Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

The warm feeling of dense vitality flowing into his vessel comforted Symon. Worries about the brutal death he'd just inflicted were still there, but they grew all soft and fuzzy against the infusion of vitality. The roses felt much nicer than most vegetation, but there was a qualitative difference between plant life and living creatures.

Fittingly, he likened it to the difference between a plain boiled potato and a well-seasoned steak. It could fill your belly, but it was just missing a certain something.

<Focus, you idiot!> Keelgrave shouted, snapping Symon out of his thoughts.

The warning brought his attention to the blade currently being swung at his neck. Any thought of capturing Symon intact for questioning had obviously gone out the window after his accidental killing.

Symon was right-handed, and the blow was coming from his left. Bringing his newly stolen sword up and across his body to block or parry would take too much time, so he did the first thing that came to mind.

Like a ninja, he reached out and caught the blade with his hand. Unlike a ninja, the blade sank between his fingers, through his palm, and a third of the way down his forearm before getting stuck between the bones there.

He grunted softly, more out of habit than genuine pain. Though it could hardly be called pleasant, his Pain Resistance brought what would have been a horrifically painful maiming down to a mildly stinging maiming. The vitality streamed out of his vessel towards the wound, helped along by a bit of his focused attention. Guiding the healing necessitated his dropping the empowerment of his draining, but he considered the faster healing worth the trade-off.

Still, the reduced inflow of vitality left him feeling a little disappointed and empty, even despite his vessel remaining close to full. He never really seemed to run out, as long as he had a strong enough target to drain.

In a flash of inspiration, Symon forced his willpower onto the vitality travelling down his arm, preventing it from moving past his wrist. His hand would still be useless, but the area around the blade…

He locked eyes with the soldier across from him. They were bloodshot and watery, and were filled with such rage that it gave him pause. They were the ones who had approached him! The ones who had refused to listen to reason and started this whole conflict!

As his arm healed around the embedded blade, further locking it into place, those hate-filled eyes widened in confusion upon realising the blade wasn't going anywhere without some serious effort.

They widened even further when Symon stabbed him in the stomach.

Ledger enhanced reaction times didn't count for much when you were so distracted you didn't even see it coming, although the soldier's Constitution meant a sword in the guts wasn't fatal. Not immediately, at least.

So Symon stabbed him again.

At that point, the soldier released his grip on his sword and shoved Symon away, sending him stumbling. He managed to remain upright. Meanwhile, he'd resumed empowering the draining, taking more vitality from his opponent, who clutched at his stomach with one hand.

Symon allowed the momentum of the shove to carry him back several more steps, stopping just inside the maximum range of his thread. His arm had already been bleeding less than it should have, thanks to the associated resistance, while his healing slowly mended the injury. Thankfully, despite being split down the middle, everything was still attached. It wouldn't even take a minute for the bleeding to stop entirely, time which he was content to wait.

Every second, he moved closer to his full strength while his opponent lost blood and vitality. The two circled one another, neither eager to make the first move. Once his arm had healed enough, he ripped out the blade. It took a few tugs to free, sending a small spray of blood out along with an electric tingle up his nerves, but his opponent didn't capitalise on the opportunity. He was already looking pale, and his eyes might have been a little glazed over.

At this point, Symon was confident he could have walked in and killed the man with his sword, but he didn't want to waste the vitality. Every second, more of the energising substance flowed into him. It felt good in a way he had a difficult time describing. It was like a strong, warm coffee that somehow made you feel more confident. He didn't want it to ever stop.

With his arm now back to normal and a full vessel, every unit of extra vitality he eked out would go towards making his vessel permanently bigger. He wouldn't get much of an improvement, but it was certainly better than the nothing he'd get from finishing the soldier with his sword.

He'd just wait until the man collapsed, then it wouldn't be long before he stole the rest of his vital essence. After that, he could take the rest from the first soldier that he'd already weakened, then—

He paused.

That didn't make any sense. Well, yes, it made perfect logical sense, but that was the point. Symon wasn't some killer robot operating on pure logic! He wanted to use his magic to help people, not this.

There was absolutely no way the Imperial force here would see this as the big misunderstanding this truly was, especially after the accidentally over-effective pollen attack. They'd started it, but the higher-ups would probably be about as understanding as these guys had been when he'd tried to warn them about his magic. Really, it was their fault, and they'd just come back in the future if he left them alive, so—

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What the hell am I thinking? I can't just execute that guy!

With a groan, the man in question stumbled against a tree. He stood there for a few moments before slowly sliding down to the ground.

<Of course she shows up now,> Keelgrave chimed in, oblivious to Symon's sudden internal conundrum.

"Huh?" he said aloud before he noticed what Keelgrave had spotted. He really needed to stop getting so distracted.

One soldier was drained to the point of near unconsciousness, the second was dead, the third was slowly bleeding out against a tree, while the fourth and final one…

He was pressed against another tree, his head and limbs hanging limply while Entisse chewed through his throat. Seemingly sensing his attention, she dropped her… meal… and turned to face him.

Entisse licked the blood off her lips and lower face, her long tongue reaching further than he felt tongues should. "Weak," she hissed.

