Nathan lost a moment, stunned from yet another blow to the head. He was aware of movement, and hands on him.
Don’t lose the plot now
He settled into [Focused Mind] and tried to direct his [Regeneration] to his head. He pictured the proper layout of brain and meninges - but Nathan couldn’t fully hold the image. He squeezed his eyes closed, concentrating on staying conscious. Moment by moment his mind felt clearer and more focused. Then, the process stopped.
{Stamina: 0/420}
{Mid-Tier Focused Mind Rank 10 achieved! Congratulations, you have maxed out this skill! It cannot be improved any further. You must achieve insight into this skill to develop it to the next level.}
Nathan’s eyes cracked open. Aarl was carrying him though a ruined building. The wiry man was staggering under Nathan’s weight, but they passed through a door and Aarl set Nathan down against a wall. Nathan was still woozy, but his eyes could focus now. Khachi was leaning heavily over Stella in the corner and Sarah was slumped against the will, sipping from a healing potion and holding her side.
Nathan reached back to touch his head wound. His hand came away sticky with blood, but there wasn’t a great rent in his head that exposed his brain or anything. Unfortunately, he was still bleeding pretty badly. Blood was streaming from the gouge along his ribs, and the cuts on each forearm were welling with bright red blood.
Good thing I don’t get woozy when I see blood. Oh there’s the shock.
He gestured weakly towards Stella. “Magic. Out of Stamina. Need some magic.” They had extra healing potions, but when they’d tested it in training after Nathan had gotten injured they’d just tasted bad. Apparently alchemy was magical enough that Nathan was immune. It meant he would likely be immune to magical poisons, so pluses and minuses.
Stella laughed weakly, coughing. “S-still need me I g-guess? Come over here.” She waved Nathan over with a weak motion.
Nathan got up, nearly overbalancing. Aarl grabbed him under the shoulder and helped Nathan across the room. His footsteps left blotches of blood on the floor. Stella wasn’t doing much better. It looked like she’d taken a bolt from one of the turrets to the chest. Her enchanted robes seemed to have slowed the bolt enough it hadn’t gone through her like the one targeted at Nathan had. Khachi had removed it and was continuing to heal her, chanting quiet prayers over her supine body. Khachi’s legs were wet with his own blood, but he seemed to be paying his own wounds no mind as he chanted over his friend.
“By the valor of Deiman, let these wounds be healed. Taken in righteous battle, this injury will not fell a valiant warrior. I ask you, Deiman, stem the flow of blood and mend this wound that Stella Caxol may fight virtuously another day.”
Nathan collapsed to the ground next to Stella. Her hand flopped to the ground next to Nathan, palm lit with fire. Nathan took her clean hand with his bloody ones, cupping the fire within like it was his only source of warmth in a blizzard. Stella laughed at that, her cough a little stronger this time. Then the fire increased in size, growing larger and larger until it would have touched the ceiling without Nathan absorbing the mana. It wasn’t a complicated spell, just more mana being fed into a less-disciplined derivative of the blowtorch spell that they’d fought over during their first spell practice.
This time, Nathan wasn’t trying to disrupt the spell. He was trying to suck as much stamina as he could from it, then feed it to his injuries in order of priority.
It was a surprisingly intimate moment, with Nathan and Stella softly chuckling at the ridiculousness of the situation. She was healing him from life-threatening wounds… by setting him on fire. While she was also being treated for a deadly wound.
Sarah called over after a minute, her voice tinged with pain. “If you are enjoying yourselves so much, can I get Khachi over here? I require a bit of divine love on my ribs.”
Khachi ignored her, finishing his prayer. “... continue to be your faithful servant in righteous battle. Praise to Deiman, may his Grace be granted” He released Stella, who was looking much healthier. Then he rose and walked over to Sarah.
Nathan looked around for Khachi’s shield and hammer. They’d been discarded in the corner of the room. The shield had two bolts sticking all the way through the heavy metal. The very tips were red with the wolf-man’s blood.
Aarl came back into the room. “The sentry constructs are keeping their distance for now. They don’t seem to want to go too far from that building they were guarding. They seem… uncertain now that their support fire is offline.” He threw an acknowledging hand gesture towards Nathan.
Nathan hadn’t noticed him leave, but he was glad that somebody was maintaining their situational awareness.
