NOVEL NEXT Chapter 85 - Teamwork
Having already trained Entisse's Poison Resistance, Symon was able to apply some of the techniques he'd learned to help speed up the Dumosans' training. Unfortunately, his draining magic continued to give him grief.
How could he closely monitor someone's vitals, keeping them on the edge of death for minutes, from half a school bus' length away? The answer was that he couldn't. Such dangerous but effective training was out of the picture.
They'd devised a workaround, though it was hardly glamorous. Aslan had gone first, his previous worries ameliorated by the new, less dangerous training. They'd tied a rope under his arms, and he would simply scoot into the mist, legs first. He'd stay there for as long as he could bear, where the others would then haul on the rope and pull him to Symon, who would quickly heal him as he slid by.
The process had been awkward and fumbling at first. Symon had underestimated how long Aslan would be able to hold out for, meaning his legs were more damaged than he'd anticipated when they finally pulled him out. This had resulted in him getting only partially healed, and having his damaged legs bumped against every stone and root as his kinspeople pulled him out of Symon's range.
It had at least been an easy problem to prevent from recurring. There was a limit to how fast Symon could pull the vitality out of his vessel, and there was a separate, higher limit for how much he could maintain control of without the vessel containing it. If his concentration broke, it would spread out through his body before slowly making its way back to his vessel.
Much like his thread, Symon's vitality almost seemed to have a mind of its own. The difference was that he could actually control it, being able to stop it and hold it in place if he so wished.
In this case, he simply had to force more vitality into his fingertips, allowing him to transfer greater quantities at once to Aslan. His record was being able to bring out almost half his vessel's capacity, although it took so much focus that it wasn't feasible in most scenarios. Here, all he needed to do was wait for Aslan to pass by and then heal him before he was pulled too far away.
Being able to move, talk, or even fight was completely out of the question with his focus wrapped around so much vitality, but he was sure that trying to push his limits of what he could control was excellent training for his Will. It didn't even waste the healing essence, as going past his limits just meant it got reabsorbed into his vessel.
The process admittedly looked silly, but it was undeniably effective. It only took a few attempts for him to dial in the exact amount of vitality he needed to transfer, while everyone managed the hauling of the rope and resetting of the training much more smoothly. Entisse would be the one to guide Aslan partially into the mists, the only option considering only Symon was immune, and his draining, while not as rapidly lethal as being fully submerged in the mist, was still hardly ideal.
Once Aslan had had enough — or passed out, on one occasion — he'd signal to Entisse to begin pulling him out, which the other Dumosans would see and begin their own hauling.
While it was much slower than Entisse's training, Aslan still received the resistance a couple hours before nightfall. Symon had wanted to work on Safiya next, her shorter height and lighter weight meaning just Entisse and Atabek would easily be able to haul her out, giving Aslan an opportunity to rest. He might have been fully healed, but the magic did nothing for the mental toll of what was essentially torture.
Instead, Safiya had volunteered Atabek for the position, meaning it was just her and Aslan to pull the big man to safety. Entisse hadn't been included for this, as she had yet to recover much of her strength. Starvation wasn't the type of thing you could recover from faster by eating even more food, although she certainly tried despite Symon urging her to take it slow.
Still, she contributed as much as she could before needing to rest. The much heavier Atabek was pulled out more slowly, but this was balanced out by his higher Constitution requiring everyone to rush less.
They decided to call it quits about an hour before nightfall. It hadn't quite been enough time to get Atabek the resistance, but no one wanted to have to trudge back to town in the dark. Well, Entisse wouldn't have minded, but she wasn't able to go to the village on account of being an elf.
Everyone was tired from the hours of physical labour, or in Symon's case, the strict mental control needed to maintain his grip over the quantity of vitality needed. He elected to stay at the manor with Entisse, partially to make sure she didn't get into any trouble and partially to work on a training schedule using the vitality-rich roses. The others all returned to the village, taking all but one of the emberwolf corpses with them.
The monsters had been strung up to a tree and field dressed, with most of their organs removed and their blood drained. Entisse had filled a canteen with the stuff, claiming that it had a nice spicy taste, though Symon had graciously declined her repeated encouragement to try it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Taking the monsters back provided many benefits. For one, the villagers would be grateful for the cheap meat, and Aslan believed he could wrangle discounts on their rooms with Durga the innkeeper in exchange for some of it. And while Symon wasn't being monitored — at least, he didn't think he was — it provided credence to their story of going into the forest to hunt monsters.
There were no town guards to care about that sort of thing, only the few personal ones the Baron had brought with him, but it was still beneficial to have something to sell the lie. Symon doubted the others would be harassed, but he was still suspicious of the Baron's plans and thought it was the smart thing to play it safe. The timing just lined up a little too coincidentally in Symon's mind.
