Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

Two weeks had passed. The armies of the elves and dwarves were still approaching, but it would take seven more days before either would arrive in Kulvik.

Too slow.

Elijah had returned to the capital city three days ago. In his absence, Oscar and Mary had died. They'd been killed while doing their work, by the hands of an assassin who slipped past every security measure. Vera had called it a tragic oversight. Elijah thought of it as a consequence of his personal mistakes.

"Did you know Oscar had a child?" Elijah asked as Aleksi handed him his beer. While rarely used, Cleo's establishment did possess a private bar in the basement, one stocked with every type of liquor and alcohol that humans could imagine. "I thought him and Mary to both be unwed, but it seems Oscar had gotten himself a wife and kid a year ago."

He'd found it harder than expected to look that woman in the eyes. Vera had privately assured him that the widow wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of her life, that a house and gold had been provided, but that failed to replace the life lost.

"Didn't know that," Aleksi replied in a low voice, before sipping his own glass. Elijah mirrored it, not finding much enjoyment in the taste. The small beers were a standard during these hours, and yet he found himself craving something a little stronger. "How was the wake?"

"Small. Quiet. Very standard," Elijah explained. He was one of ten who'd been present, including Vera. The rest had been Oscar's wife and child, and then Mary's closest family.

None of them had looked angry. Grief-struck, ready to cry when hugging him, but never did they ever seem to blame Elijah for the dead. Maybe they could see what he couldn't. Maybe they hadn't been told that their deaths hadn't been planned, that the two apprentices had been replacements in his stead.

Elijah was supposed to be dead. Or, at least, an attempt on his life was meant to have occurred, one that he could've survived with ease. But he didn't get that chance. He'd instead been forced to confirm their demise, to help put them to rest, and to continue the work that Elijah had thrown their way.

The sound of a chair grinding against the wooden floor made Elijah look up.

"I see nothing but sour faces here," Cleo commented as she sat down at their table. Beside her was Cas, who carried two glasses filled with a green liquid. "If you were customers, I'd have you kicked out for bringing down the mood."

"Nobody but us down here now, Cleo," Elijah countered, gesturing to the empty bar. Even when the rustic room could handle fifty drunks at once, every table and chair but theirs sat empty. "No moods to ruin."

"You can ruin mine, and that's more than enough reason for you to lighten up," Cleo fired back instantly, causing a snort to leave Elijah. "There you go! Sip that beer of yours and feel your insides heat up."

Elijah took a swig of the light drink, but nothing much happened. With his endless work before the wake, he'd neither slept nor eaten, using his concoctions to avoid both of those distractions. The laboratory needed to keep running, after all, and the parts being supplied to the army that hadn't been automated yet needed his attention.

When he'd helped bring in the sixteen thousand wounded three days ago, everything had started running low. Emergency operations required sedatives, infected wounds required antibiotics, and poor health and endless marching had started fever breakouts that Elijah could barely start to treat.

At least the dwarves from Stroham who remained were more than helpful with the latter, with their casual immunity to human diseases.

A toast to you, Lord Greyhelm.

Elijah gave his beer a third try, as he recounted the dwarven lord's act of heroism. Thinking back, it became obvious that the Earth Mage knew what would happen, that he intended to give his life in an attempt to save the soldiers. The fact that he never seemed to falter made Elijah respect his actions so much more.

To transport his stone corpse back to Kulvik had been a challenge, yet the dwarven people had thanked him. Elijah had briefly thought that Greyhelm would be brought below the surface, to join his house in Stroham, but the dwarven soldiers had denied the thought. To transport a lord to his grave would require his entire family, for anything less would be a dishonor. And… those who remained knew the challenges that Serenova faced, and they knew that leaving now would only make it harder for Kulvik to remain standing.

Even when you're gone, they follow your word. I hope you're proud of them, Greyhelm.

"How has the city been treating you, while we were gone?" Aleksi asked Cleo. "More business than usual, maybe, with how the streets are filling up?"

"Yes, but not as much as you'd think," Cleo replied in a sad tone, inspecting her drink. "The fighters seek a type of comfort that my people cannot give them. The comfort of knowing that they will return home, and that they even have a home to return to. I imagine you know well how it fares for the villages further out."

