Good Thing You Came

"Cough, cough, cough!" Harvey coughed up a mouthful of black phlegm. He tried to sit up, but he was completely helpless—after all, a person who had only regenerated their upper torso and hadn't even finished growing back their spine lacked the essential parts needed to sit up. Faint slivers of warm light filtered into the slits of his eyelids. Harvey slowly opened his eyes and saw Chikala healing him. Orange flames burned on the beastman's sole remaining right hand. As the orange flames continually scorched down, Harvey's flesh and viscera gradually regenerated within the fire. "The snow..." the necromancer rasped in a hoarse voice, "stopped?" "It has already melted," the beastman answered. "Spring has returned." Harvey tilted his head and saw a vast expanse of azure sky and white clouds, with lingering patches of snow pressing down upon lush green grass. A brisk breeze blew across the plain, sending ripples rolling through the sea of grass. "I should have turned entirely into an undead creature, even my blood transformed into corpse blood," Harvey asked out of curiosity. "How did you bring me back?" "However you turned into an undead, that was how I turned you back into a living being," Chikala said. Harvey froze slightly, then came to a sudden realization. "My eye?" In order to turn into an undead creature, Harvey had plucked out his own eyeball and swapped it with Alice's. Thus, the only part of his body that had remained uncontaminated by negative necromantic energy was the eyeball he had gouged out. Harvey blinked and realized his left eye indeed had yet to regenerate, but the vision in his right eye was crisp and clear. Even so, for Chikala to forcibly reconstruct him into a living being from a single eyeball was practically on par with regenerating from a drop of blood. Such healing capability... Yet the necromancer did not press him on this point. Instead, he asked an even more crucial question: "Why save me?" If Chikala could regenerate Harvey from scratch starting from an eyeball, the beastman could certainly have restored his own limbs as well. Earlier, Chikala had incinerated one of his own arms and both legs with Flesh Conflagration. In theory, he should have prioritized healing himself. Yet he was still crippled, having poured all of his sorcery power into healing Harvey. More importantly, Chikala had no reason to save him. They had never been on the same side. The only reason Chikala had traveled with them in the first place was that he had surrendered as a slave in the Dead City, betraying the Four Pillar Cult to survive and becoming their Sanctuary-level slave. Now that Alice had burned down to ashes, the slave contract was void, and Chikala was a free beastman again. Kicking them while they were down would have been expected of him, while leaving in silence would have been more than generous. Going through such tremendous agony to drag Harvey back from death offered the beastman no benefit whatsoever. "Because of a healing sorcerer's professional ethics," Chikala mumbled in a muffled voice. "To do everything possible to save any life." Harvey couldn't help but chuckle. "You're a healing sorcerer?" "The Calamitous Fire Sanctuary has very few water sorcery inheritances, but healing is an essential necessity for everyone, so we developed a set of healing fire sorceries," Chikala explained. "Water sorcery has Water Therapy, and fire sorcery has Fire Cupping. While the Fire Cupping sorcery spirit isn't as convenient as the Water Therapy sorcery spirit, it drastically accelerates the body's self-healing speed. The regenerated flesh ends up even stronger, making it arguably better than Water Therapy sorcery spirits in the long run." "And here I thought the Fire Cupping sorcery spirit was some kind of torture where you seal someone in a jar and roast them alive," Harvey said in all sincerity. "I've been a healing sorcerer all along, even up to the Sanctuary realm," Chikala said. "And it's precisely because I'm a healing sorcerer who has witnessed far too much death and injury that I cherish life so dearly. Those combat types who fought their way up to Sanctuary either threw their lives away fighting the Mercury Trojan or ended up murdered by him." "Why didn't you tell us you were a healing sorcerer?" Harvey asked curiously. "Igola's attitude toward you would definitely have been a lot better—we've always had Yaxiu filling in as our makeshift healer." However, Chikala deflected the topic. "This fire sorcery miracle used to treat you is called 'Life Fire.' It is the greatest masterpiece of our Calamitous Fire Sanctuary's healing fire sorceries. As long as even a sliver of brain cells remains, it can drag someone back from the brink. "Yet Life Fire doesn't just require sorcery power; it must be kindled with life itself." Harvey opened his sole remaining right eye and only then noticed a multitude of new wrinkles lining the beastman's face. It was just that the beastman's features were messy to begin with, making it hard to notice without a close look. No wonder this healing miracle was so