Reborn Healer Chapter 5

Unlike the house I’d grown up in, sliding doors weren’t exactly a thing here. Reading our house’s encyclopedia back to front had embedded the fact that this world was technologically behind in my mind, but the little differences often slipped my notice until they were suddenly important.

For instance, our backyard door was meant to be magically locked, but Iryn had stopped bothering with that some time ago thanks to the relative safety of the area we lived in. I was somewhat familiar with the locking procedure, but I physically couldn’t reach the lock from where I was.

The wooden door shook under the impact of the wolf’s body, splinters flying and paint chipping. I considered trying to hold it off for a bit, but I physically could not put up the force required to hold a door against a teenager, let alone a wolf that I was sure had some magic influencing it.

“Iryn!” I called out, hoping she’d wake up. The red-haired woman my family seemed fond of employing was a ridiculously heavy sleeper, so I didn’t have much hope. 

I didn’t know what her capabilities were in a fight, but she at least had a full adult body. I could… well, I did have magic, but it wasn’t the kind that was terribly useful in a fight.

After the second rattling crash from the door, a piece of it shattered, creating a hole through which my still-enhanced eyes could see the wolf’s fur.

Yeah, I’m not standing my ground here. I ran for it. Iryn’s room was upstairs, which was further than I would’ve liked it, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

As I ran, my mind raced with the bits and pieces of knowledge I had assembled from the books I’d read so far. Magical beasts weren’t common in rural cities because of their relatively low ambient mana according to the encyclopedia, but they were everywhere in the nearby Ayasi forest, which I had to assume this wolf had somehow escaped from. They were basically mutants and could possess intelligence up to that of a human’s and even use magic on some occasions.

Basically, I couldn’t count on this wolf being anything like a normal one, which meant any knowledge I could dredge up about wolves was probably going to be wrong.

Behind me, I heard a sickening crunch as the wolf smashed its way further through the door. A spike of adrenaline shot through me, accompanied by something else.

Fight.

The voice in my head was not quite my own. It was still recognizably me, but the thought had come unbidden. It was surprising enough to me that it actually stopped me in my tracks.

Where had that come from? That had been my thought. I could feel the emotion within me, fear twisted into determination, but… how? I had been hot-headed in the life before, but never like this.

This felt like instinct.

Fight.

Standing still cost me critical moments. With a final splintering impact followed by the thud of paws on wooden ground, the wolf was in the house.

I turned around, a strange sensation encompassing me. It was as if I was watching the scene play out from a bird’s eye view. Me, a young toddler at the bottom of the stairs, facing down a wolf three times my size.

And somehow, despite my undeveloped body, despite the lack of practice I had in this form, I moved. For moments, it was as if I had been wearing this body for decades. My frustratingly unresponsive, uncoordinated limbs responded to me like an athlete’s.

The same fiery instinct pushing me to fight seared through my mind again, this time providing me a vague, blurry image that shifted with my movements. As I tried to get back up the stairs, a brief flash of phantom pain sliced through my mind.

No. Not that way.

Heeding the instinct, I took only a single step up and then slid downwards just in the nick of time. The wolf leapt straight over me, sharp claws and glistening fangs smashing into the stair I’d been trying to get to. I rolled down, wincing in pain as I landed poorly, and got to my feet.

FIGHT.

The same instinct that had just saved my life screamed through me again, piercing screams of danger lighting up my nervous system.

I did the same thing I’d been practicing for the last few months, well-traced grooves lighting up with mana.

“Barrier!”

My enhanced senses dropped as I cast the second spell—there was no way for me to hold my first Initiate-tier spell and cast a new one at the same time.

At the last second, I adjusted its parameters. I’d wanted a wide one that could protect all of me, but I listened to myself instead. I angled the Barrier spell sideways, directing it perpendicular to how I would’ve created it.

Barrier lvl 2 -> 3

The wolf’s open maw met the edge of the spell. While the forcefield was unfortunately always locked to having dulled edges, the wolf brought its entire weight down on it, essentially smacking itself in the mouth with a baseball bat and knocking its body off balance. The Barrier shattered under the force of the impact, and I threw myself out of the way as the wolf hit the ground, howling in pain.

It was bleeding heavily from the point where it’d hit the shield, its front teeth scattered across the ground. The wolf’s breath was a horrible rattle, and one of its legs had broken, bone poking out through fur matted with blood.

I looked at the pitiful animal, its eyes still glistening with hate. It looked back at me and tried to snarl, only succeeding in coughing up more blood.

It was then that I finally heard frantic footsteps from upstairs followed by a loud exclamation that I hadn’t heard before. If I had to guess from the tone of it, Iryn was saying something along the lines of fucking hell.