Next to none remained.

It seemed that Castilla had stopped playing slowly and had started attacking from all fronts. Any village that required more than a week to reach had been burned down to ashes. The only larger settlement that remained was Melrond in the south, where the duke's own mages had been able to thwart the enemy.

"With any luck, Alin will be repeating his old feats after the war and help rebuild the homes lost," Elijah said. His eyes narrowed when Cas paused in trying his own glass. For the Chronomancer to react to such a comment… "Something we should know?"

"Should? Nothing of the sort," Cas replied, putting down his glass. "Hope will serve you better these days. Less specific. More wiggle room for miracles to spring up."

Elijah had known the Chronomancer for decades, knew that every movement of his had been carefully planned, and this small slip-up was nothing of the sort. What it meant, Elijah didn't know, but it unnerved him to no end.

Even more when he could sense Cas's aura start to flare up, the thousand arms and faces of fog staring in every direction, and blood started to seep from the Chronomancer's nose. Not just a drip but a stream, serious enough that it took less than a second for it to fall from his chin.

"Cas!" Cleo exclaimed, handkerchief in hand to help, but the Chronomancer had been faster. "What's happening?"

"Just a small adjustment to the timeline," he assured her, wiping away the blood. "They're arriving a few days earlier than expected. I… I did not see that coming."

'Dawn,' Elijah sent, instantly warning his familiar of the impending danger, but he didn't get a response before he saw the vibrations in the drinks. The sound came a moment after, as something heavy made an impact against the walls of the city.

'Oh? A feast approaches?' he could hear the tarrasque snarl inside his head, as more strikes rang out through the air. These weren't directed at the city, but the beast that had been resting. 'Is that everything you got? Give me a challenge!'

"Best of luck!" Cas shouted as Elijah and Aleksi ran for the door. The desire to send a retort back at the Chronomancer nearly reached his thoughts, but the unseen danger that approached the city outranked everything else. "Remember to look up."

What?

They passed a dozen confused people before they reached the exit, allowing the duo to see the sky that had turned black. A familiar color and intensity, with the accompanying strikes of thunder which the world would never naturally produce.

"He's back," Aleksi commented, before the roar of the tarrasque flowed through the air. Every person in the street, who'd been panicking and running, slowed in their steps, as their bodies commanded them to be still, to be silent, and pray that the beast of legend took their lack of movement as a reason not to hunt them. "Let's go."

Elijah's feet barely hit the ground as they ran to the castle, as the giant lifted him over any obstruction, be that walls, stalls, or people. He didn't care, barely noticing the world nearby. Most of his mind was focused on the network of roots that he had now spent months working on around the city, including the thousands of traps scattered over the malformed plains. With the Dungeon's assistance, each plant that could be seen from the city walls was under his control and was supplied with enough energy to be sentient enough to notice and report anything amiss, yet none had sent even the mildest of warnings.

Nothing was wrong, according to them, and yet Cas' words made Elijah refuse to believe that. One of the most powerful mages of Castilla wouldn't have settled in the skies above the city, striking at the tarrasque, alone. There had to be more.

'Dawn, where are you?' Elijah questioned, not comfortable with the duck being separated from him anymore. 'I need you back.'

'Are you sure?' she fired back. 'I have ten of them now.'

The duck sent him a visual of ten people wearing custodial outfits, various shades of purple robes, and light armor, which matched that of the castle guards. All of them likewise had their eyes closed, while they hung from one of the trees in the largest of the royal gardens.

Assassins, all of them having the goal of killing Elijah. As Fade had predicted, the first attempt wouldn't be the last, and countless more had tried to finish the task. That's why Elijah had sent out Dawn to wander the corridors of the castle, while transformed into his likeness.

Even when she could not say a word and could barely keep her eyes pointing the same way, the assassins had been happy enough to try going in for the kill regardless. Each had failed when the poison had no effect, and the attempts to stab Dawn had only caused their hands to be trapped in the fake flesh.

As Dawn made clear, while sending over the memories of the experiences, she had more than enjoyed the looks of her prey, when she grew a few extra jaws to keep them in place.

