Viridian Gate Online: Schism: A litRPG Adventure (The Heartfire Healer Series Book 2)

by E. C. Godhand

  Corvus lit a thurible with incense. The smoke would reveal those in stealth. We saw their approach now as shadowy figures crouched on their heels with weapons drawn. Shiraz exhaled slowly and extended her hands, casting ice on the ground around the traps to slip them up and slow them with Numb. Rainer stood behind the traps, bardiche clasped firmly in his thick, meaty hands, and hyped himself up by bouncing on his heels and occasionally hitting himself in the chest with his fist.

  I took my place behind all of them and gave my orders: Defend and thin the edges. Slow them by any means. Crowd control as much as possible. Take out the ranged and stragglers and don’t let them past. If Thanatos called us to Morsheim, let our deaths take twenty seconds versus ten to buy them that much longer to flee. Punish them for every second they failed to kill us. Make them remember us with regret.

  The first wave started.

  Corvus’ miasma revealed ten rogues: seven melee with daggers and short swords and three archers. Judia’s explosive trap knocked one into the wall like a rag doll. The others flinched at the deafening boom and shielded their eyes from the light. Judia followed up by pinning one of their archers to the ground with an arrow sunk deep into his foot. Another rogue let out an ear-piercing scream as he backed up into a bear trap that snapped on his ankle. They were easy prey to finish off.

  Shiraz fired an ice lance into another archer’s chest. The woman was tougher than we thought and drew her bow even as ice encapsulated her skin in a glistening sheen. Eventually she froze mid-pull, leaving the arrow frozen to the string as if hanging in the air. A follow-up shot shattered her like glass.

  Two more slipped on the ice and needed a moment to gain traction. Four rogues, blades drawn, rushed the line. Rainer cleaved three of them with his bardiche in a massive swing that nearly reached from wall to wall in the narrow space. The fourth ducked in time to evade the damage as his friends were sliced across the navel. Another swing back from Rainer cut them in twain. Their bodies fell to the ground and disappeared in a puff of light.

  Corvus punished the rogue for his dexterity with a chain around his wrists. They pulled the man to them and delicately extracted his kidney with their massive scalpel. The rogue’s eyes widened as he gazed upon his own organ, then rolled back in his head. He, too, disappeared into the light.

  Two remained. Judia and Shiraz wore them down one at a time, keeping the rogues rooted in place by ice or a deft shot to the foot to prevent them from getting close enough to damage us, while Corvus cast their chains to pull the remaining archer into Rainer’s cleave.

  They wanted me. Badly. The rogue, even if he couldn’t stab me like he wanted, would toss grenades. Although Lenity absorbed at minimum fifty damage, and with my spell power it spared me at least a hundred, between him and the archer, the shield didn’t last long and popped easily. I had about fifteen seconds of the Sola Fide debuff until I could refresh the spell. Still, that was one heal I didn’t have to cast, so I could focus on keeping my teammates alive from the splash damage.

  Shiraz helped by casting Rime Scale on me when my shield dropped and on Rainer when it was up. A crystalline hoarfrost encapsulated us in magical armor. This rotation seemed to work, until finally the last two were dead.

  In the second wave, ten more took their place.

  Running around Rowanheath healing a raid of twenty-five had filled my first miracle bar. Killing ten rogues and healing the group, with all their stuns as heroic feats, had nearly filled the second. The problem we ran into was that now that the traps didn’t slow them, we took more damage, and I had to heal more. My Spirit was running low. And with Shiraz having to fire more frostlances and her ice spray, she was running low on magic as well. Rainer did well enough for himself, managing his Stamina. His bardiche attacks were slow but smooth, and smooth was fast. If we could keep mitigating the number of people on him at any given time through crowd control and eliminating the ranged fighters, he’d do fine.

  Rainer charged one man with his shoulder and made the rogue drop to his knee. He swung the axe in an uppercut to hook it onto his neck, then stomped on the man’s head to finish the blow. He hooked another with the curve of his blade and tossed the man behind him for Corvus to chain him and pull him onto their scalpel.

  I shielded Judia. The light of the shield lit up the dim tunnels well enough to see. We couldn’t risk the rogues getting the upper hand in the darkness. She caught an arrow out of the air, spun, and fired it back with a leaping shot at the archer.

