A stunned silence choked the area around where Hiro had been lying just moments before. Almost everyone stared down in shock at what now looked disturbingly like a well-kept grave. Even the whispered questions of those at the edges of the crowd who couldn’t quite see hushed as the weight of the moment settled over the parade ground.

For her part, Erash continued to gasp in lung-fulls of air like a swimmer coming up after a long dive. Her hands clutched white-knuckled to her staff and lines creased around her eyes as she watched the mound of freshly turned dirt.

Then Threstus arrived in a blur, standing next to the Priestess, obviously only now catching up to her.

“Wow, you can really move when you want-” He started before breaking off as he took in the surrounding mood.

“What did I miss?” He asked his voice turning serious, as his eyes inevitably found the mound of dirt.

The shock was broken by the question and the surrounding crowd started yelling in outrage and confusion. In response, Ichiro shot to his feet in a smooth dangerous motion, his hand on his sword as his eyes followed all sorts of unseen paths entering in and out of the dirt mound. Something powerful was happening there, and Tilly gasped an inhalation of his own as he realized he had been holding his breath in anticipation of… something.

“WHAT DID SHE DO!” Voices yelled out through the angry milling crowd.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO LORD HIRO?”

“ARE WE UNDER ATTACK?” More and more started to join in the yelling.

“Calm Yourselves!” Ichiro shouted in a low, intense voice, his eyes continuing to trace patterns leading off in multiple directions from his father’s mound.

“This woman is one of us! She is the new High Priestess of the God of the mountain. He is the one many of you have to thank for your new classes!” He followed, finally looking up from the almost manic pattern tracing his eyes had been absorbed in. The crowd quieted in response to his command, and Ichiro turned toward the Priestess and stated in a calm respectful voice,

“I see that he yet remains with us. But as I watch, his core pattern is being altered. Please explain what is happenening.” The immutable peace of Ichiro's deep meditative state lent a gentle and polite tone to his voice, but Tilly didn’t miss the fact that his hand had remained resting on his sword when he turned to the Priestess.

Erash looked up from her vigil, almost as if she had not heard any of the voices until this point. Her face somehow took on a weight and maturity far beyond its youthful beauty as she considered Ichiro’s question. The weight surrounding the pair suddenly doubled as their eyes met, before dissipating just as quickly as it had come. Erash nodded in acknowledgment of whatever had just passed between them and answered,

“Hiro was facing a stacking Debuff called Corrupted Vampiric Infection. I have never seen it in person, but it simultaneously removes a target's regen and Turns the target once they reach zero health. This Debuff is not unheard of, but it was far more powerful than it should have been at this level. The Corruption had been cleared, but the rest of the effects of the debuffs refused to be cleansed…” She trailed off, looking back down at the grave, before continuing

“When I got here and read his recent damage log, I saw that almost all of the infection had been cleared, and his health had moved up and down between .25% and .5% for over 90 cycles.” Her eyes rose to Tilly from the dirt mound, sharpening in interest once again,

“I immediately cleansed the remainder of the Debuffs and attempted healing, but something blocked my attempt at regeneration. It felt to me, like trying to heal someone who had already passed beyond our plane… Something I cannot yet accomplish. So with no options left and a patient on the brink of death, I chose to do something …drastic.” At this point in her explanation, her words flowed forth more hesitantly as the lines on her face softened back to something younger and less self-assured. Tilly was left with the impression that he was listening to a teenager explain why they had broken curfew instead of the highest leveled entity in the Alliance.

Ichiro nodded along, unsurprised at the state his father had been in when she arrived, “This drastic choice… it is better than death, yes? I see much of what makes up my father still there but there are significant things being added as well.” He added, encouraging her to continue.

“Yes, I hesitate to speak of this because it is part of my people’s inheritance. But I chose this course, and I will see it through; In my lands, when a warrior makes a sacrifice of sufficient substance to protect the Land, they become eligible for a very particular ritual. I saw it as I was looking for anything else I could do to halt Hiro’s decline. The ritual called to me-”

“A moment please,” Threstus interrupted politely before turning to the crowd, many of whom were straining to hear.

“Lord Hiro will be just fine! Our Priestess took care of it. Now off with you! All unit commanders gather your groups and return to drilling! We begin line work and combat forms today whether you are ready or not!” His sudden and loud shouting hit and dispersed the surrounding soldiers like magic. Kuro and Nyuk remained behind, sitting back on their haunches at a respectful distance, watching for any change in their Lord.

Once the whole of the audience had dispersed, Tilly followed Ichiro to his feet, and re-instigated the conversation,

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“So whatever you did, it kept him from dying. That has to be good, right?” Tilly inquired, brushing the dirt from his knees.

“That is correct…” She answered, still struggling to find a way to describe the ritual in terms that were honest but not too revealing.

