I felt kind of pathetic standing there, Anna tossing out rock after rock, each slamming true into the ensouled undead I had taken ten to twenty seconds to kill. She could kill them in under a second, from range, with perfect precision without getting dirty.
At least she wasn’t getting bit or grabbed. I could hear the other guy freaking out, someone was tying him up to stop him from flailing from the sound of it, and I wasn’t quite enjoying my time with the burn either.
And I got a small intake, the other guy got it full blast.
“Anna, is poison a kind of mana?” I asked her.
“No, not that I know of anyway. Poisons are a- [Shotput] broad. It’s not a single thing. You don’t buy poison; you buy a type of poison. So there’s no single material and no single mana type. There are poisonous mana types, but no poison, the same way there’s water or fire.”
I looked over at her and asked, “Why do you know about buying poison?”
She looked at me and, in an all too serious tone, said, “I know nothing about buying poison.”
If I didn’t know better, that would be what I would call menace. On Anna, I felt she would be more cross than liable to break my knees, but I made a mental note to remember not to press her in a way that could result in poisoning. I doubt she would hurt me, but there was way more you could do with poison than kill someone.
And by a mental note, I meant telling Selly, “Remind me not to anger Anna to avoid poison.”
“Aye,” she said stoically, “will do.”
I didn’t think she would poison me; she wasn’t that kind of person, and it wasn’t like it would hurt me in the long run, I guessed, but still. I did not want to be poisoned if it was anything like this.
“Whatever it did, it feels like poison. I can genuinely say I would probably be screaming too if I were him,” I told Anna.
“Pain is expected. I’m glad he isn’t turning right here and now, and someone’s tying him up just in case he does. Nasty stuff zombies, and that’s no lesser zombie either.”
Wait.
Wait, what does she mean?
Turning? Like… spinning around?
I felt like I suddenly knew less than nothing, and that wasn’t a good feeling piled upon my uselessness and general lack of value. I was… A meat shield.
Anna was handling herself just fine up here on the wall despite my fears of her getting hurt.
That wared with the feeling of my heart slamming in my chest and my knowledge that Anna couldn’t hold in melee, and it was losing ground.
I felt useless here.
I couldn’t insert myself into the wall of fighting men, who were standing their ground admirably, pining back the wall, only letting a few in at a time so the clubs and swords could do their thing. The ranged fighters up on the wall with me, including Anna, took choice shots at the rhythmic wave of troops.
There were no priority targets, no Gremlin [Cultists] showed themselves, and the old [Crossbowman] and his support could not take their toll in truth.
It had seemed more exciting when I had been down there, but I had no place.
I could see the fire licking above the rooftops in the distance as it burned in towards us, the air getting hotter, slowly cooking us.
The old leader with the crossbow spoke up as I started to blank out.
“We need more ammunition. Tall vacant girl with the shovel, go and [Secure Munitions] for us, will you?” the older man asked.
I could feel the skill shift something around, informing me of where some bolts and arrows were left in a pack stashed back near the route further into the city.
I sighed.
I could have said no. The man had no power over me. But I did feel somewhat thankful for his intercession in the fight. The undead was still pined out in the horde, its legs broken from the wave of other undead.
There weren’t many other things I could do anyway.
I sighed and whispered to Anna, “I’ll be right back. Make sure the guards don’t break their necks.
With a bit of what I confusingly took as excitement, Anna said, “No problem, I have the wall. Nothing will get past me.”
It was both cute and also strange.
I didn’t know how to interpret that in the moment, with all the other things having seeped back into my head as the rush faded, leaving only the burn of black magic in my leg and the spot on my head where I whacked it on my spade.
I pitter-pattered down the ramp, coming to the now-bound form of the man.
He didn’t seem so good. The shield of mana that blocked me from seeing within could not hide his colouring. He was dimming.
It was kind of like how you could see the skin of a fruit, but something ephemeral told you it was rotten inside.
I felt drawn to him, that dying man, and took a moment to try and comfort him. The old fart had enough bolts left for me to take my time. A man had left him tied uncomfortably and with a gag, still young enough to maybe be a bachelor, but maybe being married. He was not much to describe. Most people were.
Like so many others, he was normal. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and sun-kissed skin from days in the sun.
“Sorry about your friend,” I told him.
He could not respond to me, but I made sure to get in his line of sight so his unfocused eyes could at least see me. The least I could do for the man.
