Chapter 456: The Dragon Triad I

I put my hand on my hips, staring at the people who’d turned my admittedly unimpressive little store into their home.

How did I fix this? How did I gently get everyone out? How -

“This your place?” Nina asked, giving it a critical eye.

“Yeah. Supposed to rent this floor, but people are squatting.”

Really, ‘floor’ was being extremely generous here. It was the business room at the bottom of a crowded apartment building. Even here, Arachne’s ever-present threads snuck through the area.

“What do we do now?” She asked.

I pursed my lips.

“I’m not sure. Ask the guard?”

Nina rolled her eyes at me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to an alley.

“They’ll never come. Just fob you off with some excuse. Only time I’ve ever seen the coppers here was the catch-fire plague ripping through the town. Short of that, they’ll never come.” Nina’s emotions bled into her words, a complex mix. Relief and bitterness, disappointment and pain.

I was oddly stumped. I seriously doubted flashing my Sentinel badge would do the trick here. There came a point where people were so far removed from authority, that authority ceased to have any meaning. The emperor himself could show up, and…

Wait, no, they’d probably leave for him, on account of all the soldiers with pointy spears near him.

“You’re the expert, what would you do?” I asked the kitsune.

I wasn’t too proud to admit I was out of my depth. That she had more experience than me in this area. Admitting that I didn’t know something was the first step in correcting the issue.

She looked startled.

“Me, the expert?” She asked in disbelief.

“Yup! You know more than me, and it’s just us, therefore, you’re the expert!”

Nina looked unconvinced by my reasoning, but shrugged it off.

One moment Nina was standing in front of me, the next a heavy-looking thug was. Vicious scars crossed his face, and he wore a blue headband and an open vest.

Nina was wrapping her tails around her waist under the illusion, and gave me a little nod.

“Did you up as well. Remember to swagger.” She said, walking back and forth a few times in the alley to properly get the gait down.

Her transformation was impressive, and I was reminded that kitsunes were natural tricksters. She swaggered out into the street, and I did my best to mimic her walk, trying to put on my best sneer.

If that even translated out through the illusion Nina had layered over me.

This was fun!

Less fun was the way people flinched and cowered when they saw us. Fortunately it was only a short walk to my clinic, and Nina slammed the door open.

“Alright ya pissants! Clear out! This here’s the property of the Dragon Triad! Fuck off or die!” She screamed, kicking one person in the face and making a ruckus.

[The World Around Me] was a fucking lovely skill, and I could not get enough of it. I could enjoy the show that was going on without concern.

One dude got up in Nina’s face, trying to look all tough.

“Oh yeah?” He said.

Nina grabbed him by the throat, drew her ‘sword’, and ran him through, stabbing again and again. Blood dramatically sprayed the back wall in great gouts, and the rest of the people were already fleeing through the open, unguarded door, grabbing what meager possessions they could.

In under a minute, the place had been cleared out. I eyed Nina’s work.

“Blood doesn’t spray like that, you know.”

“What!” She protested. “It totally does!”

I shook my head.

“Not at all. Maybe - maybe - if it was a decapitation you’d get a spray like that, but not for a stabbing like you did. Luckily nobody noticed, and that nobody got ‘splashed’ with the blood.”

Nina bounced on her feet, dissipating the illusion.

“Oh! That! No, I planned that! I made sure there was nobody behind the illusion I made, and that the blood didn’t go all over! Nothing for people to check!”

“Your blood’s not flowing either.” I pointed out. “You’ve got it dripping down the walls - too slowly - but it's basically vanishing once it hits the floor. The pool isn’t expanding.”

Nina dropped the rest of the illusions, bouncing over to close the door.

“Fine.” She complained, switching the subject to something not focused on her shortcomings like all teenagers did. “What do we do now?”

I gestured around the clinic, filled with crud that not even the poorest and most desperate were willing to bring with them.

“Now, my little minion, you get to clean the place.”

Nina groaned and called me names as I chuckled. I was tempted to make a chair, sit down, and read or work on some spellbooks, but no. That would make me a Bad Boss.

I let her stew on her own for a few minutes, picking up rags that were more disintegrated than whole, before hiking up my tunic and joining her in the work.

Hard work was good for a person, but there was only so much hard work I wanted to do. Once the bulk items were out, I used the Jiwa rune for [Immaculate Purification] to purge and cleanse the room, transforming it from grubby and smelling strongly of piss, to a modest clinic once again.

The structural supports of the place were starting to go. Someone had carved away at them, and they were going to be a bear to replace. Fortunately, not my job… although I doubted it’d be easy to get the [Slumlord] who owned the place to do proper, major, expensive repairs.

Sometimes, it was so frustrating trying to work here. It felt like everything was conspiring against me, making it hard to work here.

I reminded myself that’s why I was here. I had unlimited advantages and privilege. I could get out of any problem. I could apply pressure at the highest levels. I could easily defend myself. I had multiple independent streams of income.

Even I struggled to work here. Remove any one of my advantages, and it became clear why the poorest parts of town were hard up on healers - among many other things - which made my presence all the more valuable.

