---

Phyralia

The elf jumped back a few steps away, avoiding a sword strike at the last second. Her opponent was a bandit, but not a regular one. His technique was good, excellent even. If it wasn’t for her good reflexes and agility, Phyralia would have bitten the dust as soon as the fight began.

The bandit captain wore heavy armour that protected him well, but finding weak spots wasn’t hard as long as she knew where to look. The man's helmet only partially covered his head, leaving his face exposed. The metal plates placed near the neck were high and awkward to attack, but a single well-aimed strike was all she would need. Especially with her keen eyes, Phyralia had no trouble finding holes that could fit an arrow.

The problem was that the captain knew that as well. Every time she attacked one of the openings in her opponent's armour, the man knew exactly where and when she would strike. A simple sweep of his sword and a shift in his body position was all he needed to avoid everything she tried.

Elves lived long, especially pure elves like Phyralia, but she was young and lacked experience in real fights against humanoid opponents. The best sword fighter she ever fought was Reylia, her own twin sister. Their mother was never the best swordswoman, always choosing magic and bow over close combat, but they have heard how Lavanda trained Caryly to at least be able to defeat an A-rank monster easily. Growing up, Phyralia was always better at the bow, while her sister was a master of the sword.

Emery was also an absolute monster when it came to sword fight. Phyralia didn’t notice at first, but the tentacle Emery always kept within her clothes, corrected her movement ever so slightly during the sparing session they did. That might have seemed like a small advantage as Phyralia initially thought, but Reylia insisted otherwise. She assured her twin that Tenta's way of leading Emery when in a fight was subconsciously drilling into her how to fight, without the girl actually knowing. Reylia assured that if Tenta kept cultivating Emery that way, she would in no time match her in terms of technique and combat instinct. Combined with the training Emery received from Lavanda, the girl was a monster.

Compared to her sister and Emery, whom she thought of as a sister, the bandit captain's swordplay was slow, relying on force and experience more than reflexes and instinct. Using a bow for self-defence was stupid. The awkward shape made it unnatural to parry with, it was long, cumbersome to use because of the string, easy to break and left her hand unprotected. All of these were disadvantages that she would have considered if the bow she had wasn’t different from regular ones.

Her new bow had a shadow affinity and the unique ability to be stored in its user shadow. Whenever she found herself needing to throw the bow away, Phyralia could discard it anywhere and get it back seconds afterward. Controlling her own shadow with magic, she could displace it around her without worrying about sources of light putting her shadow behind her. The bow was also unbreakable and only two-thirds the weight of a normal longbow. As for the string, she had cut it as soon as she got her hand on it. Manipulating magic to create a shadow string that looked completely normal was the easiest thing in the world for her. The shadow string only became tangible at her will, erasing the worry of a normal bowstring.

The captain was about to launch another strike at Phyralia when he noticed something approaching him. Taking a step back at the last moment, a razor-sharp scythe scratched the front of his metal chest plate with a piercing sound. The spider razor leg had cut through his armour like it was made of simple cloth. Fortunately for him, his good judgment has spared his sword. If the spider had broken his weapon, he would have been left exposed.

Phyralia who now had some distance to work with, began firing arrows. His armour couldn’t be pierced by normal arrows, in that mind he used his arm to cover his unprotected face and dashed toward the elf. He needed to at least stay within range to not be exposed to countless projectiles that would force him to take his eye off the spider.

He was about to stop the elf from firing more when his foot refused to lift off the ground. When he saw the web holding him, he tried to use his sword to cut it, but an arrow hit him behind the knee. Before he knew it, another hit his hand and his weapon dropped to the ground.

The man hastily reached for his sword on the ground, but Tara was already on him. In a single swoop, she cut his entire arm off, ignoring the armour as if it didn’t exist. Unable to fight anymore, the captain was on the ground trying to stop the bleeding.

Approaching, Phyralia kicked the sword away and applied some stitching to the captain's arm with her shadow magic. She wasn’t going to kill him, at least for now.

“W-Why?” The man asked, close to falling unconscious due to blood loss.

“You’re more useful alive than dead.” She said coldly.

