Immediate efficient healing was what he needed. There was only one thing that could save him. The four component spell forms that fed into Touch Heal appeared in front of him. Without waiting or agonising over the process, he merged them into the spell he had used so extensively in his previous lives. Then he flooded it with the dozen points of precognition affinity mana that he had left. It trembled and deformed on the edges as the mana entered it, just like all the other spells he had been creating had done. This attempt, unfortunately, had less dedicated fate to guide the process, as he had only regenerated three points in the half an hour April had given him. She had her reasons to push him to do this now, but he hoped that measly amount would be sufficient to get him a great outcome.
Satisfied with the appearance of the spell form, he released it. There was another ding as time slowed dramatically. For a moment, excitement went through him when he thought he had earned Healing Tranquillity back, but the feel of the time slowing down was wrong. Instead, it was a souped-up version of the time dilation skill that went along with Heal Organs.
Instantly, it communicated all the damage that had been done to him, and, with the time still slowed, he could assess the next steps.
With a thought, his magic sealed the femoral artery in his leg. Time jerked forward, and he triggered the diagnosis component again. It reset, and once more he had breathing room so to speak.
The femoral artery was a die-straight-away kind of wound, but the rest couldn’t be ignored either, so he catalogued all of them. There were fourth level burns on his right side and his face; third level ones over most of the rest of his body. Then what was the equivalent of nine significant stab wounds where the enemy had bitten down on him. There were numerous scratches and cuts on his legs, some of them over two inches long and an inch deep. He had been disembowelled with a cut large enough on his stomach for his intestines to have escaped his body’s confines. Thankfully, a lack of movement meant that hadn’t occurred yet; then, finally, there were the seven different poisons from his meal.
Tom was sure April had models of how he would perform, and if he were to create injuries that would promote a successful merge into Touch Heal, this would have been what he would have done. All of his systems were damaged, including bones in the shoulder that had been cut through. Every part of the Touch Heal spell was going to be required to fix him.
As he lay there, he triggered his new spell over and over again, marvelling at the slowed-down time which it started with. It wasn’t as good as Healing Tranquillity, but it was much better than nothing. As he was restoring himself, he took shortcuts. Rather than healing any of the damage fully, he only triaged the worst of the bleeding initially. When it came to his burns, he superficially fixed them to stop sepsis from setting in, but took no effort to prevent scarring. The poisons, due to their nature, had to be dealt with in full, including two he had to physically push out of his body, because he had nothing that could destroy them internally.
Everything he did was triage, and, ten minutes after he started, April was finally able to bring him back to the café and heal him properly. The horrific scarring that had been about to form vanished along with the continuous pain.
He bowed his head to her:
“Thank you.” The gratitude was for more than one thing, and, from the up-curl of the corner of her lips despite her stern visage, she understood exactly what he was saying.
“That was smart,” she told him. “Only healing enough to prove you weren’t in mortal danger was clever.”
“I’m learning, and it’s what I’ll be doing from now on.” He admitted and then looked up at her hopefully. “And?”
She handed him the clipboard, and he read it immediately.
Skill: Instant Strike – Tier 1
Instantly strike an opponent passing within a thirty-degree cone of the reach of a spear thrust.
The attack will be ninety percent as strong as your base attack with a plain tier-zero weapon. Modifiers from the spear you are currently using are not applied even if the description indicates they are compatible with skills.
After the strike, your body’s effective attributes will be instantly reduced by 80%, a reduction which will recover linearly over 2.4 seconds.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Tom stared up at her in disbelief. This was not what he had wanted to see, and she knew that. Since it was a trained spell, there were no extra bonuses. He had gotten exactly what he had purchased, but he also understood why she had shared it. Now that his brain was not addled by his dying body, he recognised what had happened.
His Instant Strike into the gaping wound had been what had killed it. His new skill had shown its deadliness by punching through the monster’s exposed heart and killing it instantly, or at least close to instantly. He smiled up at April. “I figured that was what I got. What about Touch Heal?”
