Illuminaria [LitRPG Fantasy Healer Adventure]

146/61 - Performing a Miracle

"You are needed. If you can trust us, we can save them," Suku's mental plea had declared. By 'us', Joe immediately knew she meant herself and the goddess Murrcee. He was generally wary of the words 'trust me', but in this case, he really did trust Mercy Suku.

Without hesitation, Joe sent back, "What do you need?"

"The soldiers by the shore, you must get amongst them. Immediately!"

The urgency in her telepathic voice was ominous. Joe locked onto the spot a little over halfway there and used the [Talisman of the Medic] to jump to it. He heard Finn bellow behind him, followed by a sound similar to breaking glass. Joe didn't wait. He jumped a second time, appearing in the middle of the squad. As soon as he finished the teleport, he reached out to the Mercy.

"I'm here!" Joe shouted with his thoughts.

"Do you accept us?"

"Yes! Hurry." The bodies around him were fading fast. Many were already lifeless, mostly those in the middle, where the lowest-level soldiers had been. Only the faintest flickers of vanishing red glints smoldered in the rest of the troop. Even the aresa guardian was now down on one knee.

The powerful priestess's answer was so much more than Joe could have anticipated. A juggernaut of mana, power, life, magic, essence, faith, energy, and more slammed into him from the heavens. He fell to his knees as the warm yet unbearable pressure exploded out of his body. As it washed over the fallen soldiers, he could see life infusing into the scorched, blackened skin, flaking the dead crust off to reveal pink beneath the char. The deluge of power was not painful, yet at the same time, Joe felt like he was ready to explode. The radiance even began to kindle sparks in those that had been dead.

He keeled over among the downed troopers as the wave continued to rush out of him. He was completely overwhelmed by the cascade of power flowing through his body. As he rolled onto his back, a briny, wet huff blew into his face. Opening his eyes, Joe looked into the face of the concerned chimera. Somehow, the hulking predator had tiptoed through the fallen forms to stand directly over Joe. Finn rumbled his two-toned growls at the sky and the men around them, as if to challenge either to try to get through him to the man he was protecting. Joe was barely able to control his own body, but he managed to place his hand on a webbed-clawed toe beside him, expressing his gratitude to the sea-hunter.

After an eternity, or more likely just a few seconds, the waves of healing subsided, and the connection to the Mercy ended. The soldiers began to sit up. Almost universally, they first looked at their hands, arms, or some other part of themselves. Their faces were filled with disbelief, unable to fathom how the blackened, charred skin was gone, and they were alive after Cauldrakon's hellish attack.

Then they shouted in alarm at the sight of the massive black and white chimera standing in their midst. Joe tried to get his mouth to work to tell them the prime was an ally, but no sound came out. All the effort accomplished was popping his ears. With a helpless dread, he watched the guardsmen snatch up their weaponry, preparing to attack.

"STAND DOWN!" bellowed a powerful baritone voice. Joe managed to flop his head to see the dwarven manitou jogging toward the group. "This one is not an enemy of Fort Coral," Hogam Goldboar decreed. "Leave him be and resume your formation. The storm beast's assault is far from over."

The dwarf was near enough now for Joe to see the spiritualist clearly. The studs on his leather armor turned out to be dozens of metal disc-shaped charms. Names, dates, and tiny runes were carved into each disk. He also had a bandoleer that was filled, not with knives or darts, but bones. His ever-present swarm of translucent phantoms followed in his wake.

"So, yer the Joe I've been hearing about," the shamanistic caster stated, placing a heavy hand on Joe's shoulder to keep him seated. "The spirits that visit Mahq have been gossiping about you all week. Don't try to get up yet," the manitou stated. "You just channeled way more power than your essence should have. Rest. We have a few seconds before things get lively again."

Joe managed a nod before flopping back down into the wet cobblestones, letting his gaze slide past the black wall of akhlut hide to where the two great behemoths were battling over the ocean. Both of the titans were looking pretty ragged.

Every few seconds, a tentacle would lance into the Margen avatar, tearing off swaths of seawater. At the same time, the great sword hacked off tentacles that dissipated into streams of black clouds. Both of the leviathan-sized creatures reformed, though a little smaller each time. Each had shrunk considerably since Joe had exited Vexor's bunker.

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With a thunderous boom, the two finally sundered each other. Margen unraveled into a great falling column of water while the storm beast splintered into blobs of thick black gas. As they came apart, so too did the last of the typhoon. Between one moment and the next, the sky began to lighten, and the winds quieted.

