Maid with Necromancy

Chapter Twenty-Three

Let him die, let him die, let him shrivel up and die. Too bad the “healer” in Harmony was supposed to want to save the man, like he was some beautiful flower, the last of its kind. The revivalist class was still heavily influenced by necromancy and preferred death. Chronostasis kicked in to buy time for an evaluation. The number of things happening inside his soul was extensive. True sight would get overwhelmed. Whatever skill Jasper used to take a look had him shaking his head and shielding his eyes.

It wasn’t that she had no sympathy for this stranger. Even with his crimes magically branded onto his skin, such as gnome fornicator, baby eater, rapist, and public urinator. Innocence was always a slim possibility, and what if this is how they treated necromancers? [Recall] made a note to explore this region's criminal justice system.  Acting with her full skill set here had the risk of revealing she was a necromancer. The criminal was nearly dead the moment his stasis ended, and the dozens of curses in his body started to ravage it.  

That didn’t stop the other classmates from acting. Houte was halfway into casting some kind of summoning skill, one at odds with his class and profession. Letting Houte be the first one to attempt to save the man was untenable, the prat.  

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d felt a man die with her hand inside of them.

[Disintegrate] danced along her fingertips. Harmony’s hand plunged into the man’s side, grabbing his arching, twisting spine and pinning him down on the flat metal shelf he flailed on. [Mend] combined with [Renew Spirit] to make a multi-layered heal to stop the first issue that would have sent the prisoner to his death the quickest, literally twisted in two at the body, soul, and container levels.  That curse didn’t like its machinations being interrupted.

The invader complained by sending other limbs twisting. Harmony hadn’t gone into this class blind. The Association of Amateur Immortalists might have a sad library, but it had given her the basics of what most curses were. Diseases, malfunctions, and outside influences that interacted with a person's skill source, souring, twisting, or reversing their benefits.

With a loud crack, his arm twisted so far that the ulna popped out with a spurt of blood.  [Final Silence] could be a temporary solution, but the text on curses said such effects were severely blunted, not stopped. No, if she wanted time to experiment, this one had to go.

[Claim the remains of Power] target the twitchy source. Not that she wanted to include that inside herself. It was always difficult working with the living. It helped that the man was so close to death in many ways and that his soul and body were too busy fighting off afflictions. She had experience breaking and manipulating the skills of the living. What sealed the deal was the violence in grasping it, thin fractures, and destroying the patch of soul around the skill as she pulled it out.

Hexio Curie had a jar with milky fluid waiting.  “Drop it in here.”  Skills were not solid when extracted. Letting it go from her fingers would have it diffuse. This had to be a kind of preserving fluid similar to what she created in Ascendant Games experiments. Harmony let her hand dip into the fluid, and suddenly it was like holding a rock in her fingers, letting go, it clinked into the bottom as it sank in. “Now get back to saving the man. The other students are barely keeping him together!” the woman ordered.

Time to see what the others were doing. That initial strike only solved the immediate problem.  The wound in the prisoner’s side was already closing up. That would make further surgery trickier.  Houte wrestled with a green fleshy worm he extracted from the man’s body, its tail coiled around a skill, causing the patient’s body to jerk in his direction every time he pulled.

Jasper created a glowing aura around the man, which slowly healed the wounds in his body; rather than regenerate cells, it attempted to return him to a previous temporal state. The effect ran into issues with the skill being removed so thoroughly, so too much energy was wasted trying to bring it back. It also only very lightly  annoyed the mass of curses flowing through the criminal’s body. It was like trying to smother a campfire with bare hands at a distance.

The twins were stabbing tiny needles all over the body to herd a cluster of minor curses somewhere.

It was a chaotic warzone with no teamwork or strategy.  It was like Hexologist Curie wanted the man to die in an extended and unnecessarily cruel manner. If saving him would ruin her day, it might be worth it.

Harmony moved in with determined violence. A punch to the skill Houte was pulling the worm from dislodged the creature's connection, sending the rude boy to the floor to wrestle with his opponent.  The twins had a big enough cluster of minor curses in the man’s thigh [Cold Touch] reached out and turned his flesh fist-sized chunk of ice there, extending into the man’s soul to freeze them in place.

“If you touch him, that skill will work better.” She snapped at Jasper.

She could have eked out a touch more power from [Renew Spirit] and boosted it with [Mana Roration] to surge whatever skill he was using, but that was useless if he already wasn’t trying to be as efficient as possible.

And now that the dying man’s death had been delayed from imminent to a few more minutes, Harmony had time to look at him better.

The patient was in his second evolution, which meant he could take a lot of damage. There was an extra tang of iron in the air from his blood, and she knew it. It was the equivalent of recognizing that the table was made of wood after playing with some sticks, the basic connection between him and the knowledge she gained working on making the half-step iron body potion, that here was someone who had taken one. At least potions weren’t having her make body enhancements that no one used. It was useful in seeing that half-step body in action, keeping the man alive despite everything trying to kill him. It regenerated blood at a prodigious rate.

The fact that he was so advanced was also a problem. It made it more difficult to work on him to root out the infestations and maladies that dug into his flesh, container, and soul. Removing every one of the convict's skills was an option if she had more time. Even the weak ones, the twins were removing, or the stronger ones that Haute was on his second one, wasn’t enough to dent the number.

“Ashes.”  Harmony stabbed a finger into the man’s chest , using [Mend] to seal the wound, allowing fresh air to enter through the hole. At the same time, she tackled a curse around a stamina skill that was cutting off air flow rather than increasing it, as only part of the nastiness it was doing in his system.

