After finding his way to the now calm lienholders, Lee scanned around and saw groups of elves dragging corpses into piles. The corpses were being separated by monster type. Dead Goblins were being thrown on top of one another, creating mounds of dead and decaying flesh. The sight alone made Lee gag, and he had to force himself not to look away.

Another pile was of Hobgoblins. Compared to the many mounds of Goblin bodies, there were few of the Hobgoblin ones. The corpse mounds weren’t as large either, as a Hobgoblin was much larger than their smaller counterparts. The bodies were dragged instead of carried, except for those few with lots of stats in strength, who could indeed carry the Hobs as if they were normal Goblins.

Lee was grimly watching the cleanup process when he spotted a duo of elves carrying a different type of body. A Dark Elf body. The duo were not as callous in their regard to this body as the others were to the monsters. They treated the bodies of their fallen with care and wore solemn faces. One of them occasionally wiped their eyes, trying to hide a few tears and failing.

Everybody was coated in dark blood, mud, and grime. This was not the type of work anybody enjoyed, and Lee wondered about how long this body disposal process was going to take. There were thousands of bodies, and Lee thought that they would have just looted the corpses as they walked across the field. This apparently wasn’t the case.

As he continued watching, a familiar face spotted him. Upon seeing who it was under the caked-on dirt, mud, and blood, Lee cringed.

He slowly raised his hand in an attempt to wave as Maika strode over with a disconcerting smile and hints of malice.

“Lee! My favorite healer! I knew I was wrong about you!”

Lee, who had just spent all his stat points, severely regretted not dumping more into dexterity. As he tried to spin away to avoid this cleanup duty, Maika grabbed his shoulder with a wicked grin.

“Where are you going? Aren’t you here to support us in this trying time? That’s what you do, right?”

It was at this moment that Lee made a decision. One that would change the way he would go about the rest of his life. A tactic that spanned two worlds and any number of races.

He gave a lovely smile and nodded to Maika.

“You’re exactly right. Lead the way.”

Maika, with her shit-eating, devious grin, spun Lee back around to face the field and waved her arm about.

“Start wherever you want. The world is yours.”

She trekked off to the nearest body to grab and move it toward its specific body pile, and when she turned back around, Lee was gone.

He ran away. Maika’s face showed an incredulous expression of pure disbelief as she spotted Lee’s white, silver-lined robes fluttering in the wind as he sprinted back into the wooden, defensive battlements.

Lee was not about to ferry dead bodies into piles for hours on end. It didn’t matter if Arcani herself demanded it. He was not going to do it. He felt like his contribution to defending a city that wasn’t his, his being transported into a new world completely foreign to him, and the fact that he had just discovered healing magic and taught it to the elves here gave him a pass to get out of this specific job.

He would watch and observe. That is it. The gods be damned.

He looked over his shoulder just to make sure Maika wasn’t going to follow him and decided he would watch from up atop the battlements.

After making his way up, he watched just to see what they were going to do. He doubted they’d burn the bodies like they most likely would have on Earth. You could loot monsters, and throwing away thousands of bodies worth of loot sounded insane.

Not long after, an older-looking elf, which in Lee’s mind meant that the elf was about mid-thirties in appearance, strode forward to one of the piles while surrounded by a few guards. Curious, Lee watched him like a hawk from up above. The older elf spread his arms wide, and Lee decided to try a skill he’d been underutilising, Mana Sense.

Around the older Elf, Lee saw a thick vaporous mist of mana spread along the bodies. The mist was tightly and finely controlled. It encompassed the pile of dead goblins like a shell, and then, in but a moment, all the bodies were looted at once.

Piles of mainly copper coins materialized on the ground where the bodies were previously stacked. Some crude-looking weapons, armor, and trinkets were spread amongst the coins as well.

Lee raised an eyebrow.

Was this person someone who invested in luck? Also, that mass looting trick seemed nifty. Could I spread my mana outwards and loot from afar?

That was valuable information. However, Lee would have passed on this knowledge if he had to join the cleanup.

It took around two more hours before every single body was dealt with. Much faster than Lee had assumed it would take. He attributed it to people having stats and levels. On Earth, it would have taken a significantly longer amount of time.

Most of the time spent wasn’t actually due to moving bodies; it was scouring each and every inch of land for any fallen Dark Elves. They did not let a single person be left out to rot. They had made sure every single person was accounted for.

