Chapters 81-82

Chapter 81

Hestia was in her chambers when her son stormed through the door. She had been reading a book, minding her own business, while lounging on a velvety couch.

"Mother," Ennius said, "the delegation is on its way."

Hestia looked at her son and almost sighed in his face, feeling the need to rub her eyes. She was so tired of his indecision.

Ennius Iulius, [Pope], son, and still a childish man, had come once again to ask for advice.

"What about them?" Hestia asked politely, swallowing her irritation.

"They said they're worried about the Dead Lands," Ennius responded. "They have brought thousands of [Soldiers] and their Prince. But they didn't even warn me beforehand."

Hestia gestured for her son to sit down. She got up, moved behind him, and slowly began to massage his shoulders.

"The Empire is worried, my dear," Hestia said. "And for a reason. We all know the Dead Lands have been acting up. And they have their own spies. We don't always catch all of them. This is them acting rashly, but what can they actually do to you, my dear?"

"They should have put in an official request! All these [Soldiers] coming uninvited to our lands—" Ennius spluttered. "How do they dare?! It's tantamount to a military coup!"

Do you even know what a military coup is? Hestia thought to herself.

"It is a lack of respect for you,” she conceded. “But they're sending fresh troops. What do we have to lose here?"

"What if they all just die and feed the Undead hordes?!" Ennius complained.

Hestia almost slapped his face.

‘The Empire’ was the moniker for the distant dynasty known as the Sons of Neocles. They were the major continental power across the sea. They rarely involved themselves with the Church, since they were on two different landmasses and each had their own problems.

Hestia kept tabs on them though, and she knew they had scored significant victories over their foreign enemies that had both enriched them and made them much stronger than before.

Now, if Hestia had to guess, they were trying to destabilize Ennius's hold on the Church, perhaps hoping to invade in the future. The regiments they had sent were veterans from the campaigns that had been waged against their enemies. Now, without anyone to worry them, they turned their sights across the sea.

However, Hestia also knew that they did not underestimate the threat of the Dead Lands. They had come in the past, thinking they could just send a few men to the Church, thinking the Church itself was a useless bunch of superstitious cowards. But when their force had been annihilated by the Undead, they had quickly been forced to re-evaluate their own views on the matter.

Now, they sent forces that would also receive fresh men in time. This was a vanguard to prod at the Dead Lands. Everyone knew that where strong enemies were, great treasures followed. And so, the Sons of Neocles treated the Dead Lands as a gigantic Dungeon.

They come here hoping to rob us of treasures that don't exist, Hestia pondered.

"They think there's something to gain, Ennius," Hestia slowly said. "They don't know the true terror of the Undead. If it was simply a matter of throwing men in the Dead Lands, we would have triumphed generations ago."

"So what do we do? They undermine me!"

"Yes," Hestia didn't refute the facts. "They do. But they're also going to die for you. Put them on the frontlines. Let's give them easy conflicts first, and then let's see how they fare in the most contested spots, against the worst of the hordes. But let's not ‘just let them all die’ as you suggested. You see it well, dear. We don't know the number of Undead. But we also don't want to make them too strong. Let's just use them."

Ennius seemed very satisfied with his mother's words and nodded eagerly.

"Yes," he muttered. "Good, good. What a good idea."

"Your mother still has it, dear," Hestia smiled. "And you weren't wrong, either."

Ennius looked at his mother, licking his lips, and then made for the door before turning.

"Have you heard that Liliana is back? Where was she?" Ennius asked.

"Apparently she fled in order to train. She's a pain just like your sister. Perhaps even more rebellious. From what I hear, though, Cassius had to rescue her and the son of the Gens Cornelia."

"She was with the heir of the Gens Cornelia?" Ennius frowned. "That girl?"

"Do you think you should arrange a marriage between them? The Gens Cornelia is quite poor. It would definitely drain the Gens Claudia's coffers to ally with them. And given the poor management of resources the Cornelii have made across the years, it's not unlikely that it could bankrupt both."

Ennius thought about it for a moment.

"We'll see," he said, shaking his head. "I don't care about my damn sister and her daughter right now. The Empire is my main concern, mother. Please, don't tell me any more useless news for a while. If there's anything you need to do, just do it. I don't want to be involved with them."

That said, Ennius left Hestia's rooms.

Hestia sat back down on her couch and picked up the book that she was reading. She glanced at it for a moment before flinging it across the room in frustration.

She stood up and went up to the large mirror in her room, looking at herself and at the wrinkles on her face.

"Lily..." Hestia muttered.

In all her plans, the girl was a new variable that she could have not predicted.

Where was she, actually? How did Cassius find her right after he went with his uncle to raid Caesar? How…? Did he hear about her from Caesar's men? But why would they know about her, those damn sellswords? Who was not telling her the truth?