The wolf’s eyes tracked her, and anger overtook it. Forgetting its injuries, it pulled itself to its feet, stumbling as its own exposed bone pierced it further, and it looked up towards her—just in time for a hurled knife to catch it between the eyes. It was dead before it hit the ground.

“Gods above,” Iryn cursed, taking the steps down two and a time, jumping to avoid the broken step and the dead wolf at the bottom. “Ren. Are you okay? I’m sorry. I came as quickly as I could… huh?”

She knelt down next to me, taking me into her arms. I hadn’t spoken much with the woman who served a purpose somewhere between babysitter and maid, but I was pretty sure she hadn’t been practicing knife throws while I was at home. As brilliant blue eyes affixed me with a look that was less concern and more of an assessment, I found myself suddenly wishing I had taken the time to figure out what exactly it was she could do.

“I’m fine,” I told her. “You can put me down. I’m not hurt.”

Iryn did so, still looking at me strangely. “…alright. Can you get yourself to bed? I have to clean this up before your father returns.”

“I can do that,” I said absentmindedly.

Truth be told, even Iryn’s unnatural competence with that knife paled in comparison to the biggest burning question I had right now, which was that of the instinct that had saved me multiple times.

I’d ignored my instincts more times than I could count on Earth, and it hadn’t led me anywhere good. This time… this time, I was listening to them, but had they always been this strong? This immediate? I hadn’t gotten into any real fights back on Earth, so I couldn’t know, but that had felt good. I had outmaneuvered a wolf as a goddamn three-year-old. Even as an adult, doing that would have been crazy exciting. This was another level.

Looking inwards revealed a potential answer. My second core was at peace for the first time. It felt… right. The same way that that my mage core had when I had been on the brink of forming it.

Alone in my room, I started meditating. Rather than try the same exercises I had been using for gathering mana, I tried to recapture that sensation of pure instinct. I thought back to the danger. Having my back against a wall (figuratively, at least) and being forced to make a decision. Not about looking within, but reacting, adjusting, using the world around me.

Familiar, intense warmth surged through my veins. This time, though, I didn’t black out. What little pain was present was sweet in the way a muscle felt when it was sore from exercise.

The system congratulated me once more.

You have advanced a warrior core to the Beginner tier.

Skill learned: Reactive Instinct [Beginner]

Skill learned: Internal Harmony [Beginner]

I did shout then, which prompted another rushed set of footsteps as Iryn sprinted to my door. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw me just in my room.

“Be quiet, okay?” she asked, giving me a look.

“Sorry, Iryn,” I said, unable to hide my grin.

A moment later, two more notifications came by.

Reactive Instinct lvl 0 -> lvl 4

Internal Harmony lvl 0 -> lvl 2

So that was how I was supposed to gain skills! No wonder I’d been struggling to do so until now.

All complaints I’d had about my two-core situation fell away in an instant. This was nothing short of incredible. My brain was rife with possibilities. I had no idea how this had happened, but I was damn well going to make good use of this.

That was for tomorrow, though. Tonight, I needed to sleep.

#

Blue-cloaked Aria ran through white snow, the lone spot of color against a desolate background. Behind her, a horde of wolves pulling carts of soldiers and mages chased, firing spells and arrows at her when it was safe. It should have been a mathematical inevitability that one of them would hit, but none did.

She turned, throwing a knife that traveled further and straighter than any logic said it should have, and as she did, her eyes landed on me.

Aria froze.

“Ren?”

The scene changed.

A familiar door. The one hiding the basement. The lock was gone, forcibly smashed off alongside the doorknob. It swung open. On the other side was darkness.

I stepped forward.

#

I gasped awake.

“What was that?” I murmured to myself.

That had been a dream, but it had been far too realistic. My dreams back on Earth hadn’t been like this at all. They’d been incoherent messes that could charitably be interpreted as drug trips. This had been more like a vision of sorts.

One thing was for sure. When I checked my new core in the morning, it still desperately wanted to enter our basement. I still wasn’t getting it open anytime soon, though.

There were additional complications beyond that. Vallis returned in the morning and spent a good while talking with Iryn.

They found me reading in my room like they often had. Vallis had a perplexed expression on his face, while Iryn’s looked fairly serious.

“Ren,” my father said, his voice halting and quick like he was talking to a patient.

“Vallis…” Iryn said.

“Right. Forgive me.” He shook his head, then spoke more softly and evenly. “Ren. Do you have a moment?”

“I have nothing but time,” I said, putting the book down. It would never stop amusing me how naturally Vallis took to a toddler having diction far beyond his years.

He peered at me over his glasses. “Iryn tells me that you’ve learned to cast magic. Is this true?”