Chapter 36

Tom watched the group move out, and as expected they stopped advancing just beyond the latest hive he had destroyed. There was an art to harvesting new types of wasps. Get too close to a hive and you risked being overwhelmed; stay too far away and the gathering was too slow. They would adjust positioning continuously to balance those two concerns.

Next to him Harry was setting up a secondary ritual, with a grumpy look on his face.

“You must be so sick of creating this ritual.”

Harry shrugged and kept working. “It was always a non-flashy option. Any buffing one is,” he said finally. “I’m glad it’s been as useful as it has.”

“Have you classed up yet?”

The ritualist shook his head. “I have the experience, but I’m sitting on it till we know what we’re facing. If I was more selfish, I could invest into sub-rituals that would let me kill wasps faster than you, but I can’t imagine we’re going to be fighting small animals our whole lives. While it would super-charge my gains now, it feels stupid to lock myself into that path.”

Tom chuckled at that thought. “No, we will not,” he agreed. “I think I spent less than a week every year killing bugs this small.”

Harry stopped the ritual and Tom felt the increased mana flow through him as he shifted to the fresh version. Michael knelt down next to him with a bucket and thick gloves and started manually stinging Tom. He retreated to Healing Tranquillity, quickly neutralising each sting with raw power till his system built up an immunity.

“What were the worst small animals you fought?” Harry asked.

“Worst? I don’t know if there is an answer to that.” Tom considered his life. “When I was rank forty, there were low-density hornets at a similar strength to me. They were hellish to fight. One on one I could defeat them easily, but usually three or four attacked at a time. I really leant hard on my cleansing magic.”

“I once had to fight shadow-winged spiders.” Harry shivered.

A bucket came back from the frontline, and Clare joined Michael in stinging him.

“You chatting or focusing on getting immunity?” Clare asked.

Tom rolled his eyes. “Multi-tasking. What did the spiders do?”

Harry laughed. “Gave me a phobia and forced me to flee to a personal safe cave. They breached it and forced me to flee to a secondary one. Then a third one; and by the time they hit my fourth they ran straight into a ritual trap, and I destroyed them.”

The venom within him was building up to an uncomfortable level. With a sigh, Tom laid back and looked up at the thin clouds crossing the blue-green sky. Like on the first day, Healing Tranquillity let him shut down organs in an orderly manner as he focused on surviving long enough for his body to build its immunity.

“Are we going too fast?” Michael asked.

Tom shook his head. While it was not pleasant, his regeneration could keep pace with the venom.

Buckets were returned and switched out. With Michael and Clare administering the venom, the horrifying situation from the first day was not in danger of being repeated. He would not be overwhelmed with too much venom. These new venoms individually were probably more potent, but his capacity had increased significantly. A larger mana pool meant a corresponding increase in regeneration. The natural attribute points in vitality directly made him tougher, and the multiple titles reduced how hard the venom hit and increased the effectiveness of his healing.

It also helped that instead of fighting off numerous new poisons like on the first day, he was only fighting two of them.

Ding, Ching.

The noise interrupted his healing process.

Ding, Ching.

It was insistent, and it tickled at a memory from the DEUS’s trial. It was the noise that indicated an opportunity to evolve a skill or spell.

“Stop,” he ordered the two healers, knowing this was not something that could be delayed.

Ding, Ching.

The way the venom was stressing his system meant he hadn’t developed immunity yet. The concentration of the toxic substance in him, while manageable with conscious direction, was too much. He couldn’t just pop into the system room, because if it did the restrictions he was using to stop the spread would fail. Michael and Clare were there, and their healing could help… but… he realised how stupid that thought was. They were powerful healers, but in the context of what Healing Tranquillity brought to the table in his own body they were nothing.

Plus, he was not the type to rely on others.

Ding, Ching.

Time.

The noise was insistent, and evolution choices were on the clock. He needed to hurry. The stupid system would not take no for an answer. He hated that it had chosen this moment to offer him an evolution.

