Reborn Healer Chapter 19

Adrenaline didn’t affect me the same way it once had. I’d undergone two very near-death experiences as a child, and it had permanently shaped how I approached life. Training never brought me the kind of terrified rush it had in the early days, and even now, I felt oddly disconnected from the situation.

I wondered if a psychologist would have called it trauma. I sure didn’t.

My Flowing Harmony snapped into existence with cold clarity. Rather than the controlled rush of emotions I’d had the first time its predecessor skill had triggered, my senses simply sharpened, making me aware of everything from the sensation of Mizuki’s heartbeat to the sound of boot-clad footsteps outside.

If I had to describe the sensation, I might have called it feeling alive.

The girl in question seemed to have already fully recovered from the healing fatigue. Even with a worm spitting venom and squirming inside a vein just minutes ago, she seemed to be fine now. She scrambled to one knee, lifting enough weight off of me that I could roll to my feet as well.

“Shit,” she muttered. “They shouldn’t be here this early.”

My Sixth Sense triggered again, and I ducked out of the way as another terrifyingly fast arrow pierced straight through two walls.

Glass shattered, one of the jarred tinctures Vallis and I had prepared exploding into a shower of shards, harmlessly pattering against my back.

Sun shone in through the holes the oversized arrows had created, illuminating the shelves of herbs and books behind me. Both of them had been aimed at center mass. I couldn’t tell if they knew exactly where we were or if they were just going for broke shooting randomly.

Either way, it wasn’t safe here.

“Stay behind me,” Mizuki said. “I can handle this. They’re not here for you.”

That as good as confirmed my silent suspicion that she’d been running from someone. Who this was, I had no idea, but they weren’t messing around.

I had to give her some credit. Though she’d been particularly standoffish earlier, her personality had noticeably improved when she was no longer actively dying, and she’d even moved to save my life. Taking the responsibility of dealing with these people was also ostensibly heroic.

It did, however, ignore the fact that we were currently in my clinic.

“They’re still shooting at me,” I pointed out, scrabbling over to the clinic bed in a half-crawl to retrieve my net. “This is my part of town. I’m participating. Stop asking questions and deal with this.”

There was only one door here in addition to a washroom. Our supplies were largely here, and there was no second exit that I was aware of, which meant our options were very limited.

“Three attackers,” Mizuki said. “Two at the front door, one above.”

I raised an eyebrow. It had been clear from the moment she’d pinged on the same sense of danger that she also had a warrior core with similar skills to mine, but I had nothing that would let me detect how many people were in a given area, let alone their positions.

The existence of that as a skill was a bit concerning. If she had something like that, then so could the enemy, which would explain why they were sniping us through the walls.

Mizuki didn’t seem worried about it, though, and my Sixth Sense didn’t immediately ping.

“I’m going to kill the two outside,” Mizuki declared.

I frowned. “Surely someone has alerted the city guard by now.”

“I doubt it.” With that line, she rose and sprinted towards the door.

Another arrow screamed her way as she ran, but she avoided it without a second thought, angling her body in such a way that it whistled right under her arm.

I cursed, casting Augment Perception and Overheal on myself. The latter was one of the spells I’d picked up over time from Vallis’ spellbook—it created a thin mana barrier between my skin and clothes, which would hopefully be good to tank at least one hit.

The moment I moved to change my position, my Sixth Sense flared again, but it faded before another arrow could come through. Moments later, I heard shouting outside—two male voices and Mizuki. Judging by the whip-crack, they were fighting.

Taking advantage of the distraction, I made my way out of the clinic room, net in hand and bloody scalpel in back pocket. I entered the waiting room just in time to see Mizuki crash through the front door, wood splintering as she transferred her momentum into a roll, stopping herself against the desk I typically manned while Vallis was healing.

She dove to one side as another laser-quick arrow tore through the desk, this one nearly hitting her. As she rose, Mizuki thrust her arm out to the side, cracking the whip. At the end of its motion, the chain whip coiled and snapped straight, forming a long sword.

Holy shit, I thought, watching as it started to glow.

A man stepped into the clinic, brusquely kicking his way through the wreckage of the door and interrupting my appreciation of quite possibly the coolest weapon I’d ever seen.

My next holy shit was for a different reason. The man who stepped in was clad in dark purple. The same color as the new city guards. Unlike the guards I’d seen on my way in the city, however, he was fully armored, up to and including a full metal helmet that obscured his face. Everything except calloused hands was covered by plate.

Tall enough he nearly reached the ceiling, the stranger also carried a hefty sword and a shield, both of which he leveled at us. The latter had a number of scratches and burn marks on it, some more recent than others. I could guess where they’d come from.

His head swiveled, surveying the room before he settled on me.

“It’s the wrong kid!” he called out gruffly. “Don’t shoot the shorter one!”

