CHAPTER 44 QUIET REGRET

The cavalry carved a bloody path through the invaders. Meanwhile another set of horns sounded behind us in the capital and the gates started opening again.

Fiona was one of the first to pull herself back together.

“Move back towards the capital!”

Everyone began tactically retreating. So not as much sprinting back as jogging slightly while looking over our shoulders the whole way.

The soldiers we had just been fighting were somewhat distracted by the horseback soldiers that were hitting them from the side, but they hadn’t completely forgotten about us either. Only a few of them tried to press us as we moved backwards, but Redrix didn’t let them live long enough to regret that decision.

Most of the soldiers were tier 3 or under. I’m sure there were some tier 4’s in there somewhere. But I hadn’t seen any, maybe they would be officers or something so they’d be further back out of the way of the initial bloody fighting.

Our fighting retreat eventually brought us through the gate into the city. We had to fight our way through the marching formation of soldiers coming out through the gate, but we eventually made it inside.

Once we made it through the crowd we trudged off to the side and practically fell down on the ground.

There was a decent amount of space between the walls of the city and the first buildings. Probably about 25 feet of space which really allowed for us to sit somewhat comfortably without having to worry about feeling cramped.

I dismissed all of my buffs including my wooden armor covering as we spent a moment catching our breath. After a while I pushed myself to my feet dusting myself off.

Fiona glanced over at me, raising an eyebrow inquisitively. I looked back at her sighing slightly.

“Lots of people hurt and given I’m the most easily accessible healer to them most likely I should at least help out where I can.”

“You don’t want to level up first?”

I quickly glanced at my classes.

Tier 1 Class - [Lightning Sorcerer] - Level 25

Tier 1 Class - [Enchanted Bladefighter] - Level 25

Tier 1 Class - [Disciple of Nature] - Level 25

Huh. I’d apparently capped out all my classes, wasn’t that nice.

I shook my head, “No, what if it takes me several hours to get through the class-up process? How many would die during that time for a minor gain in healing capability? No, it’d be better to get started now and class-up afterwards when I have the time to spare.”

She nodded and then stood up, “I’ll go with you then.”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her this time.

“Don’t trust me off by myself?”

She scoffed lightly, “More like I don’t trust these people around here not to try and push you around. When your friend is hurt and you see a healer, especially one lower level than you, you’ll do whatever it takes to get them treatment. That and Garrus told me the story of you nearly killing yourself by trying to heal more than you could handle, so I want you to tell me when you start feeling the onset, okay?”

I nodded slowly, I could definitely see that being the case here. We’d just gotten pulled out of an extremely shitty situation after all.

She followed along behind me as I walked along. There was definitely something nice about having a bodyguard, made me feel more important than I was.

It didn’t take very long to find my first injured person. I stepped up to them eliciting a glare from the person tending to him.

“What do you want?” He said with a growl.

The other two party members that had been resting against the wall opened their eyes upon hearing his voice.

“I’m a healer, I want to help.” I replied calmly.

He scoffed, “Trying to extort money already, knife-ears? Is that it?”

You had to be kidding me. Is everyone in this world just the most piece of shit person to have ever existed?

I gave him a pained look.

“Do you really think so little of me after what we just went through? Was I not out there with you?”

He at least had the audacity to look slightly embarrassed glancing back down to his friend he was breathing heavily. He had a large and deep cut across his chest, it was possible he could make it on his own, but it wasn’t a sure thing.

Given the leader didn’t say anything else I took that as a sign of assent and knelt down next to the man and placed my good hand on him. I spent a good amount of mana healing him. The wound slowly closed and stopped bleeding.

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After a couple of minutes I was satisfied he’d at least make it through alive before pulling my hand away.

“He’s still injured pretty badly, but it’s no longer a toss-up whether he lives or dies. It’s probably gonna scar pretty badly, but maybe it’ll be something cool to show off in a year or two.” I said with a shrug of my shoulders before pushing myself back up and walking off.

As I walked past people I spent a couple of minutes with each group, several of them only having superficial wounds and scratches. I didn’t heal any of these groups, I barely had any mana right now as it was so I didn’t need to spend it on light wounds that would clear up on their own in a day or so with no issues.

I was probably thirty minutes into making it through the group before I had my first real incident. If you could call it that. As I was healing someone that had a broken bone Fiona quickly dashed to intercept someone I hadn’t noticed. I had been starting to zone out, which wasn’t a good sign.

