Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

The Nightmares ripped away the fence, allowing them entry into the camp. Corpses were everywhere, roots still holding them in place. Chunks of flesh had been ripped out of each outlaw without mercy, throats half-eaten and bloodied. Elijah felt disgust, and even more when he got sent the glee from the forest around him. They’d been granted a feast and would enjoy it for all it was worth.

The forest was sated.

The leader of the dead? Not as much.

“You can’t hide.”

Wasn’t trying to.

Elijah didn’t say it out loud, conserving his strength as he did his best to regenerate the Mana inside his Core. With how much he’d forced his body through, it was taking longer than normal. Not a good prospect, when he could sense the waves of energy flying through the air.

“Did you get a better idea on their Affinity from the other victims?” Elijah asked, as he tried to make the roots below reveal where the leader was. The leader’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and magical senses couldn’t discern their location either.

“She can cut you down without holding a sword,” Fade replied tersely as she prepared for the battle. The Nightmares were being gathered into a pulsating heart once again. “There were memories of her flying, but this doesn’t feel like a Wind Affinity.”

Elijah agreed wholeheartedly, but the description of their abilities fit well regardless.

“There you are.”

‘Move!’

The combined voice of the forest shouted at Elijah. It was the only thing that saved them from their imminent end, as he pulled Fade down to the ground in the same second everything above them was cut in half.

As if an impossibly long blade had traveled through the camp in one slash, all the tents around them had been cut apart at stomach height.

“Force,” Fade hissed, slamming the heart of Nightmares into the earth. “Of course, it’s Force.”

Vismancy.

Not a common Affinity in the slightest, but one that Elijah had seen in use once before. It’d been during one of their excursions into a village, where they’d faced considerable resistance. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but a single Mage grabbing dozens of people with invisible hands and crushing them into nothing was not an easy ability to face.

And now Elijah had to do just that.

They weren’t as powerful as the first Mage, seeing as Elijah and Fade weren’t dead already, but they still had considerable control over their abilities. They were still a threat.

‘Dawn, prepare the hallucinogenic plants again,’ Elijah ordered. ‘The enhanced toxic gas plants as well. We need everything that can hurt this person.’

Their location had been discovered, their movement was being tracked, and Elijah had some seconds to work with before the next dice roll for their lives.

‘Yes!’ Dawn shouted back, before delving into the connections with the forest. Mana was already being pulled from his Core, but the costs increased three-fold in that instant. ‘I need time.’

An impossible resource to work with, at the moment.

“Can your Nightmares get to her if she’s the only focus?” Elijah asked in a whisper, as they got back up from the ground. All the tents around them were crumpling, increasing their line of sight.

“No,” Fade replied bluntly. Neither looked at the other, eyes focused on the leader. “They need a distraction.”

“I can work with that.”

No more words were traded, as the dust settled and revealed their opponent.

“You’re to blame for all of this?”

A woman, looking to be in her late thirties. She had gray eyes, red hair, and wore a scowl on her face. When it came to clothing, there was a preference for the more extravagant of hide armors. Thin enough to be bearable in the summer air, but still looking to be of material that could stop the lucky blade from gutting her.

Nothing that Elijah was immediately worried about. The more immediate pressure exuding from the woman was much more notable.

But they had asked a question, one that came with the expectation of an answer. Something that took time to do.

If Dawn needed extra seconds to prepare everything, he would try to squeeze this for all it was worth.

“Killing almost all of the people here? Yes,” Elijah answered, seeing the scowl on the woman grow. “Destroying the tents and whatever was in it? No, you have yourself to thank for that.”

“Material goods matter little when I don’t have the men to carry them,” the leader replied in a dry tone as she stepped over a corpse to get closer to them. “Somebody your age don’t travel alone. Where are the others?”

“Far away from here,” Fade said before Elijah could open his mouth. “We came alone. No need for anybody else to clean up this mess.”

“How arrogant a thought,” the leader commented, a chuckle leaving her as she stopped some ten meters away from them. “But I suppose that fits people like you. Old mages with fine clothes. I’ll go out on a whim and say that you’re a Biomancer and you are a… Dreamweaver?”