Sarah spoke through gritted teeth as Khachi poked at her ribcage. “Then they will be easy targets from here. Stella and I can take them apart from inside the building. Those constructs happen to be too large to fit into these hallways nicely.”
Nathan was uneasy. In his mind the correct thing to do was run the hell away.
Stella spoke next. “I want to take my pride from their carcasses. Nathan, you good? You’re having a little problem with. Uh. Clothes.”
Nathan was much better. He wasn’t exactly full of stamina, but all of his wounds were healed. He looked down at himself. He was also mostly naked, with his underwear hanging off one leg. However, that was somewhat less remarkable than the fact that he was almost entirely covered with blood, all of it his own.
{High-tier Regeneration Rank 3 achieved!}
Nonetheless, he answered. “Uh, yeah. I’m better. Can I get some pants? And food? I think we should get back to Gemore right now and report this.”
Khachi rose, pulling Sarah up. “I am running a bit low on faith and still need to finish healing myself, but it seems that we are able to fight. This is a threat we encountered on our patrol, and we would be remiss to leave it behind. I agree with Sarah and Stella. We will not run back to Gemore when we have the ability to end this threat now.” Then he started chanting again, this time with his hands crossed across his chest.
Stella had dug into her dimensional bag and handed Nathan a spare pair of short pants, a rag and some pastries. He stuffed a slightly bloody whole pastry into his mouth before turning around. Then he used the rag to start wiping away the worst of the blood before delicately putting on his pants. He was pretty sure it would be a terrible idea to keep attacking whatever-the-fuck this building was. He tried to put voice to his thoughts.
“We almost died already. I don’t think it’s in our weight class. We should back off, get some experts. Remember the lessons on dungeoneering? You don’t do a dungeon you don’t know anything about.”
Sarah responded curtly. “We didn’t die, and I will not let a near thing scare me. We know what we’re facing, and the threat is much less now that you have disabled many of the defenses. We aren’t in the dungeon. We can knock down those constructs, clear a threat from the streets of old Gemore. Then we can gather information on what this is, maybe peek inside and submit what we learn to guild. We might even get to come back for it. It’s common for the team that discovers a dungeon to be offered the chance to clear it.”
Aarl and Khachi were nodding in agreement. But Nathan was growing even more convinced this was a bad idea. Something niggled at his mind. What was it? Ah.
“Uh. Guys. Why haven’t we leveled? Is the fight still happening? Aarl, didn’t you say the constructs were backing off?”
Khachi frowned. “That is somewhat odd. Davrar must have decided the fight is not over. Aarl, you counted eight outside? Are we sure that none are sneaking up on us?”
Aarl nodded, and they all took a second to listen for anything off.
Sarah continued. “We should take a look out front. No need to commit yet. Nathan, nobody will accuse you of cowardice after what you did, but we must have our chance to prove ourselves here, against a threat like this. Our parents have told us stories about fights like this for years.”
And that’s the problem! You all have heard stories of your parents, powerful adventurers all, triumphing over terrible enemies. Survivorship bias, as well as unrealistic expectations. None of us are on that level of power yet! I don’t know if we can even take on those ‘sentries’. They threw a hell of a lot of magic my way at the drop of a hat.
Nathan hesitated, uncertain how to convince them without being demeaning. Stella was already starting to walk towards the door, and Khachi picked up his hammer and shield and followed. Nathan was left following them to just continue the conversation. It wasn’t a far walk to the front of the ruined building. There was an empty door frame and pair of wrecked windows that showed out onto the street. Nathan noticed another metal bolt sticking through the wall next to the door. He shivered.
Whoever built this place did not skimp on defenses. There are almost certainly more layers, more contingencies than what I saw.
With that thought in mind, he studied the front of the building. The look-away magic and illusion were starting to reassert themselves, but now that Nathan knew what was there it was easy to penetrate. All eight of the bug-constructs were acting just as Aarl had said, He studied the building carefully for a moment, breathing out and activating [Focused Mind]. He leaned into [Notice], looking for important details.
The building was nondescript, but sturdy. The windows were heavily barred and set high in the walls. It looked something like a prison, but the bunkers out front made it seem like a military headquarters. There weren’t a lot of obvious details, just the windows and some carvings on the walls. The carvings were abstract, some crests and flowing lines of decorative stonework that made the wall not so barren.
