Temporarily sacrificing half of my mental stats to my second mind and pawning off all the work of healing and transporting the injured to him and my other seeds, my mind turns to other endeavors. This new skill has potential and will need work in the future, but today I have just one crazy idea to try. A warping of its intended use that I couldn’t explore myself, but my other half should. And that is only because I can feel the inherent malleability of the skill after it took up a hint of my own Aether.
I talk through my plan with a particularly bright seed, a young being that hasn’t specialized yet. A few are like the automaton seed who took up full time research while doing their best to imitate a computer, but many more chose more common paths like wearing an avatar around the clock and improving their locomotive skills, or furthering their nature control.
There were also great concentrations of seeds that were broader in their specialization, developing a broader skill set. Hell, there is even a historian that was trying to piece together and understand everything about humanity and the other races of the system. Too bad that for some reason, the history books from Earth or any similar account that we experienced first hand barely made any difference to the pool of ‘system history’ in my book. Even the occasional discovery of a quirk of the system during interactions with its Aether was a lot more significant than entire encyclopedias in its eyes.
Stopping my mind from wandering further, I start explaining in that same mental imagery that I learned so long ago, now melded with words, which the seeds with root copies of my brain could almost instinctively understand.
“Ok, I’m gonna want you to integrate with the other part of my mind after I run through my plan.”
Connection. Deep connection, like Pando?
“Roughly. I can’t stop healing, so when I start up again in his place, he is going to stop and you two try to become one. Then I’m going to slowly reduce the number of stats and you will be there to prop him up.”
Confusing. He is you and yet not you.
I chuckle and send a confusing mess of feelings through our bond signifying that I’m in the same boat.
“Yes, confusing, but it is like you splitting in half and becoming another seed while retaining a loose connection.”
I focus really hard on the mental imagery, trying to convey what each step means and I can almost see the light of understanding behind his eyes.
After I run through the simple actions and explain the impressions that my gut gave me to give him better context I end our conversation and trust that my other half will know what to do.
I slowly take the slack, getting my mental fingers nimble again before taking full control of the situation.
With nearly half of my stats, my ‘copy’ should have been roughly as good at controlling the streams of Life as myself with my ‘loss’ of stats, but it is more complicated than that. I can almost feel a separate pool of willpower that I have, amidst other more intangible resources, that doesn’t interact with the system. But he was doing something that was mostly inside the rules of the system, unlike for example my direct manipulation of space, bending it with raw will instead of any mana or even Qi.
As I take charge of the dozens of Life streams healing our troops, I let my mind wander. In my memory, I know everything that both of us have made, though there seems to be a small delay for information to travel. It is me on the other side, but it doesn’t quite feel like myself but a clone. Even after all of my interference, it is still half my creation and half the system.
I know I can trust him and it is a positive change in the status quo that happen out of nowhere, but sharing all my memories still feels like getting naked in front of someone for the first time.
I surrendered control of my body and mind to Pando in the past and after waking up, I could go even deeper, but it is still strange to add a stranger to a similar list on an even deeper level.
Most of these doubts fade away in the rush, a mad scramble to save each and every single person that I can. Then a sliver of my stats returns to me and I can feel the effect of my Life resource increasing. That keeps going and going until he holds only about 10 percent away and clear memories of how and why this has changed settle in my mind, as clearly as if I have done it myself.
The first hint of a headache starts to build, though it probably had less to do with the confusing nature of my duality and more to do with the simultaneous use of skills all over the place.
Even with my sky high perception and a bunch of other stats, it was still a struggle to keep up with the injury rate, and I didn’t even heal everyone.
Most of them, I had only glanced at and left to other professionals because they weren’t either life threatening or significantly hampered their combat potential while requiring a negligible amount to get back into the fight.
