SelkieMyth
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Chapter 589 - Plague Wind
🕑 Added 2024-09-25 02:00:02 +0000 UTCRaccoon was a new and interesting presence in our lives. I was less than impressed with her desire to learn ALL THE VIOLENCE from Iona and her reluctance to do the hard, needed farm work, but Iona managed to get her round.
Weeks passed, and carrots died. The hardiest ones were growing into small and scraggly little things, but by the gods, they were alive. Growing, promising more food, promising to extend our stores.
Raccoon approached me one morning as I was recharging the enchantments, praying for the day she leveled up enough to do the chore herself. What else were minions for? I raised an eyebrow at what she was carrying, and stood up straight as she nervously approached me. Her language skills had improved in leaps and bounds, and I was pretty sure she had a general skill dedicated to learning.
“Elaine. Uhhh. I got for you?” She shyly offered me up a dead opossum.
“Thank you?” I gingerly took the offering, trying to figure out what I was going to do with a dead marsupial. It hadn’t even been washed or anything, the blood was still congealing on its fur.
Her offering reluctantly accepted, Raccoon beamed at me.
“Is good eating! You teach me magic food skill?”
It took me a moment to understand what she was asking. Maybe.
“Do you mean my [Tower] skill I get food from?”
Raccoon nodded furiously.
“Yes! Lots of good eating. Raccoon and tribe no starve.”
I debated trying to explain the power complexities of Spatial magic, along with the power and control requirements, before getting into the need to plan and store everything.
“Raccoon, how high can you count?” I asked, hoping she’d make it higher. As her teacher, I had standards.
“One, two, three, four, five… six! Seven, eight… ten, thirteen, thirty six!”
Raccoon nodded to herself like she was an accomplished genius, able to rattle off huge numbers.
“You teach me magic food skill now?”
I sighed.
“Raccoon, you’re great, but nine comes before ten, and…”
I debated saying ‘no’, but I doubted that’d get through to her. I drew myself up - fuck how short I was, I was still almost eye level with the goblin - and did my best ‘evil mysterious witch’ look.
“Elaine powerful Immortal mage. Puny goblin hasn’t lived long enough to learn valuable secrets. Many years of learning needed first. Then, I teach powerful secret-hush magics.”
I felt a little greasy after saying that. Raccoon was nodding along like it made total sense to her.
“Alright! Raccoon picks carrots now, Elaine cooks?” Her eyes locked on the carcass I was still holding and she licked her lips. There was absolutely no temptation to have Raccoon do the cooking herself, not after the first time. We’d all seen what she considered ‘good eating’, and since it had been her first week and she was still a nervous wreck, we’d politely choked it down, then made a private pact to never let her cook again.
With quite a lot of high-speed mental effort, and a dramatic flick of my wrist, I lit up a dozen carrots I’d mentally marked as being ready for harvest. Had to keep my dramatic ‘all powerful witch’ image up after all. It was the only way I could get her to practice her letters!
She was one of the most eager students I’d ever had. Once she figured out that I was teaching her ‘runes of power’, there was no stopping her thirst for knowledge. Part of me wondered if she’d be disappointed down the line, but… nah that was impossible. Everyone loved reading.
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Sage of Tomes] has leveled up!]
Oh, I wondered what Auri was up to? Also, speaking of, it’d been a while since we’d seen Fenrir. He left to hunt and hadn’t been back since. Iona still had the companion skill, so he was obviously still alive. Just… concerning.
Carrot - oppossum soup. Yay apocalypse.
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[*ding!* Congratulations! [The Elaine] has leveled up to level 1350->1352 +200 Strength, +200 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +2000 Mana, +10000 Mana Regen, +4000 Magic Power, +4000 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]
I woke up in the middle of the night to a pair of levels, swearing.
“Love! Auri! Up!” I yelled, teleporting Iona’s armor onto her body as she sat up. She threw off the covers and we both jumped out, and I finished gearing her up.
“Brrrpt?”
“Unknown, two levels.” It was a little biased, but my mind instantly jumped to the goblins, wondering if they’d betrayed us.
“Goblins?” Iona asked, on the same wavelength.
[*ding!* Congratulations! [The Elaine] has leveled up to level 1352->1353 +200 Strength, +200 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +2000 Mana, +10000 Mana Regen, +4000 Magic Power, +4000 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]
My mind was split a dozen ways, each investigating in a different manner. Iona quivered beside me, ready to spring into violent action the moment I located the source of the trouble.
The sharpest blade in the world was useless if it didn’t strike true. The third level already suggested this wasn’t goblins. No offense to them, but an entire tribe of goblins trying to knife three dozen farmers in the middle of the night simply didn’t have the weight or scope for me to be leveling multiple times. A tenth of a level, at best, before it was split with Auri.
