Reborn Healer Chapter 28

Master-tier.

The words didn’t feel real. Up until this point, practically everything I’d dealt with in and around Liaren had been between Beginner and Adept, be it monsters, wild animals, or humans. It had gotten to the point where I mentally classified “regular life” into the basic tiers. I hoped to get past them one day, of course, but for the time being I was here and that was well within bounds.

Of course, Vallis was at least Master-tier and probably higher, seeing how he was able to casually cast the Highmaster spell Rebind Soul on me, and Aria was probably similar, but they had always operated on a different level.

The difference between Initiate and Adept was already pretty stark. If it hadn’t been for extenuating circumstances and underestimation, I would have easily lost every fight against an Adept I’d taken in terms of raw power. The gap between Adept and Master was far, far greater than that.

I did the sensible thing and joined Matias and Mizuki in running the hell away. We had strayed a pretty good distance away from our rope, so we had to hit the ground at a dead sprint. I cast Swift Step on myself and used a couple of Dashes, keeping up with both of the others, who had movement skills.

It was interesting how warrior cores specialized, I noted idly. I had assumed that they were all uniform at first, giving them much less flexibility than mage souls, but it was clear that everyone with a warrior core I’d met had a fairly different set of skills.

Maybe I’d mistranslated the word for myself. It seemed like these cores were generally catch-alls for abilities that influenced mana inside one’s own body as opposed to mage cores…

Pay attention, I chided myself. There was no time for introspection on the nature of magic right now when we were actively fleeing from a tidal wave of slime.

Mizuki was the fastest, followed by Matias. I had a stark realization that my sustained speed just didn’t match up to theirs. My skills and spells were a lot more inclined towards agility and short bursts rather than a sprint like both of them were managing. Even combined, I wasn’t going to be outracing them.

The half-elf girl leapt, her physical prowess evident as she easily cleared the gap between floor and rope, catching it with one hand and pulling herself up without even using her legs.

“C’mon, doc,” Matias called out to me, waiting before he made the jump. He had his hands held out, clearly indicating he was going to boost me. “Women and children first.”

I snorted. Whether or not that had been intentional, I couldn’t help but find the statement a touch absurd.

The gesture was much appreciated, though. While I could jump and Dash to adjust it, I wasn’t very confident in my ability to do so and also catch a rope that was currently dancing wildly across open space thanks to Mizuki’s movements on it.

I stepped on his laced hands, jumping as he provided me a boost. I flew further than I thought would, rising high into the air. Flowing Harmony guided me as I reached out with both hands. Catching the rope also went smoothly, rough cord digging into my palms. Thanks to my age and training, I was still relatively light with a disproportionate amount of strength, so I was able to hang on without too much difficulty.

A moment afterwards, the rope shook again as Matias also jumped on. It creaked as we swung, Mizuki and I both grunting as we adjusted our grips, but it held, and so did we.

“Climb fast!” Matias called. “I’m goin’ to cut the bottom so it can’t suck the whole rope in!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I looked down to see Matias scaling the rope as well, simultaneously trying to work his hunting knife out from his belt.

The slime was getting close enough that I could hear it now. The crash of its body against the rock surface reminded me of a wave breaking against a cliff, just thicker.

When it entered visual range in the dimness, that comparison only grew stronger. It looked like a recording of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami I’d seen once. Just like the muddy, debris-filled waters that hadn’t stopped rising, the wave of dark slime advanced unceasingly, covering every part of the cave under us. Rocks, gems, and other detritus glinted off its body as it flooded the area underneath us.

How big was this thing?

“Shit!” I heard Matias cry.

My heart leapt into my throat, my panic only worsened by the rope suddenly going taut and straining.

Looking closer, it seemed he hadn’t been able to make it high enough to cut the rope out from under him. The slime had risen up and caught him by the legs.

Empathic Insight triggered then, clearer than ever. I could tell exactly what he was thinking.

A memory flashed between us, barely a couple of months old.

I know where I’ll meet my end, he’d told me. You’ve got a life ahead of you, kid.

“Matias!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

“Get out of here!” he cried. “Go!”

