EmEs_etherious
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Chapter 51- Regeneration
🕑 Added 2023-01-04 11:59:01 +0000 UTCSmall change: I've increased the level 2 system unlock time from 48 hours to 96
Chapter begin:
Tamo looked at the powerful healer that Selena had brought in. His luck finally seemed to be looking up for him. Arthur was dangerous, that was an undeniable fact as clear as day, and yet when Tamo looked at him, he didn’t see the deadly warrior that Arthur was.
No, he saw the reflection of the man he himself had been when he was younger. Someone just as idealistic. He winced, remembering how carefree and naive he had once been, and hoped that Arthur’s naivety would not be tested.
At least he’s not stupid as I once was. He recognised that Arthur was much more mature and intelligent than he let on. It was only a shame that he had not yet realised that it would be better to mask that intelligence in ignorance than let others know just how calculating he actually was.
Tamo sighed, trying to stop his meandering thoughts and focus on what Selena was saying. It would be important that he and everyone else involved in their operation would be at full focus over the next few days. Sadly, since he had broken his father’s curse of compulsion, he'd found that he could never be truly present in day-to-day life. Not until he threw off the rest of the curse, but he and Selena had both decided it was in their best interests to keep its remnants for as long as possible. To not let Toshiro know that his son was no longer under his control if the old bastard could even tell such things. It would give them the element of surprise, and they’d need every advantage they could get if they wanted to kill the monster they only knew as Shade.
Tamo had already seen the scenes of the fiend’s battles after they were concluded and judging from the dismembered state of the man's foes, he knew that he was not yet ready to face the shadow mage in battle. Even with all his unique titles that allowed him to exhibit power far stronger than his level 89 suggested.
Titles
-Progenitor of Blood (Possess a Blood Affinity)- Triples health regeneration and ensures that one's blood is recovered at an extremely enhanced rate.
- Vampyric prowess (Possess the traits of a vampire)- Gives one the ability to gain stats as well as temporary skills from consuming the blood of powerful and rare monsters [does not work on the same monster/species twice]
-Curse breaker I (Throw of the curse of a more powerful mage)- Increases willpower by 5%
Looking at his list of titles, Tamo sighed. Even with all these extra boons, he was unsure of his ability in even tackling the healer in front of him, let alone an individual like Shade who had used forbidden magic to enhance himself.
Especially in his currently weakened state. Perhaps he had been impatient, using the augmented turtle's blood to help him throw off the curse when his body was nowhere near ready to handle such volatile energies. And yet he’d wanted to rid himself of the curse as soon as his tutorial sponsor had warned him that one had been placed upon him. He hadn't even been surprised that his father had done such a thing. It was something he’d come to expect of the man after what he’d done to drive his sister away. Tamo shuddered to think of the mindless slave he would have become if he’d not been informed of the curse so soon, and once again he thanked whatever gods there were that he’d attracted the attention of a powerful benefactor during the tutorial.
Now if only the bastard had just done me the favour of removing it himself. Fuck all these system laws. What's the point of power if you can't break them?
He was pulled out of his inner musings- he had allowed himself to get distracted again- when Selena spoke.
“Are you not going to ask what your payment will be for helping us, Arthur?”
Tamo leaned forward in his bed, or at least as much as he could in his weakened state to hear the conversation that was taking place. He too was very curious as to what the government would be offering Arthur in return for his assistance.
The answer the young healer gave both surprised and amused Tamo, and he felt his opinion of the man rise and plummet at the same time somehow.
“I’d help regardless of the reward after hearing the situation in detail and besides, I figured the government would compensate me properly in return for my assistance. I’m pretty sure you guys want to maintain an amicable relationship with me.” Arthur answered nonchalantly, seemingly unconcerned with any materialistic gain.
Is he just a nice guy that wants to do the right thing, or is he acting? Tamo mused, as he carefully observed the healer in front of him. Oh, he's realised that he doesn't really have a choice here and is going along without complaining. He's acting the fool, isn't he? Perhaps he was looking too deeply into Arthur's actions as Selena seemed to be perfectly pleased with Arthur’s answer.
You're too gullible for your own good.