With everything clear, Phyralia looked around for anything else that could have value but found nothing. All the bandits were dead, and as such they could not be interrogated for information. It didn’t matter anyway, the two targets that had the best chance of knowing anything useful were already captured.

Tara and Phyralia left the bloody mess that was the training ground, dragging with them a web cocoon the shape of a person.

---

I stood in front of the rescued prisoners, still holding the healer in my arms. Holding her hand up toward the injured, the light from her magic was a pale yellow that helped whatever it touched. The healer wasn’t happy about her situation, but I didn’t give her a choice. She would do her best until she was empty of every single bit of mana she had.

Through her healing magic, missing skin reformed and broken bones reunited once again. The work of her healing magic was truly something to witness. She couldn’t help for their blood loss, but that was fine. As long as they could walk and survive, they were fine.

Reluctantly, she healed every single person that needed it. The hostages were grateful for being healed but remembered the woman who had previously healed them only to the bare minimum to survive when they first became hostage. In his rage that an adventurer, a healer nonetheless, could team up with bandits. One girl grabbed the sword of one of the guards we took out and rushed at us, hoping to kill the healer.

“Die!” She screamed.

The healer was unable to react in time and instead, she closed her eyes, expecting the dagger to hit her in the face with the sharp pain that would come with it. She gripped herself as much as she could on my shirt in the hope it would lessen the impact somehow.

I caught the woman's blade with my left hand. Holding the girl with only one arm was hard, but Tenta was there to take most of the weight himself. The blade cut through my glove, leaving a trail of blood dripping to the ground. I scowled at the pain but didn’t let go of the blade. There hasn’t been much strength behind her strike, she was still extremely weak and would need more time to actually be able to do real harm. I could have had Tenta block it for me and he probably would have if she had been a real threat, but her only aim was for the healer, not me. I just happened to have been carrying in my arm the target of her wrath.

Reylia didn’t waste any time and kicked the woman in her gut. The sword fell to the ground with a metallic echo. Some of the prisoners looked shocked, while others wanted nothing more than to have the chance to harm the healer themselves.

“Emery! Are you all right?” Reylia asked me, worried about my wound, even though she knew I was fine.

“Yeah, it’s nothing.”

Clutching her stomach, the woman looked at the healer with rage. She wore rags of what must have previously been her clothes. “Why did you protect that bitch?!”

“Because she just healed you dumbass! You don’t harm the person who maybe just saved your life. Especially not if she posed no danger while we were in the middle of the enemy camp.” I said. The woman looked back, flinching at my menacing stare, but not backing down.

“You don’t know what they did to us, what she did to us! We’ve been here for I don’t know how long. They wanted to know everything about the guild, its adventurers, the other employees and even our families. They let their dog mangle us, hit us with whip and sword, and threatened to abuse us in disgusting ways if we didn’t spit everything we knew. A-And that bitch helped them! She made sure to keep us alive while they did the torture. I can still hear the coins they gave to her each time we were about to get hurt.” The woman was crying with rage.

The other prisoners seemed to agree with her. They let out roars of “Avenge us!” and “Kill the healer!”

The woman forced herself up and once against launched for the healer, with her bare fist this time. In a single swift move, Reylia lightly kicked the woman's leg to trip her.

When she was on the ground, Reylia looked at the woman with cold eyes. Her generally happy and reassuring smile was gone. “Nobody dare lay a finger on Emery or anyone else! We just save you all, help, heal and promise rescue, and all you do is complain that we spared one enemy? I don’t care what she did to you. The only thing that matters now is making sure none of you get hurt or killed. The fate of the healer can wait, and so can you. If any of you have any more complaints to make, feel free to say it to my face first before attacking. It would be my pleasure to knock you out.”

“Y-You can’t do that! You said you were here to save us!”

“Grrrrrrrr” Gnash, who had been guarding outside until now, let out a menacing growl. The woman yelped with fear when she noticed the dog. Hybry was with him, baring himself between us and the woman.

