Blaze shook his head as he stared at the patient, thinking about the last person who’d worked on the problem. What was he going to do with that man?

Talk about overdoing a solution. Almost any holy energy could be used to counter a siepvert’s corruptive energy; even Life could be used if it had to, though it wasn’t as good. It wasn’t exactly what the reference book said, but Blaze was fairly confident he’d made that clear to Serenity.

Serenity hadn’t used any of those, however; he’d used nearly pure Creation energy. Blaze couldn’t be certain what the hints of something else he felt were; there might have been some divinity as well, but it was too weak to be certain. There certainly was some Death affinity, which was a strange thing to see mixed in, but probably good when combined with Creation energy. It was so rare that Blaze hadn’t used it, but he expected it had the same issues as Life, a tendency to not simply restore or Heal but overgrow.

Yet despite that, Serenity maintained that he couldn’t Heal? He clearly had the knowledge; any Blackthorn trained destructive healer would, and the handful of times Blaze had worked with Serenity told him that Serenity was not an exception. What he didn’t have was any confidence in himself as a healer. Serenity clearly saw only his ability to destroy.

Blaze would have to help Serenity fix that before there was any chance to teach Serenity to actually heal. It wouldn’t be an easy task, and it might not be winnable, but it was worth trying. Rissa would undoubtedly help.

The other strange thing Serenity had done was that while he’d clearly followed the ritual, he’d also shaped it with Intent. Blaze didn’t think he even realized he was doing it. It was no surprise that Serenity always claimed Intent was the key to spellcasting; for him, it was. He’d have made an excellent Intent-based caster, but Blaze thought Serenity was happier with his spellforms. Blaze envied him that ability; he could see spellforms but not create them. Perhaps in the future.

“How bad is it?” Rube’s voice interrupted Blaze’s musings.

It had probably been long enough. Blaze had known the answer to that question since he walked into the room, but he’d had to wait and look like he was figuring it out. If only he didn’t have to waste so much time to make it look like he was using standard Healing Skills! He knew better than to reveal himself, unfortunately. He’d learned that the hard way.

“You’re responding well. The last of the scales should dissolve back into ordinary skin in a couple of days, and I think you’ll regain most of the lost arm strength. You’ll need to exercise them to get there, however, so make certain you do the exercises.” Blaze thought for a moment, then decided to add the rest of what he’d noticed. “The variant of the treatment Serenity used seems to be giving you some minor enhancements. I don’t think it’ll affect your Attributes at all, but there’s a good chance you’ll be a little more resilient and possibly have a slightly increased lifespan. At the very least, it shouldn’t be significantly reduced, which is the normal diagnosis for a condition that advances as far as yours did.”

Admittedly, that was mostly because the normal remedy for “a condition that has advanced that far” was a mercy killing, but Blaze didn’t see any need to mention that. It was true that the sort of damage he saw was hard to repair and that incomplete repair shortened the lifespan. Not that Blaze was about to allow that.

Two of the chimeras charged Serenity, who was farther into the room, but the last one leapt for Andarit. Serenity couldn’t let that happen; yes, she was in armor, but it wasn’t as good as his and she also wasn’t as resilient. It was his job to keep the enemy off his squishy ally while she killed it.

He sent a Death Manabolt towards the third chimera, hitting the lion’s face. It skidded to a halt, reorienting itself towards Serenity, right as the chimera that started closest to him reached him and swatted him.

Serenity found himself flying uncontrolledly for several feet, knocked completely off balance. He landed roughly and picked himself up in time to be hit by two different fiery spit attacks. Even combined, they weren’t bad enough to actually hurt. The one thing they did mean was that the goat heads were easy to locate. One of the two breathing on him was the one close to Andarit, so Serenity sent his ax towards its skull while he threw a Death Magebolt at the lion’s head on the other one trying to maintain its fire on him.

Andarit could handle the crippled chimera now; the only head it had left was the snake’s, and if Serenity remembered the ones he’d fought in the past that meant it was mostly helpless as long as you stayed out of range. The lion was the best at moving the body, while the goat could do it stiffly, but the snake could barely manage it at all.

A snake lunged for Serenity from the chimera that had originally swatted him away, but the remaining smoke was more of a detriment to the snake’s aim than to Serenity’s ability to dodge. Despite its speed it couldn’t turn once it sprang forward, while Serenity could lunge to the side. Even so, he didn’t quite get completely out of the way; the snake’s nose thudded into Serenity’s shoulder instead of its fangs.

Serenity wasn’t about to let the moment escape him, so he grabbed the snake by the back of its head, sinking his claws into its flesh. The scales parted almost as easily as if they hadn’t been there. It was almost too easy to sever the snake’s vertebra, and Serenity had to remind himself that not only did he have a Tier advantage but he was using dragons’ claws. Having grown them himself didn’t make them weaker.

