Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

It was a strange experience, standing in the forest away from the road. The natural forces of growth had been strong around the manmade path, but this… Elijah could stand and breathe it in forever, knowing there was forever more nuance to discover.

He wasn’t even calling upon his magical senses intentionally anymore. This torrent of images, concepts, and thoughts was a primal reaction from his Core, as it instinctively sought out the connections to the world around him. There was just so much to see, to feel, to understand, and Elijah knew his mind could never dream of seeing it all. It was just… more.

‘A source?’

What didn’t help was the fact that the trees were waking up when he walked by them. Silent minds, beings that had been without the concept of ‘being awake’ for hundreds of years, all noted Elijah’s presence. His Core sought them out and gave them the gift of thought, and they all responded by wanting more. The Mana he exuded was the sweetest sugar anything here had ever tasted.

Even without focusing on it, he knew what they would do to get another drop.

‘Anything!’

And the forest could hear his thoughts as well.

Great.

‘Stop!’ one of the mighty oaks close by shouted into his mind. Elijah tried to ignore it. ‘The other flesh forced lines into my bark. It hurts!’

What?

“Wait,” Elijah whispered as the oak sent memories of what it was connected to. Fade obeyed instantly, not taking a step further. “There’s something here.”

Going down on one knee, he pushed away the tall grass until his fingers felt the mildest resistance. A string. It wasn’t tight enough to break at a simple touch, not enough to degrade in the span of a few days, but a boot could easily catch on and break it.

‘Let me see where this leads,’ he ordered the trees around him, and they obeyed without a moment of hesitation. They craved the taste of Mana, and Elijah was finally allowing the floodgates to open.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 14MP/sec

A high cost, but it felt like nothing compared to the mountain of sensations Elijah was sent in response. He’d asked for whatever the string was connected to, and the forest had obeyed.

“There are lines beyond what those memories you found said,” Elijah informed Fade, as he continued to look deeper and deeper into the spider web of connections. While these outlaws might’ve signed their own death warrants, he still had to respect their ingenuity. To build such an intricate detection system, to maintain something like this on such a large scale… It was the work of madmen. “If we go by the path our good friends took, we’ll pass another dozen of these.”

“How paranoid of them,” Fade commented, carefully stepping over the string. It was longer than it needed to be, but Elijah didn’t judge.

Even when knowing the traps’ exact position, it was near-impossible to spot. The shade from the thick forestry, which stopped almost all hints of sunlight, made it hard to see something thinner than a blade of hair, and the thick foliage didn’t make it any easier.

Careful navigation, and letting his mind stay connected to the forest helped mitigate the dangers somewhat. Elijah couldn’t keep the bond with the trees as strong as they would’ve liked, since his Core still needed to passively regenerate more than what was spent, but the life around him was so willing to help that it mattered little. Every hidden string meant to detect trespassers, and every tool meant to hurt those who got too close, were moved around without any accidents.

“We’re close,” Fade said, before Elijah could say the same. The trees were thinning the slightest bit, more rays from the falling sun reaching the ground, and in the far distance, there was a hint of sound that wasn’t from wildlife. “Nearly a hundred of them.”

“You can tell by their fear?” Elijah asked, finding one of the larger gatherings of trees a hundred meters away. It would hide them well while they prepared while keeping them just far enough away to stop some random outlaw from taking notice of them.

“No, I can tell by the lack,” came the reply, earning the woman a raised eyebrow. “There’s joy, stupidity, and no sense of wariness from the outlaws. They think nothing is amiss.”

“Stupidity is an emotion to you?”

“With these types, it’s one of the few they can feel,” Fade supplied, venom clear in her tone. He didn’t blame her. From what the roots were describing to him about the camp, memories of the old times were starting to surface. “How confident are you in this plan? I can hold up my part, but it will require next-to-no opposition if I am to spread the Nightmares out so far.”

If I didn’t have complete trust in being able to do this, I wouldn’t be here.

Elijah knew his chances of going against nearly a hundred amateur fighters. While his concoctions could provide some support to his allies and disorient the enemy, there was no scenario where he could take so many head-on.

But here? That was a different question entirely.

“It’ll take an hour at a minimum, but I’m confident that I can get most of them,” Elijah answered. Fade accepted that, settling further into the ditch to make it harder to spot them. He did the same some seconds later, as began to settle into the forest hive-mind. “Poke me if anybody comes around. I can’t promise I’ll be responsive until I’m ready.”