She didn’t respond verbally, but the wording on the clipboard was replaced with a wall of text. It was the spell he expected, with all the add-ons from previous stages of the process. The first thing he noted was that Touch Heal, just like Spark, was a persistent spell. He was going to keep it forever, no matter how many times he used it as a base to merge into other new spells.
That, all by itself, was a huge bonus. Smiling, he read further:
Spell: Touch Heal – Tier 0 – Level 10
You can heal yourself and others if you make physical contact with them.
Then he studied the sideways evolutions listed below. As expected, the functionality gained at lower levels had mostly come through unchanged. He suspected a few minor benefits had been lost, at least in the description, but the bulk of his earned extra capability had flowed through.
He started from the top.
Sideways Evolution 1: Boosted Diagnostics. For the diagnosis stage of the use of Touch Heal, time is dilated at a rate of 64:1. Once you begin healing, the time flow will return to normal.
It was nice to have had the bonus of slowed time quantified. Sixty-four times would buy him a lot of efficiency. In the time it took someone to say a simple sentence, Tom could spend a couple of minutes planning exactly how to fix the injuries, and, from the experience he already had with it, the ability was stronger than it claimed. Not only could he enter and re-enter the diagnostic state at any time - it was also flexible enough to allow him to line up a series of actions when he was in there. Only once he triggered that list of instructions did the time dilation stop.
Overall, it was about half as strong as Healing Tranquillity, but that was still very good. His eyes drifted to the next sideways evolution, and one that was probably the most individually powerful of them.
Sideways Evolution 2: Superior body. Resilience and the speed of injury recovery is increased with the following specific additional benefits.
* Robust Organs – Efficiency of all organs increased by 50%. Some individual organs also have a more targeted boost.
* Liver is an additional 250% more efficient.
* The heart can now continue beating through catastrophic injury.
* Skin is 20% tougher.
* Stomach gains an extra 100% boost to digestion.
* Stronger Bones. All bones require 60% more pressure to break.
* Enhanced Blood – Oxygen carrying capacity of blood is doubled and you will bleed 50% less.
* Internal Sanctity – Mana cost to destroy or move substances (foreign or natural) in the body is reduced by 25%.
There was nothing surprising in what was listed. Most of those benefits had been present in the lower spells, with the exception of the efficiency of all organs being increased by fifty percent.
That one was new.
Theoretically, it could be build-breaking, but he wasn’t going to be that lucky, and he suspected the description had overstated the value. For example, he doubted it would make him fifty percent more intelligent, which one reading of that benefit would suggest. Likewise, he was not about to become fifty percent harder to cut, which would have happened if his skin’s performance was truly improved to that degree. Instead, Tom suspected, it represented a general improvement to normal operations. Skin might resist piercing attacks slightly more and heal faster, but its primary function was to keep out bacteria, viruses and fungus, and that was what would be boosted by fifty percent.
That was an advantage, but not that much of an advantage. As for the brain, it was possible his nerves might now fire fifty percent quicker, which would give him a bonus for how fast he thought, but would do nothing to increase his intelligence. Like with the skin, it was a nice improvement, but not an earth-shattering great one.
His focus continued down to the next cluster of additions.
Sideways Evolution 3: Internal Barrier, Constructed internal barriers can block foreign substances a full tier higher than what proficiency and energy invested in the spell would usually allow.
Sideways Evolution 4: Active Resistance Boost. For 16 mana, this spell can be applied to increase resistance to all purgeable foreign substances and energies by 32% for half an hour.
He ignored those two as they were abilities that he was already aware of, and, in the case of the second trait, intended to take advantage of once he had more mana available.
Which left him with the last bonus.
Sideways Evolution 5: Improved Efficiency. Touch Heal is 50% more potent when used on self.
Given he was primarily getting Touch Heal to fix himself up, this was arguably the biggest bonus out of all five.
April had been watching the micro expressions flitting across his face the entire time. Her grin had grown steadily broader:
“And that, my friend, is a damn fine pay-off for a year and a half of work.”