Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

The Princess was out of the room within the minute, leaving them to prepare just as they were supposed to. It mainly meant resting, eating the food brought to them after half an hour, and then mentally readying themselves for a rather boring walk.

Because it was. Even when invisible and ignored by those who walked through the darker streets, Elijah found himself enjoying very little of it all. The others somehow did, at the very least, the lacking reactions from those they passed as interesting to them.

“If you get too close to others, I can’t promise to keep the veil unbroken,” Harper warned, when Sasha unceremoniously walked over and swiped a bag of gold coins from one of the game tables put out on the streets. “And don’t steal in my presence either. I’d like to have some manner of respect for you by the end of all this.”

“Didn’t come here to get your respect,” Sasha replied in an uncaring manner, inspecting one of the coins with a frown. “These thieves deal in painted bronze.”

The Illusionist seemed close to commenting on the irony of the situation but the professional assistant kept her tongue to herself. Elijah was impressed by the willpower, knowing he would’ve already raised his voice if he cared in the slightest about the woman’s actions.

Nothing serious occurred when they continued through the streets, quickly passing into the middle district. By then, the side streets were all but empty, and they were able to reach the Dungeon’s entrance without a single soul getting close to them. He saw Fred, Olivia, and other guards he recognized close to the entrance, yet none of them looked their way, and they could walk through the open gate without any problems.

While he wouldn’t let go of his own Affinity, Elijah had to admit he was starting to better understand the benefits of invisibility. So many areas previously inaccessible could suddenly be entered without any resistance. And against people not prepared for it, there was little to stop an invisible person from getting another by surprise. A quick knife in the back was all it would take.

…

Huh.

Now that he was considering it more, it was a good thing that the Princess’ assistant was on their side. Even if he knew about her tricks, catching her would be incredibly difficult.

Without any troubles, other than some having an initially hard time adjusting to the Mana-Density, they were able to go down the floors until they reached their goal. Hidden off the main path, and nearly impossible to find if you weren’t looking for it, came the cave entrance that would be the two’s new home for a while.

“Just as cold and wet as I remember,” Jack noted, as they went into the cave itself and placed down most of the supplies. They had food, medicine, water, sleeping bags, a few knives, the enchanted paper to communicate with, and some emergency lights if the Dungeon suddenly decided to rid the ceiling of the blue moss. “Not the worst trade-off in the world, though. Should be plenty of time to work.”

“Wasn’t your biggest hindrance in progressing with your gun a lack of visits to the smithy?” Elijah questioned, as he helped stretch out a thick tarp that would hopefully stop the spiky ground from being too rough on the back. Even if the two were still in their youth, the spine could only handle so much before it began to ache.

“Well, yes, but that was before I was given several days to mess around inside here,” the man explained. “I’ll have to do a lot of repetitive work, but I’ll have something working by the time we get out of here.”

It was a confident statement that Elijah didn’t feel like questioning too heavily. Nobody else did either for that matter, as they silently worked. Harper had already left, needing to sort out some other issues, but would return in a few hours to let him and Aleksi reach the surface unnoticed once again.

In the meantime, he had a small promise to uphold.

‘Dawn, the trick you did with separating roots from your main body,’ Elijah sent the duck that had mostly been relaxing inside his Core for the past few hours. ‘Do you think you could do that with branches and leaves instead?’

‘Would it be useful?’

‘Yes. Very useful.’

‘I can do it!’

With a small flash of gold, the duck emerged from his hand and jumped down onto the ground right before the cave entrance.

The same second the webbed feet hit the ground, it began instantly. Roots ruthlessly dug through the semi-earth below the animal, making the area shake just a little. Dust and fragments fell off in small heaps, the eye of the Dungeon began to look their way, and the roots had come into place around the entrance within just a minute.

Then came the branches, growing out of the walls and steadily covering everything up. They were thin at the start, barely able to hide even an inch of what was behind, but as it all began to layer on top of each other, and as the branches thickened, it became impossible to see what it was meant to hide.

‘Might be best to make it slightly less obvious,’ Elijah suggested, looking around at the otherwise blank, gray wall. ‘Widen the area with branches perhaps?’

Dawn didn’t reply, the duck instead taking a few steps back as she followed his words. The wall shook again, more cracks forming as even more branches began to crawl out. Leaves, golden flowers, and an entire hive of different sorts could be seen. It looked like a small hive of different flowers and plants that had been bunched up together, even growing on the ground before the wall instead of directly on it, yet the truth was that it was all one massive organism.

Elijah had to think that they had passed the one-ton mark for the total biomass within twenty minutes of work, and yet it didn’t stop for another ten. By the end, when they’d added an entirely new chunk to the already massive forest, he had to make the duck stop in fear of others coming along to just investigate the plants more than anything else.

‘Did I do good?’ Dawn asked innocently, excited as she jumped up on his hand.

… Looking at what he wouldn’t have been able to do if given several hours, not even with the lowered cost that came from the higher Mana-Density in the air, Elijah had only one answer.

‘Yes.’

Never before had he thought a duck could vibrate to such a degree, the little thing nearly falling off him as her back feathers wagged and she tried to go for his face. He smiled at it, though the expression was wiped off instantly once he noticed Aleksi grinning at him.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking it more than loud enough.”

