CHAPTER 28 ENGAGEMENT PART 2

I quickly made off as fast as I could. I really hoped I was right about this. I planned on going to help heal higher leveled fighters to get them back on the field, from everything the party had said about my healing abilities they were busted for my level.

Granted they ate a ton of mana to use but it seemed well worth the cost. But the main reason I was coming out here was that I hoped the guard commander was back here being healed. I hoped to get him back in the fight to help the guildmaster take down the big guy tearing us a collective new asshole.

I kept up the pace quickly breaking through the edge of the trees, the sounds of combat fading to a slightly more distant din of noise rather than the grating cacophony that it had been. Sure enough I found a makeshift camp, about a dozen people were running around frantically trying to take care of about one hundred injured. Definitely an overworked crew.

The air was filled with the agonized moans of the grievously injured, they were not sounds that I enjoyed hearing. Occasionally the air flashed brightly with brief bits of magic.

It looked like out of the dozen people running around only a few were actual healer classes, the rest just seemed to be something more akin to nurses doing first aid work, changing out bandages, checking on patients, and administering potions.

For a few moments I searched and scanned trying to see if I could find the commander. When I couldn’t immediately pick him out of the crowd I walked up to the nearest medical worker that I saw.

“Has the commander been brought back here?”

“The commander? No.” He replied with a curt voice, very clearly focused on the task in front of him.

I nodded slowly, more for myself than him.

“I see. I’m a healer, where can I help?” This seemed to get more of his attention.

He turned and looked at me, his eyes flicking to my ears and then my arm.

“A healer huh? If that’s the case how did you lose your arm?” There was something slightly mocking about the way he said that.

“I lost it fighting a demon in the third tier who turned it to ash before I could even have a chance to reattach it. What’s your excuse for being useless?” I retorted, my voice was laced with as much venom as I could muster before I turned and walked into the center of the camp.

I knelt down to touch the floor whispering lightly

[Healing Blossom]

Immediately my mana started plummeting. But the results were immediate, people with minor wounds were instantaneously healed, while people with larger wounds started closing up. Albeit a lot more slowly than I was used to with this skill. Something to investigate later, the skill said it healed a percentage of hp, so ideally they should’ve been healed up in three seconds. No matter the case it was doing what it needed to, but I was going to more quickly run out of mana before fully healing the entire group.

People started whispering in shock and awe as someone whose arm was only attached by a few strands completely healed. I had to say I was just as impressed, I wasn’t able to fully test the limits of the healing abilities I had until now, but I was getting a fairly good idea.

I checked my mana, I had just passed the halfway point, as it stood I wasn’t even going to heal a full quarter of the injuries in the room, or rather I was going to make them less severe but it wouldn’t address the overall problem of needing to get people back into the fight.

I turned and looked at the nearest person that wasn’t the snob I had been talking to earlier.

“You, do you have any mana potions?” I spoke with as much authority as I could, but my body was getting exhausted as I drained of mana so I didn’t come across as well as I would’ve liked it too.

“Umm, uhh ye-yeah I think we have a few.” She just continued to stand there dumb-founded for a moment.

“Well? Are you going to get me one? As it stands I’m on thirty-three percent of my mana, if I get enough mana I can heal this entire group.” I said slightly exasperated. Some people’s brains really did just function on power saving mode permanently didn’t they.

“Oh, right.” she dashed off, stopping at one of the actual healers of the group and quickly talked to them hopping from one foot to the other before pointing back at me. A quick discussion took place before the healer nodded and she dashed off again, presumably to get the potion like I’d asked.

I hadn’t really had a chance to notice before as I’d never really dropped below fifty percent of my mana. But there seemed to be a correlation between mental exhaustion and the amount of mana you had left.

…

Maybe that wasn’t quite the best way to describe it, but it was the only way that could make sense. I was breathing more heavily, a migraine was slowly developing, and my mind felt like I had just gone through a litany of standardized testing.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I was on ten percent when the girl I had sent off returned carrying several bottles of a deep emerald green liquid. It had a sort of radioactive glow to it that was slightly mesmerizing. Now that the bottle was closer I could see small particles within the liquid itself, gently flowing and swirling around as-

“Sir?”

I was jarred out of my thought process and I looked up a little higher, the nurse was holding the bottle out to me with a concerned look on her face. I realized now that she had probably been there for a while and had been waiting for me to take the bottle.

I frowned slightly, “Sorry, I got lost in thought. It’s kind of hard to think right now.”

