What surprised in the aftermath of the Injecticle incident was that I’d leveled up as a Healer, or rather as an Arcane nder.
Level 30: 12 skill points
Excellent. I was really enjoying the increased number of skill points. I’d gotten a bunch of new ones in Pleasure Seeker too, for all the partying we’d done following the Glumpdumpkin situation. One did not look a dozen skill points, an attribute level, and a special ability level up in the… mouth.
I rolled my eyes at my brain’s weird inability to make a good taphor and plowed on.
The old mainstays were back on the nu: Diagnostics, Treatnts, Develop Cure, all the different sizes, add one point for the Human version—just for my mama—Administer Cure, putting us at 9 of 12. I wished all the Develop Cure skills would aggregate into a single one like Diagnostics and Treatnts, but it hadn’t happened, and I desperately needed all the skill levels I could get.
It then occurred to that I had utterly neglected all the various aspect skills. I could shift from Develop Cure by size and work on the various different aspects instead.
The list though was long. Aside from the basic elents of fire, lightning, water, plant, earth, and air, there were the other aspects I’d co into contact with: divine, dark, fairy, draconic and poison. The only two out of the long list I’d consider were beast and bug. Many of the Nakamamon we’d co across had been beast or bug aspect. Still, Vellenia was neither beast nor bug.
The last option was to go with fighting aspect, which was now a skill option as well. I gritted my teeth and tried to will it to disappear, but it stubbornly remained on the list, taunting .
Screw you, fighting aspect. And screw Blake for his stubborn insistence on not taking his anti-magic dicine.
Still, it wasn’t a bad idea to get the Huge size category up even with the rest, in the event I did end up with an aggregated skill after my next class evolution. With that in mind, I put the three skill points for Small, dium and Large into Develop Cure beast, bug, and a last one in plant. Three of the fighting aspects were plant-based.
The last three needed to go to Instinctual Casting, Mana Shaping, and then…
Then I waffled. I’d put the points into Transmutation previously, but Mana Affinity was calling to . It was used in conjunction with my Affinity attribute in order to do little things like non-cures for infected Nakamamon who needed to have their aspects shifted.
There were other options that needed attention, such as Conjuration and Abjuration. Conjured materials weren’t nearly as good for cures, but I was now a fugitive from SNORC, and they weren’t going to supply with various different oils, or glycerine, or any of the other bases like they had before. Plus, the portal was closed, and they weren’t going to be getting that stuff in anyway. When it ca to Abjuration, if I could protect the patient from itself, or protect the people from the patient, that would be lovely. Wayne knew his wards from his circles of protection and I couldn’t properly use either of those things at this level.
I chewed my lower lip thinking it over. There were a profusion of Wizards in this world, and they could both conjure and abjure. But those Wizards presently viewed as soone who needed to be arrested, brought in, detained, and questioned.
Again, the task in front of won out. Mana Affinity got the skill point.
The next thing I needed to do was check over the old character sheet. I kept it strictly on the skills of my two classes. I had more than enough going on there without putting points into non-class skills.
Christopher Fletcher
Healer - Apprentice Arcane nder 30
Pleasure Seeker - Initiate Indulgent Consort 28
Attributes:
Affinity 9
Durability 7
Ingenuity 9
Likability 7
Agility 4
Muscularity 4
Free Tokens 7
Healer (Arcane nder) Skills:
Diagnostics 7
Treatnts 7
Develop cure (swarm 6, small 6, dium 6, large 6, huge 3)
Develop cure (beast 1, bug 1, plant 1, unique 9, human 3)
Administer Cure 10
Instinctual Casting 9
Mana Affinity 4
Mana Shaping 4
Spellcasting (Abjuration 1, Conjuration 1, Evocation 1, Transmutation 3)
ditation 4
Pleasure Seeker (Indulgent Consort) Qualities:
Girth 2
Load 2
Stave Off 4
Length 4
Tongue 3
Adaptability 9
Pheromones 7
Refractory Period 1
Flexibility 1
Group Play 4
Seduction 1
The really nice bonus here was that in reaching level 30, all my Tokens replenished.
It was ti to get down to crafting a treatnt.
Although I was bumd out that the Injecticle situation hadn’t produced any fruit, I couldn’t help but feel relief the creature had gotten free of the situation it was in. Jacoby had raked her Guardians over the coals for doing dumb shirt in the swamp. There were sapient Nakamamon everywhere, not just in little towns and villages.
We’d have to restrain the fighting aspects physically and hope nobody got hurt. There were soporific plants, and since this had never been a problem, I wasn’t skilled in their application. Alan had all of my instruction manuals. I’d make do with so ‘milk of the poppy’ if Savannah couldn’t calm down our patients.
As for the mana channel and chakra invasions happening, and reversing them… I wanted to go with a slow and asured approach. If I under-dicated and failed, the patient would survive without any adverse effects. If I over-dicated… I wouldn’t be over-dicating. That was that.
