Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

The resting place of the King, Elijah able to see the large bed ahead where an old man rested. Their eyes were sunken in, long gray curls fell from their sides, and a body that was previously thick with muscle was now thinner than his own along with being twice as fragile at best. The Heartroot herb had perhaps allowed those shaky lungs and the uncertain heart to continue beating, yet the toll that time had put on the body was undeniable.

“A weak man forced into a grand chamber,” Elijah muttered, remembering the story he was told as a child while looking around the room. Luxurious rugs covered every inch of the floor to keep the feet warm, expensive chairs and a table with an unfinished chess game, a small library of tomes and scrolls, a painting of the man and a woman that was decades old and washed out from the sun’s rays, and a balcony was easily seen through the glass doors that allowed the light to fill up the room.

He walked over to the doors, looking out and seeing the city in its completed form. The view that had been some floors below, close to the Royal Garden, was nothing compared to this.

“A beautiful sight for a man that cannot see,” Elijah continued, the words of the poem fleeing from his mind. “Food fit for gods for a man that cannot taste. A perfect bouquet for a man who cannot smell. A perfect life for a man that does not live.”

Thinking back, it was a strange thing to tell the children of the streets. A song meant to make them laugh? He could certainly remember doing so, jealous of the man’s life and wanting him to enjoy none of it.

Different times.

Now he could only look at the King of the country with his stomach twisting inside him, a feeling close to pity radiating through his flesh. It was enough for Dawn to reach her limit, appearing on his shoulder before she immediately leaped off and flew to the bed in front of them.

‘Not food?’ she asked, just to be sure.

“Not in the slightest,” Elijah murmured, absentmindedly repeating the words over the bond so the duck could understand. He settled on the chair beside the bed, opened up the prepared bag, and placed the various concoctions on the bed. “Not enough for a normal life, but enough to push you a little closer.”

He tried to be gentle as he grabbed the King’s right arm, rotating it slightly so he could easier clean the elbow pit where a vein could be easily found. There was a slight resistance as he did, muscles tensing and relaxing. Elijah paused to see if the man had awoken, but the eyes never opened and the breathing only shook a little before they calmed down once again.

Not one to sleep well, I see.

Elijah didn’t mind that fact, as he injected the pain reliever. Nothing that would fully stop it, but enough to make the breathing from the king more even within only a few minutes. And when no complications came about, he continued his work. The muscle enhancements were put on the core body and allowed to travel to the limbs through the bloodstream.

The help for the heart and lungs came next. Though the normal application was meant to be done through eating, he’d brought it this time as a form of ointment. It came with a reduction in strength and lifetime effect, but it was fine for now. When the day came, the proper version could be consumed instead.

No complications were seen this time either, and Elijah could continue his work for the next twenty minutes without finding flaws or other issues. Only after everything had been gone through did he move on to the next step.

“My predecessor might’ve thought you strong, but even years ago you must’ve been too weak to handle what he thought was needed,” Elijah muttered, closing his eyes as threads of his Mana traveled through the body of the King. Slow and steady, letting the flow of the flesh guide their way and not intervening in the slightest. No influences were forced, Elijah hoping to instead witness what was being hidden within.

The forced showing of strength that came from the Heartroot Vervain. The enlarged veins around the organs caused by it were unmistakable, Elijah grimacing as he nearly caught the attention of the magical herb. It didn’t have a mind of its own, but the natural reactions that the elixir had to foreign presences were dangerous regardless.

He moved his focus down towards the gut, finding it mostly in ruin. It was healthy in terms of it not having rotted or decayed, but it was without a true inner biome. The consequences of what he’d been through in recent years, no doubt, anything that might’ve sustained the inner workings of the gut were too hard to consume.

But maybe that was for the best, Elijah easily found what he was looking for because of that vast emptiness. Sticking to the walls with a grip that hadn’t been deterred by the passing of years were the fragments of an apple.

An Idun Apple, to be specific. All of the fragments were small enough to be akin to grains, the body cutting them into smaller and smaller pieces until it was impossible to damage the magical fruit more than it had already been. It was a testament to the King’s will to even do this much in his current state, but that didn’t stop most of the benefits from the fruit to have been wasted when it was eaten.

Not wasted. Paused.

Most of the apple was still there, inside the body and dormant. It would likely stay that way until the day that the flesh around the fragments decayed and fell away. That is unless somebody tapped them awake once more.

Channeling of [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 49MP/sec

An immense cost to do so little.

Elijah didn’t care.

‘Wake up. Become one with the flesh. Heal the sickness that has festered, that holds the body still. Make it right.’

He cut off the connection then and there, feeling most of his reserves emptied by so few words. But it didn’t matter how empty he felt, as a smile began to fall upon him and a golden blooming began to emanate from the old man’s stomach.

