Reborn Healer Chapter 34

Thaddeus fired immediately. He had no interest in continuing the chatter beyond his confusing declaration, which I was actually annoyed with.

His spell was only visible for a moment, dark, shadowy magic bursting out of the tip of his staff before vanishing into the ether. Danger Sense gave a warning indicative enough of its location for me to dodge it, while Harmonic Awareness meant that I was aware enough of my immediate surroundings that I could make out what that spell was.

The invisible beam took a jagged, lightning-like form, arcing towards me but unable to adjust to my sudden Dash aside. It hit a stone pillar instead, slight cracks spiderwebbing out from the point of impact.

Given how powerful the spell felt, the amount of damage it did to the rock was underwhelming. I suspected it would have a much more devastating effect if it were to hit me.

In response, I fired a Firebolt through the middle, first targeting Thaddeus’s exact location.

He kept his cool, emotions so stable I could barely get a read on them as he casually leaned to one side, holding his staff in front of him like a spear. The bolt of heat and force slowed, swirling around the now-glowing mana crystal in his staff until it disappeared into it entirely.

Thaddeus twirled his staff. Halfway through the rotation, the staff tip ignited with power, and I found my own spell being thrown back at me.

A Firebolt was easy enough to block with a Barrier, which I threw up as well.

“The defensive mage exam is the other direction,” Thaddeus said. “You got any real spells in there?”

“Why are you after my friend?” I asked. “What did you mean there’s a price on her head?”

“Oops,” Thaddeus replied with a shit-eating grin. “Did I say that?”

He sent a pair of the same spell he’d used the first time at me. I cast shielding spells to supplement my dodge this time, but they pierced holes through them and continued onwards without resistance.

“Interesting magic you have there,” I said. “You want to answer my question.”

“No, not really.”

I experimented with some more offensive magic, by which I meant exactly Heat Ray and Fireball. The latter was the best at inflicting damage to the other pillars, but they were almost as sturdy as the first test’s granite block had been. A well-placed Fireball could get most of the way to destroying one, but not anything in its surroundings.

As we traded spells, I was forced to admit that Thaddeus was a pretty solid mage. His staff had some property that let it absorb lower-powered spells fired at him, and for Fireballs, he used layered, well-placed shields to diffuse the blast and make it manageable.

His offensive options were primarily just spamming the shit out of the same offensive spell, though every now and again he came at my cover with a different set of spells that knocked the stone over with startling efficiency.

As much as I wanted to face-slap his arrogance out of him, I had to admit that Thaddeus was a pretty solid mage.

He was also frustratingly unwilling to explain what he’d meant earlier. Though I was getting decent at hiding what I was feeling, it must have been obvious that I was desperately curious about what his motivation for chasing after Mizuki was.

“Poor Red,” Thaddeus taunted. “Not looking so sure of yourself now, are you? All that special treatment and you’re just another kid.”

“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” I said, emerging out from behind my cover.

There were a number of explicit rules to this engagement, but they’d also noticeably left some things out.

Predictably, Thaddeus fired another set of his primary spell at me, which I blocked with a twice-layered Shield rather than trying to just raw dodge it. Still out in the open, I proceeded forward towards the barrier. He fired more spells, breaking through my shielding, but I was at the barrier now.

As a distraction, I hurled my lifeline at him. Thaddeus yelped in panic, hitting the floor and rolling behind cover as he saw me unleash it. I hadn’t even really been aiming for him.

Sure enough, the forcefield between us prevented my body from coming through, but I had made my way through a much tougher barrier before.

Shadow burst forth from my hands, and I tore the forcefield apart, carving a hole large enough for me to fit through.

I took a step backwards and pivoted hard, diving through the hole I’d made before the proctor could replace her own spell. As I did, I called my lifeline back to me.

Thaddeus took advantage of my temporary vulnerability, firing the same spell at me. Like I’d gotten used to, I activated a Shield in its direction—but then it suddenly curved, sparking over my shield. Still in midair, I tried to twist to avoid it, but the best I could do was raise my hand and take the blow there.

I rolled as I hit the ground, attempting to discern what he’d just done to me.

As I got to my feet, my hand broke out in mind-shattering pain. That was barely an exaggeration, too. I could hardly think through how painful it was, like my soul was getting ripped apart all over again but through my left hand. My vision was unusable, faded to a hazy mess of stars and red.