He loved the older woman as much as he had his sister when she had been around but sometimes her naivety frustrated him. But then again, no one had to navigate the minefield that was his life. Maybe he was the weird one for being so cynical. Still, she at least had her head in the right place which was more than he could say for most of the people he had met from the government over the past few weeks.
“Judging on previous cases, we’ve estimated that we have around four days before Shade loses his mental faculties and goes berserk,” Selena informed Arthur, “That’s why to be on the safe side, it's been decided that the operation to put him down will take place in three.”
Arthur nodded his head in agreement. You could never be too cautious in life, doubly so when it concerned the appearance of a potential mass murderer.
“So, what's the plan?” Arthur asked, looking first at Selena and then at Tamo, who Arthur observed had been strangely silent for the past few minutes with an almost listless expression on his face. Tamo decided to finally give his own input into the conversation and croaked out in his hoarse voice.
“Because of a potential leak, all information regarding the operation has been withheld for the moment. I don't know what we’re planning to do. All we can tell you is that Shade has regularly been spotted near my father over the past few days. For what reasons, we have no idea.”
The blood mage had to stop talking there as his voice failed him, and Selena rushed to give him another water bottle from the stack in the corner of the room. Deciding to finish off the explanation that Tamo had been unable to, she continued the blood mage’s short speech.
“In the intervening time we have between now and then Arthur, it's been decided that it would be best if you levelled your regeneration skill as much as possible before the operation. It should be possible with some concentrated effort.”
“God knows there are too many injured people nowadays to deal with” Selena complained, “But first, I think it's in our best interests to see how much you can do for our own resident blood mage over here,” she sighed, giving Tamo a pointed glare that told him to shut the fuck up and do nothing to piss of the healer that was about to attempt to treat him. Arthur, seemingly oblivious to the strange looks between the two, nodded his head and stepped forward.
He looked down at the bandaged man in front of him and thought about how best to go about treating him. Though he had experience growing back new limbs and even entire organs at this point, he had never tried to treat someone that was struggling to battle off the aftereffects of breaking a curse the wrong way. He didn’t even know if it could be done with his skillset. Especially since the system was no longer carrying his healing.
He placed a palm on Tamo’s forearm, ignoring the way the man flinched at his touch, and extended a small amount of ether into his regeneration skill. It was such a minuscule amount that it would serve little else but recover the most minor of cuts, but Arthur had another purpose altogether for the now healing affinity ether. Through experimentation, Arthur had learned that the parameters set by his skill were the maximum, not the minimum Ether he could channel through it. That being said, what he was currently attempting really stretched the definition of Regeneration.
Drawing on his extensive knowledge of anatomy as well as his wealth of experience in using the healing skill, Arthur used his small amount of Ether to try and diagnose what exactly was wrong with the young blood mage. That was always the first step to treatment.
A diagnosis.
At first, his scans yielded no results, and Arthur began to doubt that there was even anything wrong with the heir to the Zaibatsu Corporation. His body seemed to be completely fine. There was nothing wrong with it.
Selena meanwhile, observed the look of concentration on Arthur’s face and hoped that he’d be able to do something for Tamo. Throwing off the curse using such a volatile method as Tamo had suggested had been a big mistake and Selena was surprised that she had allowed Tamo to somehow talk her into it.
How had she been convinced that destroying 90% of Tamoss' body and then restoring it with the temporary skill gained from drinking the turtle's blood was a good idea? Sometimes, she indulged Tamo's strange plans too much and yet she couldn't help but dote on the younger man after knowing him for so many years.
The promises she’d made to his sister didn’t help matters. Selena sighed wearily, recalling the memories. Truly, the siblings were just as bad as each other with the amount of trouble they had given her. Heck, she’d have been promoted a long time ago if she hadn’t spent all her time cleaning up the messes the duo always created.
Her inner musings were interrupted when she heard a grunt of pain from Arthur, and she looked up to see that blood was running from his nose. His face was scrunched up in pain, and yet Selena made no effort to help him despite wanting to.
She knew that Arthur could stop the healing process at any time he desired if it got too difficult or dangerous, at least she hoped so and trying to help him would do little but distract him at what could potentially be a critical moment. No, the best option, Selena decided, was to wait and see if the powerful healer could somehow pull off a miracle that no other doctor before him could.
