Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

Entisse sat cross-legged at the end of the tunnel. The dense cloud of ambient mana surrounding her seeped through her skin, where it was then guided along her veins and into her Core. It was so dense, in fact, that she practically thrummed with energy.

It was begging to be unleashed, to be used and wielded. It would be simple to leave her burrow, to charge into the forest and enact glorious violence upon the prey. A river of blood would be her reward, the sanguine essence empowering her and pushing her towards further slaughter.

When it was done, the tide of blood would drown her, too.

She'd seen it happen only once before, and that was enough for her. Instead, she closed her eager lips, hiding her bared fangs. She cooled her mind, focusing on anything other than the mana. It was so thick that she barely had to try to absorb it, making her task easier.

The human had just left the burrow, so she was alone with her thoughts. Things had gone both far better and far worse than they could have. The Second Step predators were far above them, but there was much potential waiting to be claimed. She would either die in here or emerge strong enough to gain vengeance for her fallen people.

Both those options were alright with her.

She hissed softly, drawing her knees to her chin and eyeing her surroundings. The burrow was excellent, just large enough to move around in while being small enough to deter larger predators. It was cozy and protective, exactly like what she imagined a mother's embrace would feel like.

It was a far cry from the Hanging City, but it was better than the surface. She missed the gardens and music most of all, but pleasure would have to wait for her vengeance to be completed.

When the Healer returned from his brief trip, his hands were healed but still coated in blood. She licked her lips silently, the motion unseen in the shadows. He really was quite helpless in the dark, she thought, though she knew of no easy way to fix that beyond carrying a flame. That had many drawbacks, but she could investigate some of the glowing crystals outside. With his inability to sense mana, it would fall to her to figure it out.

Though she had difficulty understanding the body language and facial expressions of humans, what with their oddly small eyes and immobile ears, something had changed in the minute he had been gone. More focused, more intense, more… angry?

Her lips drew back in preparation for a warning snarl, and her claws splayed out threateningly, but the human turned away from her. He must not have even known where she was, judging by how he had begun sliding his hands across the wall to orient himself.

Her hammering heart slowly calmed, her mouth closed, and the tense muscles in her hand relaxed slightly. No, she thought, this human would not attack her. It had merely been a passing similarity to the—

A single, vigorous shake of her head silenced the surfacing memories.

The human eventually found his way back to where he had been training previously. His fingers brushed against the stone, smearing blood against its rough edges, before he found the exact spot he'd been attacking before.

The stone was undamaged, but for her senses, the wide circle of blood surrounding it may as well have been an arrow pointing at it. For the human, he must have remembered exactly what the stone felt like after thousands of punches.

Even though she'd known it was coming, her traitorous heart still lurched as he launched back into his training. She took a more direct hand this time, forcing her will upon the blood inside her body and forcing it to flow more slowly.

She'd been expecting the Healer to continue attacking the wall, but she had thought he would start softly and work his way up to a mostly tolerable level of force like he'd done the last time.

Instead, his fist slammed into the wall harder than she'd thought him capable of. There was no hesitation in his motions, and only the slightest grimace on his face as bones instantly broke with a sharp crack. She recognised the tightened facial features as pain — some things were the same across species — that wasn't enough to make him pull his punch when he slammed the other hand into the wall. If anything, it impacted with greater force.

Another crack echoed through their burrow. The tips of her ears twitched at the noise.

The blood flowed in thick, heavy drips, the continual punishment overpowering his Resistance. She was sure he had acquired it already, being well acquainted with both the Resistance itself and blood in general. Surviving having his heart removed would be a sure way to achieve it, but she suspected it had existed before then. His blood was characteristically difficult to manipulate in a harmful way — she'd tried encouraging bleeding as an experiment, finding it possible but requiring more mana than it should have — yet very helpful when being guided positively.

A bit like some of the trained scouting bats certain hunters would use, it seemed eager to obey certain commands. Blood wanted to circulate, so it had made it easier for her to make it forget about the non-existence of his heart.

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It would certainly have been possible for her to work that magic even without the resistance, but it would have required her to stay by his side, rapidly pumping mana into the spell. When the Elders had performed the Ritual of Unblooding on her, they had needed three of their numbers to be safe. She had accomplished the same by herself, and she knew now that they were weak and cowardly, so afraid of true power that they would starve it of achieving its true potential. Would her home still hang from the cavernous sky if they had been more concerned with power instead of control?

The human grunted, slamming his hand into the stone even harder than he had been. It caught on a rounded piece of stone, splitting his hand between the 2nd and 3rd finger, but he appeared unconcerned.

The blood flowed faster, its potency slowly, almost imperceptibly increasing. After a few moments of consideration, she realised what was causing it. It was that interesting new evolution of his, providing extra power the more injuries he took. It wasn't very noticeable now, but had certainly been critical for his survival earlier. The benefit slowly increased as he continued, and with it, the intoxicating aroma in the air.

