Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

Symon's exhalations echoed through the cave, the meaty impact of flesh on stone following a moment after. He was moving slowly, focusing more on form than power, but he was still punching solid stone. What was surprising was how little it hurt.

He wasn't damaging the wall at all, and his knuckles were getting bloody, but that was all. The vibration of the impact travelled through his hand, up his arm, and finally dispersed once it reached his body, leaving the sensitive bones and ligaments in his hand unharmed.

It was oddly meditative, and his mind drifted as his body alternated which fist hit the wall.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

The only focus he really needed was holding his vitality in check, but even that required very little. He'd found that it was a lot easier to, for lack of a better term, squeeze his vessel and prevent the vitality from leaving in the first place rather than trying to hold onto it as it moved through his body.

Much like with the Poison Resistance training for Entisse and the Dumosans, he reasoned that healing himself as soon as he was damaged made the training less effective. It wasn't an exact science, as no one knew the inner workings of the Ledger, but it had certainly seemed to be true before, and he saw no reason why it wouldn't apply now.

Keelgrave assumed that it might have been some measure to ensure that Third Steps couldn't just get every skill they wanted, the Ledger shifting the requirements in line with someone's capabilities. If Keelgrave had still had his body, he would have easily been able to crack through the stone without taking any damage at all. It required so little effort and risk from him that he doubted the Ledger would feel like awarding him the Skill, as his much higher attributes trivialised the task.

But not for Symon. The mismatch between his Constitution and Strength helped to protect his fists from damage, but he was still sure that he'd break something if he punched as hard as he could. In return, he'd be lucky to take more than a chip of stone off the wall.

"Okay, time to amp it up a little," Symon said aloud.

Entisse hissed a wordless affirmation, probably observing him train. In the darkness, he had no idea what she was doing. At first, it had been awkward to train with zero visibility, but it hadn't been too bad considering he wasn't moving around. In fact, the lack of vision forced him to rely entirely on feel, and he felt like it gave him a better understanding of his own body. There was nothing to distract him from the punches.

When he'd brought up his observation, Keelgrave hadn't seemed surprised. He'd then talked about the time he'd encountered this small island tribe of martial artists who would intentionally blind themselves to improve their focus. Apparently, the morbid technique had been quite effective, as they'd repelled numerous scouting expeditions from the Empire.

They'd been left alone after that, more because the Empire didn't consider their little island to have anything of worth than because they couldn't defeat them if they'd really wanted to. Keelgrave had attempted to convince them it would only be a matter of time before they decided the land was worth the expenditure and returned with a larger and more powerful force. He'd been unsuccessful and cursed them, funnily enough, for their short-sightedness.

Symon pushed Keelgrave's admittedly interesting story out of his mind, instead focusing on his fists and the wall.

Slowly, he picked up the pace, delivering his strikes almost imperceptibly faster each time. His Pain Resistance made it a little hard to interpret how much damage he was doing to his hands, but Anatomy mostly made up for it. The muscles bruised, and the sensitive bones in his hand began creaking and flexing ominously, but they held steady.

It was good to know how hard he could punch a solid object like this without breaking his hand, and he took his time to commit the exact level of force to memory. He could not bother and just heal them if they broke, but he tended to pick up more serious wounds in combat that deserved his vitality first.

After doing so, he knew he was at his limit. The time he'd taken had shown him that the damage was slowly building up and would eventually result in a more serious injury if he continued.

Instead of stopping, he started going harder.

His friends were dead or being interrogated in an Imperial prison. The villagers he'd met in Brackstead — some kind, some not so much — were back under the thumb of the Empire. It wasn't like they'd all be killed for no reason, but they had fled from the Empire under strange circumstances, though only the oldest generations had actually participated in that.

Symon pulverised these distracting thoughts, his mind slamming into them until nothing remained. When his mind was empty, something new popped into place.

Anatomy tried telling him about the boxer's fracture he'd just experienced in his right hand, but he pounded the distraction into submission. It shrank, down and down, then shot back up when he did the same to his other hand. He repeated the process, the intrusion trying to force its way back in with every punch. He didn't relent, and slowly, his mind returned to the simplicity of his motions.

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Left.

Right.

All he did was hold his vitality in his vessel and punch.

And punch.

Punch.

Punch.

Symon wasn't sure how long he had been going for, but his whole body was sore when he finally emerged from his training fugue. He let out a groan of relief when he rolled his shoulders, stretching his tense back. He'd known, at least on paper, that you used the momentum of your whole body to add to the force of a punch, but he had gained a newfound appreciation for this fact. Muscle soreness had mostly been a thing of the past for Symon, but he found that he'd missed the sensation.

It was a sign that he'd been working hard, and he hoped to see the fruits of his labour. "How long was that?" Symon asked his ghostly guide.

<Hmm…> Keelgrave started. An impression of slightly befuddled focus came through the bond, like how one might stare at a chessboard.

