He placed the IO and drilled into her shoulder. Feeling it give way slightly, he stopped, put the drill away, and grabbed a bag of his blood.
“Come on, girl!” Erik hooked up the bag and squeezed.
The CPD member secured the left arm.
“Do a femoral IV.”
Another medic came up. “Where do you need me?”
“Revival needle in the heart.”
The medic pulled out the needle and pressed the patient’s chest, using their Medical Scan. She stabbed into the chest and depressed the plunger steadily.
“IV in!” The CPD member had an IV going into the patient’s inner thigh as Erik put a bag of stamina potion on the patient’s stomach.
The CPD member hooked it up to the IV and squeezed.
“Heartbeat is leveling out.” Erik sent some surges of Focused Heal into the woman’s worst injuries, stopping her from losing more blood. “I hit her with some healing. Need her to get her stamina back before we can work on her some more.” Erik sighed and raised the blood bag, hooking it to one of the wires that ran above the beds.
“You stay with her,” Erik told the medic who had run up to them.
“Yes, sir.”
“Help over here!” a medic called out.
“You go,” Erik said to the CPD member.
He took off running.
Erik spread out his domain, looking for the ones that were flying under the radar. He ran over to a man shaking on his cot.
He turned the man over. The cot was covered in blood, dripping on the floor. Erik tore off the man’s carrier and opened his shirt with his scissors. There was a small hole in the man’s back.
Erik grabbed gauze from his leg pouch. Tearing it open, he applied it to the man’s back and rolled him back over.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” the man said, nearly in tears.
Erik grabbed the man’s shoulder and met his eyes. “You ain’t got nothing to be sorry about, troop, so shut the hell up and heal your ass!”
Could’ve done self-aid.
Erik pulled a blanket out from his storage ring and put it over the man.
The man relaxed.
“You falling asleep there, troop?” Erik barked.
The soldier jolted as Erik pulled out a balm and smeared it on the man’s upper lip.
He coughed with the pungent smell.
“That’ll keep you alert. Don’t overtax your stamina. Heal if you can. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Say it back to me.”
“Stay awake. Heal myself. Don’t use all my stamina, sir!”
“Good shit!” Erik smacked his shoulder and stood.
“Make sure all body armor is removed! Runners, do blood checks. Wipe your hands over the patient. If there’s blood on your hand, note where it is and inform a medic!” Erik yelled.
There are some healing formations, but that’s only to keep them stabilized and get them here.
Erik looked at the stack formations among the patients, buffing their stamina stats to two hundred percent.
“Help over here! Cardiac arrest!” a medic yelled.
Erik ran over to them, instinctively casting a clean spell.
“And they took Marco with them?” Head Foster asked Leonia Tolentino. The girl, still covered in the signs of battle, bowed as she stood in Head Foster’s office. Elder Cai Bo stood off to the side.
“Yes. I came to report to you immediately.”
After you talked to your father. Cai Bo didn’t feel amused knowing before of the Head. Instead, she had a hard time not biting her bottom lip. This had all gone so wrong.
Foster’s eyes shot back and forth, organizing his thoughts. “Did he know if the Black Phoenix Clan made any declarations?”
“No.”
“Of course they wouldn’t. They’re a power of the Seventh Realm, like royalty!” Foster threw up his arms and started pacing.
“Shall we press forward with our other attacks?” Cai Bo asked.
“That is what I am trying to figure out!” he snarled, veins popping out along his neck and head.
She waited for him to calm, taking a conspiratorial tone. “If the Black Phoenix Clan wishes to destroy us, they will. If we continue the attacks in the lower realms, it will at least look like we have the support of the Black Phoenix Clan.”
She saw the light catch in his eyes.
“Why would we not be worried!?” Foster asked, taking a neutral tone as he stared at Cai Bo.
“If we attack, we are confident. People might think we have their support.”
Head Foster grew silent as he stared at the floor. “That could work. What of Vuzgal?” he asked Leonia.
“The city ...” Her voice shook. “There’s nothing left.”