She nodded knowingly. “It’s fine I see it happen with the other healers a lot too, as they get lower on mana it seems to addle their thought processes. Always kind of strange I thought since you don’t see the same thing happen to mages or the like, maybe they just don’t get as low though.”

I took the proffered bottle, although it was more a vial, and quickly drank trying my best not to taste it. Everything I knew said that it was going to taste awful, so I decided to just get it over with as quickly as possible.

I was absolutely right as well. It was acidic and tasted like vomit, it was nearly enough for me to regurgitate everything I had eaten recently. I barely managed to keep it down, the last thing I needed was to waste the potion by barfing it up.

I stopped healing for a moment and watched as my mana steadily ticked back up. It would take another minute to reach back to full again.

“You said this doesn’t quite happen with mages?” My brain finally caught up to the oddity of what she had said. How would healing be any different than burning your mana through attack spells or the like.

She nodded, “As far as I’m aware, although I’ll say that I’m not exactly an expert on the topic, but I haven’t heard any mages complaining about the headaches they get from casting a bunch of spells.”

I lowered my head thoughtfully checking back on my mana, it was roughly seventy percent. And my head wasn’t feeling any better either, this seemed odd. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Would my head continually accrue stress over time limiting how much I could heal, or would it stay as it is now and just be a dull ache the entire time I was healing. A nuisance but a tolerable one.

My mana hit ninety-five percent and I started healing again, channeling mana through my healing bloom to hit as many people as possible. I was healing roughly sixty percent of the entire area. As I churned as much mana through the spell as I could, it slowly started draining. It looked like the potion was still actively recovering my mana, the potion apparently recovered more mana than I had available, I’d want to keep that in mind and not actively waste the amounts it could restore.

Resource management has always been one of my strong points.

After a few more moments the potion finally wore off and my mana started being expended a little more quickly. At the same time however I noticed several of the patients standing up checking themselves once over before glancing my way. I didn’t pay attention to them for long however and focused back on what I was doing.

The pounding in my head only increased as I healed more, but as I healed more there were fewer overall to heal. I was definitely making a noticeable dent in the amount of injured people actually present.

I only vaguely noticed the numbers in front of my face dwindling, I still had two more potions that the nurse had brought me. I thought I also might’ve heard her talking but it was hard to tell. Everything was just so loud and quiet at the same time.

I lost track of how long I had been kneeling there hand to the ground pouring out all my mana into this little glowing flower sticking out of the ground. I barely remember fumbling for the second mana potion and downing it just like that last.

I didn’t even taste it this time.

I knew something was wrong. I knew, I knew, I knew… But what was actually wrong? Something didn’t feel right? I didn’t feel right. Yeah, I think that’s it.

I couldn’t hear anything besides the blood rushing through my ears, it was a thunderous cacophonous noise that drowned out everything around me. My vision faded in and out and I could barely make sense of what was left, right, up, or down anymore.

I felt a hand come to rest on my shoulder and I looked up but I couldn’t tell who it was. I just ignored them and focused back down.

Why was I down here again? A flower? Strange… It was very pretty though. Maybe I could pick it? No, for some reason my body felt that was a bad idea. I’ll just leave it there. I saw a blue bar in front of my vision that wasn’t as blurry as everything else. In fact, it was frighteningly clear in my vision despite everything else being indecipherable to my eyes.

I watched the bar slowly drain down. Oh so slowly, all the while bells softly tolled in my ears. It was comforting, in a way. The sound was pleasant to my ears.

The bar was two-thirds of the way empty. I felt like I should prevent it from going all the way down, but I didn’t quite understand why it was draining in the first place.

Drip

Drip

Drip

…

What?

In a surge lights and sounds flashed through my mind as my brain finally caught up with what was happening around me. Someone was shaking me, yelling in my ear but the words held no meaning to me.

I balanced myself on my knees and raised my hand to my face feeling warmth flooding down it with the subtle scent and taste of copper.

Blood.

The person shaking me grabbed my head and forced me to face them. I realized there were quite a lot of people surrounding me. All of them looking at me with concern.

My head was pounding with the mother of all headaches as I looked back down at my blossom that was healing everyone, I looked around and in that moment realized that the camp was practically empty of injured people. Leaving only the people staffing the medical area.

What happened, why did my senses cut out like that? I looked up at the girl and felt like I should recognize her, but I couldn’t. And it was really frustrating that I knew something was wrong but couldn’t force myself to remember why.

I looked back down at the bar just in time for it to empty completely and my vision to go black.

‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill