Sean’s POV

I woke up several hours later, probably an hour before dusk. I stretched, groaning a bit as abused muscles protested alongside tender bones. I really should have done it earlier, but was just too exhausted from the battle. Keeping in mind I only had enough attribute points to get two adaptations, I pulled up a different list. One thing I was realizing about the system was that searching within it required precise wording. Before I had searched for ways to increase my recovery rate, so that limited it. Here I was looking for ways to increase the body’s healing and regeneration.

Upgrades

Due to unlocking Divine Vessel, new upgrades are available! Upgrades requiring a Divine Vessel will have (D) after them, and may cost more than one upgrade point. Points required will be notated (P)

Name

Description

Superfast Regeneration (D)(5)

This is the fastest form of regeneration in the multiverse. Flesh and bone injuries will heal in seconds so long as spirit and mana are provided, up to and including the replacement of lost limbs. Beware: Unset limbs may heal at a suboptimal level, and this healing will not replace vital organs.

Divine Reconstruction (D)

What normally heals in days or weeks can be reduced to hours. Spirit and mana will be drained to restore the body to its prime condition.

Restrictions: Can’t be used in combat. Lost limbs will take an entire day and 100 spirit to replace per limb. Self only.

Divine Healing (D)(1-3)

A divine ability that is used to restore the body of the target. Caster sacrifices mana and spirit to heal the target. Healing can be targeted with a high enough willpower.

Level 1: Heal others only

Level 2: Heal others and self

Level 3: Area heal

Hydra’s regeneration

High speed recovery that can repair near fatal wounds in minutes. Speed comes with a cost however, as occasionally a severed limb may regenerate as two limbs. Regeneration can be sealed with fire.

Troll’s regeneration

Though not the smartest creatures, very few can boast their recovery abilities are even in the same league as a troll. So long as the body has resources, flesh and bone shall knit together and allow the creature to keep fighting. Regeneration can be sealed with acid or fire. Heavily damaged organs have a high chance of healing at less than optimal efficiency. Lost limbs may require 24-48 hours to recover.

Saintly healing

An untargeted healing aura that speeds up the body’s natural healing in an area around the caster. Aura radius is WIS/4 meters, healing increased by INT/10.

Well, damn. Superfast regeneration was out, no matter what. It was far too costly and had some massive drawbacks. Hydra’s regeneration was out as well, as I didn’t want to run the risk of multiple limbs. Divine healing would work, but I would have to spend both of my upgrades to get it to work on myself. That left a divine recovery that couldn’t be used in combat, a healing aura that wasn’t targeted, or a normal one that was slower. Looking at the wording, there was no guarantee that Saintly healing would work on the caster, and adaptations were far too costly to waste on a chance. “And then there were two.” I muttered, staring at the chart. As I sat there, it struck me. Why not get both? I had the attribute points, and they seemed to cover each other’s weaknesses. The divine reconstruction couldn’t be used in combat, but so long as I was alive it could restore just about anything. The troll route would heal in combat, though internal organs could still see issues healing. Nodding to myself, I dropped 17 points into constitution and purchased both forms of regeneration.

New Adaptation – Divine Reconstruction

Channel spirit and mana to recover from injuries. Lost limbs require 24 hours and 100 spirit to recover. Other costs are variable at a rate of 100 mana per 1 spirit.

New Adaptation – Troll’s Regeneration

Some shy away from monster adaptations, but you have chosen to embrace it fully! So long as an injury isn’t caused by fire or acid, or sealed later by fire or acid, you will heal at a base rate of 10x that of a base human.

Once I had my choices made, my entire body started itching as things healed in hyper speed. I could feel the rib that had punctured my lung slip back into place, pulled there by my mana. “Oh, that doesn’t feel good at all.” I muttered, gritting my teeth against the strange sensation.

“Hmm?” Elendria hummed, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Found a way to get faster healing. It itches.” I complained, getting a chuckle from her. “And it isn’t funny.”

“What? Did you expect it to not have some sort of consequence?”

“Yes!” I growled, though I did chuckle a bit. “Hey, what do you say we head on back and surprise them?”

“You mean attack?” Elendria asked.

“Yeah. We still have a bit of light, and they have no problem launching sneak attacks. Let’s hit them hard, hoping they aren’t quite as prepared this time.” She gave me a mischievous grin, and we took off.

“We’ll use the sun to hide our approach.” She said, dropping back into a single file line behind me and climbing a bit into the sky. I climbed with her, racing over the sands. I still wasn’t up to full health looking at my hitpoints, but my bones felt a lot more solid than they did several hours ago.

I grinned as we approached from the west, as the siege platform was completely abandoned. We dropped down onto it, walking through the city shield to the shock of some skeleton guards.

“AAAAIIIEEEEE-“ One started to scream, only to be silenced by an explosive bullet to the skull.

“Ah, ah, ah!” I admonished. “None of that now!” We quickly cleared the group, me using explosive bullets and Elendria smashing them with high speed chunks of ice.

“Sean, something’s not right.” Elendria said after we killed the small group. “It’s too dark here.”

“I know. I bet that city shield was modified to block the sunlight. We’ll have to be watchful for attacks from incorporeals. Can your soul sensing watch them through the floor?”

“Yes.” She said after a moment of concentration. “But we have slightly bigger fish to fry at the moment.” I wasn’t surprised, I had heard the stomping of armored feet for a while, and wasn’t too surprised when two groups started marching toward us from opposite sides of the rampart walkways.

“I’ll take the ones to the left, you take the ones to the right?”

“Sure.”

I looked, and saw that the majority of my opponents were skeletons, but they were hiding behind a large group of desiccated dead.

“Surrender, and we shall make your death swift!” One of the dead ordered, but I wasn’t really in the mood. Instead of surrendering, I started two spells. The first was a simple jet of flame that I played back and forth among the dried out corpses. As they burned merrily, I concentrated on my second spell. My original claymore spell was powerful. What would happen if I reinforced the back, and used FOOF as the propellant instead of magical springs? I kept it fairly small, only a few grams of explosive, and used a cone shape instead of a rectangle. Once it was ready, with a lot of mana reinforcing the back end, I used telekinesis to send it forward into the desiccated dead. The heat from their bodies was enough to set off the mine, and the inch-thick ball bearings tore through the undead in front of me. None survived without injury, but there were a few in the back that required an explosive bullet to the skull to finish off.

I turned around, and saw Elendria had simply frozen the skeletons in front of her. She was then shattering the statues with lances of ice. “They are amassing behind us.” She said quietly.

“I know. I can feel the mana gathering. Let me know when they pop their heads up, and I’ll take them out with one spell. You want to handle the ones charging this way?” I asked, noticing that a collection of skeletal mages were walking towards us, reinforced with heavy infantry carrying thick tower shields. Just to be safe, I created boots around our feet that were empowered with sunlight. At Elendria’s look, I explained, “No sense in just letting them attack through the floor.”

“Fair enough.” She said, before focusing on the group that had changed tactics. The front line was now starting to charge, having leveled spears in our direction. The second and third lines were also charging with spears, while the fourth line of mages were holding a shield of darkness in front to block our magic. Not a bad plan.

“I’ll slow them down.” I said, elevating slightly and creating a dense wall of swirling air. I included enough air blades in it that it started shearing off spear tips, giving the undead plenty of time to slow and stop. For the first time, I finally got to pit my willpower against another spellcaster’s, as all of the mages started working to unravel my wind spell. Tendrils of dark mana tried to sap the energy, that I countered with tendrils of light to reinforce. Death mana tried to decay my spell, and I didn’t have an elemental counter to that. So I flooded the spell with sunlight, figuring that the sun was the source of life for any planet. It wasn’t perfect, but it did slow them down enough.

“Sean. Behind.” Elendria said calmly.

