Chapter: Aftermath

Erik’s entire body hurt, it was different from muscle pain, it was the feeling of his mana channels being strained past their limits repeatedly.

Still he bent to his work.

Deal with it, Waters! Erik yelled inside his head as he used focused heal on the artery he was holding, the artery closed as Erik used more focused heal on the woman’s bone marrow to promote the creation of blood.

“She’s going to need liquids. Next,” Erik said, he didn’t know how long he had been doing this, he must’ve seen two dozen patients, from the worst off just breaths away from death, to those that had complicated wounds that required too much healing powder or potion to fix.

“There’s no one else,” Elise said, she sounded tired, not only physically but mentally.

Erik made a noise of acknowledgement before he turned around, he found a chair and slumped into it.

He pulled off his gloves and sent them into his storage ring.

He held his face in his hands, the need for sleep called out for him, but he didn’t give in as he took a deep breath, using it to sit up and look around the village square.

The people under Elise’s command were working as extra hands to help the medics.

Jasper’s people had brought over all of their healing supplies and tended to those that had been healed, giving them food to eat.

Those on the walls were eating their prepared rations, there was no movement from the forest but it looked like they had scared off everything in the remaining area. With all of the beasts killed, there were more than enough resources for the remaining beasts to live off of.

Forces that weren’t on the wall ate and cleared up the city, the north west sector was a hive of activity as beast corpses and mana cores were recovered.

Erik’s vision was swimming from the lack of sleep, his eyes felt gritty and raw. He took out a canteen and started drinking water.

“How many did we lose?” Erik asked.

Elise looked at him, the dead expression in his eyes left no need to ask anything else.

“Seventeen,” Elise said, taking a breath afterwards, she had to force the word out or else it would get stuck in her throat.

Erik could see her expression twist, the guilt and loss. Everyone knew one another in Alva village.

Erik didn’t say anything.

The silence stretched as those dark emotions turned in their stomachs.

“Erik, you need to get some sleep, you’ve been working non-stop all afternoon and night. Let us take it on now, we’ve stabilized everyone and it’s a factor of just using healing concoctions and enough food to help them recover fully,” Elise said.

Erik’s tired brain wanted to argue, to say that he wanted to keep on going, that he could keep on going.

Though he knew from her look that he would be more trouble than use.

“Okay,” he said, rising from his seat slowly, his eyebrows pinched together at the headache mixed with head rush that seemed to crush his brain.

Erik took a few seconds to stabilize himself before he headed off toward the village headquarters.

He moved to his room, he pulled his armor off and dropped it to the side as he laid down on his air mattress and sleeping bag, he half pulled the open part of his sleeping bag over himself before he passed out.

He’d taken himself to the edge of mana and stamina fatigue, but his mind cleared slightly as a new screen appeared in front of him

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You have 15 attribute points to use.

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Erik was slightly startled by this but it made sense, a part of him just wanted to throw it into his character sheet.

After a few moments he got himself back under control, he might be tired and depressed with how everything had gone, but if he just easily threw away his stat points he would regret it.

Alright, so what do I do? I could power level up my combat abilities, my straight strength, stamina, agility and stamina regeneration. This would make my combat ability soar, though I would be at the same stage in trying to open more mana gates. Also there is no guarantee that I would be able to temper my bones. I might need to rely on just potions which are expensive, instead of my own healing ability.

Like this Erik dismissed putting all of his stats into increasing his body’s strength and agility.

“I could go full mana, increase my mana pool, it’s been lagging behind and I can up my mana regeneration. I could get it to maybe twelve mana per second I could fire my weakest mana bullets every second so sixty rounds per minute. I could also use the increased mana regeneration and mana pool to create more mana drops and attack my mana gates, creating a multiplicative effect of increasing my strength not just once like I would with increasing the strength of my body. Also I could use my healing spells to support myself when tempering my body, allowing me to increase my body’s strength.

The other option is to split my stats between them all. Up to now I’ve been putting my stats in based on the situation. I haven’t really had a plan for it.

He sunk into thought.

What is my biggest problem right now? Where do I get most of my strength from? It’s not from just right up punching people, it’s only with the growling dragon that I modified that I was able to get the strength to kill those different creatures, combining magic and body together to be more powerful allows me to implement greater power. If I cultivate my mana system and then use outside sources to temper my body, that would allow me to increase the power of both systems and have a multiplicative effect on my strength. I’m already beating Rugrat out in strength and agility when I was level thirteen and he was level fifteen. He has to watch what he does, moving to longer range while I’m going to close range.

What if every time I leveled up I was to put one point into strength, one into agility, and stamina regeneration with the last two into mana regeneration. The higher the mana regeneration then the more I can temper my body because I can cast a healing spell for longer. The stamina regeneration will mean I can eat and sleep less while also fighting for longer in a fight. Strength and agility are good because the body tempering system doesn’t seem to be simple at all. The mana system allows me to gain points for opening mana gates and for compressing the mana in my body, this is easier than enduring pain that comes with tempering one’s body.

