CHAPTER 31 REUNION
I woke with a start.
Instantly I gripped my head overcome with the be all and end all of headaches. It felt like I’d been wrapped in a burlap sack and had my head beaten on with a golf club for the past six hours.
I heard a soothing voice and a pair of hands grab me and gently lay me back down from sitting up. I felt a font of magic flow through me and the headache I had slowly started dimming, I allowed myself to relax. My head hurt way too much to go back to sleep, so I just sat there awake trying to focus on the magic slowly filtering through me and just letting it deal with the pain.
This carried on for several hours before my head felt well enough that I could open my eyes without feeling like I was going to puke. My vision was slightly blurry, but I could tell that I wasn’t out in the forest still where I had last been. I looked over to my side and got a vague view of who was next to me.
I wasn’t sure if it was just my vision not being at its’ best right now or if I genuinely didn’t recognize the person sitting next to me. Well I’d probably figure it out eventually.
I tried to open my mouth to speak but the person gently put a hand against my chest and said something softly. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying but I got the general idea.
‘Don’t speak, just rest’
At least that’s what I was pulling away from that. I didn’t argue. I just… I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling I recognized them, it was that frustrating sense of déjà vu you get.
I closed my eyes again and just luxuriated in the magic flowing through me until I fell back asleep.
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When next I woke my head hurt immensely less than it had last time. I was able to open my eyes and not feel like nails were being driven through my eye. My vision was a lot more clear than it had previously been as well and I was able to take stock of my surroundings.
I was in what essentially seemed to be a room in an inn, except it seemed nicer than pretty much all the ones I had been in previously. If I had to hazard a guess it was probably this world's equivalent of a hospital.
I looked off to my side, there was a pair of white linen drapes that softly fluttered in the open window. It was currently night time, I was close enough to the window to get a good look at the view out of it. It looked like I was roughly three stories up so I was able to get a good look of the city that I now recognized as Vinwood.
I hadn’t ever really taken the time to look before but… The cityscape was breathtakingly beautiful. It genuinely evoked that medieval fantasy feel, even at night there were parts of the city that were vibrant and full of life. My vision, being enhanced by my newfound biology, allowed me to see just as well at night as during the day and so the full color spectrum was still in full bloom to my eyes.
I could see flickers of lights from torches held by guards patrolling through the winding streets of the city. It must’ve still been relatively early in the night as I could see civilians wandering around together, laughing and just enjoying life.
Everywhere I looked in the city it seemed so peaceful and prosperous, there were hardly any beggars on the street or people just living in poverty in general. My vision carried much further than I was used to and I hadn’t taken much note of it before. I had noticed that it was better, but I didn’t really give it as much credit as it deserved. I could see practically clear across the city, picking out details from distances I shouldn’t have been able too.
Looking up I took in the night sky and my breath hitched as, for the first time since arriving in this world, I just stopped and looked around.
The sky was… Fantastical was really the only word I could use, but it felt like such an understatement.
People talked all the time about light pollution in cities, even suburbs and rural areas had it. But you never realized just how bad it was until you went climbing a mountain or something and could see the sky without the effects.
Those same people also talked about how wonderful the sky looked without the light pollution and everyone had seen pictures of what the sky looked like without it. And you know, normally you just kinda nod your head and agree ‘yeah it looks awesome’, but beyond that you never really think about it.
In those pictures it was like you could see the whole galaxy, but to some degree in the back of my mind I always felt like those pictures were doctored up to look better than it really was. There was no real reasoning for that thought, but I had believed it to a degree that was probably a little unreasonable.
This sky that I was looking at now? Put even those pictures to shame. Even if they were photo-shopped, they didn’t come close to what I was looking at right now. The stars that were twinkling in the sky, the moon glowing a perfect shade of purple, the sheer amount of depth in the deep and rich blue that was borderline black that made up the canvas of the sky.
Swirls of white, and a pale red interconnected and overlapped in a cosmic dance of beauty. This sight was a Naturists dream. Never before had I seen something in nature that had evoked such an emotional response from me.