“Solar flare.” With a casual gesture, I sent a streak of light and flame into the amassed darkness, shattering what little protection they had managed to conjure and ending them with a wail that started as an eerie chorus but rapidly dwindled to nothing. In my moment of distraction, the other mages pooled their mind and smashed my spell, sending a spike of pain into my head. It was too late for them, though.

“The old dead gather before me. Moldy bones and dried out marrow. Regaining a parody of this life through dark magics. Come, hunter of the frigid plains. Howl your icy rage for being denied the fresh meat of a kill, the hot blood of prey. Tundra Lord’s Wrath!” In front of Elendria, a white spectral wolf head appeared before blasting forth a stream of pure icy energy. The dark shield froze and shattered, and the dead behind the shield followed the same fate. A series of bullets to the exposed frozen skulls ended the magic that was animating them.

“Kill thief.” Elendria said with a smile.

“Never should have taught you any slang.” I muttered, dropping down to the walkway beside her. “So, do we enter the city itself, or walk around the edge and pick off small groups?”

“Edge. Far more likely to meet groups that are combat oriented.” Elendria immediately replied, and I nodded. We started moving towards the south, figuring that the most enemies would still be congregated near the gates. We annihilated the groups we came across, most of them numbering less than ten. We kept the spells simple, mostly bullets and ice lances, though any undead that looked like a pugilist class was immediately blasted with lightning. We were maybe a quarter mile away from the front gate when Elendria stopped.

“I don’t like this.” She said, staring down into what was obviously a slum area. Ramshackle shacks made of obviously scavenged materials were everywhere, creating a twisted labyrinth of faux dirt streets. It started with a single cry, that was then echoed through a thousand different voice boxes. I immediately made a sun globe above us, and just in time as hundreds of specters rose from the shacks. Among the ghostly figures were several darker ones that had to be shades, and a stream of banshees arose from one of the better maintained buildings. I could see several floors of bedrooms, and assumed that was probably a house of prostitution. The undead stayed away from the light, but it was only effective up to about six feet away thanks to the effects of the city shield.

As the screaming intensified, I felt a pressure building in my ears. With nothing else in mind, I made a snap decision and created a mana shield around us. Expanding the shield, I split it in two, creating a void and plunging us into what would have been blessed silence if it weren’t for the ringing in my ears. It took me only seconds thanks to the troll regeneration, but Elendria was nearly a minute in recovering.

“Thoughts?” She said.

“Let’s try this.” I said, sending a bolt of light towards the throng. The specters easily dodged it, and it fizzled out shortly afterward. Nodding, I sent a packet of mana with the intent of creating a miniature sun in their midst, only to have it blasted apart from something hiding in the streets down below.

“Alright, they are on to most of my tricks. Do you think you could create ice that can act like a mirror?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“No. I can make a crystal that can split the light, but that’s the best I can do.”

“Well, let’s do that then. See if you can seed the air there with a bunch of ice crystals, and I’ll blast them with light and we can hope the split beam is still effective.” Elendria nodded at the plan, sending fist sized crystal shards and having them swirl in a deadly blizzard. The sheer number of them guaranteed a few strikes on the specters, but nothing near fatal. Nothing until I turned it into a crazy laser light show. We even had a central disco ball crystal, which got targeted by one of my initial blasts of light. The other I was swirling around, trying to catch random crystals. Thankfully we couldn’t hear the wails, but it was obviously effective as undead bodies were falling like burning shreds of paper. Faced with an unstoppable onslaught, the smarter and stronger undead fled.

I let the shield drop, and we felt the rumble of approaching footsteps. “What do you think, time to leave?” Elendria asked.

“Yeah. We pressed our luck enough. They’ll have some strong people with that group.” I said, and we both took off. I looked back, and there were five liches glaring at me with red eyes and golden staves. “Yeah, we left just in time.” I said, happy we retreated. On our way back, I checked my sheet only to realize all those kills only gave me thirty percent toward the next level.