I know I had promised, but I didn’t want her to make me stop either. I wasn’t getting any levels, but that wasn’t important. If I stopped now how many people might die? We’d lost roughly half of the group of about 500 adventurers that had gone out with us, we’d probably lose a third again as many. Given that I seemed to be the only healer here.

In retrospect that somewhat made sense, no healer would willingly walk into a battlefield. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

I looked over where Fiona was holding someone back. He was pointing at me and then pointing behind him the entire time yelling about something. My mind seemed to be struggling a little bit with how much I’d healed up to now.

Fiona looked over at me and said something. I frowned slightly and did my best to focus on the here and now, doing my best to get my mind back in order.

I stopped healing the person I was working on and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. I could feel the world come back in to focus, sounds started reaching my ears again and the world seemed less wavy to me.

I shook my head slightly and fixed a slight smile on my face as I looked at Fiona, “Sorry what did you say? I was kinda focused on healing.”

Her eyes narrowed, but the guy next to her spoke up before she could repeat what she had said.

“Please! Please, he’s going to die if you don’t help him.” Tears filled his eyes as he begged me.

I glanced back down at the person I had healed. I had healed them enough, they’d survive if I left.

“Alright, I’m pretty much done here anyways, they’ll survive healing naturally at this point.” The girl sitting next to this person nodded.

“Thank you…” She whispered as I stood up.

Before I could move to follow the guy who had come running over Fiona grabbed my shoulder forcing me to stop.

“Alex, be completely honest with me here. Are you going under?”

I turned to look at her. I could see in her eyes that she already knew the answer, she just wanted to know if I was going to lie about it at this point. Her eyes were a cold gray, like steel. And they were not happy with me.

I had already broken my unspoken promise to let her know when I was struggling. She wasn’t happy about that, but she might let it slide at this point.

I looked at her for a moment before answering slowly.

“Even if I was, can I afford to stop right this second?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You misunderstand. You assume there will be more casualties if you stop now. Let me ask you a single simple question then. How many more will there be if you don’t stop now and recover?”

Her demeanor was calm and reserved, but her tone was tense. As if she was tensing to fight. No, she was tensing. She was completely prepared to knock me out if that’s what it took.

I held her gaze levelly. I couldn’t argue with her logic. At this point I seemed to be the only person interested in helping the adventurers here. If I stopped, a few people might die. If I died, dozens more would die due to not being able to receive treatment.

What felt like minutes passed before I spoke again.

“One more, then I’ll rest.”

She held my shoulder for a few more seconds before nodding and letting go.

“One more.” She promised.

I briskly followed behind the man as he led me back to where his group was situated. They were on the edge of where we had all congregated. I picked up my pace a little when I saw his teammate on the edge of the group.

My eyes widened slightly as I took in their wounds. She was missing an arm and a leg, both of which had been bandaged up heavily. Blood still managed to pool beneath both the severed limbs, going straight through the material they had used. She also suffered a severe head wound given that the entire right side of her face was bandaged and also soaked through.

Her torso was arguably in the best shape, but only that it was bleeding the least out of all her wounds.

I didn’t waste a single second, I immediately cast [Healing Blossom] and knelt down next to her and also used [Nature’s Touch] to do what I could.

I could see her breath coming in short soft gasps, her one eye that I could see was completely glazed over unseeing of the things around her. I strained myself to pump as much mana as I could through her.

Sweat poured down my forehead as the effort strained me. I pushed and pushed and pushed everything I had through her, and yet her wounds were barely getting better.

I growled in frustration. At this rate I wasn’t going to be able to heal her. She was going to die if nothing changed.

So I reached. I reached for the strength to carry through. I reached for the power that would let me heal and save her life.

And I found nothing.

I stuck my hand into the barrel and hit the bottom.

I watched helplessly as my mana hit zero. [Healing Blossom] fading away shortly after.

I slowly pulled my hand back and rested on my calves kneeling next to her.

“What, why did you stop?” The man next to me asked, “Why aren’t you healing her? What are you doing? She’s going to die!”

I couldn’t even look at him. Tears welling up in my eyes as I watched my mana bar agonizingly slowly fill back up, point by point.

I reached over to grab the girls hand giving it a gentle squeeze and depleted what little mana I recovered as it filled. I felt her gently squeeze it back, which startled me for a moment before overwhelming me completely. Tears silently spilled over as I sat there.

“I’m sorry.” I whispered to her.

Fiona had caught on quickly to what had happened and was holding back the man from assaulting me as he screamed at me to save her.

There was nothing I could do but sit there.

So I sat.

I waited.

Until she breathed her last.