The air was getting thicker. They weren’t the only ones who were delaying.

‘Are you in position?’ he sent Dawn.

‘Almost.’

Time was running out.

“Perhaps,” Elijah answered vaguely. “For somebody focused on stealing goods, you’re surprisingly well-taught. Was this a late career change?”

“Of sorts, though some outside assistance helped fill a few gaps,” the woman said with a smile.

“So those Castillan emblems weren’t stolen,” Fade concluded, making the leader twitch. “Interesting.”

…

Elijah felt the pressure increase tenfold as the woman sighed.

“I was hoping to stretch out your death and really enjoy myself, but you just had to say that,” the woman muttered, lazily raising her right arm. “Bye.”

‘Now!’

Using the structure of a Snarethorn, a root shot out from the ground and wrapped around the woman’s arm. Even if the small spikes didn’t penetrate, the strength stopped the limb from moving.

Nightmares streamed from the earth a heartbeat later, their impossibly wide jaws ready to dig into the flesh.

None of them reached their target. The root holding the arm burst apart, the arm fell down the slightest bit, and the Nightmares were kicked into the ground at extreme speeds. As they were ripped apart, Fade screamed out in pain.

Not good.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 26MP/sec

His Mana-Veins shook at the demand, but Elijah didn’t waver his focus, granting Dawn everything she needed to spew out the toxic gas from the ground.

“Oh, you—” the woman began, as the world around them was filled by the green gas. Elijah held his breath to stop the worst of the effects, but even just the exposure to his eyes and skin was enough for him to grimace in pain. “Enough.”

Fade had regathered herself, sending out her Nightmares again, but they were crushed within the same second. The cursing was endless.

And it only got worse. A mighty gust of wind from nowhere almost had Elijah on his back. Even worse was the fact that it removed the toxic gas around them, clearing the world up again and revealing the woman to have left her place on the ground. She’d seen through his plans, as she floated a meter above the grass.

Can’t have that.

“Flash,” Elijah shouted, the unstable vial already in hand as he threw it at the Force Mage and looked away. It didn’t get far into the air before it was intercepted by a mighty wind, but that hardly mattered.

The light and sound filled the world, disorienting them all without mercy.

Every human, that is.

Elijah could almost smile when he heard the cry of pain from the woman. Dawn had prepared for the hide this time, focusing on smaller points and penetrating the armor and skin before filling the wounds with a concentrate of poison, blood thinners, paralytic concoctions, and a smidge of hallucinogenic traits that could fit inside.

Anything to make the next five seconds of combat sway more in their favor.

“You scum!”

The roots were cut and pulled apart from all sides, the pieces flying through the air. Some hit Elijah but he ignored it, seeing the swinging limbs as the warning it needed to be. When the earth in front of him started being cut through as well, he could only raise his arms and protect his head.

The pain came like a sledgehammer.

Something in his right arm broke.

‘Elijah!’

A miracle.

Even through the pain, Elijah could thank pure chance for his survival. The lethal cut meant for his head had been taken by his right arm instead. The Blue Star sleeve had shown off its cut-resistant properties by stopping the sharpness from going through, and instead making his arm take the incredible force.

He couldn’t feel his fingers, and he could see his forearm bending another direction halfway.

That’s not good.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Accelerate Growth] has been activated! Current cost: 173MP/sec

The world went black.

Only for a second.

The world didn’t allow Elijah to ignore the pain, the feeling of his Core being emptied, and then… he didn’t reach for it, didn’t want to, but the crystal Runes called to him and Dawn answered on his behalf. With a cold sensation, foreign and wrong, the Mana taken by the death outlaws was used.

It was pure torture for that second that the two spells were forcibly channeled by the duck, but it made all the difference. Years of growth were squeezed into the span of a heartbeat, and spears fashioned out of the roots were shot through the air.

Some were blocked.

The rest reached their target, going straight through the core body of the Force Mage.