When his hand split open completely, she decided a little taste would be alright. A tiny spark of mana brought one of the fresher drops gliding just above the ground and up her body, where it was collected by her tongue.

Spicy, sweet, with far more depth than it should have contained. The man had barely any Constitution, but something about his magic that took the life from others gave it a greater complexity of flavour.

She frowned as she continued savouring the taste. It was already delicious, and yet it had the potential to be even greater. What would it taste like in a generation from now, when he had sampled many powerful creatures?

Patience would be required, though this was still satisfying. After all, tomorrow was no guarantee.

The meaty thuds of impact stopped, replaced with a harder clacking noise. When she opened her eyes after her focus on the blood's complexities, she saw that his hands had been so thoroughly destroyed that they may as well have been removed. Two fingers and a thumb lay on the ground at his feet, surrounded by a slowly widening pool of blood, but still he did not stop.

The bone of his forearm stabbed at the wall, tiny flakes of bone drifting off and landing on the cool, stone floor. It was such a waste of blood, but she still watched, enraptured, as the protruding bone was whittled down to a sharp point over a hundred impacts against the wall.

With a final rear back, he thrust the bone spike into the wall with the full force of his body. A familiar crack echoed throughout the burrow, alongside a more foreign accompaniment.

He pulled his arm out of the wall from where his forearm bone had barely penetrated into the stone, revealing an almost unnoticeable hairline crack in the burrow's wall.

Symon felt his whole body adjust in a way that was hard to describe. Every muscle loosened up, feeling stronger and more responsive. When he pulled his ruined arm back, the motion was fluid and followed a perfect, efficient path as it returned to his side. With the memory of the final attack he had just performed fresh in his mind, he immediately saw so many things he'd wrong.

They were minor, Keelgrave having already corrected the largest and most obvious mistakes, but individual inneficencies added up. Using one muscle a little earlier, grounding oneself better, following through a little more. A thousand little things, all working together to create the perfect strike.

<Did it work?> Keelgrave asked excitedly, his previously glum mood discarded.

"It worked!" Symon breathed, a rush flowing through his body from the aftermath of a good workout and the pleasure of achieving his goal.

"You have the Skill?" Entisse's voice asked from the darkness, shocking Symon out of his reverie.

New instincts screamed at him. The dark was a horrible place for a fight. Both arms began moving up to cover his head, then he needed to—

Symon cleared his throat and lowered his arms. He felt his face heat slightly, and just had to hope Entisse couldn't see colour well in the dark. His new reflexes were faster than conscious thought. "Uh, yeah. I'm pretty sure at least, this new muscle memory feels just like when I got the Running one."

"Excellent. We will use this power to hunt mightier beasts. Before you waste more blood, I suggest you restore your hands first," she hissed softly in the dark.

Symon looked down at his hands, though he of course couldn't see them. That was because of the lack of light, but even then, they wouldn't be there. His Anatomy and muted sense of pain told him they were… gone. "Ah, shit, I really did a number on them. Are there any… pieces… left on the floor?"

Entisse was silent for a few moments, and he was certain he heard her sniff. "Yes. You mean to reattach them? I am not sure that will work."

Symon shrugged, which was a strange feeling with arms ending in softly bleeding stumps. He still held his vitality in the vessel, not wanting to waste it. "Yeah, let's give it a shot. Please," he added. He knew reattaching severed parts was possible, but he wasn't sure if there came a certain point where it was more efficient to simply regrow it. Could a wound be so severe that it was better to cut the part off and start from scratch? He didn't think so, at least not unless there was poison or other factors involved, but it required experimentation.

As it turned out, having something to work with was better than nothing, even if that something probably looked like it had been put through a woodchipper. Symon was grateful that it was too dark to see the mess he'd made, while Entisse seemed unbothered by the blood and gore.

She oriented the missing parts as best as she could and pressed them down onto his sharpened radius as he finally released his grip on the vitality. He winced, both in pain and disgust at how crude the 'procedure' was, but Earth standards didn't apply here — even the greatest surgeon would be unable to save hands this mangled.

His magic didn't care about that, so the process smoothly continued. A burst of pain shot through his system when the severed nerves reconnected, but they quickly cooled as the vitality poured in.

Bones shifted into the correct place, tendons and ligaments twisted out to support them, and muscles grew over of the top. When fresh skin flowed down his forearm like water and covered his whole hand, he gave it an experimental squeeze.

It felt powerful and solid, like he was holding a brick, but without any added weight.

"What do you say we do some more testing in the field?" Symon asked.

Though he couldn't see her, he could hear the smile in Entisse's emphatic response.