*

"Are you sure about this?" Adriana asked. "That's how you want to spend your time?"

"I need to sharpen my senses," Lily said, entering a military tent.

She had decided to go where her father's camp had been stationed in the Dead Lands. But not to fight. No, not for now. She needed practical healing experience. So far, most of the healing that she had done throughout the years had been on herself. Now, she needed to know more. Plus... she would see death here in many forms, and one of them interested her in particular.

If I want to heal the Undead Disease, I need to see it in action.

It was a chilling thought. She definitely wouldn't infect people on purpose, but she had resorted to splitting her time between the medical tents and the frontlines. One of the greatest challenges of being in a fight with the Undead was that the only way to prevent the disease from spreading was if you severed a limb. Or if you were low-leveled and got bitten deep enough. Somehow that slowed the spread of the bacteria—another fact to file away in her list of things that would aid her in healing the Undead Disease.

Lily's Skills were very powerful. But she wasn't. However, a healing Class would level up through healing and a fighting Class through fighting. If, in the remote event that one Class encompassed both, one had two ways of leveling up.

And since Lily's Class was [Death Healer], she actually had more than one way of leveling up. Perhaps, more than two.

She went through some old notifications that she had previously ignored.

[You have slain Soldier Undead - Level 50]

[You have slain...]

She had killed many Undead when they had been surrounded outside the old villa of the Gens Claudia. That had made her Level skyrocket.

[Death Healer Lv. 1 -> Lv. 21]

She had gained twenty levels just like that. Something that might have not have been common knowledge between civilians, however, was that Undead, on average, weren't just weaker than living creatures, but also provided less experience than, say, monsters in a Dungeon.

It was often speculated that the reason was due to the twisted nature of the Undead. But now that Lily knew more about them, she surmised that it might actually have had something to do with their soul.

She inspected her Class.

Name: Liliana Claudia

Subclasses:

[Otherworldly Healer]

[Dealer of Death]

Class: Death Healer - Lv. 21

Attributes:

Strength: 135

Dexterity: 135

Vitality: 135

Intelligence: 135

Wisdom: 135

Mana Pool: 135

Skills:

Subclass: The Otherworldly Healer

[Medical Genius] - Lv. 11

[Fighter-Healer Constitution] - Lv. 15

[Healer's Blood] - Lv. 7

[Primordial Life] - Lv. 15

[Vitality Injection] - Lv. 6

[Life Scan] - Lv. 24

Subclass: Dealer of Death

[Touched by Death] - Lv. 11

[Death by Fist] - Lv. 18

[The Undead Whisperer] - Lv. 4

[The Reaper] - Lv. 8

[Death Scan] - Lv. 14

Subclass: Death Healer

[Black and White Lightning] - Lv. 18

[Reborn in Life and Death] - Lv. 20

[The Vitruvian Body] - Lv. 14

[Fallen Angel's Wings] - Lv. 7

[The Phoenix's Blessing] - Lv. 1

[Veins of Gold] - Lv. 10

Non-Class Skills:

[The Seven Eyes of Twilight] - Lv. 25, Master

[Mana Shaping] - Lv. 55, Grandmaster

[Hand to Hand Combat] - Lv. 12, Great Grandmaster

[Coniunctionis] - Lv. 45, Master

[Lux Vitae Overdrive] - Lv. 95

[Blessing of Life] - Lv. 20, Master

[Sky of Death] - Lv. 35

[Soul Attunement] - Lv. 10

Lily looked at her last Skill.

This was the extra reason—more than just practicing her healing—for her to come to the battlefield.

I wonder if I can control the Undead. Can I wrestle their control out of whatever they're tethered to? Is it even possible?

At first, she had thought that perhaps, this being a weird variant of Undead, she might not be able to. Then, however, she realized that their infectiousness probably had nothing to do with their souls. It was purely biological. And [Necromancers] worked not with biology alone, but with souls.

She really wished she still had Claudia with her. The Matriarch of the Gens Claudia, the very founder of it, would have definitely had much more to teach her. Yet, until Lily could attach Claudia's soul to her, which required much more power than she currently wielded, she wouldn't be able to talk to the woman anymore.

And so, she was left to figure things out for herself.

Well, not exactly for herself.

Hadrian entered the healing tent, casting foul glances at all the other [Healers] inside of it, and then looked at Lily, who glanced back at the black tome in his arm.

"So, ready to experiment?" Hadrian asked with a wild smile.

