Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

726 Years after Elaine became a professor at the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft

“Everyone in!” I shouted, pulsing my light to try and break through the raging blizzard. “Go, go, GO!”

I snapped a shield up overhead, obliterating a shot of molten iron going twice the speed of sound. I retaliated with a burning beam of Radiance precisely aimed at an eye. Skyships bombarded the ground through the thick blizzard, the storm concealing our exact location from the murderous flotilla.

A thought had my full heavy-duty armor snap on.

“GO! If you want to live!” I shouted to the crowd. “Nothing but your body! Leave everything behind!”

I snarled at a pair of idiots trying to bring a chest with them. I [Teleported] the chest on top of a roof, and flashed over to them.

“Leave. It. Behind.” I snarled, then zipped back to [Manor’s] entrance.

“Auri!” I shouted in. People running in clapped their hands over their ears. “Bring down the memorial wards! Open the section up!”

She came flying out a moment later, her eyes no longer playful, murder in every line of her flaming wings.

“Fenrir needs help there! Go!” I pointed to where the armored wyvern was weaving between skyships, engaged in capital-ship aerial battle. Lightning flashed through the howling blizzard. A roar of flames lit up the world a moment later, reflected a million times through the dancing snowflakes and falling raindrops. I floated above the evacuation attempts, trying to balance time spent, lives saved, the size of [Manor], the supplies we had, and how tempting of a target we made. A Void slash cut through my head at nose-level, and I snapped off a [Radiance Beam] towards the threat. A Void shield automatically materialized and absorbed the attack, one of the best defenses I’d ever seen to my attack. I couldn’t overpower it, Radiance was easy to destroy, and if it was automatic like that, I couldn’t outspeed it.

I snapped a blade into my hand and ignited it with [Solar Armaments], thankful I’d kept up my practice.

The hard way it was.

The Immortal cycle had reached its natural conclusion.

Skye and Varuna were dead. We didn’t even have a body to bury.

Orthus was burning.

The Kazehara era was over.

The Immortal War had begun again.

We stared over the devastated land.

“Welp.” I said. “At least the sun isn’t blocked out by ever-raining ash.” And we had piles of fallen trees. No scavenging for wood, no digging holes in the ground this time around. Compared to the last Immortal War, this one was practically easy mode.

“The small mercies.” Iona muttered. “There’s no way we can make a graveyard large enough, and collecting all the bodies…” My wife shook her head, pinching her nose.

I blinked away tears. It wasn’t the time for it.

“Auri, could you do us the honors?” I barely managed to choke out without my voice cracking.

Gods, so many bodies. So many lives. And I’d known so few of them. The only memory I’d carry forward was of mangled bodies and glassy eyes, a quick glance before I refocused on the living. They had deserved more, they had deserved better, but we had to look after the people packed like sardines in [Manor], and rapidly dwindling food supplies.

The flames went up.

“Brrrpt, brpt brrrrrpt.” Auri said. We had too many people, and not enough good land. A small problem could cascade into large issues that wiped us all out, and we should spread the refugees over a larger area.

“Fuck.” I agreed. “Hey love, want to find more sites?”

She was already climbing on Fenrir.

“Yeah. On it.”

I floated up in the air and started marking out farmland grids with the help of my Radiance. The borderlines between the places would be neat - solid fused glass. As soon as we had more sites, I’d need to plan out more villages and communities.

I wondered how long it would last?

I kinda enjoyed farming, but it sucked to be forced to do it.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I looked over the knee-high corn, satisfied that I’d held off losing [Tender Gardening, Industrial Farming] over the years. I hadn’t been leveling it… but it very well might’ve saved our lives.

Fenrir landed hard, and a woman bounced off his back.

“SARA!” I practically screamed, throwing myself at my daughter. Iona dashed out of our cabin - salvaged from a crashed skyship - at speed, eager to hug our kid.

She was alive.

She was alive.

“Heeey! [Lifebringers!] Over here!” Iona shouted, waving her arms at the green wave crossing the world. They turned and headed our way.

“No people again?” I stepped up next to my wife and asked.

She shrugged.

“We’re trying everything, right?” The [Paladin] asked. “Why not try this?”

I shrugged. I’d gotten my way last time.

“Alright then. Oh hey, neat, they even [Identify] as [Lifebringers] this time! Must be culturally relevant enough to be distinct from [Druid].”

Iona chuckled and gave me a one armed hug as the green wave broke around us.

“Never change, love.”

“Does that mean you’re feeding me mangos tonight?” I tilted my head up at her, batting my eyelashes.

“Yes.”

“Now that all the representatives have been elected, let the Summit at Osaku begin!”

I sat between Iona and Arachne, Night continuing to be one of the High Council members.