Despite how I lived in the more recent years of my life, sitting in my room hardly wanting to leave, I had still been remarkably well traveled. I had lived next to the ocean, I had climbed mountains, trekked through forests, gone through a safari, witnessed the migration of herds of animals in a savanna, and so much more.
And yet not one bit of it somehow compared to the pure electric and magical nature of what was in front of me right now. My senses and skills were running overtime as my emotions heightened, bringing in to view so much more than words could possibly explain.
“I thought I had recognized the person sitting next to me earlier.” I said suddenly, not turning to look behind me. “It didn’t make sense to me that not one person would’ve survived back then no matter how strong they might possibly be. I definitely couldn’t see someone like you not making it out at least if you tried.”
After a few more moments of looking out the window I turned back slowly and looked to the doorway on the opposite end of the room as it now stood open revealing the familiar elf standing in the doorway.
She chuckled softly, “You’ve definitely gotten a bit stronger since I last saw you a few weeks ago. You burned yourself out pretty hard didn’t you? Despite looking like one of us, you still have the same recklessness as every other human out there.”
Illesea stepped into the room proper and walked over to the chair next to me and sat down. She took stock of me as I sat there and waited patiently for her to speak again.
“So,” Illesea started, “How did you lose that arm?”
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She listened to me patiently, never interrupting, her face exactly as I remembered it. Perfectly implacable and unreactive to anything happening around her, but never unkind to the person she was engaged with. Never disrespectful or dismissive.
Despite never getting a reaction from her, even as I described the moment where I lost my arm she didn’t wince or show any signs of sympathy. Yet I also knew that she was giving me her full attention as I regaled her with the tale of my adventures over the past week and a half.
When I finally reached the end of my story Illesea sat quietly. Her legs crossed and hands resting in her lap giving her a regal appearance.
[Level 7617]
A quick check of her level revealed that she had leveled a bit since last time if I was remembering correctly. I winced slightly as a stroke of pain lanced through my head.
“What happened?” I asked quietly, more to myself than to Illesea.
“You passed out.” She said matter of factly.
“Well… Yeah I get that.” I scoffed lightly, “What I mean is why? I was healing a large group of people and drinking a potion and the next thing I know is that all my senses are broken. Makes zero sense to me, why would healing people be any different than just casting large spells over and over again?”
She gave a soft hum as she nodded her head thoughtfully.
“Healing magic isn’t quite the same as normal magics.” She spoke slowly at first, giving a slight pause before continuing. “Or rather using it for the sake of others isn’t quite the same.”
I frowned, but didn’t interrupt her as she gathered her thoughts and continued her explanation.
“Different types of magic are bound by different rules and I don’t mean the kind of rules like ‘fire burns wood and gets put out by water.’ More of the idea that your support spells only target your allies unless you consciously make the effort to include an enemy, or that your attack magics don’t jump to your allies lighting them on fire unless you deliberately use a spell that includes them in the attack radius.”
Stolen story; please report.
At this point she was going full lecture mode like she had the first time I had met her and she was explaining classes, “What truly determines the rules of magic? I have no clue. However, many types of magic have esoteric rules and regulations that they arbitrarily follow or ignore in spite of what might seem like common sense. One of those arbitrary rules is that healing magic cycles your life force through the people that you’re healing.”
That… Was confusing.
“Life force, so there’s another untyped form of nebulous energy that I use to heal people in addition to mana? It’s not going to kill me or shorten my lifespan is it?”
Illesea lightly pursed her lips and stared at me silently.
Oh.
Once again I had hit the nail on the head, except this time it was not an exciting prospect to be so right about something.
“You could’ve very well died if the people around you hadn’t tried to stop you. If you were still human this very much would’ve drastically shortened your life. Higher level humans can certainly live a long time, however you would have noticeably aged faster than the people around you even if you were at the same level of strength. Being an elf, or at least partially one as I’m not sure how far your transformation has taken, but you more than likely have inherited our essentially immortal life.”