With that in mind, it looked like I’d just have to go with the henge sage after all. However, I was out of glycerine. The Wizards had been looking into ways of concocting it, and we were at the point where we were literally making a still to generate bathtub gin, then using Transmutation to alter the grain alcohol into sugar alcohol.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I told the Wizards.
They were Wizards, so they had all kinds of ideas.
Regardless, the glycerine was going to be a pain in the behind to transmute. It wasn’t my job, and I was thankful they had better people on it. It was nice being able to rely on experienced spellcasters. No offense to Alan, who was an excellent person and a pretty darn good Wizard, but these people had put in the work and gotten the levels. One of them was a dedicated Transmutation specialist, I learned. Instead of generating any of the ingredients using Conjuration, they went out and hacked down the grain, separated the wheat from the chaff, and busted their asses to get this alcohol as good as it could get the old fashioned way. The reason? Generating materials out of nothing gave them much higher concentrations of mana than real objects. If you ssed with a thing’s mana concentration or mana channels, the Transmutation would be incredibly difficult, impossible, or give you a final product with an even more ssed up mana signature.
Which was why we were now bootleggers.
The Agency didn’t allow drugs or alcohol in this world for the exact sa reason it didn’t tolerate violence among the trainees or against the Nakamamon. You could end up with situations like the one we currently faced.
The henge sage, morpheus sage and the passion sage were all dried out and ready to be infused into a dium. Wayne, the guy tasked with being my right hand Wizard, proclaid what I could already feel, but in nurical terms.
“The henge sage is putting out three mana and two damage of divine power per ounce,” he said. The other two were far higher, at 6 and 3 for the morpheus sage, and 7 and 3 for the passion sage.
“Wild,” I told him. “How do you calculate all that?”
“It’s so divination magic,” he said. I stared at him. “There’s a particular ritual I used that takes a good few hours to enact, and is pretty damn expensive.”
“How…” He hadn’t had a few hours. I stared at him and he nodded.
“There’s a secondary ritual to speed the whole thing up, involving ti dilation. It’s called Fletcher’s Ritual of Extre Gullibility.”
I snorted laughter. “Nice.”
He laughed. “Nah, I just burned it and asured the release with my Mana Affinity skill,” he said. “And also took divine damage. See?” He held up a slightly burnt hand, which now glowed slightly with divine energy, like with cases of divinity poisoning.
Now I shook my head at his stupidity, and used my healing aura to help him deal with that. The damage from whatever head injury had caused him to do that, apparently I couldn’t help with that.
Wayne had clearly never t the administrators who built the system, if he thought ti dilation wasn’t possible. I had several instances of ti being fully or nearly stopped.
After healing him, I had the bright idea to further dilute the divine properties of the henge sage by splicing it again with henge grass. It shouldn’t gain any additional mana enhancing properties, being two parts henge grass and one part halo sage, but this world had floating castles and lakes that were gods. Cross fingers that it would work on the first try and I wouldn’t need this weaker strain of henge sage. I’d have to call the second splice H2Sage or sothing equally as bad.
That done, it was ti to have an hour or two to myself. I visited Tweedle Dee’s identical twin. All the fighting aspects were encircled by a special Wizard circle that canceled out sound. They roared, hissed, barked, snapped their teeth and gnawed at their enclosures, but all in an eerie silence.
“I’m sorry,” I told them. I wanted to say my words were for all of them, but it was especially hard seeing Dee baring teeth and making the barking motion with baleful eyes fixed on . This was hard to see, but I forced myself to face it. Any information I got would be useful, and I’d be getting my hands close to these creatures very soon. “Help is on its way.”
I spent so ti by the fire, but couldn’t help glancing over at the caged Nakamamon from ti to ti. Vellenia eventually joined , hugging against my side with Jacoby eventually fixing us with that intense gaze.
“I don’t like seeing them like that,” I told her.
“It’s difficult,” she said. “This sort of emotion and instinct is not what my world has known. I’m confident you will fix this.”
I couldn’t, but neither of us knew this. She twined her fingers with mine and I decided not to get all up in Jacoby’s thoughts tonight. We stared at the flas, listened to the others talk, and eventually grew tired.
After that, sleep. I was waiting on the glycerine, and the Wizards were on my usual duty, consisting of staying up all night to work. Vellenia stripped off my clothes and crawled into our conjoined sleeping bags, draping her lithe body over mine.
***
Outside of leveling up and general system-related user interface shenanigans, nothing could surprise . My ability Eagle Eyed, which I’d gotten from Tara, saw to that. This ant that, when the intruder entered the camp in the deep of night, my eyes snapped open and I was instantly aware of sothing. Or soone.
My first thought was that the Injecticle was here. I prayed that silhouetted against the thin fabric of my camp, I’d see the dusa-like horror of a humanoid with a roil of tentacles surrounding its head. I further prayed it ca to get rather than paralyze any of the people who’d thrown rocks into its swamp and caught it.