The wound on his shoulder was swollen, and reddened flesh could be seen through the holes in his shirt.
There was a leak of the dark mana, fizzing out of the wound like fog, black as clouds at night.
“I can’t do a lot, but you should know… He’s off enjoying the afterlife instead of being stuck in his body. I don’t know if I can do anything for you, but if you pass, I’ll send you off… Okay? This place is no place for you to linger.”
I was about to step up and away when a thought crossed my mind, drifting through my head like a ghost.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The man was dying.
His body was being torn apart from the inside.
And most importantly, he was Dying, capital D.
Instead of standing and fetching a few bolts and a small quiver of what felt like twiggy sad sad-looking arrows, I intentionally activated [Gaze of the Coming Spring].
It was a hunch, but I figured it was a good one.
I had been able to feel the death in the air, the fire burning what life remained in the wood, and the rats and any other creature alive and full of life mana.
And [Verdant Nexus] was all about life but also about bringing forth new life.
Most of my skills worked on plants… but [Gaze of the Coming Spring] had no limit on plants, I could feel that.
The skill brought forward intentionally sent the world into terrible potency. The skill transformed the world around me into greyscale, the world transforming as all around me, life and death mana, present as a bloom of light and shadow. It was all-encompassing, with nothing escaping the effect. Every stone, plank and person was affected.
I imagined that watching it would give some insight into how life gets its bits on, but that’s not what I was doing.
I was only focused on the one person anyway.
The [Guard] was full of life. His limbs and head, at least, were lit by a white glow that lit him from within. Without the other mana in his skin and muscles lit up with mana, the light could be seen much more freely, like the light of a lantern through a window, while the wall would block it but for a crack here or there to let it out.
And at the front of a spreading bloom of nothing was a shadowed lip of death mana.
“I don’t know if I can help you,” I told the man, “but I will try… if you want me to.”
He was tied up, gagged, and in far too much pain to properly consent, but I reached my hand over to his, my fingers slipping into his hand, looking for a sign that he was there and agreeing.
Minutely, his hand griped in a way that told me it wasn’t from pain but conscious effort.
I didn’t dally. I reached in magically and flexed my death magic skills, affinity and proficiency, alongside [Tenebral Bane], reaching out to the death mana inside him.
It was like pressing my fingers through the sand. It was not my mana nor the free mana of the world around me, but his mana, and it reacted as like it. I had to press, wiggling my metaphorical grip into him to the mana inside him.
The moment I connected to it, I felt it would not fight me like the rest of him, my affinity for it making the death within him more mine than his. My proficiency flexed as I began to do to him as I had done to myself back in the forest. I took the death mana and pushed back against the looming dark of his insides.
Instead of like me, where it was dispersed, in him, it was concentrated. Instead of whirling it around within him, unsure if that could cause more harm than good, I pressed the dark spot with the mana.
It was like popping a pimple from inside the skin instead of from atop it. The pressure was even along the entirety of his stained body. It did not move, though it did eat it up somewhat.
I couldn’t push hard enough to get rid of all of it at once, and I was not strong enough to pop the pimple, but I pressed in any way.
His body did not bounce back behind it, and I cursed myself for not having a skill to heal the man directly. I had no clue if I could do it at all. I had healed myself, but I had also not known better.
It might be fine for me, but would I kill the man if I just flooded him with life mana? Did the lack of life mana near his organs outweigh that? I wasn’t a [Healer]. I had no idea if I would leave him better off.
Though I doubt he cared if he lived or died at the moment, that was from pain, not from negligence. He would feel a whole lot more judging if he lived or if it just saved him from the pain, only to find out he was a dead man because I couldn’t heal the void that was empty of life. I could only imagine a body rotting from within and decided that it would still be better than the pain he felt.
I could only put my hopes in his stats and hope that there was another way for him to recover, even if it was only enough to save his life.
“Sorry if this hurts,” I told him as I continued to knead the sore.
He whimpered but otherwise seemed to be fine. It wasn’t reassuring, but I didn’t need any of that.
Okay, maybe I needed a little of that, but It wasn’t required, the world didn’t care about my fears.
I felt my mana drain rapidly as I pressed a little harder, each moment of pressing into him burning mana just to reach inside. Mana burned to get inside, to grip the other mana, to press and knead.
I felt about halfway empty, and the proficiency and affinity I had no doubt helped me lower the cost.
It was easier than lighting a candle, which was both astounding and a little sad.
