Ch. 1.19: Vitalist_ENF Academy: For Some Reason, She Can Only Save the World if She鈥檚 Naked

Ch. 1.19: Vitalist

 “Damnit, ina!” Carline said, tears running down her face, her new friend’s unconscious body lying in herp. “I’m sorry— I thought…” She’d thought she could take down the starhounds alone by messing with their circtory systems, like she’d practiced with elk and bears beforeing to Endrin. It should have worked, but it didn’t. These aren’t animals though; they’re monsters. If she’d thought about it for even a moment she would have realized, known that a starhound of all things would of course have some resistance to external aspects, the same resistance or more than an Aspected human would. “So stupid… This is why you don’t speak up, why you don’t make ns. Should have just let here up with something from the start.”

 She poured her mana back into ina, the little bit that had recharged in the seconds since she’dst tried to heal her. Carline’s own arm hurt too, where the monster’s mane had grazed it in the fight, but that was just a surface wound. ina had the stuff drip on her continuously, burrow through her skinpletely. And now it’s inside of her, coursing through her veins.

 Carline could sense ina, everything about her, as long as it rted to [Health]. The smoke wasn’t a poison, not exactly. It was a corrosive, eating away at the inside of her, Carline desperately healing the parts it was attacking. And since it wasn’t poison, wasn’t illness, there was nothing more she could do. Those things the body had ways of fighting, measures Carline could bolster to heal faster, but this she could only manage the symptoms of, racing against the destruction of ina’s body with her depleted, slowly refilling mana pool. It was a race she was losing. ina writhed, unconscious, but clearly suffering. “Fuck!” Carline screamed, a word that had nevere out of her mouth before.

 She ced her hands on ina’s shoulders again, preparing to heal her once more. The staff the system had given did help her focus her aspect at range a bit, but physical contact was still the most efficient. She couldn’t bring herself to do it though, to pour any more into her partner that was still letting out cries of agony. Am I just prolonging her pain? I’m not healing faster than this stuff hurts her anyways.

 ina had protected her, given her time to think, taken down thest creature with sheer force despite being frozen in ce by her own skill. She’d even had to drop the skill to dodge the one Carline was supposed to take care of. All those years practicing with a spear, all that training, all the suffering she’d endured during it, and it still hadn’t been enough. So useless. ina had trusted Carline, and now Carline was going to let her die.

 “No,” Carline said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’m not letting you die!” There had to be something she could do. If she’d had more time training before she came to the academy, she knew she’d be able to do it, but she’d only found out what her aspect actually was three months ago, and her parents had only been able to arrange medical training for thest two. There was still so much about the body that she didn’t know, so much more she’d have to learn at Endrin before she’d be able to do everything she needed to do. Still, she couldn’t give up.

 Raw healing was out. She had to get the shadows, the invaders out of ina’s body somehow. She couldn’t feel them, the same way ina’s own body couldn’t feel them, but she could tell where they were by the pain they left in their wake. Four different concentrations throughout ina’s bloodstream, flowing through and leaving devastation in their paths. Carline looked at thergest wound on ina’s legs, the one just above her right knee, creeping up ina’s thigh, which Carline had patched over with a thin scab. She ripped the bottom of her white robes, tearing off a portion of the p in front of her legs to use as gauze. She’d need it, for what she was about to do.

 Carline opened ina’s wound back up just as she could feel the smallest mass of pain shooting through ina’s leg, increasing her blood pressure by bolstering her heartbeat and constricting her veins, just like she had done to the starhound to make it bleed out faster. Carline couldn’t make wounds appear with her aspect, but messing with them once they were there was doable, and increasing blood flow was trivial. A tiny ck worm made of smoke poured out of ina’s thigh, trickling down and burning her leg, but mercifullynding on the floor before wriggling in the pool of blood and starting to evaporate. They were a menace inside the body, but once exposed to air, they didn’tst long. Carline let go of her aspect and went to staunch the flow of blood with her makeshift rag. She couldn’t spare the mana to reseal it; it all had to be saved for forcing the things out.

 The waiting was horrific. The things were continuing to eat at ina, ina’s screams were growing, and Carline couldn’t do anything about it. Eventually, she figured she had enough stored up to try again. She waited for the next biggest mass of pain to run up to the open wound, and Carline pushed again, flooding ina’s leg again, once again popping out a disgusting ck smoke worm, once again watching the thing fade away.

 Carline panted, heaving as she covered the wound again. Mana was its own resource that didn’t normally expend physical energy, but your body didn’t like beingpletely out of it, so draining itpletely, multiple times, still took a toll. She wiped sweat off her brow, pulling her hair back away as well. Two more. Halfway done, but the remaining worms were still doing damage,pletely unmitigated. Carline only needed to wait a minute before extracting the next one, which went as cleanly as the previous two, causing superficial burning on the side of ina’s leg as it came out, but nothing more serious.

