Chapter 573 - Things Fall Apart (Patreon)

I took being bowled over by an explosion with good grace. It all seemed to happen so slowly. I tucked and rolled, turning the harsh push into a somersault, and bounded back to my feet right as everything was disintegrating around me, turning into a hundred thousand splinters that were about to go through the command staff and all the [Scribes].

They’d be fine. Liberal amounts of mental trauma, but none of us were getting out of here without needing significant sessions with the [Mind Healers]. I had to protect what was actually important.

I threw up dozens of [Event Horizons] between the former walls and the stacks upon stacks of delicate paperwork. I put my hand on top of a nearby set of papers, rapidly storing them in my [Library].

[*ding!* [Event Horizon] leveled up! 842 -> 843]

There was a reason I was working on paper instead of people for a brief moment. I vaguely needed the explosion to settle before I took wing, otherwise I’d leave, everyone here would get shredded, and I’d be in exactly the same position of needing to heal everyone, without the reassurance that a lot of people were currently close to me.

If nothing else, keeping Katerina alive would make the further organization and cleanup efforts that much more efficient, net saving more lives. It still sucked deciding who lived and who I was alright with dying, but I was the [Arbiter], and the math was clear.

Katerina’s life and presence would save dozens to thousands more lives in the coming hours, as there was structure and order. Someone people could easily look up to, who could give orders and they’d be obeyed.

Iona and Fenrir being in my healing radius didn’t hurt things either. From what little I’d seen so far, they should be fine, but for all I knew this was the side-effect of a greater attack. They should still be inside my radius, and the moment this settled down a hair I’d be off like a shot, rapidly circling the city again and again. My mind filtered through dozens of injuries and problems before I settled on the worst ‘recurring’ injury that I couldn’t quite heal through.

Rather, I could, but it wouldn’t help.

Crush injuries. Specifically, someone half-trapped under a pile of rubble. I could heal them, and possibly lift everything on top of them, but the moment they left my radius it would come crashing back down on them.

[Luminary Mind] paused at that analysis, reexamining it. Fucking Ciriel, that was bad.

My healing would try to lift several tons of building material as it restored bodies, and that was a huge drain on my mana. One or two people, sure, it was fine, but hundreds, thousands? All requiring constant exertion? My healing was stupid, but I was still in ‘barely lift a spaceship’ tier, not ‘lift an entire city with magic’ tier. 

I rapidly went through a dozen different ways to handle the problem and evaluated each one as the roof of the villa we were in slowly peeled off under the impact of the explosion, stoically watching as splinters started to pierce eyeballs and fingernails before being rejected by my absolute healing.

Not healing crush injuries at all was an option, but a poor one. What I really wanted was to ‘layer’ the healing, such that every other type of injury was handled first, and timbers and bricks crushing people were handled second. My skill didn’t distinguish between ‘was injured, original problem no longer there’ and ‘original external problems is continuing to crush’, it looked purely at current body integrity.

Speaking of beams - I stepped forward, letting dozens of splinters break against my armor, reaching out and catching a pillar that was trying to topple over. Far easier to stop it when it was still practically vertical, than catching it when it was halfway down in full swing. The roof finished peeling off, and the roaring mushroom cloud in the sky caught my eye.

How could it not? It was the only thing visible. Swirling specks of Ash caught my eye, the cloud protecting Massa from the sun utterly dismissed and blown away.

Ah, I figured it out! I was going to lean on my massive regeneration. I quickly rearranged my healing to fix everything except crushed body parts and the thousand little details that derived from those, and created a complex image to only heal crush - wait, that was stupid, I could just use my ‘heal everything’ image - then tasked a portion of [Luminary Mind] to ‘flicker’ it on for a moment every three minutes or so. Suboptimal, and it was entirely possible that most of my mana would go towards lifting a building instead of fixing existing injuries, but I also had my own goddamn common sense, and the ability to see and evaluate situations on a case by case basis, throwing out targeted heals to anyone who’d escaped being crushed and still needed help.

Also… anyone that badly crushed was unlikely to survive super long. In the grand scheme of things, I was targeting an extremely specific scenario. How many people only had a building drop on half of them, not their entire body? How many people had some crucial organs crushed, necessitating a rapid timeline, but not so many that they’d rapidly die?

It was important to be thorough in my line of work, but realistic. 

