Day 11 A.F.

“So, what’s the word?” Darius asked. After settling everyone down for the night, including their visitors, he’d gathered up the foremost healers in the Village. He’d collected Avery for his Life Magic, Hiroshi for his Goddess’s effect on the undead and his healing abilities. Chad was brought along for his apprentice level, Alchemy, and Father Johnson, for some extra holy healing.

“It took some tie, but we have found some interesting results,” Avery answered. “It turns out that Hiroshi has had the best luck with helping Sean. You see, the Death Essence that’s corrupting his body doesn’t behave like disease, illness, or even poison. So anything we try to combat it using the usual methods has absolutely no effect. I’ve even tried to just flood his body with life attuned Mana, but his body rejects it. He actually started losing health. I think it’s because it wasn’t specifically directed in the form of a spell, but my healing spells work on the body, not the spirit.”

“Spirit?” Darius asked.

“Yeah, I’m not sure if Spirit is the right word,” Chad interjected. “One of the things we’ve figured out is that each person, hell, even most objects, have some kind of energy matrix overlaying their body. It’s in this energy matrix that contains our Mana, Ki, etc. and it’s not exactly overlaying either. It’s kind of complicated, but it basically exists in the same space and time as our physical bodies, but something like half a step removed? Like it’s partially in some alternate dimension or something. I don’t understand the physics of it, if physics even really matter anymore in a world where magic lets you break the laws of the universe with impunity.”

“Right, so the spirit, not spirit energy thing, is where the problem is,” Darius summarized. “Is that all you’ve managed to figure out?”

“Lord Williams, if I may?” asked Hiroshi.

“Just call me Darius, please. And go ahead.”

“Hai, Darius-sama. My Lady Amaterasu has influence over the sun, light, healing and growth. The darkness of death spreading through Sean-san is anathema to her.” He then pulled out his relic necklace, the one that looked like a stylized sunburst. “Through Amaterasu’s gift to me, I was able to use a combination of the Blessing of Renewal to increase his resistance to the taint, and my Purification Aura to help drive away the darkness trying to consume his Tamashii. After applying Purification Aura every half hour for ten hours, using every Divine charge I had and could recover in that time, we have forced the taint to retreat.”

“Is he cured?” Darius asked.

“No, not yet,” Avery answered.

“I’ve been trying to create a potion using some of that ectoplasm and other ingredients to increase the resistance of his energy state,” Chad added. “I’ve had some mixed results, but haven’t yet tried to give him anything.”

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“We haven’t been able to directly help him,” Avery admitted. “But with the Death Essence weakened by the Purification Aura, and his resistances increased with the Blessing of Renewal ritual, Sean’s been able to fight back himself. He’s been steadily gaining ground all night, pushing back the infection of his spirit bit by bit. Unfortunately, after ten hours of constant work, we had to stop to let Hiroshi’s Divine charges recover. Without the Purification Aura, the ground that Sean made is being lost, albeit slower than it had been progressing.”

“Can anyone else supply their Divine charges to help?” Darius asked.

“Yes, and no. Xavier here tried to use his Divine charges to help, but apparently he isn’t compatible with the Amulet. I think the Divine charges must come from someone who follows the same deity. We thought about moving him to the greenhouse, and use the divine charges there with Akira’s permission, but we were afraid that if the Death Essence managed to escape the patient, it might taint the crops growing in there. Akira has volunteered her personal Divine charges, and has transferred them to the amulet, though she doesn’t have many to spare. We have enough to keep the ability running for another four to five hours, but then we’ll be back to sporadic usage, activating the ability again whenever a Divine charge is regenerated.”

“I remember in the last fight with the undead, that two of our Faithful used their abilities to cast a blessing on our group. Is that something you can do here?” Darius asked.

“I’ve tried,” Xavier answered. “It’s helped some, but not a lot. Unfortunately, this Death Essence isn’t inherently evil. It’s part of the Cycle of life and death. Undead are undoubtably evil, subverting the cycle, refusing to move on to their designated afterlife. So our prayers are effective against them, but they do not apply well to this situation. If it’s God’s will, he will recover. If not… not.” He finished with a shrug.

“Well, do what you can,” Darius said. “Where are the people that accompanied him last night?”

“We Gave them the same update a couple of hours ago. They said they were satisfied with the care he was receiving and that they needed to go back to Elysium to report in. They asked us to also let you know they’ll be back in contact in a couple of days for an update and to coordinate joint engagements, or something like that.”

“Thank you. Make sure you are all getting rest, too. It doesn’t seem like this will be a quick thing to cure, so don’t push yourselves too hard. By the way, I’m going to be holding a meeting at the village hall after lunch. It’s time we started recruiting people to join the Guard, and make use of our specialization. We also need to step up recruitment. We need to find other pockets of survivors and convince them to join us.”

With the sick man dealt with for the moment, Darius knew he had a few items on his agenda he needed to deal with. He pulled up his settlement interface as he walked away and looked over the blueprints he’d bought but hadn’t used yet to construct the buildings. When his eyes fell on the Medical Tent, he cursed internally. God damn it, I knew I was forgetting something. After I set the Tavern and Brewery to build, I was going to set it up after letting everyone know about the delay, but then that bitch had to start throwing shade, I got all worked up and completely forgot to get the tent built and take advantage of the damned free upgrades. Darius looked bat at the hut he’d just left. They were in there doing their best and the one thing he could have provided to help, and he’d forgotten it. Rather than beating himself up for it, he just let out a long sigh and proceeded fix his mistake. Wait, I can't just manifest every building though, can I? We need to start paying people for the work they do, and burning through our credits when there’s plenty of people able to do the work, I mean, it made sense before; we didn’t even have the building materials for anything. On that note, what does the Medical tent even require? I know we got a bunch of materials in that war chest. Darius pulled up the Blueprint and looked it over.