Chapter 569: The Gloves Come Off II

The gloves were coming off. No more restraining myself for the good of other [Healers]. No more avoiding stepping on toes. No more giving opportunities for other people to step in and level.

No more barely-tolerating people I couldn’t see and hear being sick, hoping that someone else would manage to get to them. No more hoping against hope that the sick and poor would find medical attention, either by finding me when I worked in the slums, or if a kind passing Moonlight Medic gave them a hand.

I had barely, just barely tolerated the state of affairs, going so far as to perform the occasional city-curing ‘miracle’ in Sanguino, and now was the time to put things right.

It was like a switch flipped in my mind as my understanding of the world shifted ever so slightly. Not only was it right, but I was now obligated to always put my best efforts forward to the city I lived in or was nearby. I’d need to do some soul searching on what, exactly, that meant - but I knew it was exceptionally unlikely that I’d ever retract my aura again.

People near me - for a large, generous definition of near - would live, assuming they weren’t trying to kill me and mine. That simple. I mentally whispered an apology to all those healers who were going to be denied experience and opportunities, but the gloves were off.

I didn’t think I was ever going to put them back on.

My skills practically sang in harmony as I linked them all together, unleashing my aura and my range. Thick, heavy imaginary tomes in [Astral Archives] provided all the medical knowledge I needed, from anatomy to physiology, injuries and how to cure them, a thousand and one disease and mechanisms of action. I paid special attention to interesting Miasma-improved bacteria and viruses, and tweaked my mental model to make sure I got them, even if they looked ‘beneficial’ to a human. There was a modest number of gut bacteria that were going to be caught by my new filters and images, but that was the price I needed to pay to eradicate the disease.

I imagined whoever was the creator on the other end of the disease knew that, and quietly chuckled at their genius. I doubted it was an accident, and whoever it was had experience in making virulent life-ending plagues. Fortunately, it was only ‘some’ bacteria, not ‘all’, and the worst cases might experience some diarrhea or constipation, along with some mild stomach aches and discomforts.

Compared to the dozens or even thousands of vampires that could die otherwise, it was a no-brainer. The minor harm to one group was far outweighed by the major harm that would occur to the other group.

It linked up to my image in [Universal Cure] as I spread the range as far as I could. My mana dropped quite a bit. The average person was mostly healthy, only needing the bare minimum, and my skills had potent improvements, from [Celestial Spirit] all the way to the bonuses in [Universal Cure].

Sanguino held a little over a million souls though, and I was right near the heart of the city. It dropped and I leveled, before my mana started to rapidly refill. The benefits of focusing on regeneration at this point in my life.

I waved to where Iona, Fenrir, and now Auri were high up, and pointed in the direction we needed to fly next. Fenrir dipped a wing in a salute, and started to fly off in that direction, flames reflecting off his metal armor, not going so quickly that I couldn’t catch up.

I mentally measured the city, confirming what I already knew from decades living nearby about its size and layout. My radius was nearly 2.5 km, but it was safer to round down to 2. The city wasn’t neatly shaped, but if I went along the longer axis, it would only take me nine passes over the entire city to cure every single person of every problem they had, from a splinter to stage 4 breast cancer, from a skinned shin to a mugged victim at death’s door.

Nobody died. That was my mission, that was the flag I was planting, that was the line in the sand I was drawing for this Immortal war. The quest was impossible, but right now, I didn’t care. I would strive for that goal, and use every resource at my disposal to make it happen.

I proved myself a hypocrite by promptly amending my statement. Nobody died… except the people trying to kill my patients.

I flew back and forth along the city, taking about fifteen seconds to fly from one wall to the next, zipping over thousands of people so quickly most never realized I was there.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 983-> 995. +400 Strength, +400 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control, +1000 Mana, +9000 Mana Regeneration 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) per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

Fuck, those were amazing levels. It had taken time for [The Endless Pursuit of Knowledge] to properly level and cap out, but I was enjoying a 37x multiplier to my experience. It was rare to have such a well-targeted mission to my class - literally ordered to heal the entire country in my role as Sentinel Dawn - which was helping dramatically.

I flew up and intercepted Fenrir, settling in and strapping down with grim-faced movements. Iona tended to go out in my wedding present - the adamantium alloy armor, she loved the set and wore it everywhere, apparently it was good for the [Paladin] message - and there was no awkwardness around retrieving it.

“Auri caught me up on the situation.” Iona said as Fenrir accelerated, able to move faster now that I’d caught up. “Can you tell me about what’s going on at home?”