All the thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant, and I was able to watch the shockwave finish traversing the villa, able to marvel at how far I’d come.

I didn’t wait for the building to stop shaking, merely for the bulk of the harm to be negated.

“Take.” I ordered a shocked and shaking assistant, dumping the papers I’d secured back into his hands. Then I unfurled my six wings and blasted off at top speed, anti-friction runes glowing so I didn’t fuck everything back up again.

My mana was noticeably dropping even before I was moving, but I elected to fly around anyway. People here were still getting injured, but I’d already fixed the impact of the first few moments of the explosion. They would continue to get hurt, but so was everyone else. They were more injured, in all likelihood.

The sky shook and darkened, the growing mushroom cloud ‘fading out’, like it was behind thick cloths. A million softly glowing lights lit up the sky. A voice echoed and boomed, impossibly loud yet whispered into my ear, spoke in a language I didn’t know but intimately understood.

“Galdir, God of Softly Glowing Lights.” The voice said, then was replaced by another one.

The god himself.

“For everyone who needs a light. For love.” Were his only words. The sky faded back in, the veil lifted, and life resumed.

I caught the rest of the Eventide Eclipse taking wing. A swirling snow storm surrounded Fenrir, the mighty wyvern finally having enough oomph to power his Storm element. It took me a moment to realize why, a glance up at the explosive red sky a reminder.

Right, immunity to fire. I wasn’t feeling the heat, but dozens of fires were already starting over the city. The snow decreased in frequency as a howling south wind started to blow around the city, the snowflakes melting and turning into a fine mist. The temperature plunged, but a bit of chill would far outweigh raging fires ripping through wood-built Massa.

Auri was flying around before pausing, rushing over to a collapsed building. In a great conflagration, the entire thing went up in flames, pushing back against Fenrir’s icy blast.

I assumed she had a really good reason for it. Iona dove off the [Lord of the Frozen Skies]’ back, swan-diving to a particularly large collapsing building. Like a [Hero of Old] she pushed back on the entire thing, her skills suited to making it possible and not just punching through the beam her hand was on, and stopped the entire building from falling over, tipping it back into the position it should be in.

By Ciriel, she was amazing. I let my eyes briefly linger on her, committing it to memory. I’d have to sketch that out for Iona later, she’d love it.

I flew around the city at speed, trying to be methodical about what I covered and where. There were more than a few confused patrols of Legion soldiers, and the first time I saw one I had a quick debate with myself.

Was it more efficient to drop down and issue them orders, or was it better to stay up? Each group was less effective than I was, but bring quite a few of them together, and… nope, it didn’t work out. With how quickly I could move versus issue orders and have them be listened to, I was doing far more good up in the sky as a city-wide healing ward than I was issuing orders to confused [Legionnaires], many of whom were starting to get it in their head that they needed to do something. It was almost like watching an ant hive, rapid order disguising itself as chaos radiating from the Legata’s hijacked villa.

A thousand and one skills blossomed over the city as I flew over it, everyone doing what they could. From a family huddling under a cart that had no business holding that much weight, to branches growing out of a house and stabilizing it, from a well ‘burping’ out contents to a street covered in Ice, the grand breadth of the System was on full display.

I had no idea what was going on with the monstrous Ooze thing growing in the center of the town, but people seemed to be happy with it and not running away screaming, so I let it be.

Whenever there was a disaster, whenever things fell apart, there were helpers. People working to make things better, and the streets were boiling over with everyone coming out and pitching in whatever way they could.

I was one of those helpers.

Speaking of, I wondered if I could bring in more help? I wasn’t generally in the habit of asking the gods for help or favors - they were fairly unreliable, and spending my time waiting for them to bail me out was a terrible choice compared to simply fixing the problem myself - but there was always a first time. Why not, right?

Hi Ciriel!

Things have gone pear shaped down here. Think you could spare a miracle or three? Alternatively, is there anything I can do to help?

There was a long delay before she answered, so long I thought she wasn’t paying attention, didn’t hear, or was just off being a goddess. Like knocking on a friend’s door, but they’re out harvesting more mangos.

Elaine,

Sorry. Lots of requests right now.

You ARE the miracle for your part of the world. You don’t need me, but other people do, quite badly.

I can’t help you.

You could help me help others by providing some mana and prayers though? Maybe see if that [Paladin] wife of yours can help organize something?

