Healer Book 4 -- Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Thaden couldn’t help but stop and stare, unsure of what exactly he was looking at.  Where the previously massive, wooden building had been was now a completely blown-out structure, where he could see the reinforced frame and ceiling, which appeared untouched – and that was it.  The walls had somehow been completely removed, which he could only assume was because of the explosion, with only the perimeter and internal columns still standing.  Even in the darkness of the night, he could see them clearly, as the magical lights that had once been inside the Hall had been scattered around along the outside of the former building, creating a confusing mix of multicolored beams illuminating the area.

If that was all, it wouldn’t have been so shocking; what it was that caused him to stop and stare was the pulsing cube of glowing, transparent shadow that throbbed like a heartbeat as it encompassed nearly the entire interior of the Hall.  It was more transparent toward the top of the cube, which allowed him to see that the internal columns were still there under the ceiling.  It seemed to be denser toward the bottom, though, so he couldn’t see anything at all inside the lower half, as it was cloaked in shadow. 

What the—?

The Omenic Drifter again wished that Sadia was able to talk to him at this point, because he could really used some insight on what exactly he was looking at – if she even knew.  Unfortunately, all he knew at this point was that this shadowy cube was where the strengthening Level Compression he could still feel was coming from.

Of course, it was at that point when he stopped and stared at it when it “pulsed” again with a stronger pressure against him, and he saw the cube grow until it almost completely filled the hall this time.  He didn’t know what the it was, exactly, but he was smart enough to know that if he didn’t do something to stop it, the cube would continue growing in both strength and size, and it was only a matter of time until it encompassed the entire city – and beyond.  With everyone he saw nearby suppressed by its Level Compression, it would swallow them up within hours or less.

I guess this is as good as time as any to see if I can destroy it.

As much as it could be dangerous to anyone nearby, Thaden didn’t really have any other choice at this point.  If he ended up killing anyone still alive nearby, he would have to Resurrect them later with an apology.

He cast all the spells on himself that would activate his Leach combo, and he started walking toward the shadowy cube, hoping to see it dissipate as it was randomly targeted by the spell’s effects.  Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that he was doing absolutely nothing to it, as it appeared unchanged, and to make it even more obvious his attacks were futile, there was no nametag anywhere around the massive cube, meaning that it wasn’t a valid target, anyway.

With only a momentary hesitation, which was cut short as he saw and felt another “pulse” as it grew another few feet larger than it was before, he walked up to the shadowy shape and tried to peer through, but even with his Ring of Brilliance, he couldn’t penetrate the darkness one bit.

With as many protections as he could possibly stack on himself, and with his Incarnation of Protection available to take any massively damaging attacks, he reached forward toward the edge of the cube, ready to pull back at the first sign of any threat.  As his fingers touched the edge, they passed right through the exterior of the dark cube as if it didn’t even exist.  Pushing his hand further through it, there wasn’t even a modicum of resistance; it was as if it was an illusion, or simply extremely dense smoke with no physical substance to it.

Taking a deep breath, he cautiously stepped his entire body through the invisible wall, prepared to leap back out if it turned out to be some sort of trap…

…only to find that he’d walked into a nightmare.

Thaden’s Sunsilver Ring of Brilliance shone brightly though the Meeting Hall, which was surprisingly fully visible in its entirety.  He had been fully expecting there to be a dark miasma that would conceal everything inside the cube, but it seemed as though it was only a screen, a camouflage for what was really going on inside. 

Thaden nearly collapsed under the weight of the Level Compression that abruptly washed over him, as it seemed that its intensity had been somewhat muted outside of the Hall.  Fortunately, he’d had time to accustom himself to the pressure out there, and after the initial shock – and thanks to his 90% reduction in suffering the effects of Level Compression – he was able to move relatively freely.

Not that he wanted to, because as far as the he could see throughout the entirety of the building was death, death, and more death.  There were splatters of what he assumed were liquified body parts spread across many of the columns, with most of the macabre art show focused around a few key places, which he could only assume was where those who were screaming had exploded – such as Corinna – but that wasn’t all.  Naked and mutilated bodies were piled up in spots where they had been flung due to what had to be multiple explosions, as there wasn’t a stitch of clothing or equipment left anywhere visible; just as his own equipment had been essentially been vaporized, so too did everyone else’s.

