Chapter 455: Seventh variation

“I’ve already modified my arm, I mostly used the Champion’s bone as inspiration. It’s the toughest body part I’ve seen so far! Of course, I wasn’t able to modify my own arm to the same extent, but look!”

Lily then takes one of the daggers I made out of the white sand, one she hasn’t sold yet. She sends a bit of her mana through, activating it, and slashes into her forearm, the blade only stopping once it hits bone.

She doesn’t even bother to heal it right away, and as her blood drips down, she looks up at me with a big smile on her small face.

“I tried it before, and though it took some effort, I still managed to cut all the way through. But this time, the blade stopped the moment it touched the bone! Look!”

Lily pulls the dagger free, and the wound closes almost instantly. She grabs the dagger in her other hand this time and slashes the other one with great force.

This time, the blade slides cleanly through flesh and bone and severs her arm at the elbow.

“I told you!” Happily, she grabs the cut-off arm and holds it to the wound, as her muscles stretch, reconnecting the limb to her body, as new skin spans the gap, and the limb shifts position as it audibly snaps back into place, leaving her cooling blood as the only sign that she had ever been injured

I’m jealous. I wish I had a skill like that. I wish there was a way to make it happen, maybe a passive or something.

Tell me, are you watching, Lady Handler? Do you read my records? Do you still think I’m not normal?

Just LOOK AT THIS GIRL!

“So when can we start working on modifying my body?” I ask.

“I’m not sure, Nat, sorry. I just started with the bones in my forearm, and I still need to go through the rest of my body before I’ll feel comfortable modifying yours.”

“Makes sense.”

She immediately perks up as if she were worried I would be disappointed for some reason. “Give me your left hand,” she gestures quickly.

Curious, I lift my hand, and she grabs it with a smile. “I’ve been working on my healing marks and I still haven’t come up with a cool name yet.” As she speaks she reaches out to me with the tip of her finger and presses against the inside of my forearm, and I feel her mana make contact.

I allow it to pass through my natural barrier, and a burning itch spreads through my skin at the point of contact.

“Huh, it’s surprisingly easy to work on your left arm. I think you were right back on the 4th floor. I restored it, so I have a stronger connection to it. That’s why I can sacrifice it and not your other limbs. But isn’t that weird? I healed your other limbs too but I still can’t sacrifice them.”

“I think it has something to do with our subconscious perceptions. Back then, when I said it, you accepted it as fact and believed it. And I still believe in it, quite strongly. After all, you made a strong impact on me back when you first restored it.”

“So in theory it could work with your other limbs too, and it doesn’t right now because we just don’t believe it?”

“Something like that,” I agree. “To sacrifice something, you must have power over it; it must belong to you. And the more precious it is, the better it will be as a sacrifice.”

Lily hums in agreement and touches my forearm again, a bit higher this time, and a mark starts spreading across the surface of my skin, tracing its form in a pale shade of white. It’s barely visible against the pale skin of my arm, almost like a faded scar.

“What do you think would be the best sacrifice, Nat?”

I’ve actually thought about it a lot. Her skill fascinates me even now, so I actually have an answer ready. “I think your own life or memories.”

She stops for a moment, surprised by the answer, and her eyes meet mine. “Not people?”

“Do you think you could even own a person on a level fundamental enough to sacrifice them like that? I don't think it would work. No, I think sacrificing parts of yourself would work the best. Just imagine permanently sacrificing your being, what makes you you, just to power your skills. It would be worse than killing yourself, you’d be forgetting everything that makes you, you. It’s a terrifying thought,” I answer with complete honesty.

Would I ever be able to do that? Just the thought is...

“You’re wrong, Nat,” Lily objects, shaking her head in disagreement. Letting go of my arm, she takes a step back.

She doesn’t continue, so I let it pass.

Looking down at the white mark on my forearm, I ask, “So what now?”

“It should activate easily enough as long as it comes into contact with your blood. I tried to make it activate with mana alone, but I couldn’t figure out how. I’m going to need your help to come up with a trigger for it.”

“Got it, we’ll work together to come up with something.”

Then I stop holding my mana back for a moment, placing my normal process of mana cycling on temporary hold deactivating my passives as I do.

There are definitely easier ways to injure myself, but I may as well take the opportunity to see the effects of my uncontrolled mana on my body.

Right away, I destabilize my control over the mana in my left arm. More and more mana seeps through my skin, causing Lily to take a step back as a wave of my mana washes over the area.

My arm twitches, and twists in several places. Muscles and veins erupt from my flesh, and mana tears through the surface of my skin, ramping up in time with my heartbeat.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Then I reactivate my passives and constructs. I once again dedicate part of my mind to the process of cycling my mana through my body as it seeps back into the proper paths through my body. The feeling of a bomb ready to explode is gone.

I watch as blood touches the mark, and it rapidly begins to fade until it disappears completely.

The same warm mana I’ve grown to associate with Lily spreads through my arm, and with a speed unmatched by any of my passives, the bones snap back into place, and the muscles, veins, and nerves reconnect. Then the mana the mark held runs out, leaving the skin still torn in dozens of places, as blood drips freely from the wounds.

Stepping closer, Lily puts her hand on mine, healing the rest. “It’s still a work in progress, and I’m not sure how long I can make it last. It doesn’t hold much healing mana either, and it breaks every time I try to give it more.”

“It’s fine, we’ll test it out. How many variations have you tried?”