Chapter 82

Hadrian had come along for two reasons: one, he was a [Librarian] who valued knowledge above everything. And he wasn't just a common [Librarian]. He was quite a high-leveled one. That gave him access to more esoteric knowledge than he even knew for himself. The [Knowledge of the Empyrean] wasn't exactly just what you knew for yourself. It was a repository for what you personally possessed, and what you could trade with. By trading knowledge with the shared network that all [Librarians] had access to, despite being curtailed to specific tiers of it, Lily could get more knowledge for herself about what she needed to do to deepen her expertise of necromancy.

And there was a very interesting caveat about knowledge.

Knowledge of Necromancy was not spread at all. But one of the reasons that [Librarians] were so feared by the Church was the fact that what would be considered low-level knowledge, with the Knowledge of the Empyrean Skill, was easily retrieved. Its price could be paid by most with very little.

And Lily had very much to share with Hadrian in exchange for knowledge.

Essentially, a [Librarian] could bring back the [Necromancer] Class, despite it being forbidden in the Church and erased by all manuals, in a matter of seconds.

That was the first reason that Hadrian had followed: he possessed knowledge that Lily needed. And it wasn't limited to the [Necromancer] Class and Undead, of course. She would study and trade for much more than that. Yet, it would be her focus for the next three months as she tried to learn enough in order to find a cure or, better, a vaccine for the Undead Disease.

The second reason was that part of the knowledge that Lily might need was in the tome that Hadrian was carrying with him.

The Book of the Dead wasn't just about the chronicles of the Seats of Darkness. No, it contained much about their methods, and their esoteric, forbidden magic. And Lily was the only person able to read it. Yet, as she had already tried to glean some knowledge about the Undead from it, she had found that it was borderline unreadable when it came to the technical explanations. The way that the Seats of Darkness had passed down knowledge involved a lot of symbols that didn't get translated by her Skills, diagrams that meant nothing to her, and much more.

That's where Hadrian's knowledge would fill in the gaps. Together, they would be able to read it through Lily's Skill and decipher it by trading knowledge back and forth, which would make Hadrian level up even further and allow him to access even more specialized knowledge.

For the moment, however, Hadrian simply sat back with a series of parchments that Lily had given him with many of the translations that she needed to decipher. He waited because, outside, there was a battle with a contingent of high-level Undead, and soon the wounded would start streaming into the healing tents—those who hadn't been turned by the monsters.

*

The tent didn't smell like death, blood, or piss at that moment. But that wouldn’t last long, as Laurentia knew all too well.

Laurentia had been in the service of Lucianus Claudius and his father since as long as she could remember. She had chosen not to marry because the only acceptable marriage for her was the one to her profession. Beside her, several assistants, lower level [Healers] stood ready to listen to her orders.

However, there was one person not under her command, who had set up several stretchers and an examination table on the other side of the very large tent.

Laurentia was the highest level [Healer] in this camp, perhaps one of the highest level [Healers] in the entire country, if not the highest level [Healer] one could find in the entirety of Lumina.

She didn't care about the accolades, about being recognized; nor did she lord over others with her authority. She had chosen to pursue healing because she wanted to save lives.

Yet, what bothered her was that Lucianus, despite being one of the most organized commanders she had ever witnessed when it came to camps and division of labor, had put his own daughter here, disrupting the chain of command, and possibly undermining her authority. And the only explanation he had given her had been the following—

"Listen to my daughter."

Basically, Lucianus Claudius had decided that his fourteen-year-old pipsqueak of a daughter outranked Laurentia, a woman in her sixties, who had seen countless men die in front of her and had brought as many back from the brink of death. She’d healed countless crushed organs, fractured skulls, and the kind of wounds that would have been fatal in front of any healer other than her.

But the most outrageous thing was that his daughter had been put in charge of triage. Triage referred to tagging wounds to the right type of [Healer]. To assess such a thing, one needed not only an extremely developed [Mana Sense], but also a good grasp on every present [Healer]'s capabilities. And the blonde girl, other than introducing herself to everyone, had barely spared a glance for them.

Instead, she was deep in conversation with the gruff-looking man that Laurentia had seen so many times beside Lucianus.

She's going to get someone killed, Laurentia thought, gritting her teeth. She has absolutely no idea of what she's doing and good men are going to die today because of Lucianus's nepotism.

It was the kind of thought that made Laurentia's blood absolutely boil with fury.

And so, she was ready to relieve Liliana Claudia of her authority in this tent at a moment's notice, at the first mistake that the young girl might commit.

When Laurentia saw the first [Templar] making its way through the flap of the tent, she knew the young girl would panic.

He was vomiting blood and had a ghastly complexion. His skin perspired with sweat that rolled over him like a waterfall off a cliff. And, most importantly, he was loud.

"HELP! HELP!" He shouted as two other [Templars] carried him inside. "I'M DYING!"

The man had tears in his eyes—which wasn't an uncommon scene. People might assume that [Soldiers], [Templars], and those used to fighting every day might be used to the threat of death. But it was, especially around the Undead, often the opposite.

