43.
“You alive?” A voice called out, slicing through the fog of Santi’s mind. A warm heat suffused him, wrapping him up in comforting bands. The pains he had accumulated had disappeared and there was a sense of relaxation to his body he hadn’t felt since the integration had started.
“I’m still alive,” Santi rasped, his throat parched and his tongue feeling like lead. Each word was a struggle as his mouth refused to work properly. It was like coming out of anesthesia.
“Thank god. Can you fight?” Santi was fairly certain it was Hana who had asked. Sounds were still muffled but with every breath more and more of the pleasing numbness faded leaving him in a dreary and aching world. His vision sharpened and he made out the tiles above his head and the faint smell of antiseptic that still hung in the air still.
“Give me a second.”
“We don’t have a second. Rayleigh is down, I can’t fight, and Tank is out of healing power. Chloe and Daniel are all that’s left.” A surge of adrenaline had Santi swinging his feet up and over the edge of the bed and standing. The world spun for a moment before he caught up with what was going on and looked around.
They were in a large hallway with dozens of rooms up and down the length of it. Most of the doors were open or broken, gurneys lined the walls and papers were strewn about. Multiple carts that once carried computers or other more expensive medical equipment were pushed over into a pile by the nurses station in the middle of the hall.
At the end of the hall, by the elevator bank, Chloe and Daniel were trying to keep a pileup of hags from bursting out of the landing and into the hall. Both were moving slower and Santi could see the blood stains on Chloe’s clothes. Tank was behind them, kneeling and gasping loudly as he tried to recover his breath. Santi recognized the signs of mana exhaustion.
“Weapon?” Santi croaked. His spear and daggers had been left in the hag corpses in the stairwell. Hana was limp against the wall, her arm sheathed in blood while her face had paled. She nodded to the knife that lay in a pool of her blood. Santi picked up the sticky dagger and nodded his thanks as he staggered down the hall.
The hall twisted and turned as the after effects of the healing bothered him. His balance was screwed up and he struggled with walking but he powered on. The dagger clung to his hand, the blood tacky. Four of the hags still remained and they were all in poor condition. Missing fingers on all of them, one only had an arm, and the other three were all limping.
If Chloe had been in good shape she would have been able to tackle all four of them in their wretched condition. She hardly looked any better than them though. Her clothes were stained through with her blood and every blow of her axe seemed lethargic. Daniel was leaning against a wall behind her, dagger ready to slash out if an opportunity presented itself.
Every step helped him become more grounded, the world stopped spinning and soon Santi ran down the hallway to the fight. Closing the distance he readied his newly acquired knife. Chloe staggered back as a hag slashed at her. Her leg crumpled and she fell to the ground completely vulnerable.
The hag perched over her, claws over its head, ready to decapitate Chloe. Santi skipped once and threw the dagger. The sticky blood screwed up his throw, the blade slashing the hag’s neck and not sinking into its chest. It staggered back and screeched in rage and pain. Daniel grabbed under Chloe’s arms and dragged her back.
Santi passed them, snagging Chloe’s axe with one hand. He fell to his knees and slid across the tile. The axe scythed out, taking the leg of the nearest and hag. Santi rose to his feet, his body responding eagerly as all the exhaustion had left him.
Santi slammed the axe into the closest one’s chest and then triggered Gust, blowing back the encroaching two hags back a few feet. The spell wasn’t enough to throw them off their feet but gave him the split second he needed to rip the axe free and take the dying hag’s head.
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The hag he cut with his throwing knife swayed back and forth as the blood loss was overcoming its natural resilience. Santi lunged at it, intent on finishing it off while they were off balance.
He lopped off its hand at the wrist, ducked under an incoming blow from the remaining hag, spun around the hip of the dying hag and buried the axe into its shoulder blade. With Air Current running in its current manipulated form, the slow plodding wounded hags were no match for him.
Standing toe to toe with the last healthy-ish hag, it took only a moment for him to reduce it to three parts. Right arm on the ground, then the head. Santi stalked over to the one he had made an amputee and ended its misery.
Congratulations, you are now Mage lvl. 16
Santi dismissed the message as he looked over the team. They were all in bad shape. Daniel seemed to be in the best shape and even he was limping. Tank wasn’t wounded but had deep rings under his bloodshot eyes as he struggled to get to his feet. Santi walked past them to his abandoned pack.
He pulled a blue mana potion out of the bag and shoved it toward Tank. They needed the man's skills to stay alive for the next few minutes. Everyone was too hurt to survive their wounds with normal medicine. Without a surgery suite at least. Tank drank quickly, not questioning him.
Santi watched as the veins in the man's face grew lax and his shoulders straightened.
“Mana potion, you should be good to go on healing everyone.” Santi didn’t know what skills he had taken at level ten and fifteen, but he was hoping it was enough to keep everyone alive. Hana looked to be perched on death’s door, face pale and body limp. Rayleigh was lying limp on the ground, face coated in blood and her chest rising slowly.
“What skills do you have now?” Santi asked as he tore through his own pack to try to find the basic first aid kit. He could at least slow down the bleeding and hopefully keep people from dying until Tank could get to them.
“ First-Aid, Diagnose, Replenish Blood, Seal Wound. What happened to me a minute ago?”
“Skills require mana, you used all of yours.” It was nice that the geas didn’t stop him from sharing that. It was some common sense that the mana stat would affect skills. He did feel it tighten on him when he went to explain how mana worked and how the regeneration worked. It took a lot of time and experimentation to find out how long it took to regenerate and how much each skill or spell took.
Tank went to each injured individual to touch them briefly using his Diagnose skill. He left Daniel almost immediately and Chloe took a second longer before leaving her too. While both of them were injured, neither were ready to cross over to the next life.
He spent longer with Hana, her bleeding slowing down and some color returning to her cheeks. As he perched over Rayleigh his face became concerned as a white glow came over his hands. Santi had never seen an aura develop over Tank yet and wasn’t surprised. Tank was rapidly growing in strength and was using all of his skills to keep Rayleigh alive.
Santi went over to Chloe and bandaged the worst of her wounds. Thick white bandages were wrapped around her leg and arms. Her forearms were shredded from taking claws, the defensive wounds a terrible sight to behold. Her dark eyes were slightly glazed over and each breath came shallowly.
“How the hell aren’t you screaming in pain? I’d be crying for mercy by now,” Santi was trying his best to smile reassuringly at her. Seeing as he was drenched in a mix of monster blood and human blood, he doubted it was reassuring at all.
“Skill. Numb. It helps keep me going when I take pain. The more pain I take, the deeper the numb goes.” Her voice rasped, thin and reedy. Her skill was likely running out even if it was a low mana required passive.
“Don’t worry, Tank will be by here in a bit. Just taking care of Rayleigh right now. She’s a badass, you know. That charge skill she has it absolutely brutal. Can’t wait to see what it will be like when she gets some more levels under her belt.”
“Are you trying to distract me?”
“Yeah. Is it working?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not a doctor.”
“Fucking obviously.”
“I can go help Daniel, would that make you feel better?”
“Finish me up. Then go help him.”
“Sure. Let’s make sure you don’t bleed out first.”