But the real question, as he turned away and gagged as the sight of so many bodies and the smell they gave off permeated his senses, was why the bodies hadn’t been vaporized along with their outer clothing.  Even considering that very few of the Contenders inside had been wearing their armor or normal equipment, he knew that he’d seen plenty of them still wearing their accessories such as necklaces and rings; those types of things could be quite powerful and robust, much stronger than the flesh of the Human body.  As such, if even those had been destroyed, he thought that their bodies should’ve been obliterated as well.  They had obviously been severely injured before they died, and blood covered most of them, but it was almost as if they had been hit by the shockwave of the explosion rather than the force of the explosion itself, which was very confusing to him.

As he looked around, he saw that almost all of the corpses he saw appeared to be resurrectable, meaning he still had hours in which to do so; it was a relief, because there was still a chance that he might find enough of Corinna or the other Guild leadership and bring them back before it was too late.  The only problem with that was the fact that the Level Compression was still present, and it was getting stronger by the minute; without taking care of that first, trying to resurrect anyone might end up with their deaths again almost immediately, as he wasn’t sure if anyone their Level would be able to withstand the pressure without dying.

He had to find the source of that pressure and destroy whatever was emitting it – whether it was the Adversarial Elite or something else.

It only took a single step to the right, where he could avoid the piled bodies near him, to find the source of the pressure.  And the sight of the source also gave him an idea of why the bodies hadn’t been completely obliterated in the explosion, and perhaps even the reason for this entire thing in the first place.

A hulking mass of a four-legged, 15-foot-tall, shadow-shrouded monster, with its only clear distinguishing feature a set of vibrant red slits that he supposed were eyes that were thankfully facing away from him, bent down its long neck over a corpse.  As its vague-looking mouth bent hovered over the poor naked man, who was identified as Gerry and was deceased-yet-still-resurrectable, a glowing, smoky substance was suddenly pulled from the body of Gerry and sucked into the mouth of the monster. 

Thaden looked in horror as he finally got a clear nametag of the horrific entity that appeared as if it was literally sucking out the last vestiges of life from its victim.

Soul Harvester – Adversarial Elite

Level 734

The Adversarial Elite was back, and it was a higher Level than before.  Not only that, but as he froze in fear, as if he was afraid that any movement would call attention to himself, he could only watch as the last of the glowing smoke finished draining from the corpse of Gerry after about 20 seconds.  When it was finished, there was a visible pulse in the shadowy body of the Soul Harvester, which then seemed to expand the overall size of the cube surrounding the interior of the Hall.

What was even worse, if such a thing was possible, was that something had changed in the nametag above the monster.

Soul Harvester – Adversarial Elite

Level 734 -> 735

Oh, no.  It’s getting stronger by the minute. 

With panic-inducing horror, when he looked at the poor corpse of Gerry, he discovered that not only was the poor man no longer resurrectable, but his entire nametag had disappeared.  From what he could tell, as far as the automated processes of the System were concerned, the man wasn’t just dead – he had essentially stopped existing at all.

What?  Did that just happen?

Thaden didn’t move as his mind attempted to process what the Soul Harvester just did.  Given its name, it quickly became obvious what the monster had done, but the entire process was so outside of his realm of knowledge and expertise that he had trouble actually understanding. 

His attention was pulled back to the monster as it moved on to the next dead body, bending its head down to pull the “soul” or whatever it was out of the corpse.  While Thaden was still mildly panicking, being confronted by a monster that was not only a higher Level than it had been when he first encountered it, but could consume the souls of Contenders to grow stronger, his thoughts began to focus less on the how and why of everything that was going on and more on what he could do to stop it.  Because it was more than clear that he was likely the only one that could do that, as the System didn’t seem to even know it was here.  He could only assume it had something to do with the smoky cube surrounding the area, which not only kept anyone from seeing in, but also seemed to keep the System from actively observing whatever was going on.

Thaden wracked his brain on what more he could do to try and kill the powerful monster; since it was a few hundred feet away, his Leaching attacks didn’t quite reach it, so at the moment he had no idea how effective they would be.  While he didn’t have as high of a Physicality stat, which directly influenced his Health pool and therefore how much he could heal and deal damage, with the bonuses he had to healing thanks to his new equipment set, he was actually able to deal more damage than he had before – by a massive factor. 