If I was to only have the stat points this would be a dumb idea as I would have no strengths, but combined with increasing my mana gathering system and body cultivation I’ll be able to take the benefits of both.

Erik was determined now.

He placed three points each into strength, agility and stamina regeneration and then six into mana regeneration.

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Character Sheet

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Name: Erik West

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Level: 15

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Race: Human

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Titles: From the Grave

Mana Lord

Dungeon Master

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Strength: (Base 12) +12

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240

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Agility: (Base 10) +14

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125

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Stamina: (Base 14) +4

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270

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Mana: (Base 4) +11

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150

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Mana Regeneration (Base 10) +27

11.85/s

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Stamina Regeneration: (Base 12) +21

7.35/s

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What the hell is dungeon master? I need to check my notifications when I wake up. Erik’s vision went to black.

***

Jasper returned from handing out food. The storage sector in the north west had been turned into a processing center for the animal corpses.

Crews were moving through the city, collecting up the animals and dumping them for Jasper and his people to deal with.

The corpses that were too damaged, they simply accessed their tombstone and took the useful components and separate them to be stored in the storage warehouses.

Those that were still in good condition were handed over to the butchers that would clean the animals out, separating them more thoroughly. If they were elites or high ranked beasts they were put in storage rings for Roska to seperate.

There were thousands of beasts, making it a complicated and hard task.

Seeing the mounds of supplies and his people working Jasper was still in shock. He didn’t know how they had survived.

“How are things?” Elise said as she saw Jasper.

“Busy,” Jasper said seeing another group wave their storage rings, making more corpses appear in the storage area, they simply didn’t have the room in their storage rings to hold the sheer amount of supplies.

“The others want to have a meeting in an hour,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll be there,” Jasper said.

“Make sure that your people get some rest,” Elise warned.

“I’ll do my best, but we might need more help if we want to keep most of the meat and other useful parts of the beasts,” Jasper said. Simply put there was just too much for them to do.

“I’ll see if I can find some people to help out,” Elise promised, she headed off to her next task as Jasper moved forward to help out his people in organizing the beasts, breaking them down.

With the supplies they’d gain out of this, it was more money than anyone had ever seen in alva village.

Jasper might have been excited at any other time, right now he just wanted to deal with it as fast as possible.

Friends and people he knew had died in the battle, it was hard to take any joy from making a gold coin.

Jasper got lost in organizing where people should drop off the different corpses they brought. He would work with the broken bodies to activate the tombstones and dump the collected items in the right collection points, they had run out of storage space in their rings and items long ago.

When it was the time of the meeting he headed over to the village square.

With Erik’s healing spells and the medics use of healing solutions, potions and bandages most of those that had been injured had been sent home to rest.

Others were still there, eating and drinking as the healing had been so intense that their stamina was now lacking.

Jasper thanked the server as he took his meal and went to the table, the smell of the thick stew and bread was heavenly.

Blaze and Elise were there already, they greeted one another with looks and continued eating, all of them were hungry.

“Sorry I’m late,” Glosil said as he sat down.

“Where’s Rugrat?” Elise asked Blaze.

“There’s something I need to talk to you all before talking to Rugrat and Erik,” Blaze said, his face turning grave.

The others looked at him with curious gazes and frowns.

Blaze took a deep breath and told them about how Lord Salyn had broken his oath with the people of Alva Village, how Erik and Rugrat had come here and been given a quest.

“So, they defended Alva Village because of a quest?” Jasper asked.

“Why didn’t they tell us?” Glosil asked.

“They had our trust and we didn’t block them in planning out the defense of the village, if you were in their shoes, would you have corrected my assumption?”

The others fell silent, each of them with complicated expressions and feelings.

“So, other than the quest that told them to survive the beast horde,” Elise said.

Everyone looked to her, she had become the leader of the little village, stepping into her role fully.

“Right,” Blaze said.

“There was no need for them to defend and help us survive, they just needed to make it through. They used all of their resources to increase our strength, you might not know this but they put their own goods up for sale so that they could fuel the advancement of our people. I don’t really care where they came from or why they came, they were there for us in our darkest hour. Do you remember what they promised you when they entered Alva?” Elise looked right at Blaze.

“Alva town will come out stronger,” Blaze said.

Elise blew out a dismissive breath, “Fuck Lord Salyn, the reason we’re here is because of Erik and Rugrat. I’d say they’re our real lords.”

If this had been before, her words would be a sort of blasphemy, now it was an accepted fact.

“So, what do we do now?” Glosil asked. “Do we follow them? Will they let us? What happens if Lord Salyn comes here and sees the village is still standing and we’re all over level ten? Will everyone move to the second realm?”

These questions didn’t find answers as they all looked at their cooling stew.

“It’s not something that we need to figure out right now. The first thing we need to do is let the people of Alva Village know the truth about Erik and Rugrat. Personally I’m going to follow them if they are willing,” Blaze said.

The others agreed.

Jasper had seen Erik and Rugrat perform what were nothing less than miracles, he wanted to see just what they could do in the future.