“Around seven?" she demures, closing her hand into a fist and counting fingers, "The first one just didn’t work, the second one blew off my arm somehow, the third one started growing the bones for new arms through my skin, the fourth one started healing the skin and started spreading through the muscles and bones and screwed up my arm in the process, the fifth one sent healing pulses through the rest of the body instead. The sixth variation grew muscles out of bone. So I spent a lot of my time on testing before I made the 7th variation. The first test went really well too!”

“Lily, by any chance, when you say ‘first test’ do you mean the one we just did?”

“Yes!”

“The one you just tested on me?”

“Yeah! But I was pretty sure it would work!”

“I see.”

Lily giggles and shoves me and I manage to strengthen my body just in time to avoid being thrown to the ground by the petite healer, narrowly preserving my dignity.

“I’m joking,” she chuckles, her eyes crinkling into a smile. “I did a lot of testing before I even thought of giving you the mark. And do you remember the Last King’s crown? The one the Saint created? It might take a bit longer, probably years, but I think I should be able to make something similar work. A mark like that would be too difficult, but with your help, we shouldn’t have any trouble making similar items work all on our own. I wouldn’t even need to get close to heal people, and with a bit more work, I should be able to heal someone from miles away.”

“That sounds plausible. And what exactly happened to those items?” I ask. If I remember correctly, they were technically mine and I was just renting them to group 4.

“I’ll remind you that you said you didn’t mind if I destroyed the crown. The crown kind of broke when I was examining it. I had to cut it apart, but it helped me create the mark, so it was well worth it!”

I can’t even argue with that. What she’s saying is true, and I would have probably done exactly the same thing in her place. But it could have easily sold for hundreds of shards. The thought just makes me sad.

Relieved, Lily brushes her hair from her face. “You may not have realized, but each of these items held some part of the Saint. The crown had a piece of bone, and the sword had a piece of a finger. I started examining them as well, but I don't think they'll be as useful as the Champion’s fingerbone. For some reason, they feel like they’ve changed too much even without the damage..”

“That’s kind of creepy, isn’t it? She used parts of her own body as a medium to make it easier to send healing energy to a given target didn’t she?” I ask.

“I think it was something like that, but they didn’t feel as effective as they should have been. I think she made them before she even became a Champion, I just can’t imagine her needing something like that at her level.”

“Then the Last King and his warriors probably kept them out of pure sentiment. Could it have been a failsafe too? Say, if someone had evaporated her body, could she have restored herself from the remains she left in the items? Like Vic did in her duel with you?”

“It felt different. I don’t think your sister is actually a healer. She wasn’t good at healing her body either, at best she was abusing her passives and traits, she certainly wasn’t using anything resembling an active skill. I think she’s something else entirely, maybe she had something like an

[Avatar]

. You told us there was a Champion with a skill like that back on the second floor, and the Avatar system we used back in the tournament felt a lot like what she was doing.”

“Good catch. I thought of it as well, and I’m of the same opinion. Vic can probably create her own Avatars or Duplicates with free reign to control and swap her mind between them."

"Wouldn’t that make it almost impossible to kill her beyond a certain level? Couldn’t she just store one of her fingers on the opposite side of the planet and regenerate from that?"

"Yeah, I think she probably could. But I don’t think that means killing her would be impossible. There’s always a way if you’re creative enough. For now, though, give me one more mark. I want to get another look."

A few hours later, I decide to check on the twins. They’re quiet and heavily focused, each struggling to deal with a single evil orb.

Activating my eyes for a moment, I examine the process.

"Good, two orbs each starting now," I say, creating two more orbs and moving them over to the twins.

For a moment, I think they might complain or push back, but the idea doesn’t seem to take root, instead, they leap right into the challenge.

Their first attempts end in both orbs bursting open near instantaneously. And the cycle repeats over each attempt.

Dozens of attempts later, and they haven’t improved. Neither of them seems capable of handling two modified orbs.

Too little mana, too much mana, they’re slow to react one moment, or a distraction gets the better of them the next. The cycle continues like that for hours, and they do not stop.

As I work on my own training nearby, I can’t help but glance at them every once in a while—they’re sweating, and gasping for air, as their mana fluctuates from the strain. They still do not stop.

It’s a deeper glimpse into something I’ve noticed before. Aaron and Dennis are easygoing; they like to joke and they usually pick the easiest solution to every problem. But every once in a while, there are times like this. Moments when they buckle down and do their best. They have that same sense of competition, the same hunger for improvement that everyone in group 4 has.

I don’t think their talent is any worse than Izzy’s or Min-Jae’s, and I don’t think that’s what makes them the weakest members of group 4. I’ve seen them try, in those small moments when their competitive spirit came to the fore, drawn out by the people around them.

Their skills might be better suited for support roles. Particularly their

[Connection]

and

[Sensory Deception]

.

Maya tried to train with them, and even though their

[Haste]

puts their speed on par with Maya’s, they just don’t have the same talent for close-range combat. They’re more like guerrilla agents.

But they should be able to do so much more. I still remember Lissandra doing something they should be able to emulate with

[Connection]

.

That fiendish Absolute had a habit of letting people activate their skills and then connect to those skills, resonate with them, and use them instead. A complete show of disrespect, claiming she could use your skill better than you, without even possessing it.

My logic is simple. We’ll work on improving their

[Mana Manipulation]

, and experiment with

[Connection]

If only because I think they should be able to do so much more. And in the process, I’ll work on improving my

[Resonance]

, in my own attempt at achieving the same result.