Nathan didn’t see much odd about it. But there was something bothering him about it, and after a moment Nathan relaxed, trying not to look for something, but rather see what came to him as he looked at the wall. After a brief moment, a pattern jumped out at him. Some of the bars on the windows subtly aligned with the carvings in the stone.
What really made him pay attention was that it reminded him of the mana flows he’d felt from spellwork. Not the engravings that made enchantments - it looked like a spell was engraved onto the wall, with the windows as the focal points. Recalling the spells he’d interacted with, the flows looked like a light spell - reminding Nathan of the beams of intense light that Kullal had sent his way when he’d developed [Magic Absorption]. He never would have seen it without relaxing and letting his [Spellsense] work with his [Notice].
{Congratulations, you have developed the [Low-tier Notice] utility skill into [Mid-tier Notice]. Utility skill: [Mid-Tier Notice] This skill will help you notice details in the future. Especially useful for detecting concealed magical effects and triggers.}
He elbowed Stella, who had been discussing target prioritization with Sarah in a quiet voice. “Do those four windows, and the carvings on the walls behind them, make a single symbol? One that reminds you of light mana?”
Stella frowned at him, then followed his pointing finger. “It’s not an enchantment, but… I think I can see what you mean.” She paused, narrowing her eyes and fingering her braid as she concentrated. “There’s some mana flowing through it. But what can it do? It’s not an enchantment on the building”
Nathan thought for a second. “Could it be a one-shot spell? You flow mana through a pathway in something solid and it makes the spell?”
{Low-tier Identify 7 achieved!}
I think that means I’m right.
Stella was backing up as she shook her head. “I.. no. We can’t do that, the material interferes… but if you could…” She looked up at the spell carved into the building and her eyes went wide. “It’s huge. Everybody get back, we gotta run!”
Aarl had been silently listening, and he turned immediately, sprinting down the corridor. Stella followed him. Sarah and Khachi were slower on the uptake, but they quickly followed. Nathan took up the rear, figuring that if they were about to get hit with some sort of giant death-laser, he should probably be in back. He was tempted to stay and moon the building, but followed the rest of the Heirs closely.
They ran through the building. There wasn’t a back exit, but Stella solved that problem by slicing through the back wall with blades of force. The building creaked alarmingly but they didn't stay in the building long. They all ran into the next building over, which was especially ruined. They had to clamber over some piles of rubble and work their way around a collapsed hallway. Eventually, they emerged onto the next street over.
Nathan was sweating, waiting for Davrar to decide the fight was over. That would probably happen when they were out of range of the presumable-death-laser. And now they were a whole block away, on the other side of two fairly large buildings, and it still wasn’t happening.
Ahhh even I might not survive that at close range. Glad I didn’t moon it after all.
Khachi barked at them to get into formation, and directed the group a few streets away and back towards the transit road. They kept up a quick jog, not wanting to run into any terrible dangers. They’d almost gotten back to the transit road before Davrar finally decided the fight was ‘over’.
{You have leveled up to level 43! Congratulations, you have escaped an extraordinarily dangerous trap that has felled many Adventurers higher-level than you, without losing a single teammate!}
Phew.
{Congratulations, Nathan Lark! Now that you have Developed your class and exited the fight, you are no longer at a Disadvantage. Davrar congratulates you on overcoming your difficult beginning, and welcomes you to the Davrar Experience.}
Skill text comparison:
{[Low-tier Notice]: You have been able to deeply notice the details of your surroundings. This skill will help you notice details in the future.}
{[Mid-Tier Notice]: This skill will help you notice details in the future. Especially useful for detecting concealed magical effects and triggers.}
Overall Status:
{Status of Nathan Lark:
Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 3
Permanent Talent 2: High-tier Regeneration 3
Talent 3: None
Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 43
Class skills:
Stamina: 77/530
Juggernaut's Wrath
Antimagic Momentum
Raging Thrill
Juggernaut's Inertia
Unarmored Resilience
Utility skills:
Mid-tier Focused Mind 10
Low-tier Earnestness 10
Mid-tier Sprinting 2
Mid-tier Spellsense 1
Mid-tier Notice 1
Low-tier Identify 7
Low-tier Dodging Footwork 8
Mid-tier Enhanced Memory 2}