“As long as you don’t start muttering battle chants, I can live.”

Another dig at their old profession, and the row of mages who would chant in unison to summon mighty attacks. Elijah still had a few of those impossible words fused into his brain. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for those who’d actually worked with those squadrons.

No matter. Focus on the current times.

Channeling of [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 2 MP/sec

It was the absolute minimum needed to facilitate a steady connection that Elijah could reliably utilize in some greater fashion. It wasn’t nearly powerful for the larger changes he would need to make, but this was a good starting ground.

‘Come, Dawn,’ Elijah said, allowing the duck to follow him through the magical threads. ‘We have a camp to visit.’

He pulled himself away from his physical shell, rising from their hiding place and walking across the roots toward the sources of life. Without the filter of his flesh, Elijah could finally tell how loud they all were.

‘This is weird,’ Dawn commented, as she waddled at a high pace to keep up with his steps. Or, no, she wasn’t waddling in the normal sense of the word. With no real bodies holding them down, they were nothing but minds traveling through the natural connections of the world. Whatever form they took was their own concepts of self. In this instance, however, she saw herself as a duck and Elijah saw himself as a human. Whether that was the truth was to be revealed at a later time. ‘We’re not alone.’

‘We are not,’ Elijah agreed. Thousands of eyes were on them, the trees of the forest reaching far through the roots to have a look at them. They were sending questions, asking for help, asking what they could do to help, and many were providing bridges for the duo to walk on if they so desired. They were being helpful as if the duo were like them. The best of friends, the best sources of energy. ‘Hello to you all. We seek answers.’

‘We have answers!’

‘What answers do you want?’

‘We can give.’

‘Everything!’

‘Anything.’

‘Just give anything back.’

‘I can provide Mana as payment, and maybe a few adjustments to enhance your growth after my task is complete,’ Elijah offered. If this was to be completed, he needed the forest’s full cooperation anyway.

‘Mana?’

‘Food.’

‘Mana! Food!’

‘We can provide!’

‘Give us a task.’

‘We help you.’

‘You help us.’

It was a deal. The greed of the plants was omnipresent, yet the forest likewise understood the benefits of helping others. The roots hadn’t been connected underneath the earth for nothing, and these roots were not young either. Each tree Elijah passed had grown for over a hundred years side-by-side with others like them.

He would be using that fact.

With human legs no longer holding him back, he could barely blink before he stood at the edge of the so-called encampment. A rudimentary fence had been constructed around it. Nothing that couldn’t be jumped, but the sharp edges on top would make it painful. The only way to get inside other than that was a small gate on the northern side of the camp.

Again, it was nothing too advanced, but Elijah had to respect that they could maintain it at all.

Further inside, the usage of wood was more limited. It was used for bonfires, and for a single house that sat off to the side. Other than that, most of the camp was made up of larger tents. Each tent contained beds, sections for storing items, and even a rare kitchen setup. The equipment seen was certainly not as cheap as Elijah had expected to see.

No need to guess how they’ve obtained such things.

Even Elijah could recognize some of the emblems on those tents. Many merchants had fallen to allow for this level of luxury.

‘They’re drunk,’ Dawn commented, as Elijah had to step to the side to avoid a shambling drunk. It was a man around the age of thirty, red-faced, covered in dirt, and looking ready to sleep in the aforementioned earth. Only the help of two other half-drunk outlaws that came to the rescue seconds later stopped that from happening, as the trio moved towards one of the nearby tents. ‘Easy prey.’

‘Please don’t think about humans as prey,’ Elijah requested as he inspected the rest of the grounds. The fires were large, meat was being prepared by most of them, and the booze was flowing into the guts of every person there. They were celebrating, drinking themselves stupid, and expecting nothing to attack.

‘But they are prey?’ Dawn pointed out, running over and trying to bite at a slice of meat one of the outlaws had dropped into the grass. Without her body to assist, however, it was a futile effort. ‘We are here to hunt them.’

‘Well… Fine, yes, they’re prey.’

He didn’t like to think of them as such, but… did these people even deserve such pity? Elijah hadn’t blinked when watching them get ripped apart by the Nightmares, but looking at them as prey to be hunted down was where he drew the line? It was arrogant of him to think such things.

Focus on the moment.