Joe breathed a breath of relief, but Hogum shook his head. "It's not over yet. It's never that easy."

The falling smoky scraps were not dissipating but tumbling out of the sky, only to splash into the ocean or spatter onto the beach in a growing pile of greasy-looking goop. The congealing blob, now about the size of a house, began to shudder as the chunks oozed together. A blue and black armored leg speared its way free from the heap of bubbling flesh. Another followed. And another. A vicious-looking pincer followed them.

The rest of the transformation took place as the three military units reformed back into squares and joined together. More legs and another mighty pincer thrust free of the pile. Finally, a massive demonic crab-like body emerged from the disgusting heap.

"Really!" Joe spat as Hogam pulled him back up onto his feet.

The creature, while significantly smaller than its previous form, still stood taller than most of the buildings in the area. It was at least thirty feet across its back, with each leg about as long. Its dark, ridged shell looked thick enough to repel even heavy axes.

The mammoth crab oriented itself on the forces arrayed to face it. The enormous pinchers clacked together so loudly that they sounded like gunshots. Just when it looked like it was about to charge, Kendell's voice rang out from the shattered force bunker.

"Everybody! Take cover! Incoming!" she screamed.

The cannon blast from the guildhouse half the city away was so much louder without the screaming winds drowning it out. Worse yet, the impact that smashed into the towering demonic creature backlashed into everyone along the beachfront. The formation magic held the troopers in place. The others, including Joe, did not fare as well. The shockwave bowled over him and Hogam; it even slid Finn a few feet away.

As bad as the blast was for those nearby, it was devastating for Cauldrakon. A massive fissure opened in the creature's shell. The second artillery shell found that crack and detonated inside the monstrosity. For the second time in a matter of moments, the now epic-level horror was torn apart.

The defenders whooped as the gigantic beast splintered into hundreds of pieces. Oddly enough, all the pieces looked to be smaller replicas of the crumbling behemoth. Smaller didn't mean small, though. Each of the scuttling shapes was at least as large as a Rottweiler; some were as big as bulls. There were even a few who would look down on elephants.

The nearest crab scuttling toward them was stopped dead in its tracks as a gator-shaped ghost appeared and latched onto its legs on one side of its body. Swirling in the air, the spectral croc rolled as if it were underwater, smashing the hard-shelled crustacean against the ground over and over again. The storm critter survived long enough to lose the legs the spirit was holding in its jaws, but a second spirit, this one in the shape of a kingfisher, dove through the now cracked shell. As the ethereal bird emerged from the crab's underside, the monster died, flopping over like a dead spider, its remaining legs curling to its body.

Each spawn-soldier was covered with spikes and sharp edges. Their undertones were pink, but all the ridges and pointy protrusions were deep blues and bright violets. They would have been pretty had their faces not been molded in such a manner as to look vicious and cruel.

Like fiddler crabs, they had different-sized claws: one large and mighty, the other smaller and more agile. Joe watched as a rising member of the Rattler Squad got her shield into place, only to have the kite-shaped barricade crumple in the vise-grip of one monstrosity's power claw. The smaller pincer hooked around and bit into the woman's leg.

Joe sent his amber paw in. He first hexed the crab with [Rattlebones], and while the creature was distracted, he placed the [Casting Claw] on the near-severed limb and healed. The curse turned out to be significantly more effective on these beasts than it had been on the badboons. Joe watched as the entire shell of the monsters shuddered violently. The convulsing spawn shrieked as fluids began to spurt out of its joints. This gave the trooper an easy opening. She drove her sword through its face, killing it, yet before the guardswoman could even snap the goop off her blade, she was under attack by two more.

"How many more friggin' times do we have to kill this thing?" Joe seethed.

"This should be it. Its core is completely broken now," the mantou replied, sending more spiritual allies against the shelled onslaught, giving the squad time to reform. "Unless we are foolish enough to allow the swarm to reform, destroying these will be the end of Cauldrakon. Are you well enough now to fight on your own? I am needed elsewhere."

"Damn straight I am," he whooped with a surprising degree of intensity. Joe realized that the ferocity pouring through his connections to the wildness and Finn were making him practically vibrate with a feral exuberance.

Kendell appeared at their side a second later. Her face reflected his own battlelust.

"Come on!" she beamed. "This is going to be fun. Let's go crack some crabs!"