'... Fine,' Elijah said, not wanting to waste her work. 'Keep them unconscious, while I get Vera to contact Fade. Did you remember to remove their gear?'

'Yup!' Dawn confirmed, sending him another visual of the pile of trinkets and jewelry on the floor. While not obvious, most of it had been enchanted to help obscure intent and allow the distant controllers to remove any chances of leaks. While Fade had given Elijah the bad news about the spies being given minimal information now, what they had been told was still valuable enough for her to go through. 'Do you think I can eat some when others are done?'

Despite the endless plates of luxury meats, the duck's stomach had no limits.

'I'll see what I can do.'

Elijah scowled as another strike of thunder was matched by the roaring of the tarrasque. The beast of legend couldn't reach the Stormcaller, who sat high above the clouds, but the lightning didn't hurt her too badly either. While the intense electrical current ran through the beast, she'd experienced much worse many times before.

"We need one of our heavy hitters who can fight," Elijah muttered as they entered the castle. None of the guards stopped them, Aleksi's speed and size making everybody step aside. "Get us up to the war room."

The spiral staircase was skipped in favor of simply jumping from railing to railing, making them ascend the two hundred steps in the span of twenty seconds.

Vera had heard them coming, with Harper opening the door to permit them inside. Alin was already there, with Tina beside him, and in the corner sat Jack, Grace, and Sasha, the first two tinkering with some metallic plate while the last one had Mila on her lap.

"Have the scouts spotted anybody?" Elijah asked, not bothering with being polite. "Anybody other than the Stormcaller."

"No, but we didn't notice the black clouds until they appeared above our heads either," Vera replied, her eyes not leaving the table littered with over a hundred individual pieces of paper. Each was covered in glowing, red text, with more words appearing every second. "Tina, are you ready?"

"Everything looks good," Tina confirmed, adjusting her bronze gauntlets with practiced ease. Even when she matched Alin in age, ten years past where most would've retired, her eyes were confident, and her body language matched that of somebody half her age. "Alin, if you would."

"Of course," the old Earth Mage said, raising his staff and letting it hit the stone floor. At once, one side of the room's walls began to disassemble themselves, revealing the outside of the castle and creating a platform the two mages could stand on. "Let's welcome the enemy into the fold."

With the wall ripped open, Elijah could see the peak of the city's walls. While impossible to see from the ground, his position in the tower allowed him to spot the dozen or so Royal Mages that stood on top. Veterans of the old war, each more powerful than Elijah, and what he guessed were the last of the old guard.

The tarresque roared in defiance as lightning struck once more, but the power behind the strike didn't match what had been done before. The Stormcaller had sensed the approach, as Kulvik began their retaliation to his presence.

"Send a message to Fade when you have the time," Elijah mentioned to Vera. "Dawn has ten would-be assassins unconscious in the largest of the royal gardens."

"I'll pass it along," Vera replied, sending out the new orders while keeping her eyes on the sky. "Scouts in the north have gone quiet. Are you detecting anything in that direction?"

"Nothing."

He grimaced when the fighting started. The Stormcaller had shifted his focus instantly, releasing a dozen lightning strikes at the Royal Mages on the wall in rapid succession. Blue, translucent barriers stopped them, the enchantments in place protecting the mages, but Elijah knew it wouldn't last.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Maybe it wouldn't need to either. Giant spears of stone, accompanied by pink fire, split the clouds above in two, briefly revealing the Stormcaller, who quickly changed his position. A chase ensued, the cumulative powers of the Royal Mages making explosions ring out far up in the air. Every color the human eye was able to perceive could be seen in the minutes that followed; thousands of MP spent every second. Each person present was a walking army on their own, and their destructive capabilities when working together were unmatched.

"Scouts in the south have gone quiet," Vera reported, frowning while scribbling out orders on the paper. "Harper, are the civilians in the clear?"

"Emergency underground shelters have been filled," Harper said instantly, going through her own subsection of papers on the table. "Guards are trying to maintain order, but people are restless. Projections are predicting up to a thousand losses from hysteria alone."

"Better than them dying from enemy fire, I suppose," the queen muttered with clear scorn. "Anything new, Elijah?"

