Healer Book 4 -- Chapter 47

(I may end up breaking this chapter up into two, since it's about 5,000 words compared to my normal 3,000 words, but I couldn't find a good stopping point while I was writing it -- so, we'll see. Anyway, enjoy!)

Chapter 47

“Uh… what?” he blurted out unconsciously in surprise at the voice in his head.  He knew it wasn’t Sadia, unless she had changed her voice dramatically, because it sounded like an older man with a refined and annoyed tone, but absent of any type of accent that he could recognize.

The Soul Harvester stared at him and tilted its head to the side slightly, as if confused about something.

“You must hurry and reinforce the pocket; we don’t have a lot of time before we’re detected.”  

Inexplicably, the Adversarial monster turned away and padded over to another corpse, before starting to “feed” upon its soul.  Both its dismissal and the way it seemed to expect that Thaden knew what the hell it was talking about was messing with his perplexed and frightened state.  As a result, frozen in indecision, it was all he could consciously do to stare at the massive shadowy lion-bear as it continued to go about its grim business.

He knew he should attack and stop it from permanently killing even more people that he wouldn’t be able to resurrect, but as the seconds passed and he couldn’t force himself to move, he realized that – as horrible as it was – he didn’t do anything because there was something that consumed his attention more than anything else at that moment.

Curiosity.

This Adversarial Elite monster seemed to be intelligent, or at least it mimicked intelligence fairly well, and it seemed to have some sort of plan.  He couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t just coincidence that all of these people were brought together in an enclosed space before it appeared, as if it had been orchestrating events until it led to this point in time.  The more he thought about that, the more sure of it he became, until there wasn’t any other explanation to it all. 

But there was one thing that he didn’t understand.

“What do you need me to do, again?  And why do you think I can do it?” he abruptly asked, causing the soul of the unfortunate victim near the Soul Harvester to stop being sucked toward its mouth as the monster turned toward Thaden.

“What are you talking about?  Reinforce the spatial pocket protecting the area before it collapses under the scrutiny of the System.  I can feel the energy and the capability within you, despite your pitifully low-Level disguise; I’ve never felt anything quite like it before, and since I doubt that there’s anyone else in this world that emanates the holy authority and power like you do, you couldn’t be anything else but a Director.”

Thaden’s head spun.  He’d have to investigate more about everything he was just told, but something caught his attention right away.  “Holy authority and power?  Do you mean Mana?  The Adversarial energy?”  He remembered being told many times that Mana was a product of the Adversary, and the System basically purified that energy for its own use.

“Adversarial—  What nonsense are you spouting?  Only those indoctrinated by the vile Assimilation System call it that.  Is this some sort of test?  Or are you simply reinforcing your disguise so that you can blend in better?  We don’t have time for this; we only have an hour or so before we’re out of time.”

The annoyance in the voice was clear, and the monster seemed to huff in irritation as it turned back to its meal. 

But the Omenic Drifter wasn’t done.

“Oh, yes, of course – a test,” he said with a chuckle without any humor behind it.  “We can’t be too careful, right?  Except, I need to test you one more time before I can risk my disguise like this.”  He did his best to stay calm, playing along while he dug for more information – but it was difficult, especially with the pressure of the Level Compression still pushing down on him.  “Once I reinforce the, uh, spatial pocket here,” he said, waving the general direction of the entire Hall, “what exactly is the plan afterwards?”

“The plan?  Have you gone native, Director?  It’s the same one we’ve had for millennia, and yet this is the first opportunity that we’ve gained to actually implement it.”

The monster paused for a moment, but when Thaden didn’t say anything and just stared at the Soul Harvester, he heard it sigh heavily.

Out of everything he’d seen and heard thus far, a massive, shadowy, bear-lion sighing in exasperation was probably near the top of the list of the craziest things he’d ever witnessed.

