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Apocalypse Healer - B1 Chapter 16
🕑 Added 2024-10-24 10:09:03 +0000 UTCHe sighed, accepting the silence in the vicinity with a shrug. It wasn’t like he’d expected the system to respond to his complaint in the first place.
[Holy Touch]...you better be worth it.
There were no detailed descriptions for the Skill Runes, but the information imprinted on his mind was enough to gain a rough understanding. [Holy Touch] was an active skill that augmented the potency of holy power to a higher level. Utilizing the Skill Rune allowed him to remove infections with a simple touch.
That was all David had comprehended for the time being. More information had been etched on his mind, but unraveling everything wasn’t that simple. It was even more difficult to understand more about [Holy Touch] than it was for David to comprehend [Cleanse] and [Cure Wounds].
Since holy power has some purifying and healing properties, it shouldn’t be impossible to mend my body and remove impurities from my body without the other Skill Runes. I’d only need them to heal others and cleanse their infections…if [Holy Touch] doesn’t work on them.
David didn’t have enough holy power to activate [Holy Touch] at this moment. He didn’t lack a lot, but David wasn’t about to damage his Holy Sea again.
The crimson motes. I still don’t know what they were. It shouldn’t have been lifeforce or something like that. I felt better after using the crimson motes to tend to my wounds…and worse. But the latter was because something else was drained. Not my lifeforce.
[Holy Touch] didn’t seem like a bad skill, but [Draining Touch] should have been better. He sighed deeply, his eyes drifting back to the battlefield.
David’s eyes landed on Sebastian’s corpse. The warrior was lying there motionlessly, his head squashed. He was surrounded by blood and other corpses. It was a sorry sight.
David winced while striding through the bloody pool covering the floor. His shoes squished as he approached Sebastian’s body. The sound reverberated throughout the third floor, but nothing responded. It felt like the entire shopping center had transformed into a graveyard. A sea of corpses. A resting place for the unfortunate.
David picked up Sebastian’s sword. He looked at the flawless double-edged longsword and sighed again.
“It’s lighter than expected,” His expression soured, but he forced a smile on his lips, “I will use it well. Don’t you worry.”
The events of the last few hours flashed through his mind. Most had been exciting, stirring his heart, showing David what it felt like to be alive. But not everything could be great. No matter how exhilarating it was to feel alive, people were still dying all around him. The world had turned upside down. Death was everywhere.
David had to get used to it.
He turned away from Sebastian’s body and approached the body of Kobold lying nearby. David shoved the Kobold aside, revealing one of their shortswords. It was covered in blood, but David cared little about something that minor. He picked up the shortsword, swung it a few times, and compared its balance with Sebastian’s longsword.
It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. One longsword to fight and a spare weapon to use if I’m disarmed.
He considered using both weapons simultaneously, but his experience with cold steel was lackluster, to put it simply. It was enough against the Kobolds in exchange for various grievous wounds; however, it might be different against more intelligent fighters.
Once he was done, David escaped the bloody battlefield. He checked the situation on the third floor before casting a few glancings down to the first and second floor.
Corpses. Everywhere…
It was a sight straight out of a zombie movie and something that would have scared the shit out of David if he had seen something like it 24 hours ago. But now? It didn’t feel like anything special.
David inspected several shops to replace his tracksuit with clean clothes. He also found a new backpack, only to realize too late that most cans were bent, and their contents spilled inside the backpack. Some water bottles survived, but even the bags of snacks burst open. The back was damaged beyond repair as well. It was cut in several spots, and claw marks were everywhere. It was already a miracle nothing spilled out of the backpack.
David found another backpack and searched for undamaged goods for the next ten minutes. After David was done, the new backpack was only a quarter full, but that had to be enough.
I didn’t see Sebastian’s back earlier. Did he forget it?
He shrugged and changed his clothes. Removing his clothes took another ten minutes and a lot of endurance. Even his underwear was drenched in blood.
David shuddered and took some more clean clothes to dry his body when he couldn’t find a towel. He’d prefer a shower or a warm bath over this, but water was scarce, let alone warm water.
Once his body was dry, David put on his new clothes. He found a fitting pair of running shoes alongside some comfortable socks and continued searching for comfortable clothes to store in the backpack. Since there was enough space left in the backpack, he might as well pack a second set of clothes, underwear, and shoes. Who was going to stop him?
David struggled a bit when his eyes fell upon several belts. He wasn’t a craftsman and had never worked with leather, but his creativity got the better of him. He took several leather belts and connected them neatly before wearing the finished product.
The belt didn’t look special, except for the two parts David had added. Several stripes of leather hung at his left hip in an awkward angle. It looked like a mass of leather stripes at first glance, but everything made sense once David sheathed the longsword in the construct.
The weight of the sword hilt pulled the leather construct downward, resulting in an odd angle. The sword swayed with each step but didn’t cut through the leather construct nor restrain David’s movement. It wasn’t loose and wouldn’t be lost easily.
It was a makeshift sheath. Ugly, but efficient.
The same construct, albeit smaller, was attached to the right side of his hip. It wasn’t perfect, just like the other sheath, but it was enough to sheath the kobold’s shortsword. It was tightly secured but could be drawn swiftly if necessary. Just like the longsword. Of course, it would be worn out quickly, but David was satisfied with his makeshift work.
Can I rest now?
He wondered while his feet led him back to the furniture store they had been to before. His body had been mended, and the Holy Sea replenished his holy power quicker than before, but David felt like resting. Unfortunately, the roars of monsters reverberated through the streets, reminding David where he was and what was going on.
That didn’t sound like a Kobold. It sounded like something more…primal.
David’s hair stood up to its end as he approached one of the collapsed walls in the shop to look outside. They had seen the Kobolds in the same position earlier, but a lot had changed since then. Not even a full hour changed, yet everything was different.
The sky was still blue and cloudless, and the sun shone brightly like always, but Infected roamed the streets, and strange magical creatures emerged and disappeared left and right.
David hadn’t noticed them earlier. He didn’t pay any heed to it before. But now that he was taking in the whole picture, David discovered the truth.
Bolts of lightning crackled somewhere to his left. An explosion resounded, followed by a bestial roar. A large creature dashed across the street and disappeared into a smaller alley. Other creatures – David saw only blurs – pursued it, leaving behind crackling electricity currents.
Further behind, buildings collapsed. David was sure he saw something humongous towering above a building, but it disappeared when he blinked.
“The world is fucked, isn’t it?” David murmured. He turned around, only to see something in the corner of the furniture shop. It was a large wardrobe with an inbuilt mirror.
The mirror showed a young man covered in scars. He removed the upper part of his tracksuit and swallowed hard as the scars covering his face, arms, and shoulders were exposed.
His dark-brown hair was still smudged with blood, though less than before, and his facial features were dark and gloomy. Only his emerald eyes glowed as vividly as always. But, other than that, David’s appearance changed.
Not much ought to have changed in a few hours. Not even half a day had passed yet, but David was covered in scars, his expression was harder…colder, and his firm body was…more than it used to be.
David’s presence felt different, even if it was merely by looking through a window.
His posture had changed, his hands lingering on the weapon hilts, ready to dive into a bloody battle at any moment.
“The scars will only get worse. Looks like I will have to live with them,” David chuckled.
Even if he didn’t like the scars, they made him look more savage.
He may only be a Cleric, but nobody would take him lightly looking like this.
Probably.