“I have seen my… mother perform this same ritual once, for an Entkin who had fought back an Ogre incursion at the mouth of a canyon on our borders. He held until our forces arrived and was little less than a husk by the end of the battle. My mother arrived in time to perform a version of what I just did and the Entkin was restored, even advancing a tier in the process. But there is a price…” She said, looking down from Ichiro’s face to the ground where the Land had taken Hiro into its embrace.

“Hiro is currently undergoing a transformation into a Guardian Entity for this Faction's portion of the Land. So yes, he will still be alive, but not in the same way he was before. He will never sire any other children, nor will he need to eat or sleep.” She continued her voice dropping as she delivered the cost of the ritual.

“Will his mind be altered?” Ichiro broke in a little more sharply than his previous inquiry.

“No, although he will be tied deeply to this portion of the Land and invested in its growth. He will no longer be able to level. Instead, his abilities will compound as this Faction and its influence increase. His power is now directly tied to the weight and density your nation has on the spiritual fabric of Nephesh. Finally, as long as your nation's Sovereign Crystal remains intact, no wound can kill him, defeat will only place him in a slumber until the damage is restored.” She then sighed,

“At least I suspect this will be the case, I had not anticipated the change my own powers had undergone with my new class and obligations. It does not feel like any negative alterations were added to the ritual, but it was not the same one I learned under my mother’s tutelage.”

Ichiro took the news with a thoughtful frown, while Threstus processed the costs and benefits in a more pragmatic manner.

“Ichiro, forgive me if I am overstepping. But this sounds like something your father would have chosen for himself if given the chance… It gives us one more edge in protecting our emergence into the conflict of Nephesh, which seems to have become more perilous than ever before.” he suggested softly, finding the Lapin’s eyes and showing none of his characteristic sarcasm.

Ichiro took a deep breath at Threstus’ statements and nodded in thanks to the Bastion Commander.

“A similar thought had crossed my mind as well.” He said slowly, coming to terms with the turn of events that none of them had anticipated happening this early in the process of their Faction's establishment.

Throughout Erash’s explanation, a war of emotions had moved through Tilly. When faced with the prospect of Hiro’s death, he had moved back into the toolset he had employed thousands of times in his old life. It had all come back to him so easily and while it hadn’t ‘worked’ it had seemed to have made enough of a difference that they wouldn't be losing the leathery old samurai any time soon.

Then the whole conversation was interrupted as Linus arrived at a jog, having just received the news. Some minutes were spent catching him up and all four of them immediately started planning the next steps to secure the gap and await Hiro’s return. Instead of joining in, Tilly's eyes wandered to his flashing notification log,

Congratulations! You have just averted a fatal debuff without using any mana or abilities!

You have learned the skill First Aid.

First Aid - Using a combination of your knowledge of the internal composition of living beings, medical techniques, and basic aid supplies, you are able to neutralize or even clear negative Debuffs. Your interventions add a +n% multiplier to your target's inherent healing ability. “n” being your level in this skill.

Your First Aid level has increased! Adjusting for previous experience…

First Aid level 1.

First Aid level 2…

First Aid level 35

It may have been childish, but the validation of such a high skill level given for what had been a career spanning decades filled him with satisfaction. He might not be able to heal, but hell if he was going to let someone around him die if he could help it. In fact, the similarity between this skill and his old career actually imparted a level of comfort with the prospect of playing that sort of role in parties when necessary. Maybe this could be a key to rounding out his build when he ran out of Mana. Something more akin to a specialized paladin than a pure tank or mage DPS.

There were some things he couldn’t do anything about. But to have this tool back in his belt and acknowledged by the System meant a lot to Tilly. His vision may even have begun to grow blurry before he wiped the stray speck of dust from his eyes and brought his attention back to the matters at hand.

Tilly’s moment went unnoticed as the four in the background finalized the temporary plans in light of recent events,

“I’ll dispatch half the bastions to the gap now to guard the work party we have heading that way this afternoon. We need a trench as soon as possible, and stone behind that over the course of the next weeks. Our small community of dwarves reported another strange encounter with that woman in black yesterday as she left our land. She pointed them to an ancient collapsed quarry and mine on the other side of the mountain. We should be able to move that stone to the gap using the river starting as early as tomorrow, I know the dwarves are ecstatic to get moving.” Linus listed out, summarizing their next steps.

Tilly continued to only half listen to the logistical details as he watched a breeze stir the grasses and flowers sprouting in the spot Hiro had laid.

Then he realized that he hadn’t felt any air moving as he watched the plants begin to sway.

“Guys!” he called over, “Something is happening!”

The other four came over in a flash as the freshly turned dirt began to move along with the plants, shivering and swaying. Then like the classic scene from any first act of a zombie movie, Hiro’s hand burst forth from the ground reaching up to the sky in a grasping motion.