formidable—it came at the cost of the healing sorcerer's own lifespan. No wonder Chikala hadn't dared reveal this to Igola. If he had exposed it, Igola would have bled the beastman dry of his lifespan unless the Swindler had a sudden, miraculous attack of conscience. It was also fortunate that Chikala's sorcery spirits were deceptive, appearing entirely offensive at a glance. As a result, everyone had assumed he was a combat sorcerer. Who could have guessed he could assemble offensive sorcery spirits into a healing miracle? "I'll help you keep it a secret from Igola. Though if he really presses me, I doubt I'll be able to hide it from him," Harvey said with a chuckle. "I never expected to fool Mr. Bogin's sharp eyes anyway," Chikala said with a wry smile. "I can only hope your homeland won't be too dangerous." "You still want to leave with us?" "I don't have anywhere else to go anyway," the beastman replied. "Since I'm leaving the wasteland, why not go somewhere where there are familiar faces? Besides... Mr. Harvey, haven't you forgotten that you left something behind?" Left something behind? Harvey paused briefly, then remembered. "Where's my corpse?" He had regenerated from scratch starting from an eyeball, which meant the original body that had transformed into the Blood Moon Corpse King was still there! "That's no longer your corpse," Chikala chuckled. "Look underneath you." Harvey turned his head and realized he wasn't lying on the grass, but in the embrace of a corpse... Alice's corpse. Though it was called Alice, its original appearance was completely gone. Only the right eyeball remained intact, while the rest of the body had turned into a desiccated corpse riddled with cracks. Its arms were folded across its chest like a pair of wings, shielding the necromancer in its embrace. "To be honest, I was just doing my best and never truly expected to bring you back," Chikala explained. "I placed your eyeball on it and then activated Life Fire, hoping to snatch your soul and life back from its shell. "As it turned out, it seemed eager to push you out. Without much effort on my part, I transferred you onto the eyeball to begin regeneration. And your old shell became Lady Alice's new vessel." "Is that so?" Harvey murmured. "Do you think it's still not time for me to walk quietly into the grave?" "Huh?" Chikala stared blankly for a second, then realized the necromancer was talking to Alice. Still, the beastman had seen plenty of this sort of thing before and found nothing strange about it. "In that case, your contract with Alice is still in effect, and you remain a slave. However, you saved my life, and I saved yours before, so I consider us even," Harvey said. "If you wish to travel with us, I can promise not to bind you with the slave contract." The beastman nodded. He hadn't expected Alice to still exist, but that didn't sway his resolve. "There's one more thing I'd like to ask of Mr. Harvey." "What is it?" "I want to learn the necromancy faction." Harvey froze slightly, his right eye staring unblinkingly at the beastman. He stared until the beastman grew thoroughly unnerved. Only then did a genuine smile break across Harvey's face, his lips pulling back in a grin. "All right. If Igola bullies you in the future, you can come find me." *** The moment Yaxiu, Igola, and Gwen stepped through the mist gate onto the fifteenth floor of Silence, their bodies instantly tensed as they entered combat readiness. The fifteenth floor was a colossal chamber, its walls projecting an assortment of images. Yet right now, no one cared what the main theme of the fifteenth floor was, because their eyes were locked firmly onto the two sides engaged in a standoff within! On one side was a group of sorcerers dressed in Black Feather uniforms, guarding the front of an open passage. Their expressions were tense. Despite their overwhelming numerical advantage, they did not dare make a rash move. On the other side was Tamashi, holding a Black Feather sorcerer hostage. His Grey Fox blade was already lodged in the hostage sorcerer's throat—a slight flick would be enough to decapitate him! The hostage's face was contorted in venomous hatred, his eyes devoid of fear, yet he did not dare resist. After expending so much effort and braving peril after peril, they had finally found him! Yaxiu was both thrilled and furious, barely able to suppress his temper. "Tamashi Slay All Crows!" "Yaxiu!" Yet the Black Crow was even more thrilled than Yaxiu. He snapped his head around to stare at Yaxiu, his synthesized voice unable to conceal his sheer delight. "You really did come!" He then let out a long sigh of relief. "Good thing you came." Yaxiu and Igola both furrowed their brows, utterly perplexed. Such vulnerable words sounded nothing like the Black Crow... "Pay no mind to me, don't stop, and don't fight them—go straight through this floor!" the Black Crow shouted at the top of his lungs. "Hurry to the bottom floor and stop the Silver Lantern! "She is already constructing a world-ending sorcery procedure to destroy Senluo! The only ones left who can stop her are you!"