“I issued the evacuation order.” I said. “I didn’t stop to grab anything on the way out. I trust Skye will balance getting to safety with grabbing additional supplies. The Valkyries were gearing up and heading down to the village to oversee what’s going on. I got the sense that they’re going to stay outside and help until the bitter end.”

My mind flickered over everyone I knew from Orthus village. I was satisfied enough with my apprentice Primus Nix’s medical education and progression, and he should be enough for medical care. The [Mayor] had a good head on his shoulders, Skye’s organizational and leadership skills were peerless, and…

Iona nodded, like there was nothing more reasonable, like I hadn’t just mentioned that the recovering Valkyrie order was probably about to be wiped out to the last woman.

Hells.

Basically every knightly order was about to get wiped out, weren’t they?

My mind went tumbling bumbling down the thought path, a thousand fears and worries assailing me, the fog of war suddenly very thick and very real. I didn’t know what other people were doing. I didn’t know if this was the best thing I could do. I didn’t know if Artemis and Julius were safe on the Island, I had no idea where Amber was, and Nina was probably already in a dangerous situation before the newer problems were stacked on top of it.

Ciriel. I hope her [Creed] didn’t demand she do anything too stupid.

I thought back to Arachne’s letter, and hardened my resolve.

I had faith in Exterreri, more notably Night. I had faith in his decision making, I had faith in his partner. His motives weren’t entirely pure, I knew that, but the map and the path to heal the most people in Exterreri? Yeah, all of that was real. It was an impact I could have right here, right now, today. Exterreri had a large population, and I was tasked with keeping them alive.

Right. That I could do. When there were quiet moments, I could look into helping other people in other places.

Auri sensed something was up with me and my mood, and nuzzled herself into my hand.

“Brpt!” She reassured me.

“Thanks.” I said.

I couldn’t bring myself to speak any of a dozen comforting lies, starting from ‘we’re going to be alright’ and getting more bald-faced from there.

One interesting quirk of various parts of the System working together was perceived travel time. I could bring my focus to ‘unaccelerated’ - permanently having my perception heightened and my thoughts sped up sounded like a special type of hell, a Curse White Dove would bestow upon a speedster - but accelerating my thoughts and mind while on Fenrir flying incredible speeds ironically made it feel like a ‘normal’ trip, instead of passing by in a flash.

“Can we have Fenrir fly low and fast over the 1st Legion?” I asked Iona. “They tend to be tightly packed, and Fenrir’s faster than I am.”

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“Agreed. Fenrir?” Iona asked, her head on a swivel.

The wyvern grunted his assent as I pulled out a spellbook, copying a rarely-used spell from memory into it. My hands shifted in a slightly unexpected way as my skill guided my creation, ‘reminding’ me that for a large semi-transparent illusion I had to make certain modifications.

[*ding!* [Reality, Writ As I Will]leveled up! 700 -> 701]

Thank goodness for skills, I would’ve forgotten that.

“Looking for anything in particular?” I asked Iona. I suspected, but I wanted to confirm.

“Threats. Attacks.” My wife said. “It’s almost nostalgic in a way. I started off escorting healers around, wary of high level threats, and here we are again.” The Valkyrie frowned. “Forget it, nostalgia over. I’d forgotten how much it sucked to be this worried over an attack, and there isn’t someone higher level keeping half an eye on us.”

Too true.

“How are you?” I asked, trying to gauge her mental state, wanting to be a good partner. Iona mock-groaned.

“I have an entire teapot in my bladder.” She good-naturedly complained. “The [Priest] kept pouring, it was good, and there were like, twelve bathrooms right there. Now it’s all gone straight through me, and I have regrets.”

I couldn’t help it. I tried to restrain my laughter, but it came out as a snort before devolving into full-on chuckles.

“There’s the First.” I pointed to the built-up town around the fort, close to Sanguino. Fenrir started to dive as I activated the spell. The illusion of a gigantic bat enveloped us, hopefully indicating to the trigger-happy Legion that we were friendlies, and NOT a wyvern on a strafing run. Fenrir flew low and fast as my healing washed over the Legion and the camp, performing a tight turn without being asked to make sure everyone got healed.

