Chapter 576: The Elaine
That had been close. Iona hadn’t been kidding when she said the speedster had a good skill - I hadn’t been able to track how fast they were moving or where they were for most of the fight. She’d even dodged a Radiance beam, which was absurd.
Her sword had been coated with apple juice, among other things, and [Luminary Mind] was split into the full 20 parallel thought processes, and one of them inhaled slightly, sampling the scents in the air.
It was so overwhelming I had to shut down the entire thought process, only getting a glimpse at thousands upon thousands of subtle scents all blended together on the edge of the sword. What was that!?
Another thought process took up the mantle of research, quickly coming back with a number of different possibilities. One floated to the top - a potion known as Bane, designed to target curses like the one I had. Because there had to be that one [Alchemist] asshole who was like ‘how do I kill as many people as possible and get a medal for it?’
Well, shit. Good to know my secret wasn’t out, that they hadn’t come prepared with apples specifically to harm me. That would imply a huge information leak, up to the point of Arachne possibly betraying me. That wasn’t the case - it was more that they’d thrown the entire kitchen sink at me, and apples happened to be in it.
Thank the twin goddesses of the moons that Iona hadn’t hesitated. We’d practiced with my curse back in the School and had discovered a number of things. The most important one - if Iona re-did an injury done by apples, my healing could handle it. For example, if my finger was cut off by an apple blade, and Iona cut off my hand, my entire hand would regrow.
It was good Fenrir and her were around. With my biomancy improvements and vitality, I didn’t think I could slice myself up anymore - my strength to vitality ratio was waaaaay off. My immunity to fire was great, except Auri couldn’t burn over an apple injury to make it ‘fresh’ - I was immune. I could possibly fry myself with Radiance, given that I’d dropped [Radiance Resistance], but that was chancy and dicey. My Radiance was a precision tool, but what was most needed with apple injuries was large brute force.
And Iona, without hesitation, without a moment of doubt, with complete faith and love in me, chopped off the injury on my neck, then put a hand through my heart to re-traumatize and let my healing take over.
To be fair - with how I’d modified my blood, I could go quite a bit longer without one than a normal human.