He cut the rope. Before my heart could beat again, he was gone, swept away by the slime.

It went slack again, the pent-up tension in it releasing and sending us swinging this way and that, but both Mizuki and I stayed on.

Higher above me, Mizuki was continuing to climb up hand over hand, already more than halfway out.

“Matias fell in!” I shouted at her.

“I know!” she called back, continuing to climb. “That thing’s a Master-tier! You’d need a team of Adepts to fight it, not just me and you! I can’t even do anything to it!”

There was a cold logic underlying her words. If we weren’t enough to take it down, then going lower to try to save Matias would be futile at best and lead to all three of us dying and being unable to report this to the city, getting more people killed.

On the other hand, this was Matias. I’d practically grown up with him. He’d taught me half the swears I knew in this language. We’d joked, chatted, broken bread together. In a very real way, he was one of the people I was closest to in this life.

I’d watched as the few people I cared about on Earth disappeared one by one. Was I going to do the same now?

It was certain death down there. But maybe—just maybe—there was a chance I could get something done.

For a moment, I was torn by indecision, but that burned away once I remembered a critical fact.

“Get the guild party!” I called up to her. “Call them back! They can kill it!”

“Yeah, we—wait a second. Why are you talking like you’re not coming with me?”

“Be fast,” I said, silently casting Overheal on myself. “I’m counting on you!”

I let go of the rope.

Mizuki’s cry was somewhere between confusion and the very familiar despair of someone who had lost everything keeping their life structured. Though the sound alone wasn’t enough to tell me, the powerful emotional pulse was plenty.

I had the wherewithal to regret putting her into that situation before I made contact with the slime.

Though it looked like water, hitting it hurt a lot more than high-diving into a pool did. Though I tried to hit it at an aerodynamic angle, the impact still knocked the wind out of me, shaking the mana barrier that Overheal had established for me. My knees buckled as I sank into viscous slime. One of my ankles fractured, but I had a Basic Heal ready for it immediately.

The slime didn’t seem to notice that I’d fallen into it. Then again, it didn’t really seem to notice much of anything. If it weren’t for the fact that both Mizuki and Matias had identified it as a monster, I would have assumed that this was just something like a landslide.

Whatever it was made of, it was a good deal thicker than water. It was significantly harder to move at all in the slime, even after I enhanced my strength with an overcharged spell.

By that same vein, though, I wasn’t sinking very fast. It was a struggle to keep my head above the surface of the slime, but I didn’t want to drop. Whatever this was, I highly doubted it would go down well in my lungs.

I treaded slime, getting thrown this way and that by the flow of the being’s body. My Overheal was ticking down, the mana I’d invested as a layer of protection quickly disappearing. The cause, as far as I could tell, was twofold.

It was nearly impossible to see in the darkness. Odd parts of the slime were glowing dimly, but everything moved too hectically to follow. It was clear to me now why the ground had been so smooth. It was for the same reason that Matias’ scanner had pinged so oddly, and I would bet money that it was the same reason we hadn’t seen any bodies from the failed attempts before us.

The slime was scraping the cave floor clean. All of the stone, mineral deposits, and corpses were somewhere inside this thing now, and they were all whirling around its insides like it was a blender.

Said material was hitting me. Not everything flowed through the slime in the same way, and I kept on getting the sensation that I had just been hit by a sack of bricks. I didn’t dare poke my head inside to try to get a look, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually was getting hit by bricks.

The second reason was the slime itself. Even when I wasn’t getting hit by debris, Overheal was gradually ticking down. I couldn’t feel it yet, but when I raised my arm to try to get some leverage on the tumultuous surface of the slime, I could see that it was starting to eat through the healer’s clothes Vallis had provided me.

I forced myself to be calm, keeping myself afloat and trying to avoid incoming debris. The issues with acid and dangerous floating objects went double for Matias, who’d already been in this mess for a while. 

I had to find him. What came next… I hadn’t thought of that yet. One thing at a time.

While I didn’t have the same kind of top-tier surveillance skills that Mizuki apparently did, I did have one that could compete with her in one specific field.