“What this really means for you is that unless you die to unnatural causes, such as suicide by mass healing, you won’t pass from old age. If you’ve only partially inherited it, you should live thousands of years as opposed to the centuries higher leveled humans normally live, although those kinds of people are fewer than one in a million.”
I nodded slowly. That was a lot to take in. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it yet. I had just been told that I was immortal, or that even if I wasn’t I was going to outlive everyone around me barring unfortunate circumstances.
I didn’t really want to think about that.
“So how does healing exactly work then with this life force? How do I know how to properly control it? Are there skills or anything I can do to supplement how much I can heal?”
She shook her head in response. “The only defining attributes to how you heal are your level and ascension and the recipient's level and ascension. From what I’ve heard, the fact that you were able to heal as many as you did at such a high level is a testament to both the strength of your class and your single-minded determination.”
“Healing someone,” She continued on, “ cycles your life force through theirs. Or at least those are the terms that we use to describe it. When yours cycles through theirs it heals them along with using mana, the stronger they are or rather the higher level they are, the more they will need to be able to get back to full strength. That means the healer will need to provide more. So healing a large group of people in the third tier when you’re still in the first tier is exceptionally difficult and would normally take a long time.”
“This is particularly why healers take their time to heal groups of people instead of just trying to force it like you did. You need to wait for your own life force to recover before moving on to the next person. How long that takes isn’t particularly well known. In your case you should’ve been out for several weeks, fortunately I was here and I have a minor healing skill and I was able to use that to cycle my life through yours helping you recover.”
Interesting. Someone finally decided healing magic was op and decided to nerf it for some reason. I did not like it at all. It made me want to be irrationally angry, what the fuck was this bullshit? This makes zero sense!
Very rarely does fiction represent reality unfortunately. Although I guess part of my problem was I still expected this world to follow some form of fiction. What was the saying? Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.
I guess at some point, if I kept growing in strength, I would get strong enough that it wouldn’t really matter. I’d be able to heal whole groups of people without batting an eye. But as it stood right now I was going to struggle handling even just a small group of people at my own level, let alone half an army.
What was even more interesting though was the implications of what she said. It bears further study, but from what I managed to gather there was something like… What was the word for it? Some greek or latin word to reference the idea of the soul? I don’t remember, but there seemed to be some sort of borderline spirit based implication that goes hand in hand with healing.
I let out a deep sigh.
I looked back out the window and just stared for a moment trying to organize my thoughts to get back on track. I frowned.
“How long has it been?” I asked while turning back to face her.
“You’ve been resting for two days now.” She responded without hesitation, “Although I’ve only been here since this morning when you woke up briefly and I began to heal you.”
I smiled slightly, “And once again you’ve helped me while I was stuck in a crappy situation. Thank you.”
She returned my smile, good lord I forgot how beautiful this woman was. It had to be magic, this level of perfection didn’t seem… I was going to say natural, but that would imply that magic wasn’t a product of nature which isn’t necessarily true if you thought about it.
We sat there for a moment, I enjoyed her presence. I felt like I was finally safe enough to just stop and relax. Every moment since leaving the forest was ordeal after ordeal after ordeal and it was exhausting. It was also the first moment since losing my arm that I could just stop and look at the stump that remained.
Someone had done me a favor and tied the sleeve of the clothing I was wearing into a knot to keep it from flapping around too much. Losing my arm was frustrating, I guess I should be glad it was my left arm, which was my non-dominant side. But I had hoped to get some music related skills at some point. Kinda hard to do when you only have one arm.
A phantom pain raced through my arm where it had been cut off as I idly rubbed at it. I looked back to Illesea,
“Will my healing eventually get strong enough to regenerate my arm? It is pretty inconvenient to be missing it.”
“At some point it should be yes. I’m not sure when that will be though. Some people get the ability to replace limbs as early as third tier, those people have three full classes dedicated to healing however. Otherwise people receive it around tier five.”
I groaned at that, there was a possibility I could get it earlier given how powerful my third class was that had my healing on it, but given that the class that had my healing stuff on it wasn’t even a full on healer focused class that seemed unlikely.