None of that happened. Instead, I heard hushed voices in what was obviously an argunt. Vellenia remained snuggled up against , her hand unconsciously trailing down my abs and dangerously close to my cock.
Now, I wasn’t Drat. Nor was I the other Rogue, Oz. Going outside was a stupid idea.
Still, I put on Golightly, my magical shoes, and hoped they’d give a boost to sneaking like they indicated they would. They did. Then, against the sleeping protests of my bond mate, I crawled out of the tent and went out to see what was going on. I passed my first stealth check with ease, thanks to the bonus 5 skill points from the god’s gift.
“—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jacoby said. “We’re looking for him the sa as you are.”
The other figure didn’t move. Jacoby stared back defiantly. Finally, the other person hissed, “I’d bet you all the Tokens I have that you’re harboring the fugitive, and the mother. We’re aware you had contact for your field assignnt, an assignnt which you have yet to complete by the way.”
“These kinds of accusations are insulting. For all I know you already have his location and are just trying to fra soone for it. See how insane that sounds?”
“If you keep raising your voice, it really gives the impression you’re hoping soone will wake up, see here, and make a break for it.”
“Oh yes, I have no good reason to be upset. Ass.” Jacoby rolled her eyes. “My Bard is over there, sleeping. If I wanted to convince or seduce you, she’d be up. And my Rogue is in that tent right now. If I had the subject in my custody, which I do not, I would be trying to hide him or help him escape.”
Shadowy figures moved among the camp, barely detectable using Eagle Eyed, and I ducked behind a tree to stay out of sight. One of them peered at the tent, then turned to the person Jacoby was speaking with, nodding the confirmation that Savannah the Bard was inside. The other one peered at Oz’s tent, confirming the Rogue was in there.
“So you won’t mind if we go through all the tents… what in the devil is that?”
The figure moved over toward the center of the camp, where the cages all held the half dozen fighting aspect Nakamamon, including the Vulpetunia.
Jacoby sighed. “Why don’t you go on about your business and do the task admin assigned to you, and I’ll do mine, okay?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this. They’re infected with sothing?”
“Yes, now if only we had a competent Healer to help with the problem!” She snarled. “I don’t appreciate being awoken in the middle of the night, accused of harboring a fugitive, and then interrogated about a task you’re completely unfamiliar with. Get. Out. Of. My. Camp.”
A rustle made spin, but when I did, I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. There was a thump and more rustling, but it was beyond the limits of what Eagle Eyed could handle.
“I have the authority to search your camp,” the figure said. “You deal with the rabid animals and I’ll deal with the Healer nonsense.”
He made a loud whistle, and figures erged from the darkness around Jacoby. For the first ti, her mask of fury slipped and I saw real fear. So eight people erged into the waning light of the campfire.
“Where’s Ricky?” the leader demanded.
I chose to head to the edge of the water and slip under the surface. Then I piled so of the easy rocks onto myself. A few monts later, Vellenia joined under the water. Her eyes glowed with a minty green light in the dark, and she peered a question at .
We need to stay hidden, I sent her with Psyspeech. So of the Agency’s people are here and looking for . I think we’ll be okay. And doubly okay if she just lay on top of .
I’d brought this situation on myself. The existence of this team, scary as it was, was actually a good thing. Jacoby’s orders had hinted at the possibility of contact with earth, though there was a possibility of records indicating my team had been on schedule to return to this world and they wanted for questioning. They may have also had records indicating that I’d returned but not checked in.
The team interrogating Jacoby and ntioning my mother ant that HQ was in contact with earth for sure.
For the next forever and a half, I kept Eagle Eyed focused on the mana sense. It showed the explosive amount of living things in this area of the swamp, but no humanoid ones. I thought I caught a glimpse of a humanoid deeper into the swamp, away from Jacoby’s camp, but it disappeared from view.
Eventually, I had Vellenia head up and check out the situation. She reported back that the other team was gone. That was good, since I was filthy from being subrged in a swamp for so long.
Jacoby was waiting at my tent. “What happened to his man, this Ricky guy?”
I shrugged. “No idea.”
She blinked. “Fletcher… are we going to find a dead body in the swamp?”
“I hope not!” I said. “I’m here to heal people.”
“Hey, I’ve heard Healers can make poisons.”
“Well this one doesn’t,” I said. “I never saw a guy, and definitely didn’t kill anybody. I do the opposite of killing.”
She huffed, with crossed arms, and looked away deep in thought.
“And lay off, okay? My mom has fracking cancer and I’m here dealing with your problem.”
The concern on her face broke. “Sorry. There was a douchebag, your bond mate said you heard us talking. Another expedition leader trying to get you. They’re after you. They know about your mother, and they’re trying to capture you both.” I could tell she wanted to touch .
I nodded. I needed to get back to my mom as soon as possible.
This is Christopher about to do a rush job.
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