Soderberg
patreon
Lifeweaver: Book 2 - Chapter 2
🕑 Added 2025-09-22 18:00:13 +0000 UTCThe first half hour or so of running was a real struggle, but after that Luke's body came alive again and stopped fighting him at every step. Now with full control of Weaver's Eye, being out and about was no longer a painful struggle. Before, information about every minor and major injury and disease assaulted him each time he passed a person. In crowds, that overload made it difficult to concentrate. Having upped the skill's ranking to rank 3, though, ended all that. The new silence allowed for a run where the body could work while the mind relaxed.
On and on he ran. The increased endurance made him feel like he could go on forever, just run into the horizon and never look back. Without realizing it, he'd turned in the direction of Relian and was running east at high speed, as if he chased the man, if that was what he was, through the city. Forcing himself to turn, he continued north instead, past the orb. Even at this early hour, the line was long, full of excited people talking over one another. The great numbers showed that despite everything that had happened, people still wanted to become Integrated. And who could blame them? The promise of superhuman-like strength, spell casting, or other abilities was something out of stories, and almost everyone wants to be the protagonist of their own story.
The dungeon with the dwarves, the dragon, and the deep dweller had sent ripples through the city and even the country just a few days past. A large number of Integrated hadn't made it back. The newspapers had nicknamed it 'death dungeon', but even with so many lives lost, the onslaught of Integrated news meant the reporting on the place fell away after a day or two, once they'd run out of pictures of the massive dragon they'd defeated. For some reason, the image Hannah took of Luke standing on his head made it in there as well, much to his embarrassment. At least it didn't mention him by name.
Hannah. The woman was connected to the Deep Dweller somehow. It had wanted her, and her shadows responded to its presence. Luke had attempted to contact her a few times through the communication gems, but had so far not been successful. She didn't respond. Everyone who went into that dungeon came away a different person, he figured. Best give her some time. If she didn't want to talk, he couldn't force her.
Sweating like a madman, he continued north past the orb and the still closed-down headquarters of the Department of Integrated Affairs. After what happened with the Fallen Shepherd in there, with so many killed or disfigured, it would take them some time to rebuild and fill the vacancies.
Again, he'd turned east without realizing it. Luke stopped and leaned forward, propping himself up by holding on to his knees. Sweat streaked his face, and his legs screamed at him to stop. But Luke didn't want to stop. Not yet. As if making a point, he turned west and ran up the street. A group of youths blocked the way on the curb, huddled together around someone's phone as it blared out a track Luke couldn't place. Rather than shout at them or go around, Luke sped up, charging right at them.
At the last moment, one of them looked up and raised his hands with a cry. Luke gave him a mad grin and extended a thread of mana from his hand, holding it up. Just as he was about to crash into the group, he used Weavestep, ending up behind them, and he kept running without looking back. That'd teach them to pay attention to their surroundings.
Flexing his Lifeweaver skills felt good, like they, too, were getting a workout after being somewhat dormant while Luke rested the last couple of days. As luck would have it, or perhaps not luck, per se, he soon found another reason to use the core skills of his class. A couple of streets farther west, Luke came upon an accident where a car had hit a cyclist, who was now on the ground in the middle of the road. Someone, the driver of the car most likely, was down on his knees beside the woman, shaking her shoulders while a group was forming around the two. Several people were filming. Assholes.
Luke ran up to them both and pushed the man back so he fell on his ass.
"Hey!" the man shouted, half from anger, half from being startled out of his whimpering shock.
"Shut up!" Luke said, pointing at the driver, a man in his sixties. "You don't shake someone who's been injured! What were you thinking?"
Not listening to the reply, Luke steadied his breathing and used Threads of Mana while activating Weaver's Eye. The diagnostic skill gave him an instant sense of what was wrong with her. The car must've been going over the speed limit for injuries like this. Broken bones. Punctured lung. Concussion. As if that wasn't bad enough, she was bleeding all over. Unconscious as she was, and with her face and hair covered in blood, it was difficult to make out her age, but Luke guessed she was in her late thirties. All those injuries put her in critical condition. If an ambulance arrived in the next minute or so, she might have a chance of survival, but he heard no sirens. Good thing he'd stumbled upon the scene.