At least it was not during a life-or-death battle.

He borrowed mana from his crystal. Energy flooded through him, and he focused on very specific patterns, gathering the power and pushing the venom back. It was not part of his body, and that meant he could locate and manipulate it. The healers had been stinging his legs, and through the mana channel, venom had spread from there. It had reached the lower lungs, kidney, liver, bowels, stomach.

Tom’s mind went from organ to organ with a thin mesh of his power, aided by Healing Tranquillity, slowing time down, shoving the unwanted chemicals in front of them.

The amount of practice he had manipulating the internals of his body showed as he could push a large measure from spot to spot.

The quantity being manipulated was becoming dense and difficult to move.

Tom assessed options and attempted to determine whether a single thorough-pass was better than multiple ones.

With an internal curse, he patched a wall that had crumbled away and then watched in annoyance as some of the venom he had gathered leaked back to the previously clean kidney.

It was too unwieldy.

Multiple passes then.

He abandoned cleaning his insides further and instead focused on the glob that he had already extracted. Down around the hip joint. Pushed it into the quads and then up toward the skin.

He plunged the knife down and ignored the flash of pain. Then with an effort of will he refused to heal the gash.

The blob of venom oozed out, and only then did he relent to his instincts. With a flash, Touch Heal was unleased, and the skin healed perfectly with the venom having been expelled, beading on the skin. There was something to be said about the value that concentrated substance probably possessed to alchemists… considering Tom thought they had been selling it for a large number of credits… but… he flicked it off with his fingers, and it fell onto the yellow grass, which immediately bleached purple on its way to dying. The mana component applied as equally much to flora as fauna.

The first chunk had been cleared.

One of maybe four? Five? Six? He thought to himself.

The deadline set by the potential evolution meant there probably wouldn’t be sufficient time for five passes, let alone any extras that may be required. Driven by the knowledge, Tom pushed harder. The knife flashed and dimly he could sense the confused looks from Michael and Clare, but he ignored them. All that mattered was that they had stopped pushing more of the deadly substance into him. For now, he just needed to clear it to allow him to deal with evolution

Ding. Ching.

“Why are you doing this?” Michael asked, clearly unable to temper his curiosity.

“Skill evolution.” he told the curious healers.

“Go check it out.”

“Can’t.”

“We’ll protect you.” Michael guaranteed him.

Yes, no, maybe.

Whichever the answer was he didn’t have time to interact. He completed his third sweep through. Well over ninety percent of it had been cleared.

Ding, Ching, Ching.

It was even more insistent he was not going to get time to complete his process. He was going to have to trust that he had expelled sufficient poison. “I have to go.”

“We’ll keep you safe.” Michael said immediately.

With a nod, he shifted his perspective and was standing in the system room, and every single surface including the floor flashed insistently.

The room strobed impatiently, and even in the few seconds that he was standing there, both the intensity and frequency increased. If he suffered from epilepsy, this light show would surely have triggered it.

“Display.”

The space almost sighed in relief at the word, and the wall in front of him transformed into a screen.

Through continued use of Touch Healing internally, you have earnt the right to evolve the spell into the Tier 3 trait Targetable Regeneration.

Shock filled Tom at those words.

Followed by excitement.

A trait!

An upgrade from a spell to an intrinsic part of him. An ability that would apply even when magic and skills were suppressed.

Traits were superior.

While they upgraded less frequently than Spells or Skills when they did, an upgraded trait jumped a full tier. No slow progression along the tier which occurred with the simpler abilities.

Traits were fundamentally better than Spells or Skills.

You have 21 seconds remaining to decide.

Tom took a moment to understand what was being said. Why wouldn’t he take the Trait? Why was this even a choice?

“What’s Regeneration?”

Trait: Targetable Regeneration (Tier 3).

Passively heals any injuries taken, including flesh wounds, bones, and limb regrowth if the body has sufficient energy.