It also helped that they didn’t need to move the Giants. The older lucky elf simply moved along the battlefield to their location and looted them singularly. Lee had expected a wave of coins or some super enchanted heavy weapon, but he was let down with only a few items replacing the Giant's corpse.

Whipping out his watch, Lee checked the time and saw that it was nearly midnight.

This was a long, tiring, and unexpected day. Twelve hours ago, he had been giving a lecture on healing, and not long after that, he was taking lives instead.

Leaving the battlements, Lee started to walk home. There wasn’t much else he could do, and he was sure there would be some meetings or irksome conversations with Nitis tomorrow. He paused before he entered Neldam properly and looked down at his hands. They were, frankly, gross.

He doubted that the bath was open at midnight, even though elves didn’t need nearly as much sleep as he did. So he just took off his robe and cast Conjure Water above his head. It did soak his white undershirt, pants, and underwear, but he could deal with that easily enough.

While channeling the cast of Conjure Water, Lee realized that the amount of water being output from the spell was more than usual. He had often cast the spell to drink from, so he probably knew this spell the best. Roughly double the amount of water was being conjured. Before, it was a little spout of water, a tad larger than a stream you’d get from a drinking fountain. Now it was more like a water hose.

After spending a few minutes scrubbing himself down with his cloak, which would clean itself automatically, he felt as clean as he could be without any kind of soap. He shrugged and walked back to his house, completely soaked but feeling clean.

He collapsed in his bed after taking off the soaking wet clothes and changing into a set he had purchased from Sarum, the greedy tailor.

He fell asleep in less than ten seconds.

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Lee didn’t often dream. Most of the time, what he saw in his sleep was just black, then he awakened. Today he dreamt a nightmare. He dreamt about the monsters he slayed earlier in the day. He was on the battlefield, surrounded by familiar Dark Elven faces. Jud, Juris, Erie, Maika, and the others they gathered along the way were forming ranks in front of him. They grunted and yelled as Goblins swarmed into their weapons and were hacked apart.

Lee tried to cast spells to help out, but he couldn’t cast any. He couldn’t cast any of his magic. So instead of watching his companions get slaughtered, he jumped into the fray. As he did, his Healer’s Beacon radiated forth.

Lee smiled at his beacon of healing, but his smile faded into horror as his Dark Elven companions started to melt. Blood started to pour from every single orifice, and their skin began to sag. Their muscles began liquidating underneath as they screamed in terror.

He tried to turn his Healer’s Beacon off, but it wouldn’t do so.

He heard someone scream his name from behind, and when he turned, he saw Neia and Ruven, both melting with looks of utter betrayal.

“Why!” They all screamed at once.

Lee was knocked to the ground by a monster. Turning his head, he saw the Hob, whom he had killed by himself. Its features were identical, and its wicked grin and eyes were locked onto him as he lay on the bloody grass. The blood and gore of his melting friends covered his hands as the Hob raised its large club.

The club swung down on top of Lee as he screamed.

He woke just before it made contact.

—-------------------------------------

He startled awake, panting, and looked around his room. All was normal.

He slowly calmed down as he realized it was just a nightmare—a terrible nightmare that was probably the cause of some sort of PTSD.

Taking a slow breath, he conjured some water to drink and checked the time.

He had only been asleep for a few hours. It was nearing five o’clock in the morning, but Lee felt that he wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight.

The faces of his… friends? Is that what going through life-or-death battles with each other leads to? Were seared into his mind. He immediately put two and two together and realized his dream was about his new skill Antithesis of Healing.

Would that be the effect of it?

Lee hoped not. He didn’t want to imagine melting foes to their very core. He didn’t want to imagine killing anything at all, for that matter. All he wanted was to heal, save others, and live a life that he couldn’t live on Earth.

But, it always came back to monsters, in the end, it seemed.

What would he heal? Idealy, diseases, and illnesses. What was more likely, however, was wounds from monsters.

He wanted more levels, as all people probably did. Where did you get a lot of XP in a short amount of time? Monsters.

He wanted to travel and spread his healing. Sharing his spells and bringing a little bit of good to those who had lost hope. What prevented him from traveling and achieving this goal with relative ease? Monsters.

Lee held his head in his hands as he sat up in his bed. He ran his hands through his very short but still-growing hair. He looked at his newest skill in his status.

What was he afraid of becoming? A monster.