I Reincarnated as the World's Worst Healer-Chapter 113: Purifying Fire vs. A Thousand Parasites (4)
Lucian and Daniel looked up at the Red Queen with the same expression of someone who had just processed something their brain would rather not have seen. The massive figure of glowing veins and black worms filled the cavern with its mere presence, making the burning ceiling feel lower and the available space considerably smaller than it had been a minute ago.
"What the hell is that?" Daniel asked without taking his eyes off the creature, in the exact tone of someone who knows the answer won’t be comforting but needs to hear it anyway.
"That thing is our prey! Now focus and do what I tell you." Ebony glanced at them over her shoulder with a confidence that didn’t allow debate, and both of her companions responded instantly with a unity that wouldn’t have been possible weeks ago.
"Got it, boss!"
A brief chuckle between the three, short and without ceremony, and then all three took off running in different directions before the Red Queen could fully lock onto them as targets.
The creature tried to crush them with its arms. Every blow that hit the cavern floor kicked up clouds of dust and rock fragments, leaving craters in the stone that the purifying fire illuminated from below with that constant green glow still covering every surface. It was slow for its size, but the sheer area each movement covered more than made up for it.
Ebony watched Daniel as she ran, using the hand signals they had practiced over the past few days without ever being fully sure when they would actually need them. Now they knew.
The killer observed from atop his summon’s shoulder, arms crossed, that same steady calm never leaving him even in the worst moments of the night. The three of them moved, searching for a blind spot behind the creature, and he read them effortlessly, anticipating each change in direction before it even finished.
He tapped the Red Queen’s shoulder lightly, once, and the creature responded immediately.
{{Blood Magic: Red Queen: Amber Blood}}
The summon’s hair, each strand a blind worm with a circular mouth full of spiraling teeth, opened at once and spat dark blood in every direction without aim or discrimination, filling the cavern with projectiles that hardened into reddish crystal upon touching any solid surface within seconds, trapping or blocking anything in their path.
Ebony leapt left. Lucian rolled right. Daniel dashed forward, slipping beneath two crossing streams that crystallized just behind his head before he finished the motion.
The orders had been given before the attack. Daniel didn’t hesitate and closed in with twin axes in hand, weaving through the blood streams with the agility of someone who had spent all night dodging things he shouldn’t be able to dodge, and when he reached range, he twisted sharply, putting his full body weight behind the swing and severed one of the Red Queen’s arms in a clean strike.
The arm hit the burning ground and the purifying fire immediately began consuming it, but the creature was already regenerating new tissue at the stump with a speed that made it clear losing an arm meant nothing to her.
The killer looked at Daniel with a different kind of attention than before. Something about the boy’s energy didn’t match what he should expect from the companion of a Healer and a half-elf. There was something unnatural in the way magic moved around that young body, something dark and dense that had nothing to do with any kind of living magic.
He didn’t have time to dwell on it because Lucian was already moving.
The elf’s blades struck the ground near the creature’s legs, and from the impact, massive roots burst out, wrapping around one of the Red Queen’s arms with enough force to immobilize it momentarily, piercing into the fleshy tissue and pinning it to the ground while the purifying fire began climbing up from below.
Ebony was already charging in, fists burning green, reading the opening Lucian had created and calculating the exact point where contact would cause the most damage in the least time.
The killer scratched his chin.
"(Interesting. That girl’s energy is somehow holding an excess of magic that should’ve destroyed her body already. That other one has dark magic, almost like an undead. And the half-elf clearly has something hidden inside him, but he doesn’t want to use it in front of me.)" He watched a moment longer. "(How strange.)"
He jumped away from the summon just as Ebony’s fist reached the Red Queen’s torso.
The purifying fire sank into the creature’s tissue at the point of contact and spread inward, burning through every vein, every worm, every structure of blood magic it encountered with the same efficiency it had shown all night. The Red Queen began burning from within, her massive form slowly collapsing as the green fire spread through her body with nothing able to stop it.
The three of them watched her disintegrate with the brief satisfaction of a completed objective, then turned to the killer.
The killer yawned.
Not theatrically, but with genuine boredom, like someone who had just seen exactly what he expected and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. He pointed both palms toward the ground and dropped a rain of small, fleshy eggs that scattered throughout the cavern before any of them could intercept them.
"Devour everything and control the world."
{{Blood Magic: Summoning: Royal Guard}}
The eggs grew. Fast, with that specific violence of things changing size faster than the eye can follow, until they burst open, revealing the figures inside. Humanoids, child-sized, clad in armor made of warped bone covering every vital point, with insect-like jaws snapping open and shut with a mechanical precision that had nothing organic about it. Their wings were ant-like, translucent and rigid, and they immediately used them to lift off the ground, staying clear of the purifying fire covering every inch of the cavern floor.