“Colors fit for a king,” Elijah muttered, lifting his spirits as his Core stopped complaining about the halving of his reverses in so little time. “Now… we wait.”

‘Can I do that?’ Dawn asked, standing on the bed close by Elijah, as they both watched the golden pulsing from the King. It was centered around the gut only at first, but the golden veins followed the rhythm of a calm heart, each beat making them a little further ahead. A slow but steady process. ‘It looks useful.’

‘It is, and… maybe,’ Elijah replied. It would require that they found an Idun Apple down in the Dungeon. Very far down, further than even the Crown Prince was meant to have gone while cleansing the upper half of the depths. He didn’t like the thought of going so far down himself, but there was a chance of buying it instead maybe? Pricy, sure, but gold was not something they would be missing soon. ‘In the future, when we have fewer things to worry about.’

For now, they watched silently. Progress did not cease, the veins reaching the chest within five more minutes before slowing down as the veins also spread to the arms and legs. More surface to expand on, making fifteen minutes go by before they passed the throat and were seen on the head of the King.

The gold was weak by then, but it didn’t stop as it filled the face of the old man. Around the lips, inside the nose, on the pupils, and up in the thin gray hair. It was everywhere it could be and then some more, having a grip on all the flesh there was to see.

And by then, when the arms and legs had been covered in similar fashion, the mythical apple saw its time to shine had come, the brightness increasing tenfold as the King was briefly turned into a miniature sun.

Elijah did not blink, his gaze not faltering.

He refused to look away until the end, until the golden light dimmed, and all that was left of the apple’s influence were dull lines nearly invisible to the eye. They could be felt as mild dents, but only just.

Barely a thought was spared to them, though, as the step had been completed and the results were there. The control that the Heartroot had gained over the King had been loosened just slightly. Enough for the body to become his own, if only with the help of a dozen other concoctions to keep him stable.

Though it was slow, the eyes twitched. The breathing deepened. The fingers stretched.

And, though Elijah requested that he lie back down immediately, the King sat up in his bed. Skin hung loose, his long gray hair was a mess, and he smelled like death, but the eyes of the King were open and he was sitting upright without help.

“... Not dead yet,” King Mason Newell, the man who rebelled and allowed the formation of Seranova under his banner, commented. A hand was raised in front of him, closing into a fist before the fingers were stretched out again and again. “Not too alive either, but this is better than I expected it would ever be again. Curious. Did Reynold change one of his recipes?”

Elijah noted the life in those brown eyes, so completely different from the rest of the body. Though sunken in, they didn’t waver, didn’t shake. The mind was as strong as it had ever been.

“Reynold died last week,” Elijah answered bluntly, the King blinking in surprise. “Slept in peacefully during the night. I’m the new Royal Healer, Elijah Ceade.”

“Well, Mr. Ceade, whatever you changed is much appreciated,” Mason replied, flexing his fingers again. “How long will lightness last?”

“The high from the Idun Apple in your gut finally being absorbed will last an hour or so, but the medication that you’ll be starting on in full tomorrow should keep you close to this level for the time you have left,” he proceeded to explain. “Best scenario will let you live for another year and a half. Worst is a half, even less if your body rejects too many of the herbs.”

“A few months,” the King repeated, his turn nodding as he mulled it over. “Better than I had hoped, or I’d have you call my children to my side.”

“Princess Vera led me up here. I can bring her if you—”

“No, it’s… I need time to adjust, if I have the chance to do as much,” Mason cut in before Elijah could rise from his chair and walk to the door. Something more almost left the King until the brown pupils saw the fake animal that had almost leaped off the bed to follow Elijah’s steps. “I won’t question the effectiveness of your methods, but I must ask what the purpose of the duck is. And why is it wearing a sunflower as a hat?”

“She likes the hat, and you must admit it suits her,” Elijah replied, getting a weird look from the most powerful person in the country. “And she came with me because she will be antsy if left alone at the laboratory. While ducks might not understand the concept of such a thing, Dawn here suffers no such weakness through virtue of not being a duck at all.”

As he spoke, he sent a small request to the fake animal, and Dawn immediately responded by making the flower hat grow twice as tall on her head.

The King witnessed the display, confused for a moment before chuckling at the hilarity.

“An animal that is not an animal but instead a plant,” Mason muttered, spending some time looking at Dawn taking off the grown part of the hat and eating it. “That makes you a Biomancer, I suppose?”

“Your guess would be right,” Elijah confirmed. He grabbed a loose bathrobe at the King’s request, helping him put it on before standing by his side while he rose from the bed without assistance. “Say if you feel weak. While there might be less pain now, it will increase tenfold if you fall to the floor.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll shout when the time comes,” the King promised, taking small steps as he headed to the table and chairs that stood ready to be used. “Do you play chess?”