I reached out with my Empathic Insight, extending my senses as hard as I possibly could. While there were a decent chunk of people who practiced hiding their emotions or just staying hidden from skills, Matias’ proficiency in that department was low enough that I was sure he wouldn’t be trying to hold his emotions back.

Searching should have been easy. I looked for fear or pain, which were a pair of emotions I had gotten pretty familiar with during my time healing in the clinic.

Yet somehow, I found nothing. While I’d thought the slime had no feelings of its own to empathize with, its sheer existence as a large being encompassing all of us messed with my perception skill.

I strained harder, changing the parameters of what I was looking for. It was always harder to use Empathic Insight in the heat of battle, but it was definitely possible with enough focus—

My Overheal wore down to nothing, and my entire body lit up in fiery pain as the acidic slime I was quite literally submerged in started to eat away at me. Barely a second later, something slashed through my side, biting deep into my flesh before sending both of us spinning away.

My concentration snapped instantly on everything I’d been holding up. Enhance Strength, the framework of Overheal, Swift Step, and even both Empathic Insight and Flowing Harmony disappeared. Pain overwhelmed me, and the holding pattern I’d managed also crumbled. I sank under the surface of the slime, my scream swallowed by semi-liquid slime that burned the inside of my mouth.

Spells and skills and training had made me a terror in my own right, but with the full-body shock I’d been thrown into, all of that slipped away. In the moment, I was just a twelve-year old kid.

The slime was unforgiving. I tried to spit it out, but theseemingly liquid substance took on a much more solid quality when I was trying to get rid of it, sticking to the inside of my mouth and trying to eat me from the inside out.

Even with my eyes squeezed shut, they burned. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I was going to die here and—

Shut up, I scolded myself. You wanted to be better than this.

I had made my decision, and like hell was I going to let myself die terrified.

Everything hurt like hell, but I had experienced pain before in spades. I could adjust. I knew what it was like to have my soul torn apart, and while this was painful in new ways and was a much longer-lasting sensation, I could regulate myself.

Find the silence. My mother’s words. A mantra of hers during training. Listen to the part of you that remains cold when the fire burns.

Flowing Harmony slowly slid black into place.

I started casting healing spells on myself, patching up my skin even as the slime actively ate away at me.

Heal lvl 1 -> lvl 2

Though my nerves were still screaming at me, needles of white-hot pain piercing every corner of my body as I reconstructed dissolving flesh, I could find the quiet spot in my mind. I could close in and fortify myself.

I was out of oxygen, and I involuntarily inhaled, sucking slime straight down my throat.

To everyone’s surprise, the acid slime was not breathable.

My consciousness was starting to dim at the edges. I had no way to force air into my lungs.

Even as I started to choke, I stayed calm, finding my center. I had dealt with people losing oxygen before. They were usually unconscious the entire time I was operating on them, yes, but the important part was that I knew how choking killed. In this instance, the two threats were slime melting me from the inside out and losing oxygen to my brain.

The former could be dealt with through simple healing. As to the latter… I shaped an Adept-tier Heal, guiding the revitalizing power through my arteries. The brain needed oxygenated blood to respirate and create ATP, which then powered the rest of the body. In this world, it was also a regulator for the mana provided by the soul. All of that put together meant that it consumed a lot of energy.

To oversimplify things, without oxygen, my brain would grow tired and die. I couldn’t make oxygen, but I could target specific parts to heal.

Spell by spell, I kept myself alive and conscious. There was a limit to what I could do, and I was going to start suffering from healing fatigue eventually, but I was stable.

Next order of business. I had to find Matias.

Even though I was fully submerged in the slime and melting alive, I felt calmer now than I had before I’d started to fall. My focus was sharper, and I found myself able to use my Empathic Insight with a narrower lens.

Empathic Insight lvl 5 -> 6

There. Faintly in the distance, I found a thread. There was no terror there, and while there was pain, it was muted. The emotion most strongly embedded in there was resignation.

That was him. It had to be.

I opened my eyes, pushing through the pain and activating my mana flashlight. It lit up a wide range around me. Surprisingly, the slime itself seemed to be semi-transparent, and the light went a long way when it was from the inside. The light caught in its body, which looked to be a sickly greyish green, and I properly saw the sheer amount of crap it had picked up  for the first time. Boulders, gems, the odd weapon, and most chillingly, skeletons of shapes both human and not drifted through the slime, all of it in constant turbulence.