I pressed harder, really squeezing the dark and managed to press it back closer to the wound on his shoulder, a spray of dark quickly staining then disappearing into thin air.
It made me want to gag a little, but I sucked down a bit of smokey hot air, and the feeling of wanting to gag was blissfully replaced with the sting of smoke.
As the darkness receded, the amount of death mana also receded, much of it burning up to break the darkness up at its edges. However, as the darkness was pushed out, it began to win the tug-of-war. There was more death mana than the Tenebral mana.
I gave it one more press, at the cost of an inordinate amount of mana. It felt like running a mile in a minute but for mana. There was no burn of muscles, just an ebb as the mana left, followed by an increasing emptiness.
The press caused the dark mana to leak like gaseous pus from the wound before the dark within crumbled, breaking apart and dissolving.
Quickly, I let go of the death mana, letting it spread back out across the ruined area of his torso before I pulled out of him.
I breathed a sigh of relief and let my skill drop.
The man still moaned, still in pain, though he might have regained a little colour.
“Get yourself looked over if you can,” I told him before backing up to my feet.
I felt… I didn’t know how I felt.
I was a bit torn over it, but I had no better way of doing it.
I could only hope that that made the difference.
I had something like one-third of my mana, maybe a little bit more than that.
I headed over to the ammunition. I had spent only spend maybe a minute on the man and would soon be missed. I didn’t run, there wasn’t any real reason to, not with how it was going, a slow grind of turning zombies and skeletons in to a mess while I couldn’t contribute much at all.
If they were suddenly in need of help, shouting would come first. Shouting and then fighting for their lives, and all of that would be loud.
I made my way there, picking up the pack of ammunition and slinging it onto my back instead of carrying it with one hand. I was about to move back and deliver the pack when I heard a tiny noise.
It was faint, not distant, but simply small and hushed.
My ears swivelled, trying to find where it came from, but I couldn’t. Perhaps it was a skill, or just that I wasn’t on my A-game tonight, but I couldn’t narrow it down from not being in the open area of the crossing behind me.
Carefully, I snuck my way. Forward, my feet were only touching clear stone to avoid the possibility of tripping.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, either in response to some unseen force or unknown presence, though I couldn’t tell if there was anything there.
I’m just losing it. First, I’m spacing out, and now I’m jumping at a random noise. Gods, what is wrong with me?
I sighed, the situation was obviously getting to me. I heard no more noise, the hairs on the back of my neck stopped standing.
It had been nothing. I turned and took one step before I heard it again.
All the hairs on my neck stood up again, and I spun, my stance widening as I took in the road again. It was almost the exact same noise, just a little closer.
Once was random, but twice? Twice was not a random chance.
I readied my shovel and began to intentionally sneak as best a girl over six feet tall could on an open street. I let my instinct guide my feet and posture to hunt down the noise.
The soles of my shoes lightly scuffed across the ground. My ears continued to swivel, checking for any noise my 27 points of senses could pick up.
Whatever it was, it was quiet, quiet and small.
I moved out of the ripped structures and out into the street, further and further from the others. I heard a scuff, and I griped my shovel as tightly as I could, the wood grain pressing into the skin of my hands.
I calmed my breathing, slowing it as best as I could.
The noise was coming from around the corner of an alleyway. An alleyway that led off in the direction of the undead assaulting the barricade. I got up to the side of the wall, leaning against it and peeked around into the alley.
Down the Alley was a short figure that, for a moment, I took to be maybe a child wearing a patchy cloak. The figure was hunched over and holding something.
There was indeed a cloak, but it was patchy with sick, scabby skin and fur beneath it.
The short figure was not a child, or not a human one anyway.
A Gremlin stood down the alley, hunched over, and I wasn’t about to let it do whatever it was here to do, not based on its get-up.
[Long Strider] and [woodsman’s Stride] guided my steps and [True Strike] my shovel. I hefted my shovel as I started running, bringing it down as I closed down the alley like a vengeful ghost. I reached the Gremlin [Cultist] before the shovel even got down to him.
My steps startled him, and he turned, his gross face turning to face me, surprise and hate lighting his bestial face.
My spade bit into his neck, cleaving through flesh and bone and flesh and in one clean swoop, the head rolled from the body, clattering to the ground before the body even registered.
The body fell as I pulled my shovel back, a clink of metal hit the cobbles, and a bauble rolled out. A familiar orb.