A young woman stood guard at the edge of Ashley’s newly erected walls, throwing knife in hand and a newly-bought Aquatic Arm artifact hovering above her shoulder.

A hulking thing covered in excessive plates of hard, near bone-like armor advanced towards her, and she tightened her grip on the knife.

Irregular Voidspawn, Knight Ant - Threat Level: F+(?)

She hated these insectoid things the most. They didn’t have any easy tendons to sever or arteries to stab, rendering her primary method of attack semi-useless. And this one stood a whole head and a half above its brethren and charged with the speed of an olympic sprinter.

A throwing knife swished through the air to hit it center-mass, but the weapon just glanced off of the creature’s armor with a clink. She cursed, dodging out of the way of the charging ant.

“Ian!”

Her partner’s Mark of the Osteomancer was tailor-made to face off against these types of creatures — he’d handle this no problem.

But, as she glanced around her, she realized that he had left a few minutes ago to get something from the Shop.

“Dammit.” She booted up her Void-adjusted comms device. “Currently facing off against an F+ ranked irregular Knight Ant. Ian went to get something so I’m on my own. Will call in if I need backup.”

The voidspawn snapped its jaws at her, and she jumped back, grimacing. No visible weak points.

Just because she couldn’t penetrate its armor didn’t meant that she was defenseless, though. She drew on her Mark of the Gravimancer, using her spirit to physically push the Knight Ant down.

She let out a sigh of relief as it struggled against the power of her Intermediate Mark. These things always seemed to be more affected by increased weight than other types of voidspawn.

Then, the ant gave an enraged chitter, activating a Mark of its own.

“Shit…”

The insect glowed with crimson light, and her control over its gravity disappeared.

“Scree!”

Her artifact went to intercept its jaws, but it barreled through without issue, catching her in the stomach with an armored limb.

“Ack!”

She decreased her own gravity at the impact, landing softly onto the sidewalk a few feet away. “What the fuck?”

Irregular Voidspawn, Marked Knight Ant - Threat Level: E-

She whipped out a handful of daggers, throwing them all at the voidspawn in desperation. Once again, they all glanced off without a scratch.

“Commander Cromwell! Could I get some help in here?”

She called out through her comms device, but all she heard from the other end were screams and orders.

“Blob down! Blob down! Get him some healing and some mutagenic water from the Ley Line! Keep your weapons up!”

“Commander? Nina?”

“Sorry, can’t spare anything! We’re currently preoccupied here too.”

The Knight Ant flashed with power, and she gritted her teeth. “Alright. Plan B, then.”

Another Mark activated, and a shimmer of bright light erupted in the voidspawn’s vision. Yet, its aura activated again, and it continued ahead, ignoring the blinding distraction.

So it could shrug off visual stimuli too?

The ant chittered, and she threw herself out of the way just in time to avoid its chitinous maw.

Dammit, things like this weren’t supposed to happen! Now she’d have to waste an expensive artifact killing the thing.

“Ian!” She shouted, cursing her teammate. What did he have to get that was so important as to cost a full month’s worth of hunting?

Something appeared out of the corner of her eye, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Help had arrived. Ian would come in and dismantle this oversized bug in an instant. Except, it wasn’t Ian.

Rather, it was a sickly young woman wielding a tiny green… hammer?

Elizabeth Sayler - Threat Level: ?

Her eyes widened. There was no way that the girl would be able to fight a Knight Ant. “Hey! Get away! That thing is dangerous —”

A blue aura surrounded the woman, and she leapt towards the voidspawn, arcing her hammer down towards the thing’s head.

Kat winced. Such a light blow wouldn’t do much to the ant’s armor, even if it —

“Screee!”

The hammer expanded to four times the size, cracking the Knight Ant’s armor with a wet crunch.

Credits Earned: 61

The creature began dissolving, and the girl let out an exhausted pant, wiping a bead of sweat off her forehead.

“Phew! That was a tough chase. Is this the city of Ashley?”

* * *

“So you’re a healer?”