They could fly. That changed everything.
"I honestly preferred using the Red Queen to finish this." The killer watched them spread through the cavern, arms crossed again, posture completely restored. "But if I destroy this place, the mansion collapses too. So let’s keep it discreet."
He snapped his fingers.
The creatures surged forward.
Not in a chaotic swarm, but in focused trails, each choosing a target and rushing toward it with a speed that made the green fire on the ground irrelevant since none of them needed to touch it. The first to reach Lucian struck him hard enough to send him flying into the cavern wall, his back leaving a mark in the stone before he dropped.
Ebony blocked two with her forearms and took a third hit to the side that shoved her half a meter without knocking her down. Daniel dodged the first ones aimed at him and cut one down with his axes, but the next one moved too fast for him to reposition, and the blow landed on his shoulder with enough force to make something crack.
Ebony looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at Ebony. The exchange lasted less than a second but was enough for both to reach the same conclusion at the same time.
They looked at Lucian, who was pushing himself off the wall, blood running from his chin, his expression that of someone calculating exactly how much each part of his body hurt before deciding whether he could ignore it.
"Pointy ears, you know what to do when the world starts falling apart, right?"
Lucian wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand and nodded without asking anything else.
Daniel started moving through the flying creatures without trying to fully avoid them, letting some hit him as he closed in on the ones he could mark, and when his axes opened a deep enough cut, he leaned in and drank.
{{Dark Magic: Soul Binding}}
The magic flowed into him from each marked creature at a speed unlike any normal absorption, direct, without resistance, as if Daniel’s body had been specifically designed to receive that kind of energy and process it without friction. Strength and magic poured into him within seconds, leaving the affected creatures motionless and empty.
The killer narrowed his eyes. That kind of connection magic belonged to the undead, not the living, and yet that boy used it as naturally as breathing.
Before he could act on that realization, Ebony clasped her hands, and Daniel, with all the speed and strength he had just absorbed, used her palms as a launch point and was hurled upward with such force that he shot out of the cavern through the ceiling hole as if the tunnel were just the next step of an unfinished jump.
The killer stepped toward the opening.
Lucian slammed both hands into the ground, and roots burst upward, sealing the hole completely, forming a dense barrier of wood that wouldn’t give easily. Then he activated his spell without hesitation.
{{Spiritual Magic: Fairy Fire}}
The roots ignited in a pale green flame, softer than Ebony’s purifying fire but steady and enough to force anything trying to break through to deal with both layers at once. It wasn’t a perfect seal, and it didn’t need to be, it just had to last long enough.
"You’re a very annoying group." The killer looked at the burning root seal, then back at Ebony and Lucian with that expression that had shifted all night between admiration and collector’s hunger. "But that only makes me want to collect you even more."
He began gathering parasites in his palms, small, dense, magic concentrating into each one before being launched, preparing his next move with the same meticulous care as always.
"Then you’ll be waiting forever, because we don’t belong to anyone." Ebony stepped beside Lucian, and the elf understood immediately, forming a wooden base while she prepared the purifying fire to coat it.
On the surface, Daniel shot out of the tunnel into the city’s night sky with all the speed Ebony’s launch and the absorbed magic had given him combined. The cold early-morning air met him several meters above the mansion, or what remained of it, and from that height he had a second to assess the situation before starting to fall.
He gathered everything he had absorbed in that instant. Every trace of magic from the marked creatures, every bit of his own reserves, all condensed into the point of impact before hitting the ground.
He fell like a meteor.
The impact in the mansion courtyard produced a sound that echoed for blocks, and the shockwave spread across the ground in all directions, cracking stone, opening fissures that ran through the entrance path and reached the building’s foundations.
The mansion gave way. Not all at once, but in sequence, one floor after another responding to the loss of structural support, and the entire property began collapsing into the void left by the shattered cavern below, swallowing walls, columns, ceilings, and the garden that had been the stage where the night began.
In the cavern, the killer felt the tremor, and for the first time all night, something in his posture shifted, just enough to be noticeable. He looked upward as the ceiling began to give way again, harder this time, and then let out a short laugh that had none of the qualities of the previous ones.
Lucian finished forming the wooden sphere around himself and Ebony just as the first massive blocks began to fall, and Ebony covered every inch of its outer surface with purifying fire without wasting a second, sealing it in bright green as the entire cavern collapsed over them and over the killer alike, burying everything under tons of rock, earth, and fire, erasing from the surface any trace of what had once been the Melian family mansion.