But clear memories of his process pass through our short term memory and I understand the rationale he used to overcome several problems with implementing my idea. The slowly returning stats trickle down until his control and stability can’t go below roughly 100 in perception and 80 in willpower while allowing him to keep up with healing. Though thankfully beside another 20 points in intelligence, he doesn’t seem to need any other stat.
For now, this seems like the limit and though my other brain isn’t my equal on several fronts, I can almost feel the seed making up for most of the lack and greater ease in doing simultaneous tasks.
Thin streams from a single minded individual and very focused line of Life replicate in the inner world hospital. The same technique that I use when time is not a critical factor but 3 simultaneous streams at a really high efficiency level.
It’s time consuming and I couldn’t do more than a single one at a time if I wanted to use the least amount of Life, but it paid off whenever I could do it.
Still, as soon as I sense my second mind gets into gear slowly expending his efforts, at a trade off of efficiency, my attention turns to a single patient. The one with the worst injuries. Someone that was expensive to heal and where I could draw the greatest savings compared to a more mass healing approach, so I simply trust my other half to take care of everyone else.
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A moment later, I also pull a sliver of my pure Qi and a few motes of my soul scruff to spin around my body trying to follow that natural field forming and spinning there. It might not make much difference, but it will help me the new skill ever so slightly faster and there could always be other benefits down the line. Which to be honest is my main goal.
Once more I draw the Life stream to the minimum level, I thin the stream as narrow as I can reliably produce and pass it precisely along his damaged tissue instead of randomly spraying it like its mass produced healing goop.
Not much happens for the next first few seconds, beyond accelerating his own healing capabilities. A technique that relies on his own body and is more expensive per ‘point of health’ on a mage than a tank. Life might have some inherent healing powers, but if it had it was hiding underneath the supercharging of their cells healing capability.
I look at the runes on the ground and walls and the fluids added to his bloodstream to increase his healing rate, compounding their effect with my efforts rather than adding on top of those other things. Even though the system identified it differently, I still don’t see it as health regen; calling it healing rate makes much more sense.
I try to connect with him, with my resource and with the whole situation, but nothing goes beyond the boundaries I knew were there. Sure, some things I could learn and after thousands of hours and millions of Life points I would probably be so good that what I can do now doesn’t even compare, but this precious resource was slowly running out. A resource that I would need days in deep meditation to regenerate a thousand points regardless of what eh system said about it my regen rate.
Even as I improved and got more and more selective in my use, I could see the painting on the wall.
That is unless I could at the very least discover some way to further mitigate the cost, increase my regen or find another healer to take up the slack. Even with my level of perception that lets me see the moon with the precision of a basic telescope and as deft as my control is, I’m still ‘throwing resources’ at the problem until it goes away. More direct than the first time I did it, as I traded an actual hose for a needle, but the fundamental mechanics hadn’t changed.
I was still dousing wounds with the nectar of Life.
But there is the perfect opportunity for me to learn just a few hundred meters away. Perhaps an actual healer on our side would be even better, but they had a few dozen in their backlines each with multiple people backing him.
As soon as I get a faint connection to the people the enemy’s healers work on, the 2 or 3 second skill stops and they jump to the next one.
Still, this halting process does teach me a hint of what I wanted to know. With time for me to focus and without worrying that even a minute over here is going to cost a couple of people’s lives, I can sense something just outside my grasp. Almost a trick that may not solve everything, but would let me dramatically improve efficiency.
Maybe it wouldn’t be instantaneous, maybe there was more to it than I knew. I saw a path, a hint of light entering through the cracks in the window after so long in the dark and so I hit it, trying to break it down to let light in.
Light to breathe new life into my room and bathe me in the warm rays of the sun.
A world tries to distract me, but even as my other half asks for a few more stat points, I just part with them and sink in absorbing the enemy's actions. All in perfect detail given he is inside my perception field.
A smile pops in my face as things seem to be looking up and I try to enter a trance in my healing efforts.