Physicality – 2,635 (2,674)

Celerity – 2,659 (17,007)

Mentality – 8,838 (94,969)

Personality – 851 (824)

Fortuity – 3,660 (9,060)

Mana Cost Reduction (All): 25% (540%) Capped at 95%

Casting Time Reduction (All): (540%) Capped at 95%

Cooldown Reduction (All): 75% (540%) Capped at 95%

Healing Increase (All): 133% (2,620%)

Damage Mitigation Increase (Defensive): 116% (1,620%)

Spell Effectiveness Increase (All): 60% (1,380%)

When all of the Plates were attached, giving him an additional 54 boosts to the stats on each Lucky Vagabond piece of the set, as well as creating a total of 10 full set bonuses, his Celerity had shot up to over 17,000, making him three times as fast as before, and his Mentality was at nearly 100,000, giving him nearly 1 million Mana in his pool.  But the real winner, at least as far as he was concerned, was the bump in his Fortuity, which was sitting at over 9,000, which would influence a lot of Class spells, either with higher magnitudes or higher chances of having them trigger.

And it was those spells that he wanted to investigate to see if there was something that could help him in this situation.  When he had been Leveling-up, there were a total of 5 separate occasions where he’d been asked to select new spells, but he had been in such a hurry that he’d not been able to do anything but pick all 3 spell choices each time, since he still had plenty of extra selections to spend.  As a result, he’d only gotten a brief glance at each of the 15 new spells’ names, not even their descriptions, before he started heading toward the Hall.  While he wished that he’d actually looked at them before this, he knew that he hadn’t really had the time or the focus to do so, as it had taken most of his attention to simply attach his plates on the quick jog to the location. 

Now, though, he quickly pulled up the first new spell from the list, hoping to scan through them looking for the spell or spells that might see him through this nightmarish encounter.

Exceptional Health Renewal (Single Cast): When cast upon a single-target, Exceptional Health Renewal floods the target with healing energy that—

Before he could read more than just the very first of Exceptional Health Renewal’s description when he felt a disturbance in the Level Compression aura in the Hall.  His mind froze for a second before he closed the window with the spell information, revealing that the Soul Harvester had stopped sucking out the soul of its newest victim and had turned straight toward him.  As the vibrantly sinister red slits that formed the monster’s eyes bored into him, Thaden felt his legs turn to jelly as a blast of pressure slammed into him.  Pushing through the force attempting to make him collapse to the floor in a puddle of flesh, he managed to firm up his legs and stood his ground as the powerful Soul Harvester took what looked like calm and  deliberately slow steps in his direction, like a predator creeping up on its prey.

It was only when he felt like his outgoing breath was taking minutes to exhale that he realized he had subconsciously applied his extremely high Celerity to work, making it seem like the world was slowing around him.  His even higher Mentality was able to handle the sense of time difference easily enough, so he had plenty of opportunity to feel the sheer power that emanated from the monster padding his way.

Without being able to take his eyes off of it, Thaden was finally able to give a little bit more definition to the shadowy shape of its body.  If he had to compare it to anything, it would be a cross between a bear and a lion; its body was large and bulky, but with a feeling of weight and strength behind it, while it also had a long tail that swished back and forth like a cat, and mane of inky tendrils surrounded its head, giving it even more of a creepy vibe than before. 

As it stepped on a corpse underneath its shadowy forepaw, the body was smooshed and it splattered off to the sides, as if it wasn’t flesh and bone but a partially melted stick of butter.  The Soul Harvester didn’t seem to care, however, as it only had its eyes laser-focused on Thaden.

Thaden waited in anticipation as it got closer, unable to move even as he wanted to, as he estimated that it was only a dozen or so feet from walking right into the range of his Wild Health Leach spell.  Tensing up as it raised its paw to pass into his damage-inflicting perimeter, he held his breath…

…only for the Soul Harvester to stop and put its paw back down, safely out of range of the Omenic Drifter’s attack.

“You sure took your time getting here.”

Thaden’s brain tried to malfunction, because the mental communication was shocking.  It wasn’t the content of the communication that was surprising, but the source…

…because that certainly wasn’t Sadia speaking into his mind.