My lifeline returned to my hand. I was operating on primal instinct more than any logical process. There was a Ren Kane whose body was moving through the incredible pain, but it wasn’t me. My perspective shifted, and I watched as I took my spear and cut my left hand off.

The pain ended so quickly that it nearly jarred me into shock, but I snapped back to reality just in time to actually block the next set of what I now concluded were torture spells or something of their ilk.

I grudgingly admitted that Thaddeus had made a good play, essentially conditioning me over the fight to treat his spells as one-directional shield-piercers that could be ignored if sufficiently shielded against or if I moved out of the way.

I threw my lifeline again, adjusting to the shift in balance that missing one of my hands brought. It bought me enough time to kneel down and pick up my bloody severed hand, which was still twitching. I brought it to the bleeding stump at my left wrist and cast Heal, content with a slightly sloppier job for the time being just to get it back on.

Magic spells that worked on living tissue tended not to work if said tissue was removed from the body. It was a quirk of how mana traveled through living bodies that usually didn’t matter but in this case critical. Once I got my hand back on, feeling restored to it quickly enough, now without the disabling pain.

I called my lifeline back to me, grabbing it with the bloody, freshly reattached hand.

“What the fuck is that?” Thaddeus said, stumbling back in shock. “The shit?”

“You’ve never seen anyone cut their hand off?” I asked, advancing on him. “Maybe you need to practice a little more.”

I cast Doubletime, sharply increasing my own speed. Though Thaddeus was a good ranged mage, he absolutely wasn’t ready to deal with someone with my speed and agility. Unlike most combat mages who used this kind of spell, I had the warrior side to back it up, and I wove through the defensive net he wove with ease, getting up close and personal and striking him in the throat with the blunt end of the spear.

Fun fact about spears: not only the sharp part is dangerous. Plenty of people used quarterstaffs, nunchuks, and other blunt weapons. The blunt end of a spear was pretty much a staff.

Thaddeus folded, clutching his throat. I followed it up with a savage kick to his gut. Even though I still couldn’t put much weight behind my strikes thanks to my younger body, I had a whole ton of power and doubled speed to use.

I got on top of the taller teen as he dropped, wrenching his staff away from him to keep him from being able to fight back. Even if I didn’t weigh that much, having a spear pressed against one’s throat with someone’s full body pushing it down had to be unpleasant.

“Participant Red,” the proctor’s voice came. “Refrain from damaging or stealing your opponent’s magical focus, please.”

“Not intending to,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up, though.”

Her explicitly calling me out for that was implicit validation of everything else I was doing, which was convenient.

I pulled on Split the Shadow, creating claws from my bloodied fist. I actually had no idea whether this skill would be able to pierce through skin, but it definitely looked like it could, which was good enough for me.

“What was that about having someone come to find my bleeding body?” I asked again. “You wanna repeat that?”

I let the pressure give just a little bit, giving him enough breathing room to speak.

“Fuck… you.”

“Not happening, sorry,” I said. “If you want to fuck someone, I’d recommend someone of your own age. Though I guess you’re not finding much luck with that face.” To punctuate the point, I punched him in the nose. “I’d advise you start talking. We still have…”

“Four minutes and thirty seconds,” the proctor provided helpfully.

“Four minutes and thirty seconds,” I repeated, pressing the spear down hard again. “You can surrender if you want, but we’re still in the same group. If you don’t start talking, I will make it my duty to find you and ruin the rest of your examination. Hell, if you leave, I’ll find you after that. Your family has a school, right? I’ve heard talk of it a few times. I’m sure you’ll be there one of these days.”

I punched him in the face again, an Enhance Strength amplifying it this time. To be honest, that one was just because punching him in the face felt good. There was no ulterior motive.

Thaddeus held his hands up, gagging as he tried to choke out a word. I eased up enough for him to speak.

“F-fucking fine, okay? I’ll talk, just let me breath.”

“Don’t worry, I’m a doctor,” I replied. “I know what I’m doing. You haven’t choked yet.”

He might have suffocated just a tiny bit, but he wasn’t experiencing a high enough level of hypoxia for me to care.

“They put up some requests on our board, okay?” he said. “Just said they were looking for a girl named Blue. Offered a bunch of cash to capture her and added some names that’re supposed to be around her. Yours was one of them.”

“They?” I asked. “And what’s your board?”

“Are you stupid? The school’s posting board,” Thaddeus said. “Like the ones the city and guild have.”

“Oh. Right.” I assumed that was what Matias had pulled the deep obsidian quest from. I hadn’t actually seen the board. “Who put that there?”