“I’d suggest,” Illesea said, pulling my attention back to her from my pity party, “That you make an effort to fabricate your own limb with magic in the meantime. Your third class is a nature based one that gives you some control over wood. Just use it to form an arm instead of armor, with a little bit of practice manipulating it should eventually become second nature to you.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, opened it again, then closed it.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that already, what’s wrong with me?” I slapped my hand to my face, dragging it down, pulling my skin lightly and stretching it out in exasperation.
Illesea just laughed, the sound fluttering pleasantly through the room. I joined her and we allowed ourselves to revel in the amusement of the situation.
After our amusement died out I looked at her, my smile slowly slipping from my face.
“I do have a question about levels. Mine show up as question marks to the people around me. Why is that?”
Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. “I guess your transformation is not entirely for show. This is a longer discussion but also one that’s slightly more documented than most other phenomena.”
“Each race of elvenoid has affinities and traits that help define them. Humans are extremely versatile and can achieve a somewhat natural affinity for any type of magic or class type. Orcs tend to be more based towards physical classes and have bigger bodies and stronger muscles to help push them down that path. Elves are extremely intimate with magic, it permeates all the way through our bodies to our very souls infusing us with power. As such we are partial to magic classes. Although we do have natural agility and strength beyond that of the average human at the baseline.”
“Each race has a particular set of affinities that are naturally ascribed to them, like a kitsune have a unique flame, an orcs bloodrage, the elves magical mystery. Part of the way that manifests is protecting your level from view. You just need to learn how to control it.” Illesea explained.
She then relaxed back into her chair allowing me to digest the large amount of information she gave me.
Essentially I had a racial trait that gave me better affinity with magic, and had the option to hide my levels from people. I held no doubt that it could be pierced by people with the right classes or magic item. But it was a strong ability in the meantime.
“What are you planning to do now?”
Illesea let out a soft hum, as she thought about it.
“There’s a small group of survivors that I’m now in charge of. My goal is to lead them safely to a new haven, from there I plan to communicate the danger of The Seven. If they plan to start attacking our havens we need to be prepared, thus they need warning.”
I nodded, I wouldn’t lie some part of me had vainly hoped that she would stay with me. I’m not entirely sure if my desire was based on my infatuation with her, even though it was blatantly obvious she would never or could never reciprocate, or if I was afraid of not having someone there to protect me if I somehow ran into something that was too strong for me to handle.
But this honestly made the most sense. She had a duty to her people, I definitely wasn’t going to be the one to stand in the way of that. Against my better judgment I asked her what was resting heavily on my heart.
“Will I see you again?”
She just gave me a smirk, yet it wasn’t condescending but rather mildly affectionate, like a mother looking at a child who had asked if they could keep playing video games when it was time for bed.
“Assuming you don’t kill yourself trying to heal a massive group of people? Then yes. But I won’t make any promises for you.”
“Oh you’re a funny one aren’t ya?” I snarked back at her, but I was unable to keep the wide grin off my face.
She stood up from the seat next to my bed and gently rested a hand on my head.
“Stay safe young one, you seem to have a propensity to get into trouble that would be more than enough to kill any other person at your level.”
“I will.” I replied to her.
“Thank you, Illesea.”
She just gently smiled at me.
“Of course.”
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He stood amongst buildings built towards the sky made out of materials he had never seen before, some mixture of stone it seemed. The buildings were covered in glass spanning towards the tops of the buildings. Whatever nation he was in he didn’t recognize the architecture and certainly did not know of a nation wealthy enough beyond the capitals to afford such extravagance in their building.
Malcolm Neese was in a place he did not recognize even slightly. There were strange metal contraptions rolling across the road. People walked on sidewalks as well, there were flashing lights dictating the flow of the metal contraptions in reds, yellows, and greens.
As people walked by him they gave him a slightly wide berth and odd looks but otherwise didn’t approach him or interact with him in any way.
“Where the hell am I?”
He needed to find his way back soon to deal with that demon before it took out his entire force.
End of Book 1