"I'm seeing nothing," he replied, not understanding the readings he was getting from the network. Even if the battle between the walking powerhouses was happening in the air, the shockwaves resulting from the mana collisions had to create enough of an effect for the plant life below to detect. He could feel the residue on his skin, and yet no warnings came through. "... Jack, are your weapons prepared?"

His own chain of information was being obscured by something.

"Just about, yeah," Jack confirmed, after getting a nod from Grace. "We don't have any rounds designed to detonate mid-air, though, if you're planning to hit the Stormcaller."

"I'm not," Elijah denied. "I want you to shoot in every direction around the city, as far out as you can."

Vera paused her rapid writing, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"Are your plants showing anybody on foot?" she questioned.

"They're showing nothing wrong, and that's impossible with what's going on out there," Elijah said. Everybody flinched as one of the lightning strikes passed by the city walls and hit the buildings in the upper district.

"... Jack, Grace, I'm giving you clearance to fire," Vera said, accepting how utterly problematic the observations were. "Make it rain."

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 102MP/sec

Elijah didn't hear much of what happened after, as he dug into the network. With the increase in output, the Breathe Life spell allowed him to see every detail, every connection, every rate of transfer, and he understood the inner workings of every movement inside the network. He saw the minds of thousands of plants, each with its unique personality, all communicating in a rapid string of exchanges. Nothing was hidden, nothing could be hidden, for the balance would be broken and the others would notice and cry out to Elijah, but that hadn't occurred. The unbreakable safety mechanism, impenetrable through the sheer size of the network, had been breached.

It must've, and yet he couldn't spot it. Each connection was solid, every piece of the puzzle present. It was as perfect as it had been for the past two days, every mind stable, but he knew there had to be a flaw.

… Where are you?

Elijah allowed his full descent into the network, refusing to give up, refusing the thought of him being wrong. Even when his ears picked up the explosions, and the sounds of lightning got nearer as the fighting grew more intense, he focused every ounce of his willpower into this one task, for the chance that he had been infiltrated meant that the first defence around Kulvik had turned inert.

I can't find it.

Emotion made his jaw tighten, his pulse quicken. Dawn tried to send a message, complaining about not being allowed to eat the corpses, and he heard the challenging shout of the tarresque who tried to focus her paralytic abilities onto the Stormcaller, but he ignored it all. There was only one voice he allowed to enter his mind, one outside that even his single-minded focus couldn't avoid being distracted by.

'You are acting irrationally,' the Dungeon said, a manifested hand in the mental space dampening Elijah's emotions. Like a cloth in his ears, tuning out the worst of the noises, Elijah felt his breathing slow and his nerves to become less twitchy 'You are my pillar. Pillars are stable. Stop the collapse. Remember your task.'

'Hard to stay calm, when I know something is wrong with the network you're helping keep alive,' Elijah said, using his mind to point at the visualization of the network in front of him. 'I'm getting no warnings, no crying about emergencies, and I'm—'

'You are,' the Dungeon cut in. 'For a full day. Very loud.'

'What?'

'Do you not hear?' the Dungeon asked. The giant eye joined him on the metaphorical ground, looking up at the network. '... Strange. You are deafened. Veil hides the truth. Only lies present. Work by another. Be revealed.'

The order rattled what sat above Elijah, causing the visualization of the network inside the mental space to fracture like glass. Every calm thought, every mind finding nothing amiss, broke and fell away, revealing the truth that had been obscured.

Even with his efforts to separate his connection to his physical body, to increase his chances of discovering the flaw, the sheer volume of minds screaming at him in that instant made his hands fly to his bleeding ears, his pupils turning white as Elijah fought to contain the voices. If they had been humans, their throats would have long since broken, for their screaming had been constant for hours.

'They're coming!'

'The enemy!'

'Raise your flags, for doom approaches!'

'Give us the word!'

'Please!'

'We must act now.'

'Your command is all we need.'

Five, ten, twenty… Elijah couldn't begin to count the forces, the magnitude of signals so large that none of his constructs could handle the load. Every precaution, every piece of extra hardware to handle bursts of activity, would've been filled by a quarter of what the map was showing.

