PoA The Concept of Death Chapter 6

PoA The Concept of Death 6

Melinda cursed and rechecked her surroundings. They were on a cliff with a half-decent position, but it wasn’t ideal.

“Move right and get into a defensive position.”

She looked over the cliff and added, “Vinny, protect our feet. Don’t let them collapse the ground under us.”

Her team immediately responded to her orders and ran along the lip of the ravine, but Melinda felt like she was missing something that she just couldn’t see.

Tara let loose an arrow, and someone vanished from the mass of confused workers and defenders.

“Try to not hit the workers.”

Tara sounded miffed as she responded, “They moved in front. That’s not on me.”

She loosed another arrow that raced out to remove another of the charging attackers. The ground rumbled underneath their feet, causing them all to stumble, and Kyle and Sam to drop to a knee to stabilize themselves.

Vinnie had both arms in the ground up to his elbows, and his face was pale with effort as the cliff around their group started to disintegrate.

“Stronger than me,” Vinnie spat out with trembling lips. “Best I can do is control the fall.”

Melinda wanted to curse, but avoided wasting time and called out, “Sam! Get something poisonous down there! Medium burn.”

Her poison master teammate pulled a vial of purple liquid out of her waist pouch and threw it to Kyle, who lobbed it into the group of attackers. Tara, having heard the command for poison, held her arrow until the vial was directly over the attackers. Once it was in position, she shot the vial, causing the noxious liquid to spray everywhere.

Melinda didn’t actually know what this poison was. Sam was always mixing new batches with various levels of lethality. The one she called for was something that would take at least three minutes to kill a monster of human size. It ensured that she could heal her teammates if any of the poison escaped the control of Sam’s Talent-based manipulation of poisons and venoms, and blew back onto their team.

The liquid started to vaporize once it was free of its glass container, causing a fog of miasma to obscure their vision of the attacking group. Sadly, it was mostly for naught, as a huge gust of wind blew the gas cloud back at their still descending team.

Sam was better, and shunted the poison off to the side, unwilling to fight a wind mage for control over a gas. They had practiced this exact scenario in a rift with wind mage birds, and it was almost always a losing proposition.

An arrow exploded in a flash of lightning as it hit nearby, causing Melinda to flick a look back at Tara, who seemed just as surprised as she was. Matt’s little gift was coming back to pay dividends, but she didn’t know how many arrows Tara’s quiver had the time to enchant. She hadn’t asked their archer exactly how her new growth item worked, and was only going by the quick explanation that Matt had given at the table. It was something she had overlooked, but it would be good to know exactly how the quiver worked, so she could anticipate its uses in any engagement.

Regardless, it was proving to be a useful addition.

They slammed into the bottom of the ravine, creating a plume of dust and rubble. While everyone else wobbled on their feet, struggling to stand, Mathew stood strong. He was already taking his position at the front of the group, thanks to the stability granted by his Tier 3 Talent.

A huge hunk of wood that was more tree than log flew directly at them, but Kyle quickly stepped forward and swung his massive sword. He deflected the projectile away from their group, and slammed it into the cliff wall.

The group of Kingdom fighters rushed forward, but between Kyle and Mathew, they were able to hold off the attackers long enough for everyone to get into a defensive position around Vinnie. He was busy fighting enemy earth mages in order to keep control of the ground around them. The area outside of Vinnie’s control was full of rising pillars that he shattered, and spikes of earth trying to stab them from behind, which he halted as well. Even the ground around them was being turned to sand.

Their earth mage was effectively out of the fight, but he was heavily limiting the enemies’ avenues of attack.

With Kyle and Mathew acting as a wall of steel, Sam ducked forward to cut overextended legs and arms, putting [Venom Strike] to good use. It would take a full minute to actually kill an enemy with poison alone, but the venom’s effect slowed the reaction speed and coordination of any who were struck. That allowed the melee duo to take their weakened opponents down quickly. Kyle was busy directly cutting through lax defenses, while Mathew’s precise strikes with his mace handled the rest.

After a few frantic minutes of fighting, Melinda and her team stood alone while the last few workers retreated down the other end of the ravine, along with the final few defenders. Tara continued to launch arrows at them, but considering their wall of shields, it was more to harry them in their retreat than to actually inflict casualties.

After checking that their backup was quickly approaching, Melinda inspected her teammates. They were mostly fine, except a few light wounds here and there. Against her better instincts, she left them alone to save mana.

Sam was helping Vinnie to his feet and brushing off the clinging dirt from their teammate .

Vinnie said, “We need to be careful. The earth mage retreated, and he’s strong as fuck.” He spit out a glob of blood that was a worrying shade of pink, so Melinda moved over and inspected him as he continued. “I think it’s a Kingdom fighter. Not another Pather. He’s got too many skills, and I think he’s using [Entomb], which is Tier 14.”

She found that he had bitten deeply into his cheek and tongue during his fight, and had swallowed a good amount of blood. A quick [Directed Heal] took care of both wounds, but she wouldn’t be able to help with the nausea that would come from his swallowing so much blood.

Kyle, who had walked away from their group, kicked open a box he had found. Multiple chunks of copper ore fell out into a pile. He picked one up and tossed it in their direction after a quick inspection.

“Tier 6 copper. Why is this worth a special hidden mine?”