“Fine.  If it will satisfy you to the point where you’ll reinforce the pocket, then I’ll briefly explain the plan.  First, after finding an internal vulnerability brought on by one of the captive servants of this world, the goal was to exploit it by inhabiting one of the nexus points.  This is where I came in, as I gradually dominated the nexus point’s functions, before luring in proper subjects, which I was able to convert into potential vessels.  You were there when the final transition took place, but I assume you had other duties to attend to, leaving me to my work.

“Unfortunately for our plans, these vessels were structurally weaker than expected, so an alteration was needed.  After infusing my essence into their souls, which I did quite adeptly without their knowledge, I was able to nudge them in the direction that led toward this gathering, giving us plenty of resources to work with while also accomplishing our secondary objective.

“Now, with your help, we should be able to establish a permanent spatial pocket for freer access to our awaiting forces.  As for the next step, the seeding process in nearby nexus points has already been—wait.  What’s wrong?  Your heartbeat is growing arrhythmic; is it the System?  Has it already pinpointed our location.  Or—"       

The panic Thaden felt as he heard the plans of the Adversarial monster made his heart beat erratically, and despite his outward calm appearance, it apparently had been picked up by the Soul Harvester.  It looked at him suspiciously as it took a single step back in confusion.  Suddenly, its eye-slits narrowed, looking at him in what appeared to be suspicion, before they seemed to blaze brightly in anger.

“IMPOSTER!  WHO ARE YOU?”

He held up his hands up defensively.  “Whoa, what are you talking about, buddy?  We’re just fellow colleagues here, right?  Now, calm down and I’ll get to reinforcing the—” he started to say, but he had to fling himself out of the way of a 4-foot-wide beam of a destructive void-like substance that suddenly erupted from the mouth of the Soul Harvester.

“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BUT I WON’T LET YOU RUIN OUR FIRST CHANCE TO SAVE ONE OF THESE WORLDS!”

Save one of these worlds?  What is it talking about?  Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to ask, because even as his Incarnation of Protection appeared from nowhere to block the first attack, where it immediately disappeared from the damage that was inflicted upon it, another beam shot over his head as he rolled out of the way of the dangerous attack.  Even though it had missed hitting him with a direct hit, just being within a foot of the beam knocked off thousands of points of his damage mitigation.

“Stop!” he shouted, but it did no good as his head was nearly taken off by yet another void-filled beam of destruction. 

He had a feeling that if he tried to tank one of those hits, he might not survive; not only did those beams feel similar to the explosion that had nearly killed him earlier, but they felt even more concentrated.  It might not stop at obliterating his gear; his body would likely disappear along with it.

“Fine, you stupid motherfu—” he shouted in response to the attack, intending to run away for a few minutes while he formulated a plan.  Unfortunately, he just happened to look at where the beam had hit behind him, only to find that he was correct in his assumption; the attack was indeed strong enough to obliterate equipment and Human flesh, as the corpses it hit practically evaporated once it touched them.

Anger flowed through him at the sight of at least a hundred bodies that were no longer there for him to Resurrect, gone forever because this damn monster was throwing everything it could at him.  Thoughts of running away fled from his mind as he turned toward a new task, vowing to take the monster down before it had a chance to do any more permanent damage – even if it killed him in the process.

  Keeping on the move and utilizing every bit of his Celerity, Thaden took to the air, rapidly jumping from column to column in his bid to keep the Soul Harvester from hitting any more corpses with its devastating void beam.  While he jumped off the upright columns like some sort of super-athlete on one of those obstacle course-based TV shows, he refreshed all of his spells as rapidly as possible, including all of his normal protection spells and the ones that Wild Health Leach operated on, before adding a few others. 

Exceptional Repeat was now extremely overpowered, as it enhanced the magnitude of each repeated spell cast on him by Fortuity/20, which equaled about 450% as of now.  Exceptional External Stimulation was the only channeled spell he kept active, but with a chance of about 36% of increasing his Physicality and Celerity with each instance of healing, it was almost guaranteed that those two stats was start ballooning incredibly high in no time.   

