During the Tutorial, Serenity completed another level of the Solo dungeon. It was annoying; a beach and shallow sea level where the monsters tended to come on him without warning. Having a giant, head-sized clam latch onto your foot from under a layer of sand wasn’t dangerous, so it didn’t set off his Skill that warned of danger, but it was certainly annoying. It was even worse when it was immediately followed by a pair of giant lobsters flinging themselves out of the sea where they had somehow been hiding in the shallow water, forcing him to fight while partially hobbled.

On the other hand, it gave him a good time to practice using himself as a sword. However weird it was to think of, it was surprisingly useful; he could alter the blade simply by thinking about it, including changing the Affinity and length on the fly. The sword didn’t have the magic-nullifying properties of his ax and couldn’t simply be called back to his hand, but it was incredibly sharp even though it didn’t have a “real” blade. He could also use any of his skills with the sword as the starting point, and it even had its own - his own? - aura radius.

Annoying seemed to be the theme of that level. The constant salt spray, sand and dried salt everywhere, and being continually wet from the waist down simply added to it, as did the waves that kept coming in even during battle. It was enough to make him seriously consider casting a water-aversion spell, but he’d have needed something to deal with the sand and salt as well and it simply wasn’t worth it. Not for the single day he spent making his way through the level.

Somewhere in the middle of the level, he gave up on waiting and placed his Attribute points. He’d put it off out of concern that it would worsen the mana leakage, but he decided he was already going to suffer for that because he’d increased his attributes for the Tier up; he might as well just do it all at once. He was a bit surprised to see that it took most of his remaining Ev, but at the moment he had no other use for it.

Condition: Healthy

Healing Available: Full

Mana: 8536/8536

Essence: 8536/8536

Stamina: 3980/3980

Might: 387

Agility: 387

Phys: 388

Understanding: 387

Will: 387

Mind: 388

Perception: 388

Ambit: 388

Essence

Pure (Innate)

Ev: 132,674 (Purified)

Serenity was relieved when he finally found the giant octopus final boss. It had a veritable army of clams trying to latch on to whatever they could, but at Tier Three Serenity easily outmatched them and the boss. It had been designed to be fought by a Tier One human, after all; there was little more it could do than annoy him.

The level awarded him several more of the strange magical rocks and enough experience to push him past level ten in his Path, but there were only two levels left, and with the reduced experience gain and higher experience requirement of his Tier, it was obvious that even completing the rest of the dungeon wouldn’t take him to Level 75 and give him access to the ability that might or might not be better than the method Blaze showed him.

Serenity was going to need to practice with the Rift; it seemed like the most likely way to easily get experience for his Path, since several of his Path abilities referred to it. Unfortunately, he’d already discovered that it was unpleasant to use while in the Tutorial. It wasn’t as bad as when he’d tried to deal with the Hegemon Worms, but it was clear that anything that reached outside the Tutorial was a bad idea to use when he was inside. He’d simply have to work on that later.

No matter what he did next, Serenity knew he’d have to start with Blaze’s method. It’d been worth the attempt to come up with a better method, but he wasn’t about to go through the hell that was spending a solid year, probably longer, in the Tutorial without letting time pass outside simply to level his Path enough to maybe heal Rube.

Serenity felt sorry for the young man, but he didn’t feel responsible for him. No, his choice was bigger than a single man; his choice was instead to follow the trail backwards. He needed Rube awake and aware for that to tell him where to start, but he didn’t need him fully healed.

At the end of the day, Serenity’s specialty was Death. He wasn’t a healer and he probably never would be; it was better for him to stop whatever was going on before it caught someone else than try, and probably fail, to heal the man currently affected.

He’d take Blaze up on the offer of a visit after the Tutorial was over, whether or not Rube needed the help.

Serenity decided he’d also extend the same offer to some of the other instructors. Earth could use people who knew what they were doing. Even better, it would give Serenity a group of people he could count on. He wasn’t certain what he’d need them for, but if he’d learned one thing in his long life, it was that something always came up eventually. The universe wasn’t a peaceful place.

When he thought about it, it was strange that the only mage-instructor other than Blaze that Serenity even liked was Honoria, and neither was formally a mage-instructor. Blaze was a healer and Honoria was a crafter. He’d taught a number of the mages, but it never seemed to go past the formal relationship.

Most of the instructors were fine, but there were a few that seemed to have the same attitude as Entherys, dismissive of the Earth students for their lack of knowledge and connections to “the people who mattered”. It seemed more common in the mages than the other groups, but there were some in each group that looked on him with suspicion and the Earthlings with disdain. Serenity didn’t understand why they’d even bothered to join the Tutorial.

After exiting the Tutorial, Serenity stretched. The break had been nice. Yes, he’d spent time teaching students how not to get themselves killed, but he’d also spent a lot of time hanging out with friends. Kerr and Sillon had even managed to beat him and Blaze at Delve Deeper.