Iona rolled her eyes as the sharp crack of stones against metal heralded some idiot being too trigger-happy - but a tiny part of me was impressed that they’d hit a wyvern over 1000 in a dive. That was some serious aim. I could see straight through Fenrir thanks to [The World Around Me]

, and his armor hadn’t even gotten dented.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 995-> 996. +400 Strength, +400 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control, +1000 Mana, +9000 Mana Regeneration 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) per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

Then we were off, and I pointed in the next direction we had to go in. City after city, town after town, the sun rose and the sun set as we dove through Ashen clouds, soared over cities, ignored a hundred demands and signs to stop, and leveled up at a speed I hadn’t seen in decades.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 996-> 1024. +400 Strength, +400 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control, +1000 Mana, +9000 Mana Regeneration 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) per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

My leveling speed was enough that my mana regeneration significantly changed, going from 11.5 million mana per hour to 12 million mana per hour. I started to get ravenous, but I’d armed Fenrir up - I hadn’t attached our traveling chests and non-[Tower] storage.

Hunger could wait, and I’d sleep when I was dead. Iona and Fenrir felt the same way, but Auri, bless her little heart, was a little too hyper to chill enough. She buzzed around with manic excitement for about 14 hours straight before passing out in my hands with an insistent “Brrrpt!”, claiming she was fine and was only ‘resting her eyes.’

Bless her.

I wanted to class up as soon as I could, but I couldn’t while we were flying around. Fenrir could move us rapidly between cities, at which point I needed to be awake and alert to use my skills. If we paused and stalled out the big ‘remove the plague’ effort, more people would move, more people would slip past the metaphorical net I was dragging around, the harder the Moonlit Medic’s job would be and the higher the chance that it erupted again, negating all my efforts. It was a similar story with my general skills. I’d spent decades working on them, a brand new shiny level 1 skill that I had no experience with wouldn’t help me right now.

It was possible, there was the slimmest thread of hope, that this wasn’t the start of The Big War. That this was simply another move in the endless game of back and forth that had been going on for nearly a century. That it was on the same level as hiring a [Saboteur] to falsify records and fuck with my land.

But it didn’t feel that way, and Arachne had even called it an overt act of war. We couldn’t just take a massive plague unleashed on us, deliberately targeting vampires, lying down, and the patriotic part of me that had been trained up as a Ranger insisted we shouldn’t. The subtle and quiet war that had been raging for decades had been steadily escalating. To escalate all the way to the point of unleashing targeted plagues at people?

That wasn’t going to be taken lying down, and retaliation would be swift and decisive. Sentinels, knights, and other Immortals were going to be deployed as the big hammer, and the slowly smoldering barrel that was Pallos would erupt. I gave it a month, tops, before everything went horrifically wrong.

I had a bit of time as we were flying for a portion of [Luminary Mind] to muse on the nature of stomping out a pandemic. Arachne had me hitting the major population centers - and most of the medium ones as well - but there was still the issue of travelers and villages. My healing was incredibly thorough, but it didn’t have a great track record of teaching antibodies how to identify and fight a disease. If it truly was engineered, then a single person on the road could be enough to reignite the entire plague, forget a few farmers all coming in from a village to a crowded town market.

At the same time, Arachne wasn’t an idiot. She knew all this, and if she was telling me ‘Dawn, go hit the major centers’, she had to have more plans to handle the rest of it. If it were me, I’d station [Healers] at every gate and treat everyone coming into a city, but that was only one solution.

Speaking of cities…

I teleported out a blank notebook from my [The Library of Infinite Wonder], turned it open to the first page, and started to write down everything I had in my [Tower] that the Legion could possibly use. If supply lines went down, we’d need to know everything we had, down to the smallest morsel. My job was to get the supply list to the endless [Scribes], then carefully move things around as needed. Fortunately, nothing would grow legs and start walking away, unlike Legion supplies and the Scribe Mafia.

We were incredibly fast and made superhuman by the System, but all four of us couldn’t go on eternally. We took quick 8 minute breaks four times in a day-night cycle, and four days in crashed for 10 hours of sleep, Auri staying on guard while Fenrir curled up protectively around us.

The Eventide Eclipse circled the entire nation, hitting every city, levels dinging the entire way. A grand tour of the country, my heart breaking slightly at the thought that this might be the last time I was seeing many of the sights.

Near the end of our trip, we were rocked by a series of loud explosions. The sound was enough to make me grit my teeth in sharp pain, but I couldn’t make anything out from it.

“What was that?” Iona asked.

“I have no idea, but nothing good.” I said.

“Brrrpt.” Auri agreed.

“Loud.” Fenrir growled.

We speculated on what it could possibly be - eight seemed like a significant number - but even with my senses all I picked out was ‘boom’. Massa coming into sight killed the conversation. A convoy from the Sixth was filing into the city.