Liz nodded, following the girl through the city’s busy streets.

“Alright, let’s head over to the infirmary, where you can meet our Head Healer.” The guard dragged her through a particularly crowded intersection, and Liz took a moment to soak it all in.

Dozens of groups shuffled around them, each and every one sporting deadly weapons and a fair number of glowing Marks.

Other people. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed the sight of humanity in the couple of days she had been in the wilderness. There was just something comforting about being in the big city, even if it was in the apocalypse.

“Um… I don’t know how well my Mark works to actually heal, though…”

Liz opened her mouth to explain the restrictions on her Mark, but they stepped into a particularly sturdy building, and her voice was drowned out in the crowd.

“At last, Wurhi, we’ve reached a cleric! Let’s see how well this world’s magics handle hellfire burns…”

“W-why is everyone here so weird? Are they all demon lords too?”

“Shut up, Tru.”

“Can someone point me to a bathroom? I think I’m going to be sick…”

“Over here!” the guard shouted over to her, “Infirmary is this way!”

They pushed their way through yet another blockade of people, finally finding their way into a rather secluded area. It must have been a former office space, but it was now filled with beds and bustling nurses as they tended to their patients.

“Whoah…” Liz gasped.

The area positively glowed in her spirit-sense. Healing energy flowed from half of the people working, and the sheer volume of it was almost blinding.

Even the weakest healers had at least as much energy as she did, and the strongest…”

“Get me Reigan and Paul for this guy! We need a splint and an Intermediate on table 2!”

One woman stood out amongst the rest, a veritable fountain of golden yellow energy. She waved a hand, as a dozen patients collectively sighed, their wounds disappearing in an instant.

“I see you’ve already spotted Leandra. Just talk to her, and she’ll get everything sorted. I’ve gotta go back to my post now. See you around!”

“Huh? Wait, how am I supposed to get her attention?” Liz called after her, but the girl had already disappeared back into the hallway.

She sighed, walking over to the general crowd of healers. “Hey, um… excuse me?”

One of the free healers came up to her, and she subconsciously swiped away the System screen that appeared above his head. “You’re injured? Point it out to me.”

She shook her head. “Uh, no, it’s not that. I just…”

“Ohhh. You’re a Second-Waver, aren’t you?” The man examined her rugged state, pulling out a piece of paper.

She nodded.

“You must have spent the past few days in the wilderness, then. Are you dehydrated? Famished? Sick?”

“What? Wait, no, I’m fine. Well, I could probably use some more food, but —”

He snorted. “I’d say so. Have you seen yourself?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I have.”

She had been forced to use her self-metabolising technique another couple of times during her journey, and as a result she was pretty sure she was currently closer to skeleton than human in terms of physique.

“Wait, that’s not the point though! I’m not here as a patient. I’m a healer too! A guard told me to come talk to Leandra here.”

The man’s eyes widened, and he coughed. “Ah, my apologies. You’re, uh, a doctor or nurse, then?”

She shook her head, rolling up her right sleeve. “No, I’m Marked. See?”

“Oh. How very curious…”

She looked at him. “Why curious?”

“Ah, um, Leandra can explain it to you once you speak to her. It should only be a moment…”

The man hurried off to speak to the Head Healer, and she examined herself. Was her healing energy really that weak? She knew that it wasn’t quite up to par with the others here, but that had to be a function of her arriving only a few days ago. These people probably had weeks to hone their skills, so it wasn’t fair to compare.

She watched as the woman finished healing her last patient, a grizzled-looking warrior with a long cut running down his chest. The wound closed up in mere seconds, but it still left a nasty scar, making her wince.

Would healing energy be able to fix that too? Was she just holding out because it wouldn’t be cost-effective, or would scars always stay, no matter how much healing one poured into them? Could she heal her own scars, from where the doctors had performed surgery on her spine three years ago?

That would certainly be a neat thing —

“You there. New girl.” A woman’s voice came from beside her, interrupting her thoughts.

“You’re a healer? Come with me.”