Arthur meanwhile, was desperately trying to control his racing heartbeat, and the astonishment rising in his chest. How the fuck did he manage to affect his body on a cellular level? Arthur inwardly screamed at himself. When his first diagnosis had failed to turn up any results, Arthur had tried again, this time focussing on a part of Tamo’s body that was more heavily damaged than the rest.
Instead of using his healing skill to do a surface scan like he normally did, Arthur tried to simply pour it into a concentrated spot on the man’s shoulder. He’d never attempted such an approach before, but it just felt right, like his skill was pushing him in a specific direction. The results of his experimentation were surprising, to say the least.
It was almost like he was using a microscope to zoom into Tamo’s flesh, except that the experience was somehow less and so much more at the same time. He couldn't see the subcellular structures like he would have been able to if he had been using the mundane tool and yet he could somehow see the general way in which ether interacted with Tamo’s cells, strengthening and reinforcing them like bands of steel that seemed to be tying them together. The mental imagery had a dream-like quality to it, almost as if it was his brain's limited capability trying to decode the information his skill provided.
The bands were a representation of the blood mage's own strength, he’d probably see something similar, only more potent in his own body, and yet it wasn't the only ether that was present in the man’s body.
No, there seemed to be a foreign source of the stuff that seemed to be affecting the blood mage, attacking and weakening his own ether. Arthur blanched when he realised that he recognized the strange ether as the same one that was contained within the augmented regeneration core.
He must have drunk the monster's blood or something, similar to my consumption of monster cores Arthur realised as he considered the blood mage's vampiric roots. Suddenly, he felt a stabbing pain in his head, and he realized that he’d been wrong. His regeneration skill was NOT made to be used this way. He was pushing it to the limits of what it was able to do, forcing it to act as an advanced diagnostics tool instead of the standard magic healing acceleration it was supposed to be.
Despite the blood he could now feel running down his nose, Arthur persisted and forced himself to keep using the skill. He felt like he was on the verge of a breakthrough and knew that if he stopped now, it would take him a long time to reach this stage of enlightenment again with his regeneration skill.
His headache intensified, and he felt a drop of liquid begin to make its way down his right eye. He suspected that it was blood, but didn't open his eyes to check if his guess was correct. Just as Arthur felt that he had reached his absolute limit, he felt his usage of the skill become easier and his microscopic vision become more focussed, as if a distorted lens had been removed from his eyes.
Dumping as much ether as he could into the regeneration skill, he began to cleanse all the infecting ether he could see, much like he would bacteria, doing his utmost best to not harm Tamo in the process. Despite his best efforts, the injured man tensed up as he felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder and controlled himself to not throw off Arthur’s offending hand.
The itching pain lasted only a mere three minutes, but the process felt far longer for both of the men. Finally, Arthur opened his eyes. It was done. Selena watched with budding hope, as Arthur began to remove a part of the bandage on Tamo’s shoulder, and almost moved to stop him before controlling herself.
She was shocked and then elated to see that a tiny patch of skin on the blood mage was now a healthy looking brown like it had used to be instead of the sickly yellow the rest of his body had now become.
Tamo too seemed similarly excited and yet it appeared that Arthur, the man responsible for this small miracle, was distressed with what he had accomplished.
The healer sighed when he saw the minuscule handspan of flesh he had managed to cure on the man's shoulder before looking at his notifications.
Congratulations. Through the usage of Regeneration in an unconventional way, you have forced the skill to grow. This is a very unstable method of growth and it is advised that you don't rely on such a path going forward.
Regeneration (Uncommon) has reached level 2 …
Regeneration (Uncommon) Level 2- Use healing Ether to regenerate your body at 1.2% of max health total per minute of usage. Efficiency drops by 50% when used on another individual.
Cost of usage on host: 20 Ether/minute
Cost of usage on another: 30 Ether/minute
Secondary Effect: 120 healing affinity Ether may be stored as OVERHEALTH in the target of this ability to be used for recovery when the individual is injured. This stored Ether works under Host-Use efficiency levels. Overhealth cannot be stored in the host.
NOTE: Uncommon skills cap at level 20
Arthur couldn't find himself to be happy when he saw his skill progression as he’d checked his ether reserves just after.
Ether- 1480/3230
It had taken over five hundred ether to heal five square centimetres of flesh. He sighed wearily.
This would be a very, very long process.