“... And you were the one who didn’t want a cat.”

Elijah refused to continue that conversation, instead making Dawn briefly open up the wall to the cave so that they could communicate with the ones inside. Jack had already settled in quite nicely, and Sasha seemed to have likewise grown accustomed to their situation from how she already looked half-asleep. He didn’t want to bother them too much, with everything ready, so Elijah instead reported that they would go around the floor and wipe out any monster found to hopefully lessen the risks of such attacks at the start.

“Sounds good to me,” Jack replied, waving them off. “Oh, but if you do have the chance to pick up pollen, or any powders with higher amounts of Mana inside them, I wouldn’t mind a small farewell gift.”

Of course, he would ask for that.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Elijah replied, getting a thanks in reply before Dawn closed off the wall once again and they moved out in search of worms and fliers that could pose some type of threat to the younger adults. “Hear any Neogis?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Aleksi was quick to promise. “Only the worms hiding, a few fliers close to the end of the floor, and… otherwise a relatively empty area.”

A boon from the cleansing only having been done a little more than a day ago, Elijah supposed. It was already empty the day before, ignoring the bastard of a spider that had snuck up here without being caught. Other than that, he was rather happy with the lack of foes, the few monsters here not proving much challenge.

It certainly allowed them to take the leisurely approach. With several hours remaining before Harper was to return and fetch them, it was possible to slowly approach the different groups of worms, kill them, harvest whatever he could from their shells, and then take whatever flowers were nearby. Nothing too crazy, and certainly nothing above what Dawn could already provide if asked, but filling a few bottles worth of pollen for free wasn’t a problem from his point of view.

‘I can do it faster than these can,’ Dawn offered regardless, when the fourth bottle and sixth group of worms had been dealt with. ‘No need to walk.’

‘We have to walk if we want to kill the worms,’ Elijah replied, though he had to admit it was less them taking care of the monsters and more just Aleksi. He’d tried to chip in at the beginning, dealing with the strays that ran, but it turned out to be much faster just letting the giant deal with it all. With the additional elixir running through his bones from the day before, there was little that could stop him.

‘I could kill them.’

…

‘Really?’ he sent back. The lack of the usual excitement and childlike wonder made him pause, nearly stopping him in his tracks. Aleksi looked back at him when it happened, but he just waved it off. ‘You think you can kill these monsters by yourself?’

‘Yes,’ Dawn said. She sounded confident, which wasn’t unusual for her, but that lack of immaturity that had appeared made Elijah a little unsure of it all. This was a sudden shift, a very… unsettling change in how she communicated. Was it because of how they did it? ‘They die when crushed, yes? Roots can crush.’

With how relaxed the giant centipedes were before they started to attack, Elijah supposed that Dawn could sneakily get a few by herself.

‘No, I can be fast!’ She corrected him, reading his thoughts. ‘Very fast.’

Dawn was not letting the topic go, as they continued down the path where the fliers began to appear. While Elijah did at some point start relenting and promising to allow her a chance to prove herself once they found a group that didn’t possess any aerial foes, a certain duck wanted to be out there now.

At the very least, the endless nagging brought out that childish behavior once again, confirming that the duck hadn’t suddenly matured mentally without his notice. Still a child at heart and all, though she was one that thirsted for blood more than ever.

Maybe he needed to give up on making her unlearn that particular trait.

Another half hour passed without the duck being allowed to prove herself in combat, though Elijah did allow her to help clear some of the pollen from the flowers they found. Some were consumed as well, though that didn’t help much other than Dawn’s mood.

‘Do you enjoy the taste of them?’ he asked, realizing he’d never bothered to wonder if the plant could taste at all.

‘... They taste fuzzy,’ Dawn replied after some moments of deliberation. ‘It’s good.’

Elijah wasn’t too sure what a ‘fuzzy’ taste was meant to be, but he decided to just take her word for it. While he’d eaten plenty of herbs through his travels, these particular ones didn’t seem like they would have the best of flavors.

They’d have a better chance at making me sneeze, with all this pollen they’re shooting into the air.

“I hear voices.”

He froze when Aleksi spoke, looking over at the giant who looked towards the clearing that surrounded the cave down to the next floor.

“Voices of monsters or real people?” Elijah asked.

“People. Three of them.”

People were down here? At this time of night? The Dungeon Guards wouldn’t have allowed for it, meaning they were either high-ranking warriors or they were people who’d been in the depths for a few too many hours without intending to. The former wasn’t likely, and the latter did occasionally happen but it wasn’t a common occurrence. In his many years of delving down, he’d only seen it a handful of times.

“They’re not guards,” Aleksi supplied in a whisper, narrowing his eyes as he continued to look towards the cave down. “Their accents are off.”

Foreigners then.

Still, not somebody who they wanted to meet down here, which made Elijah want to leave and hide, but Aleksi already warned that the group had noticed their presence as well. It seemed that the giant wasn’t the only one who had good hearing.

And, as the other group got close enough that Elijah could hear their steps, and see their bodies slowly rise from the tunnel, he realized that Aleksi wasn’t the only giant here now.

“Fang?”

Even worse was the fact that Aleksi seemed to recognize them.