  We were doing well enough. The group had to have gotten good and lost in the crossroads of tunnels ahead. But cutting down the rogues as a team, Shiraz got cocky. She popped her frost armor on herself, which I had learned to not give any attention, but she tilted her head to the sky and waved her fingers to her side as if conjuring the rain. A blizzard formed above us, a swirling white cloud of cold that consumed our enemies in the narrow space. It became hard to see through the flurries of snow blinding us, but that meant the enemy ranged couldn’t see us either. Seven rogues were frozen to the floor, still and shivering like statues of ice. Rainer took advantage to advance the line and shatter them under his axe in furious swings. Judia provided cover fire with a salvo of arrows.

  But that put her out of Stamina. Rainer ran out of Stamina, too. Shiraz and I were both parched and low on Spirit. Shiraz had to pace herself. This was a battle of attrition, and we’d lose her if she kept telling everyone to gank her first like that.

  I placed my hand over my holy book and bowed my head and prayed for a miracle. Light swirled in streams through the cloud of blue magic, like falling stars, and landed on my friends. My Divinity meter emptied as the magic poured out of me and replenished everyone’s Health and secondary resources by 50%.

  We had a second chance now. Rainer took it and knocked people down left and right into each other like bowling pins. He swung so hard he lodged his bardiche in a man. When he tried to kick the man off, the other rogues used the opportunity to whale on him with their blades. I had to focus my healing on him. I had to. His Health dropped steadily, and we couldn’t afford to lose him.

  But a chiseled Imperial rogue took the opportunity to chuck a spearhead he used as a dagger at Shiraz, interrupting her blizzard and shattering her ice armor to pieces. The hunk of iron lodged in her chest. I tossed a strong HoT on her, not daring to take my focus off the tank for even a second, but the Imperial leapfrogged over his buddy and yanked the spear out of Shiraz’s back.

  She was dead before her body hit the ground.

  A sharp pain caught in my chest. With her DPS and slowdown gone, it was only a matter of time. I couldn’t do anything for her. I had to focus on the living.

  Corvus adjusted their position and met the rogue in a puff of smoke with their scalpel across the man’s neck. Both Shiraz and the rogue disappeared in a burst of light.

  “Judia!” I called out. “Can you cover both?”

  Our archer nodded and did her best. She had to focus on quick draws versus her volleys, which took more time, and had to spare time to adjust her direction. The falcon did his best to annoy the rogues with his sharp talons, aiming for their eyes.

  This put more strain on Rainer though. The man finally decided it was better to keep the man on his polearm and beat the fools with their friend, until finally the damage loosened the corpse’s grip on his axe. Corvus tried to adjust as well, but they could only maintain one miasma buff at a time. We had to keep the anti-stealth one running.

  While I could help replenish Health and Spirit and Stamina, there was nothing I could do when Judia ran out of arrows. She reached back to the quiver at her hip, found nothing, and flailed to search her inventory for any others. She caught an arrow out of the air and fired that back, but a dagger was headed her way.

  Her falcon dove in and took the hit. Judia let out an ear-piercing wail and picked up its broken body in her arms. I healed the bird. I shielded Judia. I told her to run.

  The rogues tried to follow. Rainer grinned and wouldn�
�t let them. He lived his best life, focusing only on killing the asshole in front of him with each blow of his axe. One rogue lost an arm. Another got the axe stuck in his chest, and Rainer beat the third guy with the second. Hack, hack, hack became an echoing battle cry that screamed off the walls of the tunnels and kept attention on him and off Judia, off me, for a minute. Corvus finished them off as best they could, and I kept everyone alive.

  A third wave showed up in the form of ten more. I hoped they would give up, seeing twenty of their allies fallen, but delivering the last priest of Rowanheath to the rebellion must’ve been too enticing a quest to pass up.

  We no longer had anyone protecting us from ranged attacks.

  It was only a matter of time now.

  Corvus did their best to step up to the task. They threw their chain at an archer aiming at Rainer. A rogue caught it around their short sword and pulled my friend past Rainer and into the crowd of sharp blades and unforgiving men.