Small and fleeting rune like shapes of greater complexity than even the strongest system class skills that I had seen keep appearing and disappearing forming in quick succession. Right behind it is another set of runes that could transform mana into healing energy, but those I already had drew and nobody could use them without the help of the system in the form of skill, nor do they work well with engravings. So the only option are the strange symbols that didn’t make any sense to me.
A tentative plan builds in the back of my mind. The first time I just dismissed it out of hand, but now it seems the right approach.
Time to implement it.
A few seconds to explain my plan to the commander and a minute to maneuver a dozen turrets closer together, while trying to make it seem this is just like all the other maneuvers during the battle. They continue shooting in their current directions as they move higher and at better angles to exploit one particular chink in their armor they probably didn’t think we would try to exploit, or that we even could.
Hundreds of interlinked shields along with a few system powered protections make the walls themselves nearly impregnable. Just above the wall, there was little protection during an attack, but we couldn’t exactly shoot through our own troops to get to them.
Shooting through the wall was a waste of mana and the obstacle barely inconvenienced us by now. We could now simply walk over it using the gently sloping ramp. But above their heads, sat a large city wide shield and to someone with sharp senses like mine, even the slightest dissonance in the integration of multiple runic arrays is a glaring weakness.
Then the moment comes, and with a swing, all the turrets use on the Qi and Mana in them to hit the exact spot I marked. The latter half of the attacks that should have lost cohesion and weakened to near uselessness pass through nearly unscathed after punching a hole in the shield.
Probably, even if I manage to perfectly time it all, exploiting this weakness wouldn’t make their defense more than some 20 to 30 percent weaker, but their spotters and scouts keeping up with the flow of the battle didn’t understand our real capabilities. I didn’t have half just the available firepower needed to make use of it, I had plenty to cut their defenses asunder and more to spare.
Pools of Qi, supercharge a pair of turrets.
This will need my concentration.
All my attention and a few seeds behind me back the turrets with raw willpower.
Time slows down as I make full use of my perception to absorb everything, to the minutest detail, even if it's not something I can indefinitely keep up. I precisely aim well into their camp. Somewhere that was supposedly out of reach and the pair of attacks fly through the air. The first volley hits the double layer of shields on the small hospital they have draining it of its energy.
Then a split second later, the real attack after I opened the way to capitalize on their mistake. With the greatest concentration of my will and Qi. A focused magma ball and lightning strike the building. Nearly 50 meters behind the main shield and hidden under thick stone and wood. A safe spot now completely exposed.
The lightning passes through the wall only minimally damaging it to strike the arm of one of their healers while the magma bores a hole stone and eats a chunk of his chest with its remaining power.
Then another brilliant idea shows up. I use my inner world to overcome the pushing effect on any magic inside their walls and spark a Qi ball with a hint of Life. Even just fifty meters in their perimeter, I can feel the system fighting me, but I power through with everything I have not caring for the exhaustion that will hit me in a second or two after using up all my power.
A Qi ball explodes in the middle of one of their healing houses. It doesn’t carry any mana nor is anyone observing able to tell it wasn't a real explosion, but closer to an illusion. Then I open a portal in the perfect spot between the elf healer that is stumbling back and the bed he is loosely aiming at.
I conjure another illusion, not even sparing any expense. Using a thousand points of Qi and ten points of Life. This time it slightly damages the surroundings and it will blind anyone trying to look in for whole seconds regardless of their protections.
I throw metal droplets and remains from one of the inner world forge's failed runic experiments in the room to disguise my ‘magical’ use of Qi. Though I do take care to choose one that nobody would be able to identify as having nothing to do with explosions, let alone being able to vaporize an Elf.
The healer realizes something is wrong as he is over halfway across the portal. But by them, it is too late as roots pull him fully inside stopping him from escaping, even if he could fly or he had somewhere to grab on to. A moment later I close the portal removing any remote possibility of his escape.
With spasming muscles, he flops like a fish while he is encased in darkness.
“Half of the job is done, now to the original half.”