“I don’t need you to be conscious to save you.” Noticing that Reylia was serious, they stopped complaining, and the woman joined the other prisoners. Not only did we have to deal with bandits, but also mutinous rescued hostages. Reylia said that she would keep an eye on them while I handled the healer. I let out a small sigh as Reylia's smile appeared again.

Worried about me, Hybry yelped to see my hand. Instead of waiting for me, he climbed my back until he reached the top of my head. No matter the pain I felt in my hand, he made sure to drown me in snuggle to the point that I begged him to stop.

“Hey…” I heard someone say lowly. Still in my arms, the healer pulled lightly on my shirt as if she wanted to say something. “I-I can heal you if you don’t mind.”

I was surprised. Between all the time I saw her heal someone, either at the guild, the bandit training ground or this very cell, this was the first time she asked if she could heal someone.

Going to one of the empty corners, I dropped her to the ground and sat beside her. Her legs were still unable to stand up, but they were getting a little better. I could feel she was still extremely scared of me, but since I was one of the few people in this room who didn’t want to kill her, it was better to stay with me than others.

With my chest free, Hybry sat on my lap and leaned his three heads in my boobs. Since the healer wanted to heal my left hand, I only had my right hand available to pet him.

Both resting against the wall, I showed her my left hand. With caution, she took out the glove and observed the wound. It wasn’t anything serious, but there was still blood leaking out. Putting her hand above mine, a small pale yellow light appeared on my wound.

The sensation was painful but nothing major. I watched as the wound closed before my very eyes, leaving behind only blood that indicated that I indeed had been injured there.

“Thank you.” I said. She didn’t respond, only glaring at my arm.

Staring at my old acidic burn scar, she looked curious and tried to apply her healing magic to it. The yellow light appeared, but the scar remained. Without saying a word, she focused on the old injury, and the colour of the yellow healing light changed to a darker shade until it reached orange and then red. I guessed that she tried multiple ways to heal it, but they all failed.

Lavanda did tell me that since I came from another world, my scars were harder to heal than regular ones. I didn’t remember why. The scar didn’t affect me in any way, so it was fine.

“I’m sorry, I can’t heal your scar. It’s far too incorporated in your body to be affected by regular magic. Maybe a more proficient healer or a potion of revitalization could help.” The healer suggested.

“It’s fine.” I said softly.

“But…”

“I said it's fine, don’t worry about it. I had it for a while now and it never affected me at all. I got a plague affinity, the acid was neutralized before it could do any true damage.”

“... Having a scar is not normal,” She looked down. “That is one of the first things the church of healing teaches us.”

Not saying anything, I let her continue.

“My master told me that when someone develops a scar, their whole life is changed. Healing magic is powerful, even capable of helping those normally beyond saving, but it can’t heal scars. A scar means that your soul and the very way your body exists in the world are marked by that scar. It will mark your body till the end of your day. Once, I met a noblewoman with a long scar on her face. She begged me to heal her, but I wasn’t able to. What should have been considered a beautiful and promising lady was rejected by every nobleman looking for a wife. I don’t know what happened to her, only that she was mocked by her family and ran away not long after I last saw her.”

Hugging herself, she paused a moment before adding a little more. “The same will happen to you if you don’t find a way to heal your scar.”

This side of her surprised me. Until now, I only saw her being arrogant and greedy, taking every opportunity to make more money at the expense of others. Knowing that she too had her soft side made me smile a little.

“Scar or not, I don’t care,” I said, hugging the hydra in my arm. “As long as I have Hybry and the others, the opinion of strangers is irrelevant to me. If I were to love someone and they didn’t want me because of my scars, that meant I made the wrong choice. I have another scar, a big slash on my back.” I pointed behind me. “I’m… not normal, I know that much, and I don’t want to be. Everything that happens to me affects my life and what I become. That means the world left its mark on me and that I was alive to feel it. I rather that than be dead cold in a bed.”

Afterward, she stayed silent. Occasionally, she would look at Hybry playing with my chest, but otherwise, we just waited.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“...”

“...”

“Kercie.”

“Not a bad name, mine is Emery.”

“...”

Minutes passed until Phyralia and Tara arrived. She dropped her prisoner into a corner away from anyone else. We talked about what we should do and concluded that the flare could wait a little longer. We still didn’t know if the three other teams succeeded or if they needed more time.