The wrong kid? Come to think of it, Mizuki had mentioned running a pain in the ass kid earlier. They might have been referring to the same person.

I paused for a moment, unsure of what to do. On the one hand, there were three of them. This man in particular looked unbeatable in a fight, there was another guy outside with an arrow who might have been able to see through walls, and there was a third on the roof whose capabilities I didn’t know. Also, this guy was wearing the colors of the city guard, which likely meant that this operation was sanctioned by the Lord Prince of Liaren.

On the other, there was something exceptionally fishy about this. A strange girl had shown up in my clinic, dying from poison, and she’d been shortly followed by three people trying to kill or capture her.

When presented that way, the choice was obvious. Maybe Mizuki had done something worth chasing her for, but I had no information and I doubted I was going to get more out of these guys. Besides, she was my patient. There was no point in healing someone just to let them get beat up right afterwards.

I started walking towards the armored guy, dragging my net with me. They didn’t see me as a threat, so I did my best impression of a very confused twelve-year old healer. It was easier to do than I wanted to admit.

“Stay where you are, kid,” the armored man said. “This doesn’t involve you.”

I kept going. “Have you seen my father?”

He turned, his faceless helmet managing to portray an expression of disbelief. “Kid, are you listening to me? Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” I said, keenly aware that Mizuki was frozen and staring at me, flabbergasted. “Have you—“

Midway through my sentence, I moved, casting the Dash spell.

This was my personal favorite of the Initiate-tier “buff” spells I’d learned. Unlike Swift Step, which was a passive boost to my speed, Dash was a one-time sharp burst of speed. It was the closest I’d ever gotten to feeling like I was flying—with careful concentration and calculation, I could hurtle myself omnidirectionally instead of just going in the direction that I was moving in, which the spell worked on by default.

Right now, I aimed to sneak by the armored guy’s arm. My vision blurred slightly as my spell took hold, shooting me forward. I released the net from my right hand as I approached him.

My Sixth Sense flared again, but there was nothing I could do when my path was already in motion. The armored man had his own fighting awareness, and he fended off the net with his shield as he dropped the sword with the other and snatched me right out of the air, grabbing me by the scruff of my neck.

I hadn’t expected the net ploy to work, so I was already moving, twisting my body just so and raising my hands to touch his.

The moment I made contact with rough, battle-weathered skin, I cast Anesthesia.

Spell: Anesthesia

Tier: Adept

Type: Healing

Requires concentration. Renders a target you touch unconscious and numbs their senses. Ideal for complex surgeries that require multiple operations.

During the course of healing Mizuki, I had exhausted the majority of the mana batteries I was able to keep on my person, so this Adept-tier spell was one I had to concentrate on myself to keep running.

I rarely got to use Anesthesia for medical purposes. Since it was Adept-tier, the amount of mana it took to upkeep was steep. Even now, I had to drop the other passive spells I’d been concentrating on to use it.

Beyond the mana cost, it was also quite complex, which in turn meant that I couldn’t properly operate on a patient I’d put under. That was why I’d used local anesthetic to treat Mizuki.

The reason I had wanted the spell, though, had been for reasons exactly like this one. I’d read in the spellbook that there were ways to resist it just like there were with poisons, curses, and all sorts of debuff-style spells, but the bulky armored guy clearly hadn’t expected someone of my size and age to hit him with an Adept-tier anesthetic.

He paused for a second, swaying on his feet. His grip on me loosened, and I hit the ground running. I only needed to make contact with him for the initial activation—afterwards, the spell would hold for as long as I could concentrate.

The armored man had been blocking my sight outside, so I wasn’t sure exactly where the bowman was, but there weren’t that many places that he could be. I knew this street pretty well by now.

With the last of my spare mana, I cast a Barrier in the direction I’d been feeling the most danger from. The Beginner-tier spell was all I could manage with Anesthesia active and Overheal still passively draining a bit of mana. Combined, they far outweighed my passive mana regeneration, and I only had so many spares.

Still, it was a good precaution.

Sure enough, the order to ignore me lasted about as long as it took the archer to realize I’d just knocked his swordsman out. My Sixth Sense flared, and I stepped aside—only for it to shout at me again as a sharp impact devastated my Barrier, shattering the forcefield and skimming off of my shoulder.

Even as a graze, the arrow—if it could be called that—smashed into me like a truck. I spun backwards, catching myself in a low crouch before I could fall. My concentration remained intact only thanks to my Flowing Harmony, my body and mind working in concert but separate enough that the hit couldn’t rattle me.

My Overheal had blocked the remainder of the hit, but the physical force was still going to leave a bruise.

I did, however, now know where the archer was situated. He was sniping at us from the open window of the derelict building across the street from us, the one that had been abandoned when the owners of the bakery there had fled north a year back. My instinct had sent up a signal flare pointing there, and when I tried to reach my mind out that way, I caught the thread of an emotion.