And finally, he had the reserved spell, Exceptional Repast, ready for when he was finally able to get into range of the Soul Harvester, where the chance to drain its physical and magical resistance was now at 180%, so every 3 seconds it would get weaker and weaker.

With Regeneration, Healing Burst, Full Heal, and his various bonus effects kept in rotation to have him constantly healing himself, he finally took the opportunity to jump toward the beam-firing monster, trying to force it within his Leach range.

He saw the intelligent Adversarial Elite flinch back the moment Thaden was in range, but as he had expected, it wasn’t going to be a one-hit kill.  In fact, even as he stayed within range, the Soul Harvester appeared to be hardly affected by his attacks, despite what he estimated to be millions of points of damage being inflicted by his Leach spell.  When he took a split-second to wonder why, he realized that he was only doing extremely low amounts of damage to it, because his Absorb Health was barely working as it was supposed to heal him based on the damage he dealt. 

A quick use of Exceptional Defensive Denial was sent out toward the monster, which was supposed to cancel any protective spells or effects it had, but it didn’t seem to do anything as there was no change that he could see.  After activating both Exceptional Mirrored Vigil and Exceptional Repast, with the Soul Harvester now being hit by twice as many damaging Leach spells and with its resistances being slowly drained away, it was only a matter of time before he took it down.

Of course, that was when the beams stopped coming after him and the Adversarial Elite came for him personally.  It moved so quickly that he barely saw it as it suddenly appeared in front of him in the middle of a jump between columns, and the next thing he knew he’d been swatted to the floor, hitting it so hard that he crashed through the hardwood and cracked the stone underneath.  As for his own body, it had been beaten up as well, but his damage mitigation was able to prevent most of the damage before it gave out.  His inordinately high Health pool absorbed the rest, but he was still disoriented from the sudden powerful attack, and he struggled to get up. 

As soon as he started to stand erect, a paw the size of his torso slammed him back down, nearly depleting his Health entirely; fortunately, his ongoing healing spells and effects brought him right back up to full a second later.  But now he was trapped in a hole in the floor, and when he quickly spun himself around, he looked up to see a set of claws striking downward, intending to rip him into pieces.  Panicking, he swapped a spell out and activated Exceptional Aura of the Sentinel, which was an aura that dramatically increased the effectiveness of his defensive spells and then cast everything he could to protect himself.

Fortunately, with each single-target spell he cast, he was also activating the set bonus on his new equipment, which gave him even more damage mitigation in addition to everything else he had active.

Set Bonus (6): All previous Set Bonuses, all single-target spells you cast have a Fortuity/500 chance to heal you instantly for 100% of the target’s maximum Health, provide damage mitigation equal to 50% of target’s maximum Health that lasts for 3 minutes, increase all spell effectiveness by 100% for 3 minutes, and increases all stats by 10%; does not stack.

It didn’t stack, but each time he took damage and the damage mitigation from this bonus was drained, it was replaced whenever he cast another single-target spell.

The attacks he took over the next ten seconds as the Soul Harvester attempted to savage him with its claws and even bit at him a few times was one of the most frightening experiences of his life, as he desperately kept casting everything he had to keep himself alive. 

At the same time, he was distantly aware that the Adversarial Elite was finally taking some damage, as its resistances began to deplete due to Thaden’s Repast, and he could feel that if he could simply hold on, he would survive. 

That was, of course, when a paw suddenly slammed down on him and didn’t let him up, trapping him in place like a cat that had caught a mouse.  A second later, it opened its mouth and he saw what he could only assume was a void beam charging within it. 

With a thought, he had his Mirrored Vigil jump in the way of the beam once it was unleashed, which fortunately deflected it enough that it didn’t hit him, and a few seconds later, he had to create another Incarnation of Protection to sacrifice itself by blocking yet another one, but he was quickly running out of blockers.  Desperate, he used Dominate Spirit on the Soul Harvester, and despite its outrageously powerful spiritual will, he succeeded – for all of a quarter of a second.  It was enough control to get it to stop its attack, but once it shook off his control, it charged up another one. 