Once. He and Blaze had won the other dozen times they’d played. Sillon had even banned him from playing any species other than Human to try to balance things out. Naturally, the first game with that rule in effect was the worst trouncing he’d given them since the first game.

Well, however fun it had been, it was over. He headed out to the front of their house. “Rissa? I was able to get some instructions from Blaze. They won’t fix everything, but they should be enough to get Rube back on his feet and hopefully help him hold out until Blaze can get here himself or we find a good enough healer.”

“I’m not good enough for you?” Rissa teased as she leaned over and kissed Serenity’s cheek. “Glad you got what you were after. No luck on leveling your Path?”

“Not much. Looks like it’ll mostly have to be outside the Tutorial. Got the first Skill, but that’s all.” Serenity led the way next door to Raz’s, where Rube still lay on the bed. It’d been a long time for Serenity, but it was still well under a day since Rube passed out. Serenity was worried that he hadn’t become conscious at all; that hinted at something worse than simply pain, but there was little anyone could do about it.

Serenity looked Rube up and down. As far as he could tell, nothing at all had changed. However worried he was, that was probably a good sign. At least it wasn’t getting worse.

Serenity pulled up the pictures he’d taken of Blaze’s book and looked over them again. It sounded simple, with only three steps:

Cast out the Demon.

Restore the Inner Flame and Burn out Impurities.

Heal the Outer Shell.

None of the steps were easy, though there were several options in the book for each one. Cast out the Demon was done, though Serenity hadn’t followed any of the steps in the book. He’d come closest to one that called for him to “provide an Alternate of High Quality yet Secret Protections, especially a high Priest or Exorcist for those of high Spiritual Might draw Demons like a moth to the flame,” even if he hadn’t then trapped it in a puzzle box.

The next step was to Restore the Inner Flame and Burn out Impurities, which was worded so obtusely it could have meant at least half a dozen different things. The different options helped, but they still didn’t really line up with what he had available. Most of them called for “a High Priest or powerful Champion of a God who directly opposes the Demon not only in desire but in Spirit”. Serenity could only hope that he qualified. Blaze had translated that as “god-touched”, and Serenity suspected he did qualify as that because of Tek, but he certainly was no High Priest or Champion.

On the other hand, Tek definitely wasn’t specifically opposed to demons, yet Serenity had felt that its magic was deeply wrong. If the specific opposition to the demon’s magic was the important part and not the “god” part, he had a much better chance. It wasn’t like he had many better options; if this didn’t work, he was going to have to send Rube to the hospital for longer-term care and see if he could find a priest who could help. He doubted it would be easy.

The third step required a “Healer, true and pure, a Master of his craft and a Child of the Gods…”. Blaze hadn’t taken the “Child of the Gods” part all that seriously; he’d said any Master Healer would work if they knew both constructive and alteration healing. Serenity hadn’t realized that Blaze did until he told Serenity, but it made sense; wasn’t Alteration what he’d done to the man who ate all those monster cores?

Serenity didn’t think he’d find a Master Healer on Earth, much less a Master of two different types of healing. It made Serenity wonder; why was Blaze only Tier Four, even if his magics were tightly grouped? That level of skill usually allowed people to rise into higher Tiers fairly quickly. The only reason Serenity could think of was that Blaze had chosen to stay at a lower Tier, but he didn’t know why that would be.

Focus.

Serenity knew he was distracting himself from something he didn’t want to do. Or perhaps it wasn’t that he didn’t want to; it was that he was afraid of what it would mean if he succeeded. Wasn’t it a kick in the nuts to realize he was more worried about what it would mean if he saved someone’s sanity than if he failed?

He needed to focus. Serenity took a deep breath and let it out, then another. Focus. One step at a time; pay attention to what’s in front of you and not what it means. All he had to do was ignore everywhere it talked about the Gods and he’d be fine.

The primary point of the second step was supposed to be to flood the patient’s body with mana suffused with mana that opposed the demon so that it would drive the remaining ‘corrupted material’ out. Since he’d felt that it was a problem in Rube’s Potential, he assumed that the material from the Origin would likely work.

Serenity concentrated on the Rift. It was something he hadn’t had much of a chance to practice with, and he didn’t have the true ability to control it yet, but he could open it to put things in and take them out. Perhaps that would be enough.

He stood there, concentrating on holding the Rift open without pushing anything through it. For several long minutes, nothing happened other than the Rift becoming harder and harder to control. Eventually, he had to release it; the ability clearly wasn’t made for that.

It was time for the backup plan. This time, Serenity opened the rift and sent Rube through, following immediately himself. His sword was still strapped to his side; he hadn’t yet tested putting part of himself in the Rift without the other half. At some point he’d have to, but while trying to fix Rube wasn’t the time.

Serenity watched Rube. Still breathing and not waking up; that was good. He knew that if Rube started to wake, he’d want to pull him back to Earth quickly; the Origin Point was no place for a pure human.