Chapter 8: Who are you? (1/2)
”Now… what should I do with them?” Muttering this question under his nose, Layn confirmed that no one was moving so far. Scanning the area with his eyes, he could see that out of about eleven people in the group, four were missing. Or rather, while everyone was standing and staring with bulging eyes at Layn, the four of the victims of the firedog's flames could only lay still on the ground.
Once Layn's sight swept past Irea, he noticed a huge, burnt mark on her arm. Stretching from her wrist as far as to the side of her waist and shoulder, it was clearly the source of the anguish written all over her face.
Taking a deep breath, Layn closed his eyes. Using the proper conducting element in his tool, he absorbed the remaining part of the refined energy from the air. Cutting a small wound open on his vein, he then extracted a thin strand made purely out of the stone dust, before connecting it to his blood flow.
Layn took a step forward.
”Kaka… who? Who are you?” After the momentary buzz, Layn's translation spell fixed itself. Supplied with a fresh, abundant stream of mana, arcana's potential instantly spiked. For as long as Layn could maintain the spell, he wouldn't have any further problems communicating with others.
Layn took another step. Noticing the extremely cautious and focused look in the ancients' leader eyes, he swept his rope to the side, only to let it curl around his body. In a moment, this simple rope wrapped itself around Layn's torso. The energy around him constantly decreased, absorbed through the rope to his bloodstream.
”I'm Layn.” Leaving the job of translating his words to the spell, Layn took one last step. Reaching with his hand, he gently grabbed the fingers of the girl's injured hand.
'Recreate the symposium…'
The weirder the way to call a complicated spell, the easier it was for the modern caster to recall its structure. By imagining a hall full of academics in the sanitised suits, Layn could see all four rings of this fourth tier spell. Written atop the white cloth of the doctors' aprons, they served only a single purpose.
Pushing his newly obtained energy through those rings, Layn allowed it to accumulate for a bit, before suddenly opening his squinted eyes. With all the four images falling on top of each other once this mental image collapsed, the complicated structure of the spell clicked.
”Wha…” As soon as the slight shine of the healing spell appeared all over Irea's wound, the leader of her group jumped forward. The eyes of the girl herself widened in shock at first, only to widen even more once she realised what was going on.
With the warrior approaching along with his unsheathed spear, Layn observed the changes going on on the girl's battered skin. In a set of motions too small to notice individually, her body seemed to repair itself. As if each of her bare cells suddenly exploded with energy, they would split and divide and split and divide…
By the time the tip of the spear started to threaten Layn's safety, the spell reached the critical mass. With all the flesh tissue now regenerated, the remaining energy of this relatively strong arcana exploded, filling the girl with its physical manifestation.
”STOP!” In one instant, the girl pushed her hand forward. Grabbing the spear right behind its blade, she violently turned her body around, snapping the tip off the weapon. But that didn't stop her leader's lunge.
Pang!