Nearly out of options, as his first two blockers were on deactivation cooldown, he used whatever he could find.  Out of the corner of his eye, he was able to target some corpses nearby, so he slotted in Exceptional Reanimation and activated it non-stop, ordering the reanimated Contenders to throw themselves in front of the incoming beam.

As dozens of them crawled to their feet, he knew they wouldn’t make it in time, so he started flicking through all of his Spiritual Auras, moving from Aura of Confusion, Aura of Rage, Aura of Fear, Aura of Sleep, and Aura of Silence.  Each one seemed to affect the monster for about a second before it became immune, temporarily delaying the inevitable beam slamming into him, while the Aura of Silence actually canceled the attack entirely – for a moment, at least.  He pulled out everything he could think of to prevent an attack from hitting him, from Negation Zone – which did nothing because the monster was too high of a Level to be affected by it – and Pacification Aura, which lasted for a half-second before it broke through the pacification effect.   

Fortunately, his delaying tactics lasted long enough for the first of the corpses to arrive, and Thaden was already creating more reanimated corpses for future protection.  As the first few threw themselves in the way of the void beams, practically piling on top of Thaden and the Soul Harvester’s paw keeping him down, the monster became even more angered and started slapping them away, keeping Thaden alive even longer.

And it was working, especially as the cooldown for his Mirrored Vigil expired and he was able to bring it back, doubling the damage he was doing via Leach.  With Repeat active, the both of them were dishing out millions of points of damage every second, and the resistances of the powerful Adversarial Elite were being hit hard by his continued use of Repast, meaning it was taking even more damage than it was in the beginning of the fight.

It's Health was draining quickly, to the point where it couldn’t ignore it anymore.  With a roar, it jumped off of Thaden, pushing him even further into his hole as it began charging yet another void beam, but this time, the monster kept charging it up, the power being sent into its eventual release extremely frightening.

He attempted to pull himself up and out of the hole, but he was too stuck inside it to move quickly.  As the Soul Harvester hit the apex of its jumping arc, it released a void beam at least three times as wide as the previous ones, and it felt at least ten times more powerful – if not more.

Instinctively knowing he wouldn’t be able to avoid it, as well as realizing the reanimated corpses, his Mirrored Vigil, and even his Incarnation of Protection wouldn’t be enough to stop it, he activated his Safe Harbor spell, and a spherical barrier appeared around him, extending 25 feet in diameter.  It materialized just in time to block the beam, and he started to exhale in relief, as he wasn’t sure if it would work; there was the stipulations that no other targets could be inside the spherical diameter, but he supposed that since the reanimated corpses and his Mirrored Vigil were simply his own spells and effects, they didn’t count.

Unfortunately, his breath of relief was abruptly cut short as he felt and saw the exterior of the Safe Harbor begin to flex as the void beam cut into it, before it shattered completely – which wasn’t supposed to be possible, he thought.  With no other choice, he activated his final, last-ditch spell to save himself.

Exceptional Indomitable Aegis. 

For 90 seconds, he was supposed to be completely invulnerable, but at the same time, all of his other spells and ongoing effects were canceled, which included all of the reanimated corpses – and his Mirrored Vigil.  He hadn’t used it before because it would effectively take away any method of his dealing damage, but now he didn’t have any choice.

As the beam slammed into him from above, he grunted in surprise as the force of it pushed him even further into the stone foundation of the Hall, but the barrier around him thankfully held against the abuse.  As the beam continued to try and obliterate him, he sensed that even this supposedly invulnerability spell was starting to unravel, as if it wasn’t being forced through but erased, but it managed to last against the seemingly unending attack. 