A breathless gasp of pain left her. Wide eyes, fear, and a dispersal of her magical abilities. She couldn’t hold up her defenses, and the only thing that held her up in the air was the spears embedded in her flesh.

“Consume her!”

A tortured order from Fade. Elijah could see the blood falling from her head. There was a deep cut on the side, the top of her ear having been lost.

But she was alive.

At least enough to give out that raw order, while allowing the Nightmares to stream out one final time. In clear contrast to the last attempts, they weren’t met with resistance this time.

Elijah wasn’t sure he’d seen light in the woman’s eyes at that point. Not that it mattered, as they were removed by the abhorrent monsters, together with everything else above the shoulders.

He allowed himself a sigh when a stream of energy came through his connection to the forest.

Another Mage dead by his hand.

“Any mortal wounds?” he asked Fade as he used his left hand to rifle through his coat pockets. Several vials and bags had been splattered during his fall, but the important ones had luckily survived. “I can’t fix everything but if you’re breathing I can probably keep it— Agh, shit.”

Get yourself together. Adrenaline won’t last forever. You’ll go into shock if you don’t fix this.

He shoved a bit of his shirt into his mouth as he sat up a little. The broken forearm made its presence known loudly, but he suffered through it and uncorked a vial with his teeth. He took a small sip of the contents, grateful for the sedating effects, before pouring the rest onto the bent limb.

After five incredibly painful seconds, where Elijah focused on his breathing and staying lucid, the nerves in his forearm were finally sedated and the pain was reduced to manageable levels. Everything else in his body was also complaining, but that wasn’t too bad. He could work with this.

“Sorry, did you say something?” Elijah asked, when Fade slowly moved over to him, sitting down beside him while he worked. Dawn might’ve been talking through their bond as well, but he didn’t listen well as he aligned the broken bone. Some torn cloth, a stick, and some thin roots kept it in place. When they got back, he would need a better setup, but this worked for now.

Even if he couldn’t use the arm from now on, it wouldn’t kill him and it probably wouldn’t get worse.

“I’m in better condition than you,” Fade repeated. She’d already pulled out her own healing supplies, cleaning the wound on the side of her head before applying the healing paste Elijah had given her days before. Both seemed to sting, from how much she grimaced. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a concussion, but I can survive getting back to the caravan after we’ve searched through the house.”

Not the best scenario in the world, but Elijah didn’t have anything better.

20 minutes was spent there on the ground, letting their bodies get through the worst of the pain while the various healing supplies took effect. Muscles were knitted back together, skin was regrown, and the worst of the flesh wounds were tended to. Nothing was back in mint condition, Elijah couldn’t regrow the chunk Fade was missing from her ear, and his right forearm was still broken, but this would have to do.

The threat was gone, they were alive, and the forest was just a little more safe now.

‘You took the Mana without my permission, Dawn,’ Elijah sent the duck as he and Fade slowly got up from the grass and moved towards the house.

‘Yes,’ Dawn replied. It was nowhere near the usual level of enthusiasm. ‘I’m not sorry.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be,’ he assured her. ‘We’d probably be dead if you hadn’t done that.’

‘So… I did good?’

‘No, but that doesn’t matter,’ Elijah said. He hadn’t wanted to touch the Mana that the Dungeon’s Runes had captured, but now they knew it could be used as if it was their own energy. It still felt wrong, different from normal, but if cornered it was a resource Elijah could pull from. ‘Don’t use it again unless necessary. We still need answers before we can trust that this won’t come and bite back in the long term.’

The creaking hinge of the door brought Elijah into the present, as they stepped into the house. It was lavish as he remembered it, with the fine carpet and paintings making it fit the poor man’s idea of a rich person’s house perfectly.

“I’ll fetch the documents and items on the second floor,” Fade said, when it became clear that Elijah’s chances of making it up and down the stairs weren’t the best. “You take care of the girl in the meantime.”

“You don’t want to see her with me?” Elijah asked with some wit to his voice, but the Dreamweaver only looked at him with little emotion.

“Young minds are more easily affected by nightmares,” she explained. “My presence would not be ideal for a good first impression.”

“... Fine.”