I stretched my senses, trying to understand everything going on around me. The range of [The World Around Me] had steadily increased over the years and levels, but they weren’t quite in range. However, I could hear and sense far more than the range, and I was getting a big old nothing.
‘Nothing’ was something of an exaggeration, but not that much of one. Sure, there was the sound of the wind going through leaves, and the thousand nocturnal creatures -
Wait.
No, there wasn’t. I didn’t hear scurrying mice, there was no soft swish of an owl’s wings, foxes didn’t rustle bushes and cats weren’t lazily prowling for dinner.
Then, like the scythe of the grim reaper himself had passed overhead, like Black Crow got into farming, our carrots, the vegetables of our hard labor, died. En masse, the entire field, no survivors. They simply withered and died, pretty much all at once. Blackened and withered, small and hard.
I breathed in deeply through my nose, trying to filter the thousand subtle scents to see if I could pick up any trace of what was going on.
“Elaine?” Iona prompted me, and I frowned. I absent-mindedly left the cottage, to see if my eyes could help me out. I didn’t see anything obvious.
“I’m pretty sure we’re being gassed.” I explained. “A Miasma Classer, or a Poison one. They’re releasing something on the wind to try and kill us all.” I petulantly kicked one of the plants, bemoaning my desire to let them grow a little more instead of just harvesting them all. Then again, whatever herbicide was fucking with us would -
“Fuck. The granary!” I yelled and pulled out one of my spellbooks. I grabbed a bunch of pages in the middle, and bemoaning that I was going to waste three of the seven pages, I ripped them out. “Iona, go, I have to stay here. Activate these ones, in this order.” I reshuffled the pages and thrust them at my wife, who grabbed them and shot off towards the bunker like a… well, she was a charging knight.
I was a little stuck. Everyone was inside my multi-mile healing radius, but that wouldn’t be the case if I started to move around. Running to the bunker was the same as killing five families, and I wouldn’t do it. I’d encountered a number of different traps over the years, but this was a new one - ‘move and civilians die’.
I took no responsibility for the actions of others. Like with the pirates, if they threatened a hostage’s life if I moved, I took no responsibility for their actions if I moved and they acted anyway. It wasn’t on my conscience.
This was a little different. I was actively staving off death right now, moving would kill them from my actions. It was like holding up a falling beam over a child - it was absolutely my responsibility if I dropped it on their head.
I moodily kicked one of the dead carrots as I scanned the skies, looking for a flicker, a trace of a Classer soaring away. They were in the middle of actively trying to kill me, and I had exactly zero problems dealing with assholes who tried to gas people in the middle of the night. We probably weren’t even the only ones! Anyone -
[*ding!* You are in the presence of Erra, the Merciful]
The sky warped above me and a crystalline scorpion-like vorler snapped into existence. Only the shock of the Guardian announcement prevented me from immediately throwing all my spells at the creature with extreme prejudice, instead taking half a moment to think about the situation. My mind continued to work on a dozen tracts. [Identify] the creature and evaluate the situation.
I’d studied the known Guardians, and Erra wasn’t one of them. A newly promoted one… and I hadn’t seen any notifications for any of the old Guardians ascending.
Was the Vorler the Guardian? Was her name Erra? Or was the Guardian something like a Mist or Wind elemental, invisible to the eye, and revealed the source of the plague?
I started conjuring a dozen [Radiant Angel’s Spears of Obliteration], preparing my spears of burning golden Radiance for an overwhelming initial strike on the Vorler. My class quality let my stats be… well, I wasn’t a heavyweight, but I wasn’t a lightweight either. I seriously doubted anyone or anything selected to be a Guardian was anything other than the heaviest of heavyweights, but if the Vorler wasn’t the Guardian, and I hit the right spots with overwhelming power… maybe…
That, and if it wanted to fight, I’d have to stand and fight.
This was all occurring quite quickly.
Another part of me hit upon the actual solution quite quickly, and terminated three different thought processes with the conclusion.
[Guardian Erra, the Merciful]
Well, that simplified things quite a bit.
A moment after it finished appearing, the Vorler split, then split again, turning into a cascading fractal pattern. Its many stingers all struck forward at once in a thousand-million places, a struggling harpy revealed for a brief moment. Colorful feathers and a blowing breeze in her eyes marked her as a Gale user.
[Mage - 768]
Auri flew out of the cottage, starting a beeline straight to the vorler. Didn’t blame her, we’d been hunting the menances for decades, and they were kill on sight.
“Auri! Stop! Friendly!” I yelled as the System dinged at me. Too many things going on too quickly.
