Chapter 494 - Auri and the Thousand Lanterns II (Patreon)

I continued my madcap dash back and forth across the city, trying to heal as many people as I could, my mana cratering. Tens of thousands, if not more, people burning to death in front of my eyes, and there was only so much I could do.

Then I got the notification. We all got the notification.

[*ding!* You are in the presence of Guardian Teruo, The Pure]

Katerina’s order to ‘return once I got the notification’ suddenly came into crystal clarity, and I twisted my neck around like an owl to see what was going on while I started dashing over and through the blazing inferno to get back to the Legion.

I didn’t believe I was abandoning the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people currently burning to death. Guardians were all about preserving life. Usually it was preemptive - the classic example was a high level Immortal using [Channel] with a powerful skill, trying to crack the planet in half - but often it was retributive. The Guardians showing up after Lun’Kat dropped the sky on the dwarven nation came to mind. Rare was the event that they showed up in the middle of, but here we were.

I spun off a [Parallel Thought] to wonder how, exactly, Katerina had known a Guardian was going to arrive. I’d heard the theory at the School, but her ability to predict was amazing, and reframed a number of her decisions.

Guardians existed to preserve life. To put brakes on mass slaughters executed by powerful Classers. They didn’t always succeed. Immortal Wars, as history demonstrated, showed they could be overwhelmed, and I’d seen Lun’Kat fight off all eight Guardians at once. The presence of the Guardian meant we were all subject to their whims and desires. Quick and immediate retribution.

As I turned my head, I caught a flash of Fenrir and Iona, the two still doing their best against two whole armies. Fenrir was diving down, away from the guardian and towards the tens of thousands of troops with pointy spears. The Guardian’s presence hadn’t slowed them down at all - they were just being a little more careful about where they were flying.

A massive cloud parted, and a kun-peng two or three times the size of a blue whale lazily flapped his wings, lord and sovereign over the skies. I’d researched all manner of fantastical creatures when performing my biomancy operation, and my bones had been strongly modeled after a kun-peng’s. It was like a whale with bird’s wings attached to it, but sleekly integrated. It didn’t look bizarre like a chimera did, instead it looked like a cohesive whole more akin to a manticore. It flew in the zenith of the sky as easily as it dove to the deepest depths of the sea. As a phoenix was half a step behind a dragon, a kun-peng was half a step behind a phoenix in ranking, easily equal to or possibly superior to the mighty krakens and leviathans of the deep.

The body was a deep cerulean blue, with the wings a lighter cloudy blue. I could see its eyes, the inky depth of the Void promising utter devastation.

[Ranger - 3350].

Thick stormclouds rumbled overhead, expanding from Teruo in an instant, covering the entire sky, hiding our actions from the Dragoneye Moons. Rain came pouring down on us, soaking me in an instant, dousing the city. Fascinatingly, the rain didn’t stay. The moment after it doused the flames and cooled the wood, it vanished. No sense in saving a city from fire, only to wash the entire thing away.

It also healed somehow, the drops of water proving to be lifesaving to every body it touched. I clinically noted that it didn’t have the restoration property that Light healing had, but everything else I saw suggested that Teruo was using a Storm element, not a Water element.

There was Storm healing?!

I caught a glimpse of Auri, her black flames sparking in every direction as she flew desperately to get under shelter. My eyes narrowed at the raindrops somehow completely avoiding her, like a little umbrella. Even when the wind gusted, making the rain go sideways, not a single drop of water touched the little gothic phoenix.

Did Teruo have such control over what he was doing that he could control every single raindrop?! Holy shit.

My job was done here. The moons were now clouded, and [Wheel of Sun and Moon] was off the table. I could try manually healing, but given the length of time it’d take… yeah. I needed to get back to the Sixth. The population of Shuixi needed some additional care, but that could wait.

I swept around in a large circle and healing everyone I could see in a flash. Then I was out of here.

Wang Jian was high up above Shuixi, his rain of now-extinguished lanterns put on pause at the notification, the man boldly staring up at the Guardian.

Teruo opened his mouth up, and a great consumptive ability formed, like the maw of a black hole. Wang Jian fought bitterly, flinging spell after skill, pulling out trump cards I’d never seen before. All of it was consumed by the great maw, the endless Void negating every ability.

In moments he was sucked down and killed, Teruo closing his mouth, slow wings flapping in the air.