'I wondered,' the Dungeon mentioned, as Elijah got his breathing under control and restored his ability to hear and see. 'Lack of action. Confusing human traits. I misjudged.'

'Next time I do something you don't understand, point it out,' Elijah replied. "Twenty thousand to the north, fifteen to the south, and … five thousand from the west and east. There are more further away in the north, but I can't count them. There are too many."

He frowned as the screaming of the plants began to stop again, the calm minds overtaking the network again. The veil had started to repair itself in an attempt to obscure the truth. With the Dungeon's leading gaze, he spotted the preparators. Biomancers, like him, who worked together to deceive him.

There had to be dozens of them, constantly keeping up the lie.

Dozens who tried to make Elijah the reason that Kulvik would fall.

I won't let you.

"Focus fire on these coordinates," Elijah ordered. His Core complained as he started to empty his reserves in an effort to fight back. His familiarity with the chosen field of battle, and the ability to spot where they worked to pull the veil over the true network allowed him to push back, to dig into the roots where their Mana flowered, and to painfully trace back the strands until he could sense the hand that was pressed into the grass. Even if it was too far away to strike at, to kill, he knew their exact locations. "Use whatever rounds have the highest lethality."

"Didn't get the chance to make different designs, but sure," Jack replied, handing the tablet over to Grace, who punched in the coordinates. Five seconds later, Elijah began to hear thumps and saw the flashes of light on top of the city walls a hundred meters away from where the Royal Mages stood. "With this type of range, we should be expecting lights in… forty seconds?"

Two-thirds of a minute.

It felt like hours, as the battle against the Stormcaller continued. The conjured rain had picked up, and the droplets gained a deadly sharpness. One of the Royal Mages fell when the translucent barriers collapsed, only Alin's intervention saving the others from sharing their fate.

The battle within was worse.

'Trap, kill, and destroy all you can reach,' Elijah ordered, fighting with every bit of Mana to make the command flow through the network. The veil that had tricked him had started to expand its influence to the plants themselves. He didn't allow it, tapping into the Dungeon's supply for the final push.

'Kill!'

'Slaughter!'

'Rip and tear!'

His body trembled, on the last drops of energy, before the thousands of replies from the primitive minds rolled in. The traps he'd spent months on perfecting, balancing lethality and stopping the charge of an army, activated. His work had brought results, soldiers falling to their knees as expelled gas from the roots blinded them and made every exposed part of their skin feel like it was attacked by small insects. Seconds later, grass also lengthened, pulling the soldiers down onto the ground fully, allowing the small buttercup flowers to shoot out and pierce the skull.

'Incredible,' the Dungeon said, as the energy of the dead started flooding in. Each stopped heart provided a dozen times more than what any death on the distant battlefields could accomplish. Elijah had to speed up his work, lest the influx cripple him.

Enemy Biomancers, Wind Mages, and Earth Mages responded immediately, tearing the plant life from the ground, pushing away the gases, and trying to shut down the remaining traps, but then the mortars began to hit.

The attempts to hide the network from Eliah ceased instantly, and the devastation brought with it another boon. In the distance, previously hidden from view, they could see the horizon start to shimmer. Like a cloth waving in the wind, what had previously been empty plains revealed itself to be filled with the enemy soldiers, massive metal constructs on wheels, and enough mages to make Elijah's heart sink.

"Damn it all," Vera cursed, saying what everybody in the room had been thinking. The approach of the enemy was slow, with the intentionally wobbly and rocky terrain, but the five kilometers of distance between the city and them wouldn't last. "Aim for the larger groups. Give them everything we have."

'Finally!' Elijah could hear the tarrasque exclaim, as the normally invisible sigils on Vera's arm began to glow in a scarlet red. 'I have waited so long for this day.'

The attempts to assist the Royal Mages, who continued to fill up the sky with the battle against the Stormcaller, ceased, as the beast of legend began to move towards the northern army. Elijah could feel her giddiness, her lack of fear, as the beast ran towards the mightiest that Castilla possessed. She was confident in her coming victory, in the glory of devouring the tens of thousands before her.