Elijah didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the shouting or stomping, moving towards the one proper house constructed at the camp. A cabin, two stories tall, and ready to house twenty people easily, and yet he already knew that much fewer lived inside.

The door was closed to stop others, but the roots below had lived in the earth for centuries and cared little about that. Spending a bit more Mana allowed him to connect to the wood that had been cut up to create the cabin, and Elijah could look inside the first floor with ease.

Expensive furniture, extravagant paintings, fluffy carpets, and of course there’s a wine rack.

Objects that would be traveling onboard a merchant caravan expecting to make hefty profits by moving luxury goods between cities. Nothing that surprised him.

‘Mage,’ Dawn said, the duck looking straight upwards. Doing the same, Elijah frowned as he also felt something… off. If he’d been inside his body, his senses would’ve been sharper, but it was still clear another magical presence was above them. Fade hadn’t been able to say what their leader’s Affinity was, and right now Elijah couldn’t say either. It was fuzzy, a shimmering Aura that seemed to be a gray-white type of coloring. Nothing he’d seen before, at least. ‘Do we kill them now?’

‘Not yet,’ Elijah instantly shot down. They still had much preparation to do before they could dream of such things. And that sound… ‘Can you hear that?’

‘The crying?’

Somebody was crying.

A young voice.

That wasn’t something he expected to hear inside a camp such as this.

Going through another set of doors, and down a few steps, the air of stolen luxury changed into the muddy darkness expected of a camp of outlaws. Though it was dark in the room, Elijah’s current form suffered no loss of perception from it.

He could see the large cages stacked against the wall, could see the bodies contained within them, could see the rot that… Elijah was proud of himself for not going further into the darkness at the sight. Dawn’s presence calmed him, as he took in the scene with more clarity.

Some of the outfits on the dead made it clear they’d been merchants of various ages. The stages of decomposing made it seem like most had died within the past week, and the fact that the old roots in the earth below were very healthy made it clear that this wasn’t the first batch of death that’d been seen here. The world had been fed well through these victims.

“Is… Is somebody there?”

The crying and sniffling had stopped, as a low voice asked a question into what was meant to be empty air for them. Elijah had almost forgotten that it was crying that had led him into the area, as all the cages seemed to have been filled with nothing but death.

But right in the middle, one of them contained a girl still alive. A young girl, covered in cuts and bruises and not looking far from joining the others in what came after, but she was still alive. And she could feel him here.

‘Another mage,’ Dawn said, as she phased through the cage and inspected the young girl more closely. Elijah frowned when the breathing of the young girl began to pick up, looking down at where the duck was meant to be. ‘She can see me!’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ Elijah said, following the duck and going down on one knee. While the girl responded by looking straight towards him, she didn’t react to him waving around his hands in front of her eyes. ‘She can sense our presence to some degree. She’s not powerful enough to see us just yet.’

“Please help me.”

…

If everything went as it needed to, it would be more than an hour until Elijah could get here in person. With the wounds on the girl, he knew Aleksi would find that unacceptable. Something needed to be done now, but he couldn’t be there in person for that.

But the tool meant to bring this camp down can also be a boon.

With a full understanding that it was a risk, Elijah called upon his Core to allow the next step to begin.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Animal Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 12MP/sec

‘I need you to help me here, Dawn.’

‘Sure!’

While Elijah could remember the forms of many plants, Dawn was the library that had the true schematics of everything he’d fed her. She didn’t know everything just yet, she knew more than enough for this.

It started with a healthy dose of Mana to the old roots below the cages. Something to jumpstart the process, giving plenty of energy for him and Dawn to shape the growth. They didn’t want more roots, after all. They wanted something different, a flower with brilliant golden petals.

A Sundrop Flower.

Or a variant of it, to be precise. More powerful, not as messy with its pollen, and crossbred with the Elderglow Tulip to transfer the bioluminescent qualities over and give the flower an ethereal aura.

The girl shied away as the flower broke the surface and appeared inside the cage, but the golden petals lighting up the room made her curious. It took minutes, but the young child finally touched the plant and allowed the liquid to enter through her skin. Even if it had just been a single finger poking at it, Elijah had done his best to concentrate the qualities.

And it worked, yellow veins briefly showing on the girl’s arm as the compounds traveled through her bloodstream. While it didn’t mend the cuts and bruises, it took care of the worst of it all. And, going by the giggle, she might’ve felt the warmth that came with the Sundrop Flower as well.