The humans killing Entisse's people and the Baron's arrival in Brackstead must have been only days apart, and Symon knew they were different groups after Entisse didn't recognise the Baron's description. His moustache was quite distinctive, after all. So many imperials showing up at the same time after leaving Brackstead alone for decades must have meant the Empire at the very least suspected something.
Symon waved goodbye to the others as they left for the town, Entisse having already gone through the barrier. Once they'd vanished into the treeline, he followed after her.
He stretched as he passed through into the manor's grounds, his muscles tense after many hours maintaining awkward positions. His pack had been laden with emberwolf meat, too.
"Now comes the good part," he whispered as he manifested his Ledger, focusing on only the things that had changed.
[ Status:
Name: Symon
Class: Cursed Healer
Strength: 1.00 {+0.01}
Constitution: 1.35 {+0.01}
Acuity: 1.07 {+0.02}
Intelligence: 1.13 {+0.03}
Will: 1.51 {+0.05}
Vessel (Vitality): 23/23
Abilities:
Idealise (22) {+1}
Seize (21) {+1}
Passives:
Anatomy (11) {+1}
Poison Resistance (6) {+1} ]
He was quite happy with the changes, especially considering he hadn't needed to fight a single monster for them. He was also certain that he needed to continue trying to push his limits of control over his vitality, as his Will had practically rocketed upward for no real risk.
He continued down the path to the manor with a pep to his step, attempting to brush some of the pollen off as he went. From inside, he noticed that his draining had finally made an impact on the rose population.
There were still plenty of them, but there was a dead crescent originating from where they'd been doing the training. He'd needed to fill his vessel up every few run throughs of the process, and the many hours had cut into the vegetation. It made him extra conscious of the fact that while this was more vitality than he'd ever seen before, it wasn't limitless.
Eventually, he'd drain the last rose and he'd be back to scrounging off mundane plants or fighting things for more of the life-bringing resource. When that was the case, he needed to be able to look back on his time here and honestly say he'd used it all for the greatest benefit.
By his rough math, he'd still have about 80% of the roses left after finishing everyone else's training. That was more than enough for him, and he wasn't the type to regret investing in his friends' survival. Besides, he was sure the benefits of having them along for the dungeon would more than make up for the vitality he missed out on.
It wasn't long before he caught up to Entisse, who had stopped in the middle of the path and was now staring out into the field of roses. He stopped alongside her and followed her gaze outwards.
"Oh, right. I should probably do something about that," he said, looking at the groundskeeper's body.
She nodded. "Did you forget to harvest it?"
"Uh, no. It's a thinking being. It talked to me."
"So? It is dead now, and the power is yours by right," she hissed.
"If it's mine, then I want it to rest peacefully. It had been locked in here for decades, all alone."
"You would dishonour its death by allowing its legacy to fade?" she questioned, her head tilted to one side as she stared at him.
"It's not like that. It's… where I'm from, when people die, we gather around and tell stories about them. Then they get buried in the ground or cremated, usually."
"You would waste their parts?"
Symon paused. "Well, sometimes their organs get harvested, but that's for people who really need them. For survival, not profit." Mostly, he felt pity for the gharzoth and just wanted to let the dead lie. He would have buried it already, but he'd been distracted by saving Entisse and then the resistance training.
Her head tilted even further. "This is survival, healer." She strutted forward through the roses confidently, her pale grey skin given a purple blush by all the irritants in the air. He followed after her as she knelt next to the body, her eyes closed in concentration.
Before he could ask what was going on, she struck. Her hand speared through the gharzoth's much-abused scales and into its chest. She rooted around in there for a few moments while Symon looked on, before emerging clutching a tiny crystal. It was coated in blood and other viscera, so he didn't get a very good look at it before she threw it into her mouth and crunched down.
"You're just going to…" Symon began before sighing. Consuming a monster's core was one thing, but an intelligent being? It left a bad taste in his mouth, pun not intended. Admittedly, it wasn't like the gharzoth needed the core, and it didn't have anyone who cared for it. The problem was he was pretty sure she would apply her same view of 'waste not' to everyone with a core, regardless of context.
He'd likened it to organ donation earlier. He was a supporter of the concept, himself having been on the donor registry, but the two weren't the same. He frowned. Were they?
"Is this normal? Taking people's cores?" he asked Keelgrave.
<Well… yes and no. The Empire outlaws harvesting cores from its citizens, as do most other countries, but we both know laws are only followed when it's convenient. There's so many exceptions it's basically just lip service, and even then a peasant family isn't going to let their gramps get buried with gold coin in their chest. They fetch a good price on the black markets, and there's always a demand. Don't know why you'd give a damn about the lizardmen though, things are basically just monsters.>
"Hey, you said the same thing about Entisse."