still manage to learn spellcasting, and it isn’t because they’re particularly intelligent. They just don’t face much of a consequence for messing up, so as long as they luck into learning a magic symbol or two, they can mash their magic symbols together until something works. Constructing a magic circle is pretty fast and easy, so it’s not that hard to imagine them figuring it out via trial and error.” I paused. “At least, that’s my guess for how Orukthyri learn spells. I could be wrong, but it’s what makes sense to me.”

Ella paused, and then nodded. “I hadn’t thought about that before, but you’re right. I had never wondered why the Orukthyri could cast spells before today, even though they aren’t too bright. Even if the older Orukthyri help the younger Orukthyri learn, they should still mess up a bit. The Orukthyri lost a lot of their intelligence after whatever the Ortha did to them.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway. Here,” she said, rifling through her bag for a moment before she found one of the metal canteens we used to store water. “Try… actually, point your palm at the cave wall first. Let’s see if you can cast the spell without harming our surroundings, and then if the spell works, toss some icicles in. We can let them melt for a bit and replenish a bit of water that way.”

I tried out my modified spell, and was pleased to see that nothing went out of control or exploded. An icicle about a quarter of the size of my arm formed in the middle of my palm, before it simply sat there, doing nothing.

Ella grinned. “Good job, kid. Five magic symbols for that, right? Second circle?”

“Yeah, second circle.”

“All right. Make around twenty. That’ll definitely help stretch our supplies a bit, and still leave you with your shaping essence and a little fallback spellcasting essence if a fight breaks out.” I quickly obliged, forming nineteen more icicles and tossing them into a few water containers. It would take a while for them to melt, but clean water wouldn’t hurt to have.

“Now, about food…” said Ella, thoughtfully.

Then, she sighed.

“I hate to say it, but if Felix, Anise, and her parents are sick this quickly, maybe this area is particularly influenced by the black sun. Maybe it was just extra sunny for the past few days, or the black sun is corroding our world and thus its effects are getting stronger over time. I have no idea. I’m a fighter, not a researcher. Either way, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me and Felix’s parents to go out, because our bodies aren’t as strong. I don’t like the idea of you two going out alone, but you made a good point earlier. You’re both very physically strong, and you’re much less susceptible to the black sun. Especially if Sallia uses her spells to boost your strength…” Ella paused, frowning. “You can explore a bit and look for food. But don’t stray too far from our cave. Stay nearby, so that if you yell, I can run out and help you. And don’t stay out for more than a few hours. Having a strong body reduces the influence of the black sun, but it’s still not a good idea to expose yourself to it for long periods of time, especially if four of us already got sick. Prioritize your safety over getting food. Do I make myself clear?”

I looked at Sallia, and she actually started grinning. I nodded. “Sounds good.”

Ella looked a little worried, but she sighed. “Remember. Take care of yourselves first. We still theoretically have enough food and water to make it to Silver City, since most cases of black sun poisoning only last 2-3 days. What I’m asking you to do is get enough supplies to give us some more leeway if you can do so safely. But be safe. Okay?”

Sallia and I nodded. “We’ll stay within a few hours. We’ll look for any animals to hunt that are edible. Any advice on what we can eat that won’t make us sick?”

“For monsters, most aren’t edible, since they’ve suffered from too much exposure to the black sun. Don’t bother trying to eat them. It’s best to stick to plants that dig deep into the ground, honestly. Stay away from mushrooms: I know you’re used to them, but on the surface, some of them are poisonous. Look for hungry roots, groundnuts, and cave berries. You can identify cave berries since they have a somewhat bright color, and tend to stick in cracks where they can hide from the black sun. Hungry Roots have little tufts of orange leaves that stick out above ground, and tend to be in areas that smell more like charcoal. Groundnuts very rarely grow in patches of pink grass.” Ella started describing the plants she wanted us to keep an eye out for, as well as where they might grow and what to watch out for while scavenging. “And remember, don’t eat anything until I look it over. I don’t want you poisoning yourself. Okay?”

I nodded.

Ella hesitated a gain, before she sighed and nodded. “All right, go ahead. Stay safe, and run back if you run into a creature you can’t handle. Scream if you’re in an emergency, and don’t move very far away.”

With that, Sallia and I left Ella and Felix’s parents to care for the four sick people, and we scampered off to search for food and (possibly) water.

We spent a few hours trawling through the area, keeping our noses to the ground as we checked every nook and cranny for the vegetables and water Ella mentioned. We moved slowly, for fear of getting ambushed by a dangerous enemy and dying. We found a few groundnuts and hungry roots, although we didn’t find any cave berries.

We also ran into a couple sleeplurks and quickly dispatched them, earning me my first assist, and 2 Achievement.

After about three hours of searching, we found something else of interest.

Sallia was the first one to pick something up.

“I hear something,” she said, pausing.

I immediately froze and listened, straining my terrible hearing to figure out what Sallia was picking up. It took almost another minute, but eventually, I noticed some interesting souls nearby.

Much like Orthanoid souls, they were silver-colored, and were moving somewhat near us. I pointed out the direction for Sallia, and she used her stealth rune ability to disappear.

A few minutes later, she reappeared.

“People,” she said. “It’s another group of people.”