Got to go,

Bye.

Now I felt terrible asking. The occasional still-buried person was absolutely tanking my mana, and I knew of at least 28 different trapped people. My circling of the city was slowly tightening to bouncing around between those different spots, trying to keep everyone alive. I hoped the number wouldn’t drop to 27 before the rubble was cleared.

At the same time, if Ciriel was that busy, what was happening here in Massa wasn’t an isolated event. My worst fears had come true.

The Immortal war had started.

I continued to circle endlessly until Auri came up.

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“Scouts report a similar explosion over Belum and Ephesus. Vesontio is a ghost town, there’s nobody living there anymore, not even animals. Food’s still on the table, clothes are still in closets, and beloved toys are still in cradles. The effects in Belum and Ephesus seem to be a little more devastating than what happened here, thank you Sentinel Dawn.”

I nodded my acknowledgement at Katerina’s words, already plotting how to hit Belum and Ephesus. There had to be survivors, and the medical care I could provide should lift a huge amount of the burden. Every injured person couldn’t help and took out a second person with them who had to look after them. Every person I healed was worth more people trying to fix things.

I was quite pleased with the casualty report for Massa. I hadn’t been able to save everyone - the city was too sprawling for that - but given the relative population percentages, I’d easily saved tens of thousands of lives. 

“I’ve sent a [Runner] to Sanguino, but they haven’t had time to get there yet. The granary and food supply count is still ongoing, the [Scribes] estimate it’ll take three days to have an answer. The big question, the crux of the meeting, is this. What do we do now?”

The meeting was more like a council, where Katerina, the [Tribunes], the [Governor], various [Guild Leaders], Classers, the [High Priestess], vampires, and other important people were gathered. I naturally pulled Iona into the meeting, annnnd yeah, I had regrets. 

Katerina knew what she was doing with her open-ended question, she just had to know a huge argument would ensue, with everyone trying to talk over everyone else, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what it was. My big book of rules and how to act in polite society didn’t include this level of politicking, and Iona looked pained. 

I shamelessly stole a quill and a sheet of paper from one of the [Guildmasters] - he wasn’t representing the Healer’s Guild and would survive a famine no problem - and wrote a quick note to Katerina.

Am I needed here? I’d rather start my healing-rescue op to Belum and Ephesus now. 

I’d almost phrased it as a request, then remembered that I wasn’t going to be asking permission in the first place - just wanting to move as soon as possible. Iona read it over my shoulder before I [Teleported] it to Katerina.

Katerina wrote a single word.

Go.

I made the tiniest concession to Katerina and not causing a panic by having the Sentinel sprint out of the room, and instead tapped Iona on the shoulder before [Teleporting] out. She joined me a moment later.

“What was that?” I asked her.

“I honestly don’t know.” The massive Valkyrie shrugged her shoulders as we hustled out at a brisk walk, everyone pressing themselves to the walls to get out of our way. “I know she probably wanted your presence for a bit longer to weigh in on whatever she’s planning, and getting everyone up to date all at once on the information stops the whisper game neatly. Are you going to class up?” She asked.

The thought hadn’t crossed my mind yet, and I frowned.

“Not until we’ve got time. I’ve had class ups be funky before with how long I’ve been down, and we just don’t know enough about anything right now for me to be out of the picture. Next thing I know we’ll be told there’s an emergency in Sanguino, and I’ll need to fly out there. Hard to do while I’m down.”

“Sure, but you can’t hold off forever, bad situation or not.” Iona said. “This is a quiet moment, and we don’t know when we’ll get one again.”

I shook my head in denial.

“It’s not quiet, there’s two cities that actively need my help, and there’s no telling what’s going on in the thousand little villages and estates. It is a good call though, and keep reminding me.” I said.

“Will do. Also, Fenrir’s got to eat. If we see something between here and there, we’ll dive and catch up with you. If we’re separated, three days in each city, then return back here to Massa. We’ll just keep flying over the city until we meet again. Okay?”

While [Telepathy] wasn’t a skill, the decades together seemed to have us all on the same wavelength. Fenrir and Auri were both waiting for us outside, being given a clear berth by most people - except the Legion soldiers, who couldn’t seem to get close enough, they knew Fenrir was a big softy on their side - and both of them nodded at Iona’s plan.

We hopped on board and took off.