Once the Soul Harvester’s attack finally stopped, he looked up in shock to see the Adversarial Elite plummeting toward him, shadowy wisps tearing away from it, indicating how damaged it was.  When he looked at its nametag, he could see that it was nearly dead, but unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to finish it off while his Indomitable Aegis was still active.  He was ready to cancel the spell and kill it when the Soul Harvester suddenly seemed to regain some energy after the attack, as it landed above him, staring down into his eyes with a fury and confusion that actually made Thaden chuckle for a moment.

“How are you not dead?  What kind of abomination are you?”

It shook its head, before its entire body started to pulse, steadily speeding up over a few seconds. 

“I don’t know who you are, but I won’t have you interfering with the plan.  This is too important to let our foothold in this world disappear.”

The pulsing increased, both in speed and intensity, and while he struggled to get up and run – because the Soul Harvester gave ever indication of turning itself into some sort of bomb – a paw slammed down heavily on him; it didn’t hurt, thanks to his Indomitable Aegis, but he also couldn’t move.

I might survive the explosion, especially since I have both Death Ward and Resuscitation active, but if it is as destructive as I think it’ll be, then it could wipe out half the city – or more.

Thaden had a choice to make; safety or sacrifice.

With all of his protective and Health increasing spells canceled, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to survive for long enough to kill the Soul Harvester before he was squished to death if he abruptly canceled his Indomitable Aegis, even if he was casting spells at incredible speed.  On the other hand, he would likely survive if he did nothing but wait for it to happen, but every single member of Guilded Glory would likely have their bodies destroyed in the explosion to the point where they couldn’t be Resurrected.

He didn’t have long to decide, but he already knew what he was going to do.

Feeling his bones shatter under the weight of the Adversarial Elite’s paw once Thaden canceled his invulnerability spell, he ignored the pain as he rapidly rebuilt his spells, healing himself and increasing his Health pool while adding protection spell and effect after protection spell and effect.  He cast dozens of spells within the first second, and by the third he was as ready as could be; of course, he couldn’t breathe or feel anything below his neck, as while he was constantly healing himself, most of his body was essentially jelly by this point.

He watched as his Mirrored Vigil materialized nearby, adding to the damage he was already doing by healing himself, and he saw the last of bit of the monster’s Health begin to deplete.  The pulsing became frantic, speeding up so fast that each pulse was nearly indistinguishable from each other, and he worried that his efforts wouldn’t be enough.

As a thump of unimaginable power suddenly coalesced inside the Adversarial Elite, he closed his eyes, waiting for the explosion and the aftermath to hit him, pleading that his two anti-death spells would be enough to keep him from actually dying. 

When nothing happened immediately, he opened his eyes to see that the nametag above the Soul Harvester indicated that it was out of Health, and the pressure of both its Level Compression and its paw lifted off of him as it fell on its side, a corpse.  As it hit the ground, however, it exploded into a massive burst of distinct shadows, each of which shot upward and outwards, disappearing out of the spatial pocket that had hidden the area from outside eyes.  He wasn’t sure what those shadowy remnants of the defeated monster were or where they went, but that wasn’t exactly his problem right now.

Because as soon as the last of the shadows disappeared, the spatial pocket started to fade around the Meeting Hall.  It only took a few seconds for it to fade entirely—

—and the attention of the Assimilation System suddenly pushed him back down from where he was starting to stand up, scrutinizing every square inch of the area with indiscriminate intensity.

It felt like he was stuck there for hours, unable to successfully push back against the System’s attention, though he felt that if he really applied himself, he might be able to move.  However, he decided to simply weather the situation rather than call unnecessary attention to himself, which deliberately defying the System’s hold on the area would undoubtedly do. 

Finally, though, he felt the System’s attention wane and then leave, allowing him to get up, dust himself off, and look around at the devastation.  It was still night-time, but his Sunsilver Ring of Brilliance was bright enough to illuminate a large portion of Hall, even if he didn’t necessarily want to see it all right now.