  I had to heal our tank over my friend.

  I had to.

  I repeated to myself that I had no choice in the matter to keep my heart from breaking. Corvus didn’t give them the satisfaction of screaming as they used the Plague Doctor like a pincushion for their blades.

  Rainer now had eight rogues on him. When he swung to the left, his right flank was open, and vice versa. I backed up into a wall to protect my own flank from backstabs.

  “Run,” called Rainer over his shoulder as he kept the rogues from swarming me as well.

  I swallowed hard and shook my head. “I’m not leaving you,” I said as I kept my heals up on him.

  Rainer grinned and gave me a wink. His muscles rippled with tension as he shifted into a berserker rage. Acuity told me he had a 25% attack boost at the cost of a 25% defense penalty. And he took every advantage. He feared no brawl and let his body become littered with fresh scars from the wounds I healed. When one of the rogues pushed him, he shoved back with twice as much force. Four were dead within seconds. Three comrades hesitated, learning the lesson not to get in the Risi’s way, but they paid for their hesitation in blood. The remaining men speckled so many DoTs to damage Rainer over time though, even my healing couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. The green-skinned Risi glistened red by the end of the battle as he fell to one knee, still swinging, and eventually returned to the Light like the rest of our party.

  I held up my holy text like a shield and cast Lenity. The last men caught their breath, exchanged glances, and turned to face me as one. The tension left their shoulders, and one cracked his neck side to side. One tossed his dagger and pierced my book. The third, a Murk Elf, tossed his dagger and popped my shield, then rushed in and appeared in front of me in a blink. He wrapped an arm around the back of my neck as if holding me still and pressed his other dagger into my kidney. He switched and jammed it into my collarbone, then sharply yanked on my ear to tear the skin.

  “Come on, little sister,” he said sweetly. “Tell us which direction your friends went.”

  My lip quivered as warm blood dribbled down my chin. I gave him a toothy red grin.

  His eye twitched. He frowned and twisted the dagger into my subclavian vein. I flinched and cried out as the vessel opened and stained my robes. The poison on the blade ate away at my Health.

  “Answer me!” he demanded.

  This man was much higher level than the others we had faced. Akin to the man who’d attacked me in the alleyway. I laughed. I had to. It was absurd how my actions didn’t seem to change things, but that didn’t mean they were meaningless. If I had stayed behind in New York, I couldn’t have saved anyone from the asteroid. As a doctor, I ultimately couldn’t save everyone from Death. He had the final say, always. I couldn’t save everyone from Cian’s plague, but it mattered to the people I did save. I couldn’t stop the Dawn Elves from being supremacists or the rebellion from rebelling against the Empire, but the people I fed, the people I healed, the people I inspired to keep living another day, that mattered. I had to believe that mattered.

  The Affka helped dull the pain.

  “Say something, dammit,” he hissed, pulling the dagger out and slashing across the bridge of my nose, as if I wouldn’t cut off my own nose to spite my face. I fell against his chest and took another stab to the gut from a hidden blade in his wrist. My Ubiquity shield procced. I had only ten seconds left to endure this and then the Light would claim me, too.

  “Alright, alright, I’ll tell you,” I whispered. He leaned in close.

  “Can you keep a secret?” I rasped.

  He nodded and held me steady. “Yes, of course.”

  “So can I.” I chuckled.

  I prayed Thanatos handled me gently. My last thought was on my experience bar, and how I was only a sliver way from level fifteen and the power to burn everyone here in the same holy light that consumed me.

  One Night Awaits Us All

  I sat bolt upright from the strangest dream in my on-call room back in Manhattan. It had been days since I played any video games, but my mind still thought in mechanics. And no wonder; the hospital had been dark and freezing ever since the generator went out. I wiped the sweat off my brow and pondered the blood on my hands. I know we had long run out of gloves and blood-borne pathogens weren’t the highest priority, but I must’ve been exhausted to fall asleep without at least washing up first.

  Outside the door, I heard a commotion of medical personnel scrambling and another Code Blue called. I don’t think I slept long. I never did. But that’d make it the third code that night. I kicked off the wool blanket and pulled on my white lab coat.