A little positivity amongst all of the deaths.

“I’ll come back soon,” Elijah promised the girl, knowing she couldn’t hear him. Not that it mattered. He would honor his word regardless. ‘Come on, Dawn. We have prey to hunt.’

‘Nice!’ Dawn replied giddily, as she followed him out of the cabin, her back feathers shaking with excitement. ‘Can I stab them?’

‘Some of them,’ he allowed, though that would have to come a little later. For now, the more subtle approaches had to be taken. ‘Let’s blend a few different plants together, shall we?’

The fundamental setup for his and Fade’s plan was simple. He would keep every outlaw in place while her Nightmares steadily flew through the camp and finished all of them off. Without the ability to flee or run for their weapons, it would be a trivial matter.

But even then, not everybody was as helpless, and not all of the bandits were out drinking their hearts out. Some would resist, and some could probably fight back rather well against the Nightmares, and that was unacceptable if Fade was to finish all of them off without collapsing from the strain.

So Elijah had to make sure that every person was weakened.

How would he do such a thing? Drugs.

A few of them mixed together, to be precise. Direct injection would be too noticeable, and take too much time to do on an individual basis, so it had to be far-reaching and airborne. The Grun Albus was perfect for that trait, with its ability to send out incredible amounts of toxic gas while having such a small body.

The green color and parts that caused toxicity of the gas would have to be removed, of course, which took a few minutes of working around it. Elijah would’ve normally needed days to even dream of making such a thing possible, but the cycle of using Breathe Life allowed him to delve deeper into their schematics than ever and manipulate it into exactly what he wanted.

There were limits to his manipulations, he didn’t doubt that, but he hadn’t reached them just yet. Elijah could still push this. The gas became colorless, almost odorless, unable to damage the lungs, and he further imbued it with the properties of the Breaths of Serenity and Faerie’s Breath.

The former was primarily used as a sleep aid, with its ability to make the body relax the muscles and release tension, and the latter would only further enhance those abilities as they would make it hard for people to stand. The minimal dosage Elijah had been using for his brewing previously paled in comparison to the concentrations he allowed for now. If the outlaws could tell heaven and earth apart by the end of this, he would think himself a failure.

‘Pretty,’ Dawn said, as they looked over their work together, the plant floating above them. ‘Is it done?’

‘It won’t get better than this,’ Elijah confirmed, stretching his conceptual body as he prepared for what needed to come after. The idea had been made, the outlaws were steadily being tracked in the camp by the forest, but there was still a need to implement it. And, for that, he needed the trees to work with him more than ever before. ‘Grow past your own roots! Change, adapt, and allow this stalk to surface under your guidance.’

‘Yes!’

‘Anything!’

‘We help!’

A resounding applause for his order. Elijah could only wonder how deprived this forest had been of Mana through the years to have such a reaction. Maybe he’d been spoiled by being in the presence of a Dungeon for so long.

With a patient hand, he guided the growth of the roots through the camp. Though it took almost half an hour to do, hundreds of small plants were able to sprout. Each looked near-identical to the blades of grass that already filled the earth, impossible to spot by the naked eye.

A perfect trap, if Elijah had to give his biased opinion about it. Even if the entire process drained him again and again, he felt nothing but pride.

Let’s not make this a tale of hubris.

Elijah spent another ten minutes making sure every area of the camp was filled with enough of the modified plants to create the needed effect. Every tent was secured, every bonfire had at least a dozen blades ready to send out the gas, and the cabin…

He wasn’t willing to get too close to the leader on the second floor of the building. Elijah wasn’t sure if he even could, the range of the roots not reaching so far above the ground, but risking detection wasn’t something he wanted. Instead, a batch of grass blades was grown inside the house on the first floor, right by the staircase leading upwards. It was far enough away from the room with the cages that Elijah was confident it wouldn’t reach the girl, but there would hopefully be some effect on the leader upstairs.

Let’s see if you can die in your sleep.

‘Release it all,’ Elijah ordered the hivemind, the forest obeying as the blades of grass opened in unison. The wind that came from the synchronous action was enough for a few outlaws to look up whatever they were doing, but nobody bothered to question it for more than a second. A perfect scenario for him, as Elijah could take the long trek back to his body. “Get ready. The effects will be at their peak in ten minutes.”