“The other sects won’t be happy. They spent blood to take that city,” Foster hissed, running a hand through the thin sheen of hair. They’d want loot and winnings. All they had so far were bodies.
“There ... there are dungeons located there now, filled with undead.”
“What do you mean?” Foster asked.
“It has dungeons in it, spread right across the city,” Leonia said.
“So maybe not all is lost. Undead dungeons. Are they large?”
“They cover a large area. The bodies are from the sects and the Black Phoenix Clan. They were sending people down into the dungeons. They did something and stopped them working I was told.”
Foster let out a sharp breath and shook his head.
“We all need a win to save face and to show others that we are not to be looked down on,” Cai Bo directed Foster.
“They must have been claiming the dungeon cores,” Foster muttered. “Cai Bo, continue the attacks across the realms. Reclaim our cities, assure our people. Get the head of the Tolentino clan to come here. Pull together gifts to sway the other sect leaders.”
He said it as if it was almost his idea. Cai Bo didn’t care. With this latest mess, her plans were on unstable ground. But I could use this to get close to the Phoenix clan.
“Yes, Sect Head.” Cai Bo bowed and indicated for the girl to follow her out of the room.
They exited, and Cai Bo grabbed Leonia’s shoulder and spun her around. “What was it like?”
“What?” Leonia seemed shocked and bobbed her head as she bowed to Cai Bo.
“What was it like fighting the people of Vuzgal?”
Leonia’s brow wrinkled. “They toyed with us. We thought there was a chance we could win, but they hadn’t even used half of their strength to deal with us. Their weapons hit the frigate with ease. Our camps were always within the range of their weapons. Every day they could have used their large metal tubes to attack us. They tore through our barriers while theirs stood unshakable.”
“What of the Black Phoenix forces, what happened?” Cai Bo snapped as the girl smiled and shook her head, her eyes unfocused.
“They ran into the real Vuzgal. They broke their wall and defenses in a matter of hours. They lost a third of their riders, half of their aerial mounts and they were still figuring out how many of the ground troops died.” Leonia’s eyes focused. “There was a rumor that one of the commanders died—people who are honored in the Seventh Realm, and they killed Seventh Realm fighters in the hundreds.”
She could see fear and incomprehension in Leonia’s eyes. She felt a chill that they’d poked such a power. A single city that could fight a force from the seventh realm and then simply disappear.
Just how much experience had they earned?
She frowned and clapped Leonia on the shoulder. “Get some rest. You may need it in the coming weeks.”
Leonia gave her a weak smile and walked away. As she left, Cai Bo was already planning. If she could use the Black Phoenix Clan’s honor, the loss of face that was sure to come with losing a fight so many realms below their power base. At the very least, it could give her another opening, a path of higher expansion.
What is the Willful Institute compared to the Black
Phoenix Clan?
She smiled to herself, excited as she sent messages to those in her faction.
Blaze sat down across from Domonos, sliding him a stamina tea across the table.
Domonos nodded in thanks, working on the papers that lie around him.
Blaze stepped over the picnic table style bench and sat down, leaning forward on his elbows. He twisted and turned his cup, staring at the black tea, feeling the steam on his face, watching the granules move at the bottom of the cup.
He breathed deeply, clearing his nose, and grabbed his cup, barely feeling the scalding, bitter tea. He forced it down over his tight, swollen throat. The acidic liquid hit his gut, but the sensation quickly dulled.
He dropped his head on his left hand, sighing and rubbing his eyes. Groups of soldiers sat around them, looking numb as they ate, or talking in hushed voices.
Tension hung in the air with people drooping over their food or drinks, consuming them mechanically.
They had lost Vuzgal. Vuzgal, a city full of hopes and dreams, a jewel of the fourth realm, a place where Alvans walked freely with few secrets.
Blaze’s gaze fell to his cup again, remembering the guild hall they’d had there. He remembered standing in the upper balcony, smiling as he drank a beer with Lin Lei, watching the revelry in the Guild Tavern as a group of their members banded together to play some bawdy tune; the beer flowed and there was dancing and laughter.