My eyes narrowed at the banners. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cohort? Where were the 5th-8th? Normally if I didn't see the soldiers I’d assume they were being deployed, but none of their supply wagons were around.

Fenrir was a known, if rare sight to the Sixth, and I waved down to the soldiers who cheered at my approach. Who wouldn’t want their protective Classer around?

“What’s your plan?” I asked Iona, scanning the city. She telekinetically pulled my Sentinel badge off my uniform, slapping it into her hand.

“Going to borrow your authority to take over a park for Fenrir.” She said. “I don’t think being outside the walls is a good idea right now. You don’t mind, do you?”

Fenrir and I snorted in unison, for very different reasons.

“Of course I don’t mind.” I said. “Stay safe, love you, going to find Katerina or the Legate, wherever they’re hiding.”

Iona nodded and pointed to a particularly large open stretch in the city.

“Going to hijack that stretch of land. It looks like some rich tosh’s personal garden, so only one person will be mad at me, and there won’t be kids trying to climb Fenrir or mothers giving me an earful over the ‘dangerous monster’.” She said.

“Plus… rich people.” I mocked a shudder.

Iona rolled her eyes so hard they almost fell out.

“Love. We are rich people.” She pointed out to me.

“Yeah, but we’re different!” I protested. We started laughing, and I quickly kissed her. Iona wrapped her arms around me and drew me in, hungrily delving for more. I melted into her body, letting the love and oxytocin flow through me.

“Stay safe.” My wife’s worry was clear in her eyes, and I reassured her.

“I will. Love you. Move a little closer to where HQ is if it’s too far away, I don’t want you and Fenrir to be outside of [Universal Cure’s] range if you don’t have to be.”

“Sure.” Iona readily agreed, Fenrir chuffing with outrage at the idea that he’d let Auri be so unprotected.

We all covered each other’s back. The thought was gloriously uplifting.

“Brrrpt!” Auri pointed out that we were far over the 8-second sappy limit, and we were in an emergency. Probably.

She hopped onto my shoulder, and with a long, lingering look, I jumped off Fenrir, opening my wings and quickly circling the small city before landing in front of a line of troops on the wall.

“Sentinel Dawn, ma’am!” They snapped to attention and threw me a crisp salute. I raised an eyebrow.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Are we in a designated warzone, and should you be saluting me?” I pointed out. There were awkward looks traded between the soldiers. The poor line leader’s shoulder slumped when he realized he had to answer.

“Ma’am… no ma’am?” He said. “Those orders haven’t come down yet. Should we consider ourselves in a warzone?” The troops looked frankly alarmed at the idea.

I cursed. I didn’t know enough. The Sixth being sent to explicitly guard and man Massa’s walls implied things were heating up, but I simply didn’t have the knowledge or information to say what was developing everywhere else.

The best thing I could do was be predictable to Arachne and the rest of the Command structure, and not go haring off wildly. At the same time, if I knew of a disaster somewhere else, I WOULD go investigate and do what I could.

That too, was part of being predictable.

“Fine. Where’s your Centurion?” I asked. I doubted the grunts knew where Command was hiding away, and going up the chain of command was how to find Katerina and see what was needed.

He told me, and I dashed off, anti-friction runes glowing blue on my skin. I found Katerina quickly enough, in an unassuming house positioned at the crossroads of two major streets. The entire building had been taken over by the support structure of the Sixth, every room filled with scribbling [Scribes] and runners dashing around. I handed my list off to one of them, who looked like I’d just handed her the biggest present in the world.

“Dawn! You made it, I was starting to get worried. What’s the situation?” She asked.

“I’ve managed to hit all the cities.” I reported. “I’m here, at your disposal, what do you need?”

Katerina looked at me blankly.

“Hit all the cities?” She asked.

Fucking fog of war.

“Sentinel work. There was an engineered plague, it’s been handled. Station healers at the gates for travelers. I’ve only seen traces of four Cohorts?” I asked.

Katerina grinned.

“A little trick of the Senate. By law, a Legion only needs to have four Cohorts. Most Legions are done as eight, which gives [Legates] and the like far more weight than usually commanding a smaller group would give. Except when the Ash falls, the Senate can call up a dozen retired Legates, Primus Piluses, and the like, split the existing Legions, and get twice as many Classers on the field with weighty skills. It’ll degrade our quality over time if we do it for too long, but it’s a neat trick.”

“Alright. Where do you ne-”

I was mid-word when there was a bright flash of light in front of my eyes, and we got flattened by an explosion.