[*ding!* Congratulations! [The Elaine] has leveled up to level 1353->1360 +200 Strength, +200 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +2000 Mana, +10000 Mana Regen, +4000 Magic Power, +4000 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]
I had a moment of indecision, of hesitation. The massively more powerful Vorler’s poison wasn’t killing the harpy because of me. I was single-handedly staving off death with [Persistent Casting], and once I finalized the conclusion that the harpy was responsible and needed to die, I couldn’t say ‘whoops’ and take it back. It went against nearly a century of instincts and of exterminating vorlers. My mana was regenerating faster than I could spend it. It was ‘only’ a single person being executed, and unless the trauma was immediately lethal, I could heal them again and again, as many times as was needed, until I’d made my decision.
Nobody died. That was my conviction, and right now, I could stare a Guardian in its many-faceted eyes and say ‘wait.’
I Wait for me to judge. Wait for me to decide.
I was the arbiter here.
Auri fluttered to my shoulder.
“Brrrpt?” She asked.
“Thinking.” I tersely answered.
“Brrpt.” She had full faith in me.
The Vorler, scourge of all life, a species that warring armies would pause to eradicate, an infamous Miasma user, came in on a Guardian notification. The System was cleanly telling me she was a Guardian.
But there was no confirmation, no knowledge, that the harpy was the killer. No Poison or Miasma in her eyes, no Acid or Spore or one of the other elements known for murder writ large. That the Vorler wasn’t going rogue, if it were possible for a Guardian to break its mandate. A Vorler the level I was witnessing was enough of a scourge to be worth summoning a Guardian in and of itself, the skills, levels, and classes enough to take a strong stab at gassing the entire continent of life, of stripping every living soul from its mortal coil.
The level and power were suggestive. If the Vorler, right here, was trying to kill us specifically, I’d possibly be having a harder time keeping everyone alive. My mana would be slowly dropping. At the same time, normal Poison and Miasma were trivially cheap to deflect. It was only when they got supercharged by high level skills that it could possibly start to pose a challenge… and a Vorler at that level should have the high level skills in question.
However, if they were attempting to exterminate a large population all at once, the impact and the effect would be diluted, making it trivially easy once again to deflect and prevent, my mana regeneration alone more than enough to keep up.
Did I have enough knowledge to once again arbitrate life and death? To give the thumb’s up, to allow her soul to be reaped by Black Crow? In the moment I wished for Iona, and her ability to see all stats and skills, to let me know with certainty what the right decision was.
I arbitrated.
I decided.
And a winged body fell.
[*ding!* Congratulations! [The Elaine] has leveled up to level 1360->1361 +200 Strength, +200 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +2000 Mana, +10000 Mana Regen, +4000 Magic Power, +4000 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]
[*ding!* [Everywoman] leveled up! 502 -> 503]
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Comments
Chloe
Tyftc
SwitchBlaze
Great Chappie. Thank you.
Trevor Mergen
Thanks!
Jason Hardman
I feel merging [The World Around Me] might reduce the functionality to be more healing specific. Unless the definition can be stretched to having such awareness being beneficial to her patients. Seems risky, unless the skill description is very clear on it being an upgrade or side-grade at least, e.g. same behaviour nearby at a similar range to the current ability, but less detail further out, but still giving healing feedback. It's not infeasible, with successive class-ups getting people closer and closer to god level abilities.
Kurosov
Which as a consequence could seriously harm those around her. With her current set up other healers will never get a chance to level. If she stays in one place long enough for a city to form then whenever she leaves that city they'd have no healing capability at all. Best case is setting up some mountain retreat with a city at it's base out of her healing range. She could set it up so devoted healers could go on pilgrimage climbing the mountain for a chance to receive lessons from The Elaine. The arduous journey and lesson reward compounding for the system to grant better class options to those that make the pilgrimage. The students could then act as healers for the city below, levelling their skills just outside her range. This would lead to people in need of healing flocking to the region, the most dire of cases the students cannot heal being brought within her range.
Kurosov
Which was not chosen specifically because she didn't think she'd need it, Abandoning the health of far flung future flora.
BudgetDragon
I wonder if she could merge the world around me with her healing to see everything in her healing range
BudgetDragon
I think that would only happen if she specifically took upgrades increasing her range. Right now she’s at like 5 miles(?) and for her purposes she doesn’t need it to grow much bigger. If they start building a city around here something like that might happen, since while she’s there death and disease would be basically impossible.
TroubleFait
Wasn't there a class option where she could heal plants at some point?
Hello!
That’s a direction yeah. But remember. She’s mainly using healing to restore back to optimal “original species” conditions as known in the back end of the system. Biomancy is messing with the backend “species framework” that the system reflects their body with. Though the ranged diagnostic skill would be helpful, I don’t think many of her skills are close enough to merge to make way for a new skill in the class. Maybe [Domain] adds info like a ping of what it’s helping recover from?