 The blood loss was significant though, eachrger entity requiring Carline to pump out more of ina’s blood to force it out, leaving a terrifying amount of blood on the floor next to ina. Only thest one remained though, thergest. Significantlyrger, in fact, and also the one that was doing the most internal damage. Carline had thought about removing it first, but that would have meant waiting on enough mana to exorcize it and leaving all four alone in the process. No, this had been the best way, but it still scared her, as the damage it was doing, the pain it was causing, she had to let them go, had to hope it wouldn’t be toote.

 ina coughed up blood.

 “No,” Carline said, pulling ina’s head off herp and setting it on the ground, turned sideways to reduce the risk of choking. “No!” It had to be now, no matter how much mana she had. But the worm had just passed up the right leg, and she needed to wait for it to go back through the entire body again. ina continued to cough up blood, not an obscene amount, but even with meager medical training Carline knew that any amount wasn’t good. The demon inside ina made its way round, Carline altering the blood flow to make sure it went down the right artery and back up the right vein; she couldn’t leave it to chance.

 Carline pushed, blood gushing out of the wound as she burned through all of her remaining mana, as she burned through not enough mana. The end of the worm was pushed out, started writhing as it burned in the air the same way it burned ina, but it was still inside her, and it started to burrow back into her leg.

 “No you don’t!” Carline said, grabbing the thing with the bloodied piece of her robe. The cloth in her hands melted immediately, and she screamed in pain as it burned, seared at her palm, but she pulled anyway. No mana, no way to help herself, she pulled with raw strength, gripping it with her other bare hand once she’d pulled it out enough, yanking it and tossing it away. It flew out the room, into the bright hallway where it squirmed away thest seconds of its damned life.

 ina was bleeding again. Carline ripped even more off the bottom of her robe, grimacing as she did, her hands in agony as she pulled against the cloth. She shoved it back into ce on ina’s leg, focusing on the [Health] of her again. The worms were gone, all of them, andpletely. “Thank the gods,” Carline said, crying again.

 Once she’d recovered enough mana, she began the slow, slow process of healing ina once more, stopping the major internal bleeding first, then moving to the wound Carline herself had reopened on her knee, and then the minor internal injuries. This was routine, stuff that Carline had practiced far more than she would have liked in thest three months. She shook her head, pushing those thoughts of her parents away.

 The surface injuries on ina remained even after all the internal ones were healed, but they could wait until there was mana to spare. Carline fell back, panting relentlessly, her palms aching in pain. She brought them up, staring at the wounds. It was more than the minor graze her arm had gotten earlier, but still far less than most of the wounds ina still had.

 That would be temporary though. [Health] being an external aspect, Carline couldn’t use it on herself. Once she had rested enough, she could heal inapletely without tapping out again, ina would be perfectly fine, and Carline’s burns would remain. And a thousand times over, it still would have been worth it.

 After resting a while, Carline got up, wiping her hands free of blood as gently as she could with the scraps of cloth she still had, wincing at the friction on her raw skin. Once she’d cleaned herself as best she could she tore off even more of her robes, from the back this time, as in her panic she’d already torn the front up to just above her knees, way more than she was normallyfortable with. She wrapped those new scraps around her arms and then finally her palms. She really needed water, soap, disinfectant, something to clean her own wounds and prevent infection, but that could wait.

 She kneeled back down beside ina, raising her head up again and resting it on her own now bare thighs as she looked at her. Stars, how had I forgotten… Without the fear of death lingering, without ina’s cries of pain ringing through the air, it was impossible not to notice how gorgeous she was, and in that sad excuse for a dress no less. A peaceful, soft face was deep in sleep, her small mouth slightly ajar, long chestnut hair flowing down the side of her head. Her breasts were amazing, not overly huge like Carline knew her own were, but a wonderfullyrge size, perfect shape, hanging softly as shey there on her side, threatening to fall out the top of her one garment. Despite those though, her torso was lithe, tapering in above her waist and then extending back out again into her hips and the most beautiful butt Carline had ever seen, a butt that was peeking out just a little from the end of theically short dress.

 Carline, heart pounding harder than she’d made ina’s only minutes earlier, looked down to ina’s legs, the only part still injured. Even wounded, the long, perfectly shaped legs were attractive, but Carline couldn’t focus on that now. She thought she’d need more time to restore mana, but now with [Viewer Rating] at full power and already having the benefits of [Unseen Watcher], she figured it would be enough. She focused on thest bit of healing, the burnt flesh fading into pink patches of new skin, then that soft, papery skin growing into the gentle pink flush of the rest of ina’s body.

AliNovel

Ch. 1.19: Vitalist