"Wuh…" the other soldier groaned dumbly. His half-lidded eyes snapped open in recognition of the threat, but he couldn't do anything else beyond groan and squirm on the ground. "You! Elf… they'll never stop… orders from… all the way…" he trailed off, his head slumping against the ground. Symon wasn't sure of the exact effects of low vitality, but the man was completely helpless. Neither of them did anything as Entisse walked up and casually slashed her claws across his throat.

He spasmed for a bit before rolling to the side, his lifeless eyes staring at Symon accusingly.

"I… shit, you didn't have to kill them," Symon said before frowning. He should have stopped her, but it had all happened so suddenly, and his mind still felt a little fuzzy. He thought he knew the reason for her savagery. "Were these the ones who captured you?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.

"Weak. Not them," she hissed softly, rising up from where she'd been hunched over one of the soldiers. She pointed at the emblem on their side. "Same."

His gaze lowered from the blood dripping from her chin back to the bodies.

It was one thing to acknowledge that these were bad men who had been complicit — if not direct participants — in the slaughter of Entisse's people, but it was another thing entirely to kill them like animals. Wasn't it? If this were Earth, they would have been given life imprisonment or even execution for what amounted to war crimes, or something even worse; it wasn't like they'd at least been given the privilege of a declaration of war. That would never happen here, though. No one possessed the power to charge imperial soldiers other than the Empire itself, which obviously wasn't going to happen.

It didn't sit right with him, but he wasn't so naive as to tell Entisse she was wrong for killing these men. Leaving them crippled like that in the forest was just giving them a slower death by a monster, and he wasn't going to heal someone who would just attack him again. He wasn't happy that the guard strangling him had died either, but he couldn't find it in his heart to feel guilty for that one. Killing him might have been accidental, but Symon had still known the pollen would inflict horrific injuries on someone.

But the longer he stared at the men, both those already dead and those close, the angrier he felt.

Their final words made it clear they hadn't had a recent change of heart concerning elves: in fact, they'd revealed they were still hunting Entisse. Really, it was just pre-emptive self-defence.

Right?

Symon wasn't sure if that logic would hold up in a court on Earth, but he found himself caring less than he thought he should. He'd seen bodies before, even before coming to Cathar, including a couple of victims of violent crimes, but he didn't think that fully explained his lack of concern. He'd talked with some of the veterans of his career, and they'd all developed a certain roughness required to cope with witnessing so many horrible scenes. A callous around their soul, so to speak. Even still, they would have been affected by seeing two people have their throats ripped out in front of them.

But when Symon watched the bodies leak blood from their ruined throats, he only felt a distant satisfaction. His thread sullenly moved from one patch to another of the surrounding vegetation, apparently unhappy at not getting more of the rich vitality.

"I think… I'm a little too okay with this," he said to Keelgrave. If anyone knew about killing, it was the old spirit.

<Well, they're Imperial pigs, so they deserved it,> the spirit said unhelpfully.

Symon felt like he should have expected a response like that. "Ugh, you know what I mean, though, right? It's supposed to feel bad to kill people." Granted, Entisse had done the most egregious executions, but he felt responsible.

<Is it? Why?> he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Symon paused to glance at Entisse, who was staring off in the direction of Brackstead. The tips of her pointed ears twitched slightly as she listened out, but her relaxed posture meant she hadn't heard anything imminently dangerous. "I dunno, morals? People aren't supposed to just be able to kill. Not me, at least. I'm just a normal guy, not some trained soldier."

<Sure, people are. Your home is weird, kid. Plus, Will is your highest attribute, so it's not like a little blood is going to send you crying.>

Symon's eyes slowly widened in understanding. The Ledger had been helping him adapt physically to this more violent world, which he was very grateful for. But if it was doing the same for his mental state… that raised some uncomfortable questions. The idea of having his thought process changed, even in an 'improved' way, felt wrong. He'd been a little worried about this with Intelligence until he had learned it didn't actually change your personality to become smarter, but he hadn't even considered how Will could work.

He'd been so focused on how it benefited his ability to control his magic that he'd completely passed over how it changed his more mundane willpower. Supposedly, the Ledger made his mind around half again more resistant than someone would ever be able to get without magic, if he was interpreting the number right. He didn't feel much different, right now, which was the problem.

"So, I'm resistant to feeling guilty? Not sure I like that. Explains why you're so self-centred, at least."

<No, no, it doesn't work like that. I'm all natural. Will does make your mind better at dealing with unpleasant tasks, but it's more of an immediate, active thing,> Keelgrave explained. He paused for a moment before continuing slowly, as if he wasn't sure he could keep going. <Some of my crew had nightmares. Every night, usually. It was a rough life we lived.>

"I see," Symon said before swallowing.

Ironically, he used this very same willpower to force this uncomfortable realisation to the back of his mind. If the Ledger was changing the way he thought, it was so subtle he'd only just noticed it. It wasn't necessarily the cause, either. Keelgrave wasn't exactly a peaceful influence, and it was possible that reliving his memories had rubbed off on Symon as well.

Perhaps there wasn't even a magical explanation, and Symon had just adapted quicker than he'd expected. He had more experience with death than most people did, after all, and he suspected he would only grow more familiar.