The free hand grasped his throat,which Harmony ripped out using [Claim] to grab the cursed skill along with the chunk of flesh around it that was already starting to fester with pus and black ichor.

Plop. It fell into another jar Curie had waiting for her.

“Put him in stasis again. We need time to recharge our skills before going in for more.” Harmony demanded.

The Hexologist shook her head. “Of course, the healer would be soft-hearted. That's not how this works. You either save him or you don't.”

Fighting the crazy woman wouldn't save the man. Worse is that Harmony knew she wouldn't be able to even scratch the woman in a fight. It would be like a nine-month-old toddler facing a full-grown adult.

The twins had pierced and dissipated the curses wrapped in ice. Houte was on his third creature, multiple spider legs coming out of a skill, and fixed enough that she couldn't dislodge it from the skill. Lots of tiny cuts marred the rude boy’s uniform and arms as he pulled on something she doubted he could remove; there was no point in trying a strike that wouldn’t dislodge it.

Jasper had moved to lightly touch the man, though he looked green in the process. That did accelerate the restoration. The physical wounds, including the list of crimes, were fading and being repaired. The skill couldn’t get a grasp on the curses; sometimes it hurt them, and others it healed. Rather than tangle with the complex, it focused on the body. It even healed the criminals' missing throat.

“Help. I didn’t mean to take that girl. It was just too easy.” The patient whimpered. “Pure of any choices.. she.”

Harmony slapped [Final Silence] on the man lest she murder him herself.  The fact that he was allowed to reach a second evolution with those proclivities was a disgrace.   Shrugging off dark thoughts, she focused on the result of her silence.

The curses were still active, but sluggish and easier to see. This allowed the twins to spear dozens of weaker ones like bugs on a display board.

If [Shadowed Graves] full power was an option, she could see what kind of fears might interact with the curses. With her fake [Bedside Manner], she could touch on it a tiny bit.  There had to be a better way.  Ripping out whole skills and the curses included as a fine way to stop immediate threats, but a holistic approach in the time she had left had to be attempted.

She’d done minor full-body realignments and healings. Len at the last minute before his professor showed up, Xera after she wore herself out with that link, and every morning there was the routine. Even Bea, if you wanted to count undead.

This just needed to be more brutal. “Support me, I’m going to try something.”

Not that she trusted these students, but they should know she was going to act.

The cursed monster of a man was an ugly mess. [Beauician], [Poise and Barting], [Analyze], [Keen Investigative Awareness], and nearly all of her skills worked together, even [Manipulate Dead], removing the rotting tissue could count as a healing technique. Take what was offensive, remove it, and set things back right. This should at least clear the area around the major curses in the skills.

In some ways, this was easier than filtering out the unfathomable influences that had corrupted Princess Rosaline, as there was no reason to be subtle or care about the damage.  But it took a lot of focus to squeeze it out of the container and body, essentially creating a way that would destroy or force bits to flee.  

Exhausting and time-consuming, she had to alternate tactics to keep from burning out completely as she pushed through the majority of the patient's body. A hard jostle caused Harmony to disconnect.

“I said stop! He’s already dead.”

It was Houte who'd shoved her, his condemnation harsh in his voice.

The rattling, almost-corpse was covered head to toe in foul-smelling gunk. The skin had been stripped in some places. Rude of the man to think she didn’t know what dead was, razor thin as the man’s clinging attempts were.

“Only mostly. The application of a good enough healing potion in the next few seconds should be enough to let me finish this step.”

“You really think Hexo Curie will give us a pricey potion for this piece of trash?”

“Sadly, the boy is right. I didn't have one prepared. Maybe for the next criminal. I always start with the worst of the worst because I know they’re going to die. This is a new record for how long a class has kept the first one alive. I don’t think I’ll be failing anyone this first session, even student Stone, with his weak constitution, provided a novel method in dealing with curses.”

Jasper was looking green over a pile of vomit in the corner.

“I’ll see you all for next week's class. You are all dismissed, except for student White, with whom I’d like a word with.” Everyone left as if they were chased by a horror. Curie touched the wall above the compartment where the prisoner had been stored. Roaring heat filled the room as the slab slid back into the hole and dumped the body into the roaring furnace for disposal that had opened up on the other side.

Alone in the room with the teacher. Had she noticed the liberal use of [Manipulate Dead]?

“You don’t happen to have a curse-breaking type prefix in front of your revivalist class, or maybe with your eraser profession?”

"No instructor.”

Erasers have always been good at cleaning up difficult messes. It’s one reason why I allowed you into this class, that, and youth motivates older students. If I could shepherd you through to your next evolution, we could do great things, maybe even break the unbreakable curses. And don't rely on Von Trell, he’s famously mercurial, as are people his age. Who knows when he’ll give up his guest professorship here?”

The casual disposal of the salvageable victim. The touch of insanity mixed with promises.  It was never wise to outright reject people with this kind of power. This kind of interest meant she’d shown too much competency. But that is probably what the woman was aiming to draw out by throwing a life-and-death situation at students. That didn’t mean she could get nothing out of this. “I’ll consider it. Perhaps if you can get me access to some books on curses from the library, I’ll have more knowledge to base my decision on.”

“Of course. Great things.” The woman muttered as she left, her footsteps echoing back up the stairs.  

After a few minutes of silence, Hyacinth chirped from his spot in her pocket. “Gweep.”

“Scary. I agree.”

Before she left, Harmony collected some of the smelly waste that had been extruded by the prisoner. It held lingering bits of dead curses. Worst comes to worst, she could place the smelly spiritual sample in Houte’s shoes.

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