  When I opened the door, the dusty hallway was empty, lit by the cold light of a snowy Manhattan afternoon. My breath came out like smoke. It was all a dream, but I couldn’t figure out which part. That I somehow managed to hitch a ride on the lifeboat that was Viridian Gate Online, or that an asteroid was plummeting towards Earth and the world went to hell in a panic?

  I followed the familiar hallways to the emergency department. What normally should’ve been bustling was also empty and just as cold. Broken doors that creaked in the wind let in wafts of snowflakes. I knelt by a pile and felt it in my fingers. It didn’t melt. It wasn’t snow.

  It was ash.

  I stood and felt the blood rush from my head. I checked the morgue next. The patients there were in black bags. I unzipped one and saw a burn victim. I couldn’t recognize their face to know if it was from the attack on Rowanheath or the asteroid that sent walls of flames around Earth. No one survived in the end. I went to each of my patients and apologized to them in whispers. I did what I could. Even if I wasn’t successful, I was worth saving, right? It was worth leaving them alone in the end to help others, wasn’t it?

  I backtracked the way my chaplain friend Retta had taken me what felt like so long ago. When I found the bones of the nurse in the stairwell, I sprinted past the surgical unit and took the twisting hallways to the chapel. I needed to see her. I needed to see some memory of her.

  The dusty chapel, now made of stone, was lit by moonlight through the broken stained glass. Of all the places in the hospital, for once, it wasn’t empty like usual. Several priests wearing the robes of the initiates to the Temple of Areste filled the pews, their heads draped in white veils that reminded me of ghosts. They turned as one, slowly, when I threw open the doors, and watched me with covered eyes as I marched down the aisle.

  Retta wasn’t here. But leading the congregation of blind priests was a statue of Gaia, stained with black soot like the blight that snaked through people’s veins. I held my breath. Gaia’s realm wasn’t just becoming infected; so was Gaia herself. I touched the statue’s face with my bloodied hands and left red trails on her cheeks like tears.

  The statue sprung to life. She slipped one hand around my waist and pulled me close to her, then touched her other hand to the Divine Spark on my chest.

  “You will birth a hundred Healers to replace the hundred murdered,” she whispered.

 
; The statue of Gaia spun me around to face the congregation. The priests started to bleed red through their white shrouds. The cloth eroded away at their eyes and mouth as they screamed and reached for me.

  I woke from death with a gasp as if my spirit plunged into my body. Above me I saw a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds and a brilliant sun. It was morning. I was on a wagon that wasn’t moving. A vulture circled above me. No, not a vulture: a falcon.

  Something soft and warm was behind me and I leaned back into it to rest. I was safe. Even if I felt nauseated and dizzy and sore, like I was inhabiting a decayed corpse come to life, like I did when I was infected with the Curse of Serth-Rog, I was safe.

  I checked my quest list and flinched to see my main quest, Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, had failed.

  <<<>>>

  Quest FAILED: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

  “Too much mercy is helplessness. Too much severity is oppression.” So the Sophitian saying goes. Your temple believes they have found the perfect balance, but Dark Priest Cian disagrees. You turned him in to the Inquisition, but he has escaped. What’s more, you have lost track of the holy artifact, the Orb of Antishade, that you were sent to fetch. There will be repercussions for this.

  Quest Class: Rare, Class-Based

  Quest Difficulty: Hard

  Success: Return the holy artifact to the Inquisition or the Temple of Areste

  Failure: Fail to return the artifact within (3) days; Suffer excommunication

  Reward: 15,000 XP; 1,000 Renown; Increased reputation with the Inquisition or the Temple of Areste

  <<<>>>

  I dismissed the quest and scoffed. The implications of my dream were clear. I had always known in my heart that Jericho sent me to die when Justiciar Olivia sent me after Cian. Just like all the other priests I had saved back then. He was using Cian to rid himself of followers disloyal to his moneymaking cult. Many good priests would be disloyal to a man like that by virtue of being decent people. If they believed Areste to be an Aspect of Gaia, like the Theologian Hector had, and Gaia hated people dying in her name while following the teachings of someone else, then my mission was clear, quest or not. I lost out on a lot of renown and experience, but that didn’t matter to me anymore. Gaia herself had tasked me with divine purpose.