Blaze closed his eyes to the memory. He pictured the flash of the frigate’s main cannon as it fired on Vuzgal. The cracking of the barrier was like a punch to his gut as he’d stood there with his people, powerless to do anything but watch. The emptiness in the pit of his stomach turned hard as the hairs rose on the back of his neck and the wave of noise that had struck them before the breeze crossed the battlefield, shaking the trees around the reserves and the Adventurer’s Guild. Time was a blur. But he remembered Glosil’s orders.
“Pull back your forces immediately.”
“The Sects?” Blaze had answered, confused.
“They are no longer our concern. You and your forces are out in the open. If they find you, they’ll cut you down. Get moving. Now, Blaze!”
The pages shifted and Domonos dragged the metal cup across the wooden table, lifting it and taking another gulp.
The tea had grown cold, the bitterness coating his tongue.
Domonos stretched his neck. His aid took the papers he had finished with to a table behind them that had turned into a command table.
They worked quietly, subdued.
Blaze watched Domonos as he finished stretching.
The lines of command had worn into his features, adding several years, and giving him an aged and authoritative edge. So young, and with so much weight resting upon his shoulders. Blaze’s chest grew heavy. How many young men and women, who never knew the love of another, had laid down their lives in Vuzgal? How many would never see their children again, or leave a hole in their parents’, their friends’ hearts? War should be an old man’s sacrifice, not rain in the blood of the young.
Blaze shook his head, playing with his cup without seeing it.
“We’ll make it past this,” Domonos said.
Blaze took a deep breath, regaining clarity as he straightened his back and looked at Domonos. “Morale is at an all-time low. We lost Vuzgal.” Blaze still choked on that word. “We have hundreds of wounded. The sects and this new force, the Black Phoenix Clan, will be searching for us. Who the hell are they, anyway?”
“We don’t know, my—” Domonos cleared his throat. “Director Elan is looking into it. Right now, we need to recover as fast as possible. We’ll lie low for a few days, let things settle. Then we’ll begin sending our people back to Alva and the backup dungeons in the lower realms. We’re stronger there. With the reduced mana, their power will be a fraction of what it is up here.”
“And that airship will have to burn through mana stones to stay aloft.”
“Yes.”
Blaze nodded. “So, retreat to the lower realms, bide our time, find out who our enemy is and train?”
“The greatest asset we have is time—time to increase our cultivation, make more weapons and improve them, to train people.”
Domonos fell silent. Blaze took another drink of his cold tea and grimaced.
“I wish there had been something we could do. All that training, preparation, teleporting up to the fourth realm without being discovered… We were right there.”
“You don’t think I know that? We bled them for months on those walls. They paid with their lives for every fucking inch.” Domonos hit the table. His cup jumped and spilled tea as he glared at Blaze.
Blaze’s stomach twisted. “Domonos…” Blaze raised a placating hand, tilting it palm up.
Domonos’ snarl died on his lips and he crumpled, a lost look on his face as his eyes drifted to the tea staining the wooden table.
“I’m sorry Blaze. I just—”
Blaze reached out and patted his arm. “We’re in this together.” He gripped his forearm, then pulled his hand back.
“Four days and we head to the lower realms. And we will train and cultivate. When we meet the sects or that clan again, we’ll show them the true strength of a nation. Of Alva.”
Domonos sat up straighter with iron in his bones and eyes. “We might falter, but Alva will not fall.”
“Not as long as we draw breath. We may lose ten times, a hundred times, but we are Alvans. We will work together, and we will learn and grow stronger together. These sects are nothing but individuals fighting for benefits. We fight for one another.”
Blaze held up his hand, grounding his elbow on the table.
“Together,” Domonos agreed. His elbow rested on the stain on the table as the two men clasped hands.
Author’s Note
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The Ten Realms will continue in The Eighth Realm
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[1]Dice is plural, die is singular
Seventh Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 8) Page 77