“Fuck if I know, dude,” he said, eyes wild with a combination of slight oxygen deprivation, panic, and embarrassment. “It had a seal and everything on it. I wasn’t double-checking who it was from.”

“That’s a lie,” I said coldly. “Maybe you don’t know exactly who it is, but you have an idea.”

“I’m not bullshitting you!”

“Yes you are.” This guy was not good at hiding his emotions at all. I’d thought he was, but that was just because he’d managed to remain composed for most of the fight so far.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Who’d said that again? Some Earth guy who got punched and punched people a lot, I assumed. I was watching that very principle play out in fromt of me.

“It’s some other guild, okay? I really don’t know any more than that.”

I assessed Thaddeus again.

Empathic Insight lvl 9 -> 10

If he was intentionally lying, he was doing a better job at it now.

That was good enough information, though. Another guild was after Mizuki but didn’t know her real name. Judging from the lack of details, they didn’t know what she looked like, either.

All the more motivation to get her into the guild.

“Do you want to surrender now?” I asked. “Save you some trouble that way.”

I let go of him and stood, offering him a hand up. He took it—and immediately pulled downwards, using his superior size and leverage to knock me off balance as he reached for his staff.

“The fuck?” I grunted, shifting my own weight. 

He was trained in close-quarters combat, but so was I, and I was pretty certain my teachers had been a fair bit more aggressive. Before he could get me to the ground and recover his magical focus, I wriggled out of his grip, clawing at his face with my bloodied hand, and impaled him on my lifeline, the reinforced spear cleanly sliding in through his left side and out through his right.

“Medic!” I called out.

The proctor repeated my call at a much higher volume, adding, “This test has now concluded. Do not approach your opponent, participant Red.”

“You got it,” I said, itching to pull the spear out of Thaddeus and bring it back to my hands. 

With how clean the cut had been and how close I was to him, I could probably heal him now, though some of the internal stuff could get tricky. At Adept, I could heal most flesh injuries that didn’t involve special poisons, magical aftereffects, major organ deaths, or limbs that I couldn’t immediately reattach.

That said, while I could get away with some minor healing on myself and pass it off as a regenerative spell, outright healing another grievously injured player was counterproductive to my goal to not become a guild healer confined to one room six days of the week.

I had to give props to those confined healers, though. The one who arrived to heal Thaddeus was there in less than half a minute, and he got to work quickly, using thick gloves to pull the spear out while simultaneously applying an ointment to the wounds that I recognized as a compound of various rare plants and a mineral ore that was fantastically useful for clotting blood. 

Shortly afterward, he got to healing Thaddeus properly. While his speed wasn’t quite on par with my father’s, he was in and out in under a minute.

Thaddeus groaned, sitting up and looking down to where a great deal of his own blood had congealed on his body.

“This portion of the exam has concluded,” the proctor said. “Please exit the arena.”

I called my lifeline to my hand again, cleansing it and my own flesh with a Create Water.

“We’re even,” I said, looking at Thaddeus. “Don’t come after me and I’ll do the same for you. Understand?”

Mutely, he nodded.

“Good. For your own sake, I hope we don’t see each other again.”

After Thaddeus, I was paired against a blue-haired girl with twin wands by the name of Flare who specialized in what I ended up concluding was force magic. She showed no indication of wanting to beat the shit out of me for any purpose beyond doing well in the test, so I didn’t break the barrier between us and instead tried to hone my actual spellcasting.

Flare was a lot better at offensive spellcasting than I was, and even when I started throwing my spear, I was forced to admit that I’d probably ended up on the bottom in that engagement. If it was a real battle, things would have been different, but treating every fight like it was for my life was a quick track to accidentally decapitating someone.

At least I got a skill level.

Call Lifeline lvl 5 -> 6

The third round was against someone who looked like he’d barely passed. I wiped the floor with him just using Firebolts, doing my best to not actually hurt him that badly.

With those three rounds, this section of the exam was done. There were a few others, but when I presented my identification, the proctors told me that it was unnecessary for me to take them. It was a little disappointing, but they explained that those segments were for more accurately gauging those who were clumped too closely in the median range of abilities.

“High and low end is usually easy to tell apart,” one of them in particular said. “Says here you’re in the top five prospects this year, so I think we’re good here.”

On that ego-boosting note, I was sent to the group-testing phase where a number of people were already milling about, waiting for the final phase to begin.

Mizuki, predictably, had finished before me.

“You’re late,” she said.