NDF 07
[The Elaine] is an interesting class because it's scope is everything that describes Elaine, at the cost of the class just doing what she was doing without any major qualitative improvements, when she still had [The Arbiter of Life and Death] there where moments in which she went I'm the one who chooses who lives and who dies not in a theatrical way but an personal way, so it can be safely assumed that her introspection was what gave her that last level up
Jason Hardman
Read a few people saying that as she upgrades her classes there aren't many directions for [The Elaine] to grow, but mulling over it later I realised this chapter is a perfect example of something Elaine has been missing for a long while. Elaine generally does manual diagnostics using her senses and medical knowledge, however if she had a dedicated healing diagnostic ability tied to her healer class then she'd be able to know not only what she needs to target in healing, but also what she's getting levels from. It's probably unlikely she will get that unless she makes some efforts to push toward it in her upgrades though. Another direction, that is much more in line of with her history and current class, is greater biomancy capabilities. She's got history, there's some minor biomancy in the current class, so strengthening her ability to fix and improve people will go a long way. Maybe she can breed a smarter goblin, although not sure that's the kind of thing she'd work on.
Jason Hardman
TYFTC! Pretty sure the "I" at the start of this sentence is a typo: I Wait for me to judge. Wait for me to decide.
Markus
I wonder what life a Vorler has lived to get taged as Merciful.
Clinton Walsh
That would be Iona.
Hello!
I was also under the same impression. The first book describes them as small but we all are aware Elaine isn’t exactly the picture of an Amazon.
Kennyevilmonkey
So, the goblins are about 5 feet tall then? Because, Elaine said that she was almost eye level with Raccoon, and I am assuming that they were both standing. If I'm not mistaken, Elaine is a shorty at like 5'2 or around there, right? But at the same time, I was under the impression that Raccoon is still just a kid, so how would she be 5 feet tall, unless the adults are even taller? How big are these goblins!?!?
jackalsclaw
I should see her having a long turn biomancy project about healing mango trees
Daniel B
It may also come with time in role. Being a guardian must be a bit like a paladin, with some greater force whispering knowledge in your mind
Drendude
Maybe if she was still that class, but she's [The Elaine] now instead.
Olly
When Teruo showed up over the burning dullahan city, it was able to control individual rain drops to not touch Auri, apparently aware of her presence. If Erra is anywhere near similar strength, they will be aware of Elaine and Auri.
Hello!
I feel like they might take offense at that. Plus that guardian just kinda appeared so no real way to follow it if it’s teleporting around.
Anonymous
Still like 200 off for the next class up to get Stygian dragon, rainbow Phoenix healer. Is it unethical to follow guardians around and farm xp from healing their victims?
Andrew
Thank you!
Kurosov
If only she’d planned her build properly years ago and made sure carrots were on her heal list.
Hello!
I feel like she’s taken it far enough that the next healing class up is going to have an element to healing plants as well. There’s not much more power her elvenoid healing can get besides a bigger range and to include plants/animals would broaden her range of being The Arbiter. As she pointed out this chapter she could decide the fates of everything in her range. Plus growing the space mango would help it stay a celestial feat.
CringeWorthyStudios
Huh, so at least one of the Guardians died this Immortal War. Interesting. I wonder how Erra met the criteria to be a Guardian when Vorlers are usually completely feral… Anyway, cool stuff at the end there. Though I know Elaine would never do it and it would have been out of character for her, she could have levelled a whole bunch if she’d just kept the harpy mage alive for a while using her healing to directly contest a Guardian. Missed out on some free levels there… Thanks for the chapter!
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
CringeWorthyStudios
Almost certainly but the difference is if she paid attention and cared or not.
MoonlitShade
This is the first time she truly felt like an [Arbiter of Life and Death] lol. Gotta have some system weight from that
Clinton Walsh
At some point, will her healing fields just be so large that her level will naturally boost, increasing the size of her healing fields, increasing her levels, etc. until she hits goddesshood? Can you imagine arbiter of life and death acting on essentially the whole planet? Literal goddess move before being promoted to actual goddess!
MoonlitShade
Thanky chappy
Clinton Walsh
Great chapter!!! Oo, that was so cool! What a wake-up call! Question: did Erra notice Elaine or Auri?
DerWipe
Thanks for the chapter
Roombot
Not the carrrrrottss!!!!!
Thomas Kuhn
Tftc! It sucks that they're going to have to start over for all of their fields now
Apollo Above
THAT self actualization is going to catch the systems attention
BudgetDragon
Tftc