“Understood,” Fade replied, looking at him warily. Elijah blinked in confusion, noticing how heavy his body felt. “Are you in pain?”

“Should I be?” he asked, feeling at his hands. It was all pins and needles, but otherwise, there weren’t any issues. His breath was even, his pulse was resting as if he’d been sleeping, and he felt a little tired. Nothing to be concerned about.

“No, it’s… never mind,” came the reply. Whatever thought had been there was waved away. Elijah wanted to question it further, but the Nightmares starting to leave Fade’s body left little opportunity for conversation. “I’ll release them at your word.”

The steadily growing ball of black flesh imitated the shape of a beating heart, rot and tears appearing and vanishing in a steady rhythm. It was disgusting, to the surprise of nobody. Nightmares were rarely pretty.

‘Are you ready, Dawn?’ he sent the duck, as the minutes passed by and his Core replenished enough Mana to work with.

‘Yes!’ Dawn answered rapidly. Even if he wasn’t there, the excitement came through the bond without question. ‘Can I start?’

With a breath to calm the heart that was starting to beat faster, Elijah prepared for the pain that would come in just a moment.

‘You can start.’

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 91MP/sec

“Now,” Elijah said through gritted teeth, as his Core was stretched to the limit on what it could output. It was a fair trade, however, as hundreds of roots simultaneously jumped from the ground and wrapped around the bodies of outlaws. He could feel as they struggled, as their sluggish movements resisted their entrapment. It hurt, but he and Dawn refused to buckle under the pressure. “They’re stuck.”

Fade didn’t hear him. She didn’t react to the last words, at least, as sounds similar to snake speech left her. The abominations were leaving the heart she’d grown, the shadowy Nightmares fuelled by tendrils of shadows connected to it. The entire surface of the forest before them was being covered by that black liquid.

Elijah felt like puking, the desire only growing stronger as he stopped his own channeling. It’d barely been nine seconds but it had felt like an eternity regardless, the world spinning before his eyes.

The screams in the distance brought him back to reality, however.

‘It’s working!’ Dawn screamed through the connection, Elijah helping supply a bit more Mana to hold down the more unruly outlaws who had seen glimpses of their fate. Even through the drug-addled state, they understood the concept of fear. ‘They're stuck! Can you see it? It’s all— Oh, wow, that is weird.’

A moment passed in confusion before Elijah felt it too.

The residue of the dead.

‘There’s so much!’ Dawn exclaimed, giddy while Elijah was filled with nothing but horror. ‘Can we use this? We have to!’

A hundred lives, weak or strong, carried a great weight in the world. To extinguish so many in such a short time could be felt, Elijah needing to hold himself together as the fragments of the outlaws gathered around his Core. It wasn’t anywhere near as refined as what he would attain from the monsters inside the Dungeon, but this was still potent in its own way.

And at the thought of the Entity in the darkness, his Core seemed to glow. The sigils on the outer layer of crystalline formations, just below the surface, shined brightly. Without Elijah commanding them to do so, the residue was absorbed, taken in, and given a place in the carved-out runes.

What?

The presence was unmistakable. The foreign Mana was there. Some corner of Elijah’s mind called on him to use it, but instinct refused that notion. The absorbed Mana sat isolated away from his own, inside the gift from the Dungeon, and there it would stay until he got an exact answer on what had just happened. This was wrong. This was meant to be impossible.

“Get up,” Fade ordered, bringing Elijah out of his spiraling mind. Dawn had already returned to him, the last of the outlaws on the ground dealt with. Nobody had been left alive. “We need to hurry.”

For a moment, Elijah thought the Dreamweaver was trying to pull him away, but his mind cleared a second later and allowed him to realize he was being pulled toward the encampment.

“Did you get all of them?” Elijah asked. His legs were starting to keep up with her hurried speed, even with the half-asleep limbs begging him to spend a few more minutes on the ground.

“All of the ordinary ones,” Fade answered. “Not the leader. The Nightmare only got a single bite into her before they were torn apart.”

Shit.

Even with the potency of the gas that had covered the camp, Elijah didn’t want to bet that the concoction could affect a Mage worth their salt for long. And the chance of the leader falling for the same trick twice, now that their existence had been revealed?

“What idiot dares do this?”

The window of getting through this painlessly was fading away rapidly.