I crossed the city walls, the harsh downpour instantly ending the moment I was over them, shooting back across the open field to the Legion. I was a little nervous about how far-flung the formation was. I couldn’t hope to reach them all.

I mentally corrected.

I couldn’t reach them all with [Wheel of Sun and Moon], but I wasn’t using [Wheel], it was off the table. I had to use [Imbue] and a combination of [Nova Lance] or [Mantle of the Stars], depending on how far away people were.

Nike and the rest of the [Battery] line were in formation, and I dropped down to them, hovering right above their heads.

“Detail! Mana!” I harshly ordered, no time to be polite.

Bless their training, they were already extending their arcanite rods towards me as I landed, and they quickly hit my leg. A moment of thought later, and my mana regeneration went through the roof as I absorbed mana as quickly as they could generate it.

The years of combat hadn’t just been good for my levels; they’d been great for everyone’s levels. As my mana soared with my levels, so too did my line’s regeneration. I swapped my mental healing image to the most bare-boned image I had, only aiming for critical injuries. Arms? Legs? Eh, I could fix those later. Stomach injuries? Perforated bowels? Pierced bladders, broken intestines, missing livers? Whatever, they weren’t immediately critical. I didn’t need people ‘good enough to keep fighting’ or ‘[Cosmic Presence] will get it’ - I needed people just barely alive.

Heart, brain, lungs, and a fraction of the circulatory system. Those were the important parts.

I re-extended [The World Around Me] and rapidly scanned the Legion, looking for any critical injuries I needed to jump on right now.

Bless Katerina, Optio Henrietta, and the Sixth Legion. Their time with me hadn’t made them complacent, and [Healers] were attached to and part of the Sixth. There were far more bodies than if I’d been around the entire time, but nobody I needed to jump on right this second. Optio Henrietta’s lines of [Healers] and the general discipline and training of the Sixth had held, with critically injured soldiers pulled back for emergency care and stabilization. They weren’t healed fully, but they’d last another fifteen minutes, and that’s all that mattered.

The image was ready, [Imbue] was at the tip of my tongue, my skills were at my fingertips.

“Sixth Legion! Disengage, disengage, disengage! Tetsudo! Tetsudo! Tetsudo!” Katerina ordered, Reed transmitting the orders directly to every soldier’s ear. The soldiers pulled back, the Han troops mostly letting us reform. We’d hit them by surprise from the side, and I think they both wanted the chance to properly reform against our treachery, and wanted to see what was going on with the Guardian.

After eating Wang Jian in a single bite, Teruo’s attention seemed to shift to us, and I braced myself, fearing what was to come. The Sixth had been involved in burning Shuixi to the ground, there was no doubt about that. The only question was, did the Guardian think we were involved, and to what extent? Thanks to Katerina’s quick thinking, when he arrived on the field we were battling the people who had tried to burn Shuixi to the ground.

The massive wings flapped once, and the Guardian’s judgment descended upon us. Hundreds of clear harpoons, wrapped in crackling Void, shot off his wings, each one unerringly aimed at a target. I calculated and dismissed nearly all of them, noting five that seemed to be headed our way.

I made a snap decision. Either way, I’d need to heal a bodyshot, but if the harpoons also had secondary effects, it was better to have it happen away from the Legion. I wasn’t the toughest, but I was probably the most durable.

I shot up towards the harpoons, picking one in particular to intercept. I bit off a curse as it swerved around me.

I snapped my hand out, and miracle of miracles, managed to ‘catch’ the harpoon. I discovered that the entire thing was made out of Acid and coated in Void as it instantly dissolved my entire hand, my scales briefly flashing for a moment before getting destroyed.

A curious race occurred as my [Persistent Casting] fought against the hyper-compressed Acid spear. Flesh materialized as quickly as it was dissolved, and the end of my arm exploded in a fountain of sludgy gore as Acid plus flesh resulted in a mess. The Void crackling around the bolt also happily ate my arm, but much more cleanly, voiding the mass with barely a complaint.

My mana dropped like a rock, and I was having serious doubts about my move.

All this happened in a flash, the harpoon less than a meter long and moving at supersonic speeds.

Then my hand was whole again, and the attack was over.

I’d done it. I’d blocked the Guardian’s attack.

The elation I felt was quickly tempered by a burning sensation all up and down my arm, along with dozens of holes in my clothes from where Acid had splashed all over me.