Elijah didn't share the sentiment, as the continued firing of the mortars was matched by the distant firing of black bolts.

Wait.

Fifty black bolts of light, large in size, from five kilometers away, soaring high into the sky. The initial trajectory made Elijah think the attack was aimed at the tarrasque, who would've welcomed the attempt, but the bolts were fated to overshoot.

The castle.

"It's heading for us," Harper warned, an arm around Vera as she pulled the queen out of the room. Grace and Jack were right on their heels, and Aleksi grabbed Elijah to do the same, but he resisted.

Mila had been pushed towards the door by Sasha, yet the woman didn't rush to safety herself. At a steady pace, she moved towards the opening in the wall, where they could glimpse the dark bolts in the sky.

"Don't—" Elijah began to call out, when Sasha's right foot passed by the wall and into the air, yet his tongue caught in his throat when she didn't fall. Sasha, through her own grit, found footing in the empty air, continuing to walk forward.

"We have to go," Aleksi urged Elijah, but he rejected the idea, leaving the giant to grab Mila before she tried to follow Sasha. Elijah knew Sasha would've turned around to stop her from falling, but that could've ruined the woman's current plans.

Don't be a fool now.

He didn't voice his thoughts as the black bolts grew larger. The tower hadn't been the sole target; the wagon-sized projectiles were spreading out enough to hit the entire castle.

That had been the intent, at least.

"Come here," he heard Sasha murmur. Her voice was quiet, barely a whisper, but it reached his ears fifty meters away regardless. From the way every soldier in the far distance seemed to stiffen at that same second, the fighting halting for a single breath, they must've heard it too. "You are mine."

Gravity shifted, the earth handing the reins to Sasha alone, and the projectiles curved mid-air. Elijah and the others were barely affected, but even he could feel his skin pulling towards her figure.

Then, with perfect synchronization, the wagon-sized bolts reached Sasha, and the world turned black. Each bolt had been powerful enough to take out hundreds of soldiers, fly through a dozen buildings, and still carry enough strength to kill whoever remained.

Logic dictated that Sasha would've been unnoticed, that each bolt would've moved through her body and killed everything behind her.

They didn't.

Elijah could see nothing. Sasha's body had disappeared from his vision, as the swirling pillars of magical death concentrated on her position made it impossible to spot her. Mila was screaming beside Elijah, trying to break free from Aleksi's grip and join Sasha out in the air, but the giant held her tight.

Good that they did, for nothing would have survived being close to her.

With no warning, the black bolts of death shot into the air again, high into the sky, piercing through the dark clouds. From the brief shout and the rush of Mana into Elijah's Core, he knew one fact for sure.

The Stormcaller was dead.

He could still sense Alin and Tina's auras above, but the thunderous coloring of the Stormcaller was no more. The returned fire had removed the old mage from this world.

Such a fact would've given Elijah great joy, if not for the sight before them. Sasha had reemerged, but her physical appearance could barely be called that. Her skin had separated into patches, held together by nothing but pure will, and the cracks revealing the nothingness within were more prominent than ever. Even during the previous absorption of an attack, Elijah had been able to recognize her face, yet Sasha had so little left to show. Even her eyes, so cold in the past, now only contained that endless void.

And the power.

Sasha had not sent everything back out, and her body could not handle having it contained. Or maybe she had, but the shock of holding that amount inside, however briefly, had caused damage that would not repair itself easily. Elijah couldn't care what the reason was. He just knew that Sasha was unwell.

"Elijah!" Vera shouted, making him glance away from Sasha, who, instead of rejoining them in the tower, had descended onto the rooftops far below. "Fade got through the spies. The underground shelters are rigged."

His oath and Mila's begging made Elijah wish to go after Sasha, but the queen's words made his heart sink.

"Explosives?" he asked.

"Something with a timer, and the ability to kill every person inside," Vera answered. "We need everybody out and the traps dealt with fast."

Every plan, every safety measure, was crumbling around him, yet Elijah couldn't stop moving. Handing off Mila to Jack and Grace, who had been ordered to continue their work, he and Aleksi rushed off with the hope that they wouldn't witness the fastest genocide in recorded history.