"What?" Symon asked. Usually, the number just came straight to Keelgrave.

<Eh, nothing. It was twenty-seven minutes, the exact amount depending on when you want to start counting,> Keelgrave replied, making use of his often overlooked but undeniably handy internal clock, which had been perfected by his sailing-related Skills.

Symon nodded, already crawling forward through the cave entrance. As he did so, he released the grip he'd maintained on his vessel, finally allowing the vitality to rush out towards his hands. By the time he'd reached far enough to see his Ledger, shattered bone had twisted back into shape, the skin pierced by its jagged edges already grown back over. Anatomy finally stopped its buzzing warnings in the back of his mind.

[ Status:

Name: Symon

Class: Cursed Healer

Strength: 1.12 {+0.02}

Constitution: 1.64 {+0.2}

Acuity: 1.17 {+0.01}

Intelligence: 1.17

Will: 1.71 {+0.1}

Vessel (Vitality): 16/23

Passives:

Pain Resistance (22) {+1} ]

Symon's lips curled into an involuntary smile. In a vacuum, the increases would appear tiny, but all he'd needed was less than half an hour and a third of his vessel's capacity to achieve them. He hadn't even been in any danger.

A quick spot of mental maths made his speed clearer.

"Let's round things to make it easier… 4% stronger and more resistant per hour. 2% faster and more… willpowery per hour. In a full day of training, I could be almost twice as strong as I am now!" He couldn't stop his smile from growing wider even if he'd wanted to. At this rate, he might actually stand a chance of surviving!

Keelgrave was silent.

"Yes, yes, I know it gets more difficult to increase the higher it is, but I'll still shoot way up! I'm not going to say my chances are great, but things are looking a lot less hopeless than they were."

Once more, the spirit did not respond.

"You're not disappointed I didn't get the skill, are you? I'm not, I feel like I'm pretty close already." Symon could tell nothing was actually wrong with Keelgrave, as he could still feel the spirit's presence. He could even feel him thinking, a bit like how the whirring and noises of a computer let you know it's on.

<Exactly, you bastard!> Keelgrave exploded, though his tone quickly dripped down into resignation. <It's unfair! It's ridiculous! Things wouldn't have gone the way they did if I'd had your magic. It took me half a century to get to the Third Step, and that was damn quick! Now you're here, flying into the First Step in two weeks and barely slowing down!>

Symon crossed his arms, which took some effort considering his prone position in the low tunnel. "Are you… jealous?"

<Of course I am! Anyone would be, but it's still not enough! We're going to die in here. Your little friends outside are going to die. Your pet will die, too, but it might be better than whatever the Empire had planned for her. Every second you waste salivating over your Ledger is another second you will never get back. We could do so, so much together, kid, but you need to take this seriously.>

"I am!" Symon hissed. "I just shattered my hands punching a goddamn wall for half an hour exactly because of that! How is that not serious?" He felt his anger growing, even as Keelgrave sounded more and more resigned. Of course, he would complain that Symon hadn't been putting in enough effort. He wasn't the one painfully ruining his own body just to improve his chances of survival! It was so easy for the backseat observer to criticise.

Keelgrave took a long time to reply. Ironic, considering he'd just lambasted Symon for wasting time. When he finally spoke up, his voice was much softer. <It's not fair for you either, Symon. Not just being forced into this dungeon, but being on Cathar. Hells, even your past life treated you poorly. I see bits and pieces of it when you sleep, you know? Even when I don't try to.>

Symon blinked forcefully. What? Where was this sudden nice guy Keelgrave coming from?

<You think you're pushing yourself. With your old body? The sick, weak one? Yes, you might have been. You probably would have killed yourself doing all this. But that's not you anymore. No more weak, pathetic Symon. Think about what those numbers next to your Attributes actually mean. You're already better in every way than you could have possibly been without the Ledger, even after a lifetime of study and natural training.>

"I… maybe…" Symon said, at a sudden loss for words. He thought he'd stopped his training because he wanted to see his progress, but was that just an excuse? If he could survive without a heart — granted, that was only because of Entisse's continual magical efforts — then he could survive more than merely breaking his hands. Very badly broken, sure, but he hadn't been in any mortal danger from it.

And he was better than he had been back on Earth, even without the magic. The only thing obviously superhuman about him was his ability to endure injuries, but everything else was just more than it had been. The deepest shadows weren't quite as dark to his eyes, heavy weights were a little lighter than he thought they should have been. He could remember past conversations better, even those from his first life, and his mind was fast. He'd always been good about focusing in stressful situations, but this had only improved. He might not always make the right call, but he hadn't frozen up or run away like others might have.

Taken as a whole, the differences were night and day between now and when he'd first woken up. The progression had been gradual enough, and the enemies he'd faced always so far above him, that it was hard to appreciate how far he'd come.

With a sense of finality, Symon nodded. "Okay. You're right."