I dove down to an optimal position to heal from, noting with relief that two of the harpoons weren’t heading for us, but instead the nearby Han forces. I ignored what was going on with them, choosing to focus on the Sixth.

Dozens of defensive skills flared against the attack, but the Void-empowered shot went through them all. Katerina’s [Shadow Legion] leapt up, ‘bravely’ putting their shields between the attacks and the Legion. Didn’t matter - the attack utterly destroyed the darkness soldiers, the shadows snapping back to their owner’s feet. Two soldiers - a [Centurion] and a regular line member - were singled out, the harpoon piercing them skull to groin before exploding in a burst of Acid.

The moment I identified the targets I snapped [Mantle of the Stars] to one, and [Nova Lance] to the other, [Imbuing] both with my healing image.

I was strong. I was powerful. I was one of the best [Healers] in the world, backed by an entire army. I’d survived a bare wisp of an attack from a Guardian in the past, tanking a single spore of Yurok’s plague. I’d just taken a harpoon to the hand and won.

I wasn’t ‘save someone from a direct Guardian attack’ strong yet. I wasn’t able to protect the soldiers from direct hits to the head, to attacks penetrating their entire bodies. The highly compressed Acid exploded out from the inside of their bodies, dissolving them entirely and spraying everyone next to them with highly concentrated, potent skill-boosted Acid.

My focus shifted from the dead troops to the survivors, each using their own skills and abilities to try and escape, to survive the nasty assault. The attack clearly wasn’t directed, it simply was a side-effect of the Guardian’s attack, collateral damage as it killed those it deemed guilty and ‘spared’ the rest.

Speaking of sparing - to my dismay, I saw another, much larger harpoon fired off from the Guardian in our general direction. The kun-peng wasn’t satisfied by simply attacking, wasn’t going to let the fact I’d diverted the blow go. The Guardian was going to make sure their target was dead.

To my relief, to my dismay, the much larger shot landed in the Han forces, obliterating not only the target, but everyone in a five meter radius around her.

I’d tanked the shot, only for it to have not been aimed directly at us.

No orders needed to be given to get away from the Acid fountains. Everyone just instinctively moved away, with orders to that effect coming in a heartbeat later. The sooner people got away from the Acid, the better.

[Mantle of the Stars] was easy enough to expand to touch more soldiers. [Nova Lance] was a little trickier. I changed it from one finger to all ten, then started to dance my fingers like I was playing a piano, the saving light flickering from one soldier to the next.

I almost succeeded. Apart from the two who’d been singled out for death by Teruo, only one soldier who’d been standing too close to the centurion, trying to save him, had died.

All across Zhao She and Wang Jian’s armies, harpoons fell, exploded in Acid, and people died.

All the years of campaigning in the Han Empire had taught me a little about the Acid element, and an unusual property it seemed to have. Acid plus Metal made an explosive gas, one that any spark could set off. The dullahan’s skin was made out of metal, creating a base for the explosion, and metal hitting metal could also make a spark.

Three seconds after the Guardians attack, gigantic explosions ripped across the armies, cascading from one place to another.

A thought clicked, an idea connected, and I looked at my reformed hand in horror.

FUCK! No! My Deception Ring! An ancient, priceless artifact, one I’d gotten from the old gnoll! My main protection that let me wander around mortal lands without issue! It was gone! Entirely dissolved by Teruo’s Acid!

Ugggghhh.

I still had my second layer of protection, my amulet, but the loss of the ring hurt. It was one of the very, very few items I’d brought with me from Remus, and now it was gone forever. My distractible mind instantly jumped to the prayer my parents had given me, safe inside [Loremaster’s Library]. At least that was still there, still safe.

Teruo, the Pure, looked down at all of us from on high. He was still flying in place above Shuixi, the angry avatar of judgment and justice, Guardian of life. With a slow flap of his wings, the kun-peng ascended higher into the sky, above his clouds. The moment he disappeared, Fenrir, carrying Nina and Iona, shot up into the clouds, chasing after him.

It took me a puzzled moment in [Parallel Thoughts] before the memory clicked, and I laughed, sending Nina a mental thumb’s up.

When we were talking about Nina’s path, we’d half-joked about dipping her into the living storm, the oddity that shuffled skills around. Instead, preparing for her 256 upgrade and merger of Wind and Fire into Storm, they’d found an equally potent storm to fly around in for quality.

The rainclouds of a Guardian.