• Healing Tranquillity’s ability to focus on internal healing will be maintained.
• Up to thirty seconds of healing output can be stored.

In moments, his mind interpreted the details of that skill. It was an incredible trait; and if he had to use contribution points to get it, then it would have cost more than all of his traits apart from the DEUS’s Chosen, his question that he could ask once every eight days. Similar regeneration traits had cost four times more than Fate’s Agility, and this version seemed to be more special than most. It was of the regeneration class and not lesser regeneration or one of its many variables.

It was one of the good ones.

“How good is the storage?” he asked, his mind giving context. He wanted to understand what thirty seconds of healing output meant. Currently, he could close a mortal wound instantly. If that thirty seconds couldn’t do the same, the trait might not be as effective as had hoped.

Healing is equivalent to your existing touch healing, with a dedicated forty-five mana per minute available.

That implied the storage would give him the equivalent of a little over twenty mana to use. If his mana pool was full, then from a burst perspective, Touch Heal was the stronger option. In all other cases, the new trait was superior.

Flesh wounds, no matter how severe, would be closed within a minute, or a badly shattered bone fixed in the same time frame. The targeted nature meant that if his stomach got ripped open, he could close all the arteries and stop blood loss instantly. Given that currently he could only regenerate about twenty mana per minute, his self-healing capability got boosted by over two times. His burst healing capacity was reduced slightly, but not by a huge amount.

Right now, it was a straight-out upgrade. Sure, once his mana got into the hundreds, it would be a downgrade, but it was a non-percentage trait. As he grew stronger traits, shifted to continue to be relevant. Sometimes it was via discounted shop purchases, or other times they evolved. It was why a ten percent strength boost had cost a similar amount to a plus four strength trait. Currently, they did the same thing, and in the shorter term the percentage boost was superior, but over a long period that plus four bonus might evolve into a plus ten and then a plus fifty.

His Spell had evolved into a trait!

He smiled and then frowned as his analytical mind identified why he was getting granted such a tremendous opportunity. Because of the fine print. Accepting this evolution would kill his skill levels in healing. They were currently at above ninety. Proficiency took literally years to build, but if he bought another healing spell, it would keep half of those existing levels that maintained his healing usefulness.

“Buy spell Lesser Heal.”

Experience shop is not available during a class, spell or skill evolution.

“No!”

You have 9 seconds remaining to decide.

Internally, he laughed. He should have guessed something like that would have occurred.

He was rapidly running out of time and was split on what was the best decision.

Regeneration was better for him personally. In the DEUS’s trial it would have been a no-brainer, but if he took it, then his ability to heal others would be permanently crippled, and for others, skill levels were far more important than a trait like regeneration.

Damn you. He thought. His virtual heart in the system room was thumping.

You have 5 seconds remaining to decide.

Everlyn, Sven, and Harry’s names went through his head. If he lost Touch Heal, then his ability to heal others was gone. Sure, he could buy a new spell, just like everyone else but there was a difference between a spell level close to a hundred and one at one, and it would take years to grind any other healing spell to the level where it would be useful again.

Healing spells improved with levels more than other spells, having lower mana and more oomph.

But Regeneration.

He would be a rank five with regeneration, almost guaranteeing future beneficial evolutions as the trait sought to keep the same relativity to his rank. Greater Regeneration by rank 20? and then what would that be by rank fifty? Phoenix Rebirth? Supreme Regeneration? Greater Regeneration Aura?

The variance in the higher tiers of even basic traits was significant. Even mundane traits, of which a rare version of regeneration was anything but common.

Everlyn’s eyes came to him. What if she needed healing, and he took this? It was… More than just about her; he couldn’t do this by himself. His plan needed others, or at least it would be more effective with the help of others.

But… Regeneration.

But… Losing his precious capability to heal another.

The timing was off.

The room was flashing once more. That same insistent strobing starting up. There was no time. He had to decide.