I dusted my hands off once the spell was done - more as a show of things, than any cleaning that needed to be done, the rune had seen to that - as Nina’s mouth dropped open.

“What!?” She squeaked.

I gave her a grin.

“While I’ve got you for the day, interested in learning magic or medicine?”

Nina’s eyes were shining, but she hesitated.

“All due respect, can I be learnin’ magic and still be a Valkyrie?”

I nodded.

“Oh yeah! Did you know that Iona’s technically a spellsword? Her third class has a few neat skills in that direction. The Valkyries even had a bunch of pure mages! It’s the mindset, the mentality that makes a Valkyrie, not the skills or classes.”

Nina gave me a brisk nod.

“Alright! Yes please!” She said.

I grinned.

“Well, first I need to teach you your job here, so you can help me out.”

Nina nodded so hard her tails started to gently wave. I teleported out my big book of signatures, and flipped it open to the third page.

The first had been filled out when someone scrawled their name in huge letters, eating up 2/3rds of the page, and the second page had been ripped out when someone tried to do a runner with it. My work here was not exactly off to auspicious starts, and that was before I’d abandoned the place for almost a month.

“Alright. Healing clinic. People come in, get healed, sign their name in my book - more practically, make their mark, most people here can’t read or write - then leave.”

Nina cocked her head.

“No payment?” She asked in disbelief.

I chuckled with how strongly I was reminded of a certain friend of mine.

“You’d get along well with Amber.” I said as a non-sequitur. “But no. I get tax breaks or something per signature. Problem is, a lot of people skip out. Want to make this place look nice?”

I blinked, and the room transformed.

Nothing big. Nothing ostentatious. Just some simple artwork on the walls - copied from the inn we were staying in - and smoothing over a burn on one wall.

I tilted my head at her, and she looked embarrassed.

“Beggin’ your pardon. But I figure this is the right level of fancy to not attract the wrong type of attention. Plus, uh… I haven’t seen anything fancier before.” She admitted.

My heart broke a little at that.

“Tell you what. My mentor, Night, is still around, and I’ve been meaning to have dinner and catch up with him. I was thinking of bringing you along anyway, and you might get to see what it’s like.”

I thought about it for a bit.

“Honestly, in my experience, I think the best thing to have is space. Art comes after that, but after a minimal point, a table’s a table. Right, we also need some signs outside, advertising free healing.”

Nina poked her head out and back in.

“Done! Magic?” She said, sitting down in front of me with criss-crossed legs, looking up with big eyes.

“Magic!” I said. “Now, properly, what I think you’re asking about is called wizardry. I’m not nearly as good at explaining the bare bone fundamentals as I am with medicine, but I’ll try. In essence, the System gives skills that lets us trace runes originally made by [Rune Smiths] or [Rune Masters]...”

The first client of the day - month, my treacherous brain reminded me - walked into the clinic. Younger man, [Artisan - 166] tagged.

I gave Nina a significant look, and she stared blankly at me. I gave a deep, obvious sigh, and refocused.

“Hi! Need healing?”

“It burns when I pee.” He bluntly told us.

I could just poke him and heal him, but everything Nina was doing with illusions was getting me in a mood. I made a little [Kaleidoscope] butterfly, the golden glow lighting up the room, and [Imbued] it with my best ‘heal everything’ image I had, then sent it on its way.

My eyes widened at the insane cost, and I wanted to facepalm.

I had to pre-load butterflies with all the mana needed to heal an issue when [Imbuing] like this. My full heal included decapitation, among other issues.

I’d just blown 100k mana on a simple bacterial infection.

I was just not thinking today. I stuck the memory of the interaction on the front page of both my ‘full medicine book’ and ‘everything to do with [Imbue]’ book inside my [Astral Archives], a red flag not to make the same mistake.

Fundamentally, it worked though, and that’s all that mattered.

“Thanks! Please make your mark here.” I opened my big book of signatures up, offering up a quill.

He wasn’t even listening, already halfway to the door.

Nina rushed him, grabbing the man and slamming him against the wall.

I lifted an eyebrow. Impressive, given the relative stat and level differences. Nina was almost pure bluff here, and I really didn’t want this to turn into a fight.

“Listen here you stupid fat fuck.” Nina bared her fangs in his face. “Dawn here’s nice enough to heal without asking for shit, except that you kindly put your name in her little book. Now, are you going to do that, or do I have to rip your fucking hand off to make a nice little mark?”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Nina was doing something clever with shadows and darkness, making her look a little bigger, meaner, and feral, sharpening her teeth and lengthening her claws, while also giving the place a suitably dour mood.

The dude nodded, Nina released him, and I got the fastest signature I’d ever seen before he fled out the door, muttering curses on the two of us.

“Well. That was effective.” I said. Nina lit up, her ears flicking. I landed on an obvious, hilarious possibility.

“Did you just level from that?” I asked.

“Yup!” She proudly told me.