A glance at Andarit told him that she’d figured out the same thing he had about the chimera closest to her. She’d moved farther away from it along the wall and switched her targeting to the other one with the dead lion head, the one whose snake head Serenity wasn’t holding.

It still had its attention on Serenity, and he wanted to keep it that way, so he glanced towards the one he was holding on to; it was the only one with a lion’s head remaining, which meant it was the most mobile. He’d used three Death Manabolts but no other magic, and it would be easy to target.

The chimera tried to dodge this time, but Serenity tugged on the snake’s head, slowing it enough that the Death Manabolt impacted squarely on the side of the lion’s head. It now had only a goat’s head left, and that head reared backwards and shot a larger stream of fire than Serenity had seen from the others. It had to be burning through its mana pool quickly, but it wasn’t like there was anything else for it to do.

Serenity called his ax back from the disabled chimera and threw it towards the snake’s head on the chimera Andarit was attacking. He missed, but he split the chimera’s attention enough that one of her manabolts hit the snake squarely in the mouth and it slumped, leaving only the goat head alive. Serenity was relieved; he’d been lucky to dodge the first snake’s strike and wasn’t certain he could dodge another.

With each chimera down to one head, it became a simple fight. Serenity held the attention of the two goat heads to keep them from closing in on Andarit while she took care of them with her lower-power but far more repeatable manabolt. His ax took care of the final serpent’s head on the immobile chimera.

Once they were all down, Serenity recalled his ax before heading over to Andarit. “You good?”

“I need a breather. I’m tapped on mana.” Andarit leaned against the wall for support. She didn’t look tired so much as she looked mentally drained. “Other than that, I’m fine.”

Serenity nodded. “I need a breather too. I didn’t use that many spells, but they were expensive and I’ll need to replace the two I evoked as well. Would you like to check the bodies or shall I?”

“Check the bodies? What for?” Andarit looked puzzled.

Serenity shrugged. “Don’t know yet. These are Tier Two, instead of the Tier One we were seeing earlier. I don’t know how this dungeon does item recovery from its monsters; I didn’t sense any mana cores, so we probably can’t get those, at least. The snakes are venomous, so I might be able to recover a venom sac. If we didn’t break them all, at least.”

“I’ve never heard of recovering things from monsters.” Andarit frowned. “Can I watch?”

Serenity nodded and waved for her to follow him. “Sure. It’s a lot like hunting, except we won’t be taking the meat. Dungeon monster meat can be good, but I wouldn’t count on it from a chimera, even though both goat and snake can be quite good when cooked properly and lion is definitely edible.” Serenity wondered for a moment if dungeon monster meat would taste better than other meat since it was made of mana and essence. That dinner at Ellie’s Place where he’d had Tier Two fish was excellent.

He still wasn’t going to salvage flesh from a chimera. While it was just a name, he wasn’t going to eat anything with the name chimera. Certainly not while he was in his own chimera form.

Serenity walked Andarit through the steps. She’d clearly done a little hunting, but he got the impression that someone else had handled the animals after they were killed. He was only able to recover one venom sac and one firebreath gland; it was low on the fiery oil, but there was enough there to potentially do something with. The lions had no materials worth gathering, since he wasn’t interested in their fur. None of the hides were worth much, even the snakeskin, and he’d already decided against the meat.

They took their time recovering before moving on to the next area, which wasn’t a room at all. Instead, they were suddenly standing outside, facing down a cobblestone street. The buildings on both sides were three stories tall, with brick faces. There was a line of posts that ran down each side of the street, clearly where the animal would be tied when its rider went into the building.

The scene was deserted, but there was no sign of damage.

“What do you think happened here?” The words escaped from Serenity’s mouth before he had a chance to stop them.

Andarit shook her head. “Who knows? Maybe we’re supposed to go inside one of the buildings? I’m not sure what any of this means.”

“If I had to guess,” Serenity paused to look at Andarit. She turned to face him and nodded before he continued. “If I had to guess, I’d say there was an escalating series of attacks. They thought everything was safe; that’s why the students in that gym were unprotected. It’s probably why they lost the fight we just came past, as well; undertrained or surprised, they weren’t a match for chimeras. A decent mech pilot shouldn’t have had a problem. Inprocessing … that seems to connect to the mechs. Maybe some sort of call-up for compulsory service? That’s just a guess from the fact that the inprocessing room led to the mech room, though. Maybe the pilots were still in training?”

“Could be. What happened here, then? Did everyone get called up as you said?” Andarit glanced around the deserted scene. “Or has it just not started yet?”

“Evacuation, maybe? We’ll have to go inside a building and find out.” Serenity headed towards the closest building. He couldn’t find any nearby monsters, so checking out a building was the next step.