Exhausted from the fight and stressed-out from nearly dying so many times in just the last hour, he began the process of casting Resurrection on every corpse he saw that was still able to be brought back, which was thankfully more than he had worried it would be.  While he was doing that, he vaguely saw Parties of Contenders starting to arrive to investigate what had happened, and to even pitch in to help.  While they couldn’t Resurrect quite as fast as he could, he wasn’t going to deny the help.  Even though those who came to help weren’t part of his Guild, they didn’t complain about bringing the people from Guilded Glory back; it was one thing to ignore those in need while out near a dungeon, or individuals that they didn’t really care about, but all of them had felt the powerful aura of Level Compression that had blanketed the city, so this was more like helping to pick up the pieces after a natural disaster.

Pushing through his exhaustion, he attempted to look for anyone familiar among the bodies he brought back to life, but there were so many all piled up and looking completely different when they were naked that it was nearly impossible.  As his Guildmates were brought back, he tried to answer their questions to the best of his ability, but none of them seemed to believe that he had defeated a monster over Level 700 by himself; he couldn’t blame them, because it sounded even more ludicrous in his mind when he thought about it, but he didn’t argue with them.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he felt a presence slide into his mind, prompting a brief smile to flash across his face before it disappeared when he brought another unknown Guild member back to life nearby.

“Thaden!  I’m glad you’re alive; I was worried when I felt the presence of that Adversarial Elite.  What did I miss—holy shit.  What happened?”

Wandering around the grisly scene of the Coalition Meeting Hall, Thaden recounted the events of the last hour or so, stopping every once in a while to Resurrect someone else.  “Right now, I’m just trying to thin out the numbers of resurrectable bodies while I look for anyone familiar.  I’m just worried that some of them were destroyed completely,” he said lethargically.

“Hey, I think I see someone familiar over there… Yes!  That’s Steven, alright.”

Overjoyed at finally seeing a familiar face, he ignored the horrendous state the Blade Stalker’s corpse was currently in, and brought him back as soon as the cooldown was expired.  The confused and hopeful look on the awakening Scout’s face was almost too much for Thaden and he nearly broke down, hoping that he would find enough of Corinna and the others that had exploded at the beginning to bring them back as well.

He did his best to comfort the first member of his Raid Party he’d been able to find, but he had to keep moving.  Thankfully, after finding Steven, many of the others in his core Raid Party were nearby and he was able to Resurrect them as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, the area he found them was also near where he had originally seen the Soul Harvester sucking out souls, so he ended up finding 6 familiar bodies that were ineligible for his spell, sadly leaving them unable to be brought back.

As for the Guild leadership and the others that had gone on the Raid Party to the Descent into Darkness dungeon, which included the Guild Leader, there was no sign of them at all.  After a few hours and despairing to find any hint of them, he made his way over to where he had last been with Corinna as the sun began to kiss the horizon, timidly illuminating the sheer devastation around him.  Ignoring those wandering the area around him, he began investigating the nearest structural columns where he’d last seen Corinna alive, as well as the floor, for any sign of her.  After a few minutes of searching, he felt like his world was going to collapse when he didn’t see a single thing that was identifiable and belonged to her.

“Don’t give up.  I’m sure there’s something around here; keep looking.”

Thaden appreciated her optimism, but he was already giving up hope.  Needing a break, and knowing that he could continue to cast even when he was sitting down, he plopped down against a structural column near a pile of corpses, using Resurrection whenever it was off cooldown.  After about 15 minutes, the sun finally crested the horizon and real sunlight finally chased away more of the shadows surrounding the gruesome scene around him.  Not wanting to see any more of it, he leaned his head back against the column, and tilted his head back, closing his eyes for a moment.  After a minute, he found himself wanting to fall asleep, so he forced his eyes open.

And then he was up on his feet a split-second later, as he spotted something identifiable splattered across the ceiling.  With a genuine smile for the first time since before the disastrous ending of the night, Thaden slipped his Wyvern’s Flight cloak around his shoulders so that he could reach his destination a little easier, before casting Exceptional Resurrection one more time.