Having the light was a blessing, though. I could at least identify where I needed to go and what I needed to dodge in the process.

Swimming through the slime was a no-go. Besides the fact that the skin on my fingers literally melted away with each stroke, I just couldn’t get enough leverage on the slime. It was semi-solid in a way that worked against me every time.

I didn’t let that faze me. I still had my weapons with me, after all. Pushing my lifeline forward through the ooze, I simultaneously drew on Split the Shadows and Nightmare Forged, using my shadowy claws to tear through the slime in front of me, infecting it with shadow magic to clear a path. While I couldn’t deal any significant damage to a being the size of the slime, the Nightmare Forged aspect was influential enough to temporarily dissolve some of it enough that I could use the hardened slime behind me as a backboard to push off of and Dash.

Split the Shadows lvl 0 -> 2

Just like I had the first time my life had truly been in danger, I found an equilibrium of spells to use. 1, 2, 3, Dash. 1, 2… 14, 15, Heal. 1, 2, 3, Dash.

My world narrowed to the path before me. I couldn’t clearly make out Matias’ body through the chaos, but I did sense him well enough to carve a path towards him.

Heal lvl 2 -> lvl 3

My skills and spells worked in perfect harmony. When a piece of debris came towards me from any direction, my Sixth Sense flared and I protected myself with a barrier or blew a hole in the slime large enough to dodge it.

Split the Shadows lvl 2 -> 3

Nightmare Forged lvl 4 -> 5

I swam forward through the intestines of a monster, actively dissolving from the inside out and choking on the same acid, and I had never felt more alive. My mind, body and soul were in perfect harmony, working to maximum efficiency to keep me alive as I tore my way towards Matias.

Bit by bit, Dash by Dash, I grew closer. Matias’ emotions were growing fainter even as I knew I was getting closer to him.

Empathic Insight lvl 6 -> 7

Damn it. It was time to try everything I hadn’t already attempted.

Firebolt cleared a small path throught he slime, but it also superheated the part surrounding me, increasing the amount I had to heal myself. Heat Ray did the same, just worse. Create Water did quite literally nothing.

Force only hardened the slime, so a Fireball was a bad idea. With nothing else working, I pulled out one of the trump cards I usually didn’t have the mana to cast.

Doubletime.

Similar to the effect of what I would have called a haste spell, my perception of time sped up alongside my body, doubling my speed and thus making the world seem half the speed to me.

It was a terribly complex spell, and it required a deep concentration. I was still burning, the pain almost unbearable, but the part of my mind responsible for understanding pain was not the part operating now.

My cycle’s margins grew thinner, but I continued forward and forward until I saw my target.

Matias was not looking good. A good chunk of his skin had already melted away, exposing muscle and bone to the slime, and though his armor remained, it didn’t look like he had long.

Dash. Split the Shadows. Throw my lifeline. Repeat.

Split the Shadows lvl 3 -> 4

Nightmare Forged lvl 5 -> 6

Three more cycles. Two more cycles. One more—

The torrents of the slime’s body shifted just before I made contact with his torso, and I only managed to grab his leather-clad arm instead. The motion tore the decaying limb partially out of Matias’ socket, but I cast an Adept-tier Heal at max power immediately, restoring the connection.

I was nowhere near out of the woods yet, though. I needed to heal both of us now, and I was running very low on mana. That last Heal had taken enough out of me that the edges of my eyes were fuzzing for non-acid reasons, and managing both of us was proving to be too much for my overtaxed body.

I closed my eyes, my awareness less in the moment and more embedded in the sheer perfection of the flow state I’d reached.

I will not die here.

Yet my vision continued to fade, my consciousness only aware enough to tell that I had established a new, much more desperate cycle. 1, 2, Heal, 3,  4,  5, Basic Heal, 6, 7, 8, 9, Heal, 10, 11, Basic Heal. 1, 2…

And then it all went black.

A core is evolving!

Mage core advancing to Adept…