Dealing with one thing at a time, Luke stopped the bleeding with stitching where possible, and searing the arteries and veins shut where it was not. Her blood pressure stopped dropping, but the pulse was falling at an alarming rate. With another thread of mana, Luke went in and massaged her heart to keep it going while he pulled on the rib that'd punctured her lung. Once in place, he healed the bone.
Just like when running, focusing on the task at hand, he was able to shut out everything else and ignore the voices, sounds of traffic, and even the people filming. With the critical injuries taken care of, Luke focused on the concussion. Since there was no way of treating a concussion under normal circumstances, he couldn't use Needle of Life to stitch her brain back to normal conditions, but that wasn't the only tool in his skill arsenal.
Using Threads of Mana, he washed the brain with healing mana, a trick he'd learned almost as soon as he picked the class. This way of healing used far too much mana, which meant he couldn’t use it much, but this wasn't a dungeon, and he didn't see a reason to conserve his resources. The signs of a concussion, like a dazed look, clumsiness, and trouble answering questions, were impossible to gauge in an unconscious person, but Luke got the sense that the brain had recovered through Weaver's Eye.
Now, for the next part. Getting hit by a car was bad enough, but with this woman, the troubles didn't end there. Ovarian cancer. Tough break. It hadn't spread to secondary locations, but it was pronounced and in both ovaries. Since it had invaded the healthy tissue and more or less eaten it, there was no way to just remove it altogether. Or there wouldn't have been if Luke didn't have Weaver's Renewal.
The skill read the weave, or something like that, to know what the healthy tissue was supposed to look like, allowing him to restore it to a previous condition. This skill was where the miracles of the Lifeweaver took the idea of a healer and ran with it. Like most Integrated in 'death dungeon', Luke hadn't come through without injuries. His own were worse than most, truth be told, and he'd lost an arm and a leg. Weaver's Renewal brought them both back, and they worked better than ever, even if they were a little paler than the rest of him.
After destroying both ovaries, Luke surrounded the area with Threads of Mana and then used Weaver's Renewal.
"There, like new," he muttered.
"What's happening?" the driver asked. He was still on his ass, leaning back and supporting himself on his arms, eyes wide with fright.
Luke got to his feet. "She'll be fine."
"H-how?"
"Didn't you see, stupid?" a young guy, who for some reason wore a knit cap in the middle of summer, said. "He's a healer, ain't he?" He started waving his hands through the air and moved his eyes back so it looked like they'd rolled into his head while muttering some mumbo-jumbo. "Be healed, woman!"
"Yeah," Luke said, clearing his throat. "I'm a healer. An Integrated."
Then he saw the many people filming him on their phones and glared at them. "Stop filming me."
"Integrated healers can't heal stuff like this!" someone shouted. "He's some sort of scammer!"
While it was true that all other healers he'd met weren't able to heal normal, non-monster-related injuries and non-Integrated, Luke could. It set him apart, but he didn't have the time nor inclination to teach these random assholes about the difference between a Lifeweaver and other healers.
Since the woman was waking up, Luke set off running again. No matter her reaction, it would just take more time dealing with it all, time he didn't want to waste. After almost dying several times in 'death dungeon' and the following fight with Relian, Luke hadn't used his skills much, since he needed time to recover. Now, though, having healed that woman, he felt good. Ready. It was time to get back on the horse.
First, though, thinking about the difference between Lifeweavers and other healers, Luke decided he needed to visit the one other Lifeweaver in Chicago, the doctor who'd followed Tim. After three of them chose to become Lifeweavers, she'd injured herself to the point of ending up in the hospital. Stergios, the other doctor who'd joined Tim, was dead. Tim himself was now the vessel for Relian, the Fallen Shepherd. The one living Lifeweaver still in control of her own actions must be full to the brim with questions. Questions Luke was perhaps the only one with answers to.
What a mess.