Vinnie brought the chunk to his hands with a pillar of earth and examined it

“No, this is definitely worth it.”

He bounced the chunk of ore in his hand, showing it off. “This is natural, mana infused copper. Tier 6 version of it as well. It’s only found on new planets, as it takes forever to form naturally. This shit is extremely valuable; it’s impossible to find the infused version in a rift.”

Seeing their confusion, he shrugged and added, “I don’t know every detail about how it’s made, but rifts create everything inside right at the moment of the instance first coming into being, while this ore is made over an extended period of time. Otherwise, making it artificially is extravagantly expensive. I think it’s made by blasting the ore with buckets of mana over an insane amount of time. Basically, a vein of this stuff so close to the surface is extremely valuable.”

As she watched their reinforcements move along her AI’s map, Melinda asked, “What’s it used for?” They were within the influence of the base’s anti-flying runes, so they were forced to proceed on foot, which slowed them down.

“Enchanting, as far as I know. It allows mana to flow with nearly no loss. I’m pretty sure they’re used for permanent rune enchanting; big shit, like the city-wide defenses. I don’t really know for sure, but that’s my best educated guess.”

Melinda sent the information back up to headquarters. It was good to know, and they might get some more points out of the find, if the ore really was that useful.

Their reinforcements came in in such a hurry, Melinda was bracing for a betrayal. Instead, she was shouted at.

“Prepare for another attack! We saw them coming back in numbers.”

She didn’t hesitate and called out to her team, “Let’s take this wall!”

With the order given, they all rushed to take a position at the now dismantled wall that they’d just brought down. Kyle raced over, and they formed up as a group. Vinnie created a small wall of earth about waist high, which they all fell in behind. The wall slowly grew until it covered the entire bottom of the ravine.

Their Queendom allies ran to the wall and took their places. Not a full minute later, from the other side of the ravine, a wave of at least forty people came down the slope at a run.

At the sight of each other, a variety of spells and volleys of arrows were launched by both sides.

An arrow broke through Mathew’s upraised shield and penetrated through his arm. Melinda quickly raced forward, breaking off the arrow head as Kyle cut the fletching off the back so they could pull it through his arm without causing further injury. Melinda did so, closing the wound just as she removed the arrow shaft.

She slapped his back as she raced down the line to the commander of their reinforcements.

“Why are we holding?”

He looked at her like she was stupid as he shouted, “This is our territory!” Even with her helmet on, he noticed her incredulous look, so he added, “And those were our orders when you reported that there was infused copper here.”

So the Queendom was getting greedy. She made a note that they should be prepared to pull out if things got too hectic.

But for now, she could work with these orders. “I’m a healer, so give me access to your team network.”

He looked surprised at that, but didn’t hesitate in giving her access.

Not bothering with him any longer, she ran to the most wounded fighter as another volley came down.

It was a woman with an arrow in her upper calf. Melinda quickly pulled it out and healed the freshly impaled tissue. She did it all with [Directed Heal], as her Tier 1 Talent made it cheaper for small wounds, compared to the wasteful flood of mana that [Ranged Heal] used indiscriminately.

She hurried back down the line as she checked everyone’s status. Her team made it through the next volley of attacks unharmed, with only one person dying from taking a [Fireball] to the head. She could’ve probably saved the person, but she had to remind herself to worry about her healing cooldowns.

It was something she usually never had to worry about. With a glance, she saw that both Mathew and the woman she healed had little meters next to their names. They showed her how much healing the average person could take before they started to reach dangerous levels.

In theory, you could always heal someone, even without overhealth, but the body would reject the regrown parts if there was too much stress on the body. Especially after repeated healing, the danger would increase exponentially if the healer made even the tiniest mistake. Baxter said that even he had limits that he couldn’t heal past. It just became too hard to be perfect on a cellular level. That didn’t even account for the used-up nutrients that were needed to regrow the missing body parts.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

For now, the bars next to each of the people she’d healed were bright green, showing that they had a while before they would be automatically withdrawn from combat.

A third volley was exchanged, and this time, she moved to heal a shattered arm. She was pretty sure that if she hadn’t been there, the woman would have been instantly removed. But she was here, and she was a damn good healer, even without her overhealth assisting her.

She never used more mana than she needed, and she kept her healing limited to what was necessary. She was sure to avoid wasting anything on extraneous maladies. This wasn’t a rift where they could retreat if her mana got low, and she had far more people to heal than her usual five.

When the two sides clashed, she was forced to race back and forth, keeping the Queendom fighters on their feet for as long as she could. This was a battle of attrition, and healers always made them last longer than most expected.

The real question was whether or not there was a healer on the other side. She felt that it was unlikely, but it was still a possibility. If there was, it would come down to who was better at managing their mana.

Melinda moved to a knot of fighting that seemed to be entirely focused on controlling the ground. Vines with golden thorns had broken through, extending to trap and shred the legs of the defenders.

“Someone, break that skill!”

If she healed them now, it would do little good. The wounds would be immediately reopened. To make things worse, someone cast a [Fireball] at their feet. It burned the vines and everything else around, making her job a lot harder.

Mentally cursing, Melinda cast [Area Healing] and winced as the 150 mana left her all at once. She could have gotten three normal [Ranged Heal]s or four [Directed Heal]s off with that mana. And that was with her Tier 1 Talent reducing the cost of all healing spells by half.