They split, Fade making her way up the stairs to the office and bedroom while Elijah made the trek to the back of the house. Going down two steps, a locked door briefly stopped him from entering until Dawn simply broke it down for him.

The second he pushed it open, he had to stop himself from gagging.

Elijah had known what he would be stepping into. He’d seen the corpses already and had analyzed the decomposing states many of them had been in, and yet the smell hadn’t reached him back then. That intensely pungent stench, with strong notes of ammonia and sulfur that made his eyes water, was almost too much for him at that moment.

And yet, despite the desire to never take a step inside, the yelp of surprise and fear made him force everything back down.

He’d only been exposed to this rotting air for a moment. The girl inside the center cage had been in this place for days.

“Hello there,” Elijah said, stepping into the dark room. Alongside the lack of ability to smell while visiting before, the absolute darkness of the room was only understood now. If not for the open door, there would be no source of light inside. To be inside that for so long… he didn’t want to think about it. “We met two hours ago, but I’m not sure you could see my face back then.”

The girl didn’t answer, just looking at him with wide eyes as she shook. Her back was pressed against the bars of the cage opposite his position, and Elijah could see that this distance wasn’t nearly enough for her. She wanted to run, to flee, to never look back.

“It took me some time to get here, and I’m sorry for that,” Elijah said calmly. He tried to smile but it might’ve looked closer to a pained grimace. Regardless, he went on one knee and allowed Dawn to leave Plant Storage. “You asked for my help. I couldn’t do more than grow that flower there for you back then, but now that I’m here we can get you out.”

There was no answer. There was just shaking, rapid breathing, and constant attempts to press her body further into the cage bars. And that Aura around her, a fuzzy air that constantly crackled… it wasn’t a calm one.

Could she even hear his words?

‘I thought she liked the flower,’ Dawn commented, ruffling her feathers before walking into the cage. The bars would’ve normally stopped a creature her size, but she just molded her body to squeeze through the gaps without a moment of hardship. ‘Should we make more?’

The duck going inside was the first thing to cause a new reaction, the eyes of the girl flying from Elijah to Dawn.

That her breathing slowed a little at that made Elijah feel some small bit of hope.

“Right… This little feather ball is called Dawn. She’s a sweetheart, but she can be a bit of an airhead sometimes,” Elijah explained as he found the lock for the cage. Where the key to it was located, he couldn’t say, but placing a seed inside it and forcing the plant to crush the internal mechanisms made it open up easily. “She helped me grow the golden flower before. We can grow more of them once we get out of this place if you’d like.”

It took another ten minutes of coaxing before the girl stepped out of the cage. With Dawn’s help, she was given a few more of the flowers, their properties taking care of the worst of the wounds. Elijah would still need some hours of tending to the rest if she was to have a chance of returning to full health, but that could be saved for when they returned to the caravan.

For now, they could leave the dark room behind and step into the main section of the house.

Fade was already waiting for them there, putting away stacks of documents into a bag she’d picked up.

“So you got her out,” Fade commented, impassively looking down at the girl. “Do we need to carry her? Some of those cuts look like they’re past simple infection.”

She reached out towards the girl to better inspect one of the many wounds. A simple action likely done thousands of times before in her old line of work.

For the young girl who had spent the past many days locked up, it was like having a blade coming towards her neck.

That fuzzy Aura Elijah had felt previously, the one that revealed the girl’s possession of an Affinity, flared up instantly. He felt the hairs on his body rise before a bolt of lightning left the young girl and reached the outstretched hand of the Dreamweaver.

It wasn’t on the level of true thunder, but the light and sound still made spots appear in his vision, and the ringing in his ears was likely to stay there for several hours more.

“For the love of— Of course, this is how this ends,” Fade cursed, keeping up the swears as she shook her hand. It wasn’t permanently damaged, but there were some dark spots where the lighting had hit. “Why not find a Stormcaller child in the middle of nowhere? Nothing but cursed luck.”

Looking down at the girl who had wrapped her arms around his right leg, Elijah was starting to think luck had never been involved in this at all.