While we waited, we took our time to make sure the prisoners we safe and sound. The experience they had was more traumatic than we initially thought. On multiple occasions, we saw them try to hide a dagger away from us and slowly approach Karcie. The girl stayed in her corner the whole time and knew why someone was occasionally coming to her. Instead of asking for help or moving, she did nothing to stop them.

Since, of course, we knew what the hostage’s intent was, we stepped in each time to stop them way before they could get close to Karcie. I didn’t know what was happening in her mind, but as long as she did like we asked and didn’t try to run away, we gave her her peace.

Karcie wasn’t as scared of me as before, but I still noticed hints of fear in her. Here, she had no allies, only enemies. Phyralia and Reylia kept neutral most of the time, only keeping the rescued hostages away from Karcie. That meant that her entire life and future rested in my hands. I was the one who captured her, but also the one who could protect her from everyone who tried to kill her.

At first, we tried to convince the rescued hostages to leave the healer alone. She was helpless, knew useful information and could heal anybody who was injured. But, no matter what we said, their animosity toward Karcie never faded. What they were forced to endure only to be healed and tortured again must have marked them more than we could reasonably handle. We were adventurers, not mental health specialists. The fact the only qualified healer was the source of their trauma also didn’t help. Since we protected their torturer, some of their anger was also redirected toward us. Ignoring the fact that we just saved them.

After an hour, we decided we waited enough. Keeping the healer and the victim in the same room became a hell we couldn’t handle anymore. The hostages kept talking between themselves out loud about how they were going to have Karcie arrested and executed as soon as they got back to the guild. They also never missed the chance to insult her from across the room on every occasion. As most of them were guild employees, their threat was serious. If they wanted Karcie to be gone, they just had to slip a few words to their superior about all her crimes. Some of them were also from noble families, so yeah, Karcie was as good as dead.

Since she betrayed the guild by working with criminals, she would have zero of the protection the guild generally gave to its adventurers. If she was lucky, maybe she could avoid the death sentence, but she would be forced to work as a free healer for the rest of their life. The amount of money she saved and being greedy about wouldn’t save her.

To make sure she was fine, I talked to Karcie as much as I could. Even if she was scared of what would happen to her, she seemed to at least appreciate the gesture.

Gathering everyone, we moved to the bandit training ground, as it was a much more spacious space than the cell we stayed in until now. I had Tara move the webbed dead bodies into a pile so as not to disturb the hostages with mangled corpses. Seeing some grass and moonlight made the hostage a little more relaxed than in the claustrophobic cell. With all the free space around, we also did have to worry about someone jumping at Karcie.

Just to be sure she was safe, I tasked Hybry and Gnash to keep an eye on her, more for her safety than ours. She didn’t interact with either of them at first, but it wasn’t long before Hybry took things between his head and began playing with her boobs. She yelped in surprise but didn’t stop him. Her chest was smaller than mine, but still far from flat. No matter who she was, no girl could resist the cuteness and affection of the little hydra. Gnash also didn’t mind and asked her for some petting. I would later learn that she never petted a dog before. Gnash might look horrible to others, but as soon as he liked someone, he was the most adorable walking plague in existence.

To be safe, we webbed the two entrances to the training ground. If allies were to arrive, we would open them and follow their lead out, but if enemies came for us, then we could stall them long enough for reinforcement to arrive. With just us to keep the hostages safe, we couldn’t afford to take unnecessary risks while making our way out. Waiting for more help was a better option.

Holding my hand up toward the moon, I felt the power of mana circulate in my arm and form into a fist-size fireball. Throwing it in the sky, it travelled about a hundred metres before exploding with a big boom into an unmissable red flare. The spell was more akin to a special effect rather than an attack since it didn't have enought magic to cause much damage, but as a signal to start the raid, it was perfect.

:

Note for chapter poll: For Hybry you can include his form when he grows up in size. Same for Tara. You can also keep them in their current, smaller form. As for Mizuko's magic, let your imagination go wild for what she is capable of. 

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