Poison looked like it was going to get banned again. Everyone was complaining about the Mirage ban last era, and there wasn’t a single whisper about [Healers], good riddance.

“This shit again?” I softly complained to myself. I could see why some elves threw up their hands and went ‘fuck this, I can do this better’.

“You better believe it.” Arachne quietly agreed, her threads twitching in other conversations around the room. “You get to escape sooner than we do, how do you think Night and I feel about these?”

I patted her on the arm.

“Well, professor, if I ever find Genie I know what I’m asking for.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.” Arachne said.

“Yeah, I’m totally asking him to have you level even slower.”

Susan glowered at me, and Iona got censured for laughing too loudly.

The whole time, my mind had been whirling, planning, putting pieces together.

I thought around 80 times as fast as a baseline person.

I could think about dozens of different things in parallel at once.

I had a perfect memory.

I was the best [Healer] in the world, and I’d been working on this problem for nearly a thousand years.

Farming was hard on the body, but easy on the mind.

There were exercises for [Runesmiths] to practice and level, without altering the fundamental underpinning of reality.

Hundreds of millions of fundamental operations came together, and I forged a single rune, an addition to Jiwa that I hoped would spread across the world. An elaborate set of flourishes that looked like a snake coiling around a staff, or perhaps a hydra coiled around a tree. It wouldn’t be easy to carve or draw, but it could be done.

My [Heal] rune was forged in my backyard one cloudy day with minimal fanfare. A cup of water and a chair threatening to splinter were my only supplies as all the elements came together.

[*ding!* [Runecrafting] leveled up! 412 -> 659]

[*ding!* [Everywoman] leveled up! 2130-> 2150]

I was closing in on a million mana per second of regeneration. Woo!

It wasn’t going to be efficient. ‘Heal’ was basically an extremely fancy biomancy operation, since wizardry wasn’t allowed the ‘bypass vitality defense’ that healing possessed. It would be best for kids, with only a few points of vitality. 6400 mana against 8 vitality would be 800 effective mana, which turned into about 100 points of mana thanks to the inherent inefficiencies of wizardry.

100 points of mana could do so much. An 8 year old kid was about 20 kg - it should be more, but yay pre-industrial society - and an arm was roughly 5% of total body weight. Meant an entire arm was about 1000 grams, or required about 1000 mana to restore. Wasn’t great for that, but ten sessions with the local wizard wasn’t too bad. It became a question of mana regeneration more than anything. [Battery] might become more popular as a class.

The real potency was in how it handled diseases and critical injuries. The rune was smart, as smart as I could make it. It had a whole hierarchy of how to handle injuries and disease, going for the smallest, most cost-effective methods first before trying the heavyweight, heavy duty actions.

A terrible blow resulting in internal bleeding? For just a few ‘final’ points of mana, it would patch up the critical portions, keeping people alive. Disease? It was tiny, and didn’t require too much in the way of mana to purge illness out of a body. Damaged eyes? Again, just a little bit of rearranging.

I suspected that it would end up getting known as the ‘cure diseases and possibly prevent immediate death’ rune, not as the panacea rune. As long as it was spread around, I was fine with it.

The beautiful part of the rune was how it also had to handle congenital defects, something most [Healers] couldn’t touch.

The timing of it worked out well. I should get it to the School as soon as I could, and have the first generation of [Wizards] learn it as a basic. It would quickly enter and spread… perhaps a trip to Phantasym. Then again, they kinda sucked.

I leaned back in my chair with a smile, watching the roiling mass of clouds drift by.

I had done it.

It was over.

Nina dragged herself in through the door one day, only bare shreds of her armor hanging on. She’d probably been mortally wounded by the time she entered my healing range, but since it was almost 50 kilometers, I hadn’t noticed.

“Nina!” Iona pounced on our family member, then promptly tried to squeeze her to death.

756 Years after Elaine became a professor at the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft

Iona and I sat in a field of flowers, watching the sun rise.

“It’s a beautiful dawn.” She winked roguishly at me, the pun deliberate. I snuggled in a little closer.

“It’s a joyous one.”

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]

[Age: 895]

[Mana: 152,362,000/152,362,000]

[Mana Regeneration: 324,323,265 +(3,013,438,627)]

Stats

[Free Stats: 0]

[Strength: 882,921 (Effectively: 7,063,368)]

[Dexterity: 907,177 (Effectively: 9,659,621)]

[Vitality: 2,509,240 (Effectively: 39,206,875)]

[Speed: 2,496,472 (Effectively: 49,138,058)]

[Mana: 15,236,200]

[Mana Regeneration: 33,260,912 (+ 301,343,863)]

[Magic Power: 19,182,220 (+ 2,340,230,840)]

[Magic Control: 19,181,077 (+ 2,340,091,394)]

[Class 1: [The Elaine- Celestial: Lv 2440]]