I snorted with amusement. That counted as mugging someone? Well, she had used the threat of violence to extract things from people. Good enough for the System, and ethical enough for me and Iona!

I wondered if we could set something up with some of my friends to have Nina ‘mug’ them. It wouldn’t be perfect experience, but we only needed to get her to 128 to reset her classes.

Nina looked so proud of herself. I ruffled her hair.

“Good work.”

Nina being here, knowing what’s what and who’s who made things much easier, and my big book of signatures was actually getting quite a collection!

“You know,” Nina said as she put her hands on her hips, watching the latest patient leave. “I’m startin’ to see why people make such a fuss over this. This is nice.”

I made a mental note to tell Iona. She’d be thrilled that her squire was enjoyin’ - enjoying

- the nuts and bolts of being a Valkyrie. It wasn’t all epic battles and thrilling escapades. Sometimes, just sometimes, it was about the dull, mundane work that had to be done.

Things were going well, which meant it was time for things to go to shit.

A few [Toughs] of the Dragon Triad walked through our door. The real deal to what Nina had pretended to be earlier on, the same idiots who’d tried extorting me before.

This nonsense again. I was debating trying to pull a Night and seeing how far I could throw them into Bloodmoon Bay. Probably not too far, but if I carried them over the water then dropped them, maybe they’d get the hint.

Unlikely, given their extra-thick skulls, but I could hope!

[Warrior - 290]

[Warrior - 256]

Not exactly the most threatening of levels.

The bigger one cracked an evil smile at me, while the smaller one leered. I wanted to roll my eyes at how bad it all was.

Would that really -

Actually, yes. Yes, it would. If I didn’t have my levels and training, I’d be a little concerned. Stuck in a room with no real escape, with two people larger, stronger, higher leveled and better armed, and more willing to do violence?

Nina, bless her brave little heart, was standing tall, an illusion over her tails hiding how they were nervously swishing behind her.

“Well well well, look who we have here.” Little thug lasciviously looked us up and down, trying to strip us with his eyes. “A little healer’s come scurrying out of her hole.”

Big thug held out a hand, cross-checking little thug’s approach.

“Whoa. Prolectus. Be nice. We’re here to protect the poor little healer’s place from getting ransacked and destroyed. Nobody wants the place destroyed, yeah?” He said.

Nina sauntered forward, with the invincible air only teenagers had. She shot them a cocky grin.

“Yeah, nobody wants War Sentinel Dawn’s place destroyed. Be a real shame.” Nina poked the little one’s chest.

He grabbed her neck and hoisted her up with a snarl.

Things moved very quickly.

“Listen here, you little-” He said.

I was already starting to move as he lashed his hand out.

Everyone on Pallos was super. It didn’t mean we were all made equal, or had close to the same order of magnitude on our stats. By the time he’d gotten his last word out, I’d flown across the room, gotten above him, and was pointing straight down.

[The World Around Me] helpfully showed what was beneath my target. That my fingers were in line with mostly solid stone, dirt, and a sewage pipe.

Nina had spent years starving and malnourished. Iona and I were working on slowly building her back up to a ‘normal’ baseline, but it was one of the few things that I couldn’t snap my fingers and fix. It was innate to her System image backend. The only cure was food, rest, and exercise, over several months, just to undo the worst of the damage.

It very neatly made Nina a patient of mine. Not anything I’d deliberately aimed for, nothing like a trap, but she was under my care nonetheless. I could lift a knife in defense of her - and a brute lifting her by the neck, trying to strangle her and snap her spine, absolutely qualified in every single way.

I was officially recognized as a Sentinel again. Clean up and disposal was no longer a huge hurdle.

I didn’t want to hurt people. I didn’t want to fight, to kill.

It’d be so easy to fire a [Nova Lance] through his brain, vaporizing the parts responsible for consciousness right before annihilating his brain stem and severing his soul from the mortal coil.

The simplest thing ever, cleanly removing my problem.

I did my best to preserve life whenever I could. It was fundamental to being a healer, to my own being. It was a significant part of why Ochi still tore me up. Could I have done better? Could I have found a solution that didn’t involve a massacre?

I could say I’d tried my hardest there.

Here and now? I could try quite a few things before resorting to lethal options. There was some argument that it was more humane to simply kill the person, that chopping them up into pieces was far crueler than simply killing them.

We were in a world filled with magic. Any problem short of death could be cured and fixed.

Death was the end, and life was important.

Two [Nova Lances] shot out from my index fingers, carving through the [Tough’s] shoulders like a hot knife through butter, slicing his arms off. The room exploded with heat and light. I’d angled things, and he was skinny enough that I was also able to lop off his legs at the knees.

My beams were so hot, so powerful, that the entire operation was completely bloodless. The dude had a puzzled look on his face as he slid forward off his leg stumps, unsure why his limbs weren’t responding anymore.

His grip on Nina’s neck loosened, freeing the kitsune.

I didn’t like killing, and I’d carefully preserved his life.

I still felt immense satisfaction from seeing Nina’s knee squarely land in his face.