Since the enemy was mostly weaker and death came almost only through Undeath, it meant that not many of these men and women were used to receiving near-fatal wounds. Yet, when the stronger Undead stormed the field, armed with real weapons, they often received damage that left them among the living, but made them scream to bloody hell for it.

The two [Templars] with him looked at Laurentia, which made her smile. Naturally, they had assumed that she was the one in charge, as they probably had seen her before.

Laurentia expected that to make Lily hesitate. Yet, the young girl simply regarded the man, took a piece of white cloth and gave it to him.

"You're stable. You just lost a lot of blood. The internal bleeding has mostly stopped. Wait outside where there's a white flag."

The [Templar] looked in dismay at the white piece of cloth, ready to argue, but Lily gestured for the two armed guards that she had requested, who immediately removed the man from there.

Laurentia's eyes widened.

This was not something she had expected to see. It was common for new [Healers] to treat the screaming patients first, thinking they were the ones closer to death. Yet, as Laurentia knew very well, it was more often than not the silent ones that needed immediate treatment—the ones with a glassy look in their eyes. Those who still had the energy to thrash around and scream could wait.

Also, the fact that Lily had the foresight to get guards with her...

She got closer to the girl as more people were brought into the tent.

"What's with the colors?" Laurentia asked.

"Mana is a finite resource," Lily said laconically, giving a yellow piece of cloth to another one. "We only treat the red cases on the spot. Yellow is delayed but urgent, green is minimal damage that could create problems, white is the last of the line."

Laurentia saw a black piece of cloth, "What's the black?"

Lily turned with a somber expression, “Too far gone."

*

Laurentia saw Liliana Claudia easily individuate every single problem and redirect the warriors to the appropriate [Healer]. The blonde girl asked her for advice multiple times, asking which [Healer] had seniority, which had more power, which more proficiency with this or that type of wound.

Also, Laurentia had to admit... Liliana Claudia had a temper.

"STOP!" the blonde girl shouted. "Not like that! I said, open up the arm, look at the vessels, stop the bleeding, and then STOP! Do NOT waste your damn Mana! Someone might die because of that!"

Laurentia, having been campaigning for so many years, had never needed to do what Lily was forcing every other [Healer] to do: save their Mana in case of a catastrophic amount of wounded people.

The girl had them stitch the wounded the best way they could and then reassign them a color, often yellow or green. Some even white.

Laurentia herself had done barely any healing up to this point, with most [Soldiers] requiring only a very little amount of Mana since the blonde girl moved between [Healers] and showed them notions of anatomy that the old woman knew would have her hanged as a heretic.

There's no way she gained this much knowledge without studying corpses. Is she like her father?

"That's a nerve, not an artery!" Lily groaned. "Use [Mana Sense]! Can't you see the flow of blood?!"

"But doesn't blood permeate everything?" a [Healer] stammered.

That made Lily sigh but also clearly made her understand that the people around her weren't sloppy, just ignorant.

"No. There are arteries and veins. Arteries..."

Laurentia listened to what the girl was saying, enraptured. At some point, the man who had come with Lily and had been scribbling down notes, got up and distributed a few pieces of parchment to every single [Healer] in the tent.

The flow of injured people had diminished, with the skirmish of the day having drawn nearly to an end.

At that point, it was clear that Lily wasn't just interested in making the [Healers] in the tent heal those who needed healing outside, but took this at a teaching moment.

"Alright, please read those. There are notions on how veins, muscles, and nerves work. You have ten minutes. When the time is up, we'll do some field teaching. I'll ask you to visualize the exact things I wrote down for you while you perform your healing."

Laurentia clutched the rustling parchment tighter in her hands as she read.

The way healing worked meant that one couldn't just pass on knowledge and expect everyone else to just believe in what they said. No, it required someone to have absolute certainty that what they were reading and then putting in practice was the absolute truth. If there was any doubt whatsoever, the knowledge wouldn't influence the magic, healing or otherwise.

But Lily had been smart.

She had already demonstrated her knowledge of triaging. The way she had directed everyone inside the tent... Laurentia expected at least half of the people to take what Lily had told them in the same way they would take the word of the God of Light.

"Dawn's Mercy," Laurentia whispered, reading about some 'platelets,' which apparently helped blood to... 'clot?'

Yet, when she raised her eyes, she saw many of the [Healers] looking confused at all those new words.

This is too much all at once. She hasn't shown us that she's knowledgeable enough for us to—

Right then and there, a man was carried in on a stretcher. He was silent, passed out. Laurentia could immediately tell that he had suffered enough blood loss to send him into shock.

But, most importantly, his limbs...

"Right leg and right arm removed," Lily said, immediately poring over the wounded. "Red code."