Was that fear?

Hm. Well, whatever it was, I caught enough of it to trace it back to its source.

Behind me, I heard an incredible crash that sounded suspiciously like part of the clinic’s ceiling caving in and clicked my tongue.

Vallis is not going to be happy with this.

My first priority was dealing with this archer, though. I had been wondering why nobody had interfered with this so far, but looking around the street, it became clear. It was mostly devoid of people, but that wasn’t because of anything suspicious. The presence of people and more specifically strong emotion was palpable.

Empathic Insight lvl 0 -> 1

Now that was definitely fear. Stalls had been deserted, windows closed, doors locked. People had recognized the threat posed by three armed attackers all presumably a higher tier than any of those around here were.

I was a little disappointed. Vallis and my clinic was a mainstay of this community. We had healed almost everyone on this district, let alone this street.

Then again, a lot of them didn’t even have combat-oriented skills or spells. I couldn’t fault them for not wanting to deal with an armored titan.

I threw up another Barrier as my Sixth Sense flared again, feinting a dive before expertly pivoting back and running out of the way.

Two people with warrior cores fighting was a strange game of cat and mouse. Our skills readjusted to each other, leading to an interplay where I was ducking and weaving in impractical, dance-like patterns as my opponent’s skill tried to adjust for the same.

This time, I did manage to dodge the arrow, but it was a close thing.

I huffed out a sigh of exasperation. It was pretty unlikely that I was going to be able to close the distance without him getting multiple free shots off on me. There was a good thirty feet between me and his building, and he had cover. This was a losing fight.

Alright then. I could change things up.

#

Harrison nocked another arrow, gnashing his teeth in frustration.

This was supposed to be an easy job. One on the roof to keep lookout and abscond with the unconscious body if they were able to take their target alive, one bruiser to fight her directly, and him in the wings to take out Mizuki’s kid accomplice.

He didn’t even know why his bosses needed the girl. Harrison had been given a letter with a handful of gold coin, a reminder of what he owed the south, and a picture of his family. The letter had included a name, a physical description, and a designation of her and her accomplice as a target.

“I should’ve never taken an agreement with them,” he muttered to himself. “Fucking elves.”

Everything had gone tits up. The girl was supposed to have been poisoned, but she’d managed to avoid their notice with an unnatural ease.

Once Quinn had tracked her down to the clinic, it had seemed like a sure victory, but now Jackie was unconscious or dead on the ground, Quinn was getting the piss beaten out of her inside the half-collapsed clinic, and the wrong kid was dodging Harrison’s arrows like a heavens-damned assassin.

That was the weirdest part of this whole thing. While he’d been given briefs on what his targets could do, they were completely wrong about the kid. For one, his skin was a lot tanner than the ghostly white he’d been led to expect, and for another, he was unnaturally fast. It was clear he was a healer-type mage, which made since he’d apparently apprenticed under the noble healer Vallis Kane, but he was also acting like he’d aced imperial combat training even as he kept casting spells.

This was so annoying. Getting set up had even been a pain. Harrison had been forced to knock out a squatter in the one building he could use as a safe vantage point.

Even as he nocked another arrow, trusting in the yew longbow that had claimed the lives of many an illegal mage and his archer’s intuition, the kid reacted with unnatural awareness, backflipping over the line Harrison would have attacked him on and retreating… right behind Jackie’s prone body.

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Harrison complained. “Seriously?”

Jackie’s armor was too bulky and the kid too small. There was no way he could get an angle on him like this, and while he could try to ignore him and go for the girl instead, his sense of motion was pinging like crazy on the two actively fighting inside. Without Quinn actively spotting for him, he risked hitting the wrong person.

He ducked back into cover, thinking on it.

“Ah, fuck it,” he muttered. “I’ll go for it anyway.”

If he had to chose between Quinn, the sarcastic bitch who wouldn’t even make a token effort at paying for everyone’s drinks, or his wife and daughter, he knew who mattered more.

Maybe the distraction would be helpful. The girl the elves were after was a cockroach when it came to slipping away from death, but fighters always got overwhelmed when there were too many variables. Quinn knew that well.

Drawing one of his special high-output arrows, he peered back into the window, pulling back the bow.

Just in time to see that weird brown-haired boy standing again. He had a bloody scalpel in his hand, and it was pretty clear whose blood that was. His other hand was held out, probably to cast another one of those stupid-ass shields.

Quinn didn’t let that or Jackie’s blood shake him. He took careful aim, sharpening his senses so he could catch everything—

And then he caught a word, spoken high and clear. Quinn had learned some of the arcane tongue so he could more effectively deal with mages. This was an incantation he’d heard once or twice before.

“Fireball!”