The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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Despite having a broken jaw and hand, as well as missing massive strips of skin from her forearm, which were temporarily patched up with [Bandage], Liz crawled over and assisted him. In just half an hour of frantic work, they had Susanne closed back up.

He couldn’t do much more than dump a healing potion over the charred portions of her head and neck, but it wouldn’t be hard to keep them from getting infected. And with that taken care of, the rest of her burns were fairly superficial.

Aster had gotten it much worse. The only reason she’d been able to keep fighting was a newer use of her Concept that she had developed, which let her ‘freeze’ her sense of pain. It didn’t provide any healing, but it did make cleaning out her newly textured hide less painful for the both of them. Once she was relaxing in a sink full of ice water after the worst of her burns had been cleaned out, they dug through their supplies for salves to heal burns and delicately applied them to the ravaged skin. Only after she had been properly treated and medicated did Aster release her hold on her Concept, and Matt felt a dull wave of pain through their bond.

With the worst of the injuries taken care of, he turned to Liz and helped her remove her helm and then carefully examined her jaw.

Long Zhiyuan had done a number on her and had shattered her jaw in two places.

It wasn’t pleasant, but he helped Liz set the bone before casting [Ranged Heal] and [Bandage] on the wound, allowing her to work her own magic with relative ease.

It also looked like her spear had exploded while it was in her grip, as both of her hands and arms were absolutely filled with splinters and shrapnel, in addition to several fractures in the bone and the missing skin. Her right arm was at least easy enough to treat, but with her left arm still on such intense healing cooldown and still wounded from the general…all they could do was wrap it and splint it to try and prevent it from getting worse, using her armor’s vambrace as a makeshift cast.

Matt was no healer, and he felt like he might have aggravated the entire limb with his clumsy efforts with [Ranged Heal] to provide some basic relief. Liz was also burning some of her blood to regrow the skin she’d lost on her right arm, but she simply didn’t have enough to spare to do much more than encourage it to scab over. Her left arm was almost useless at this point, but they’d just have to deal with that.

After helping her, Matt returned to Aster, who had curled up underwater, licking the stump where her tail once was.

She looked up to him with watery eyes and asked, “Are you okay?”

That caused Matt to choke up, and he forced out a smile—realizing a moment later that the gesture may not have been reassuring—and said, “Ahm fine. How abo’ you?”

He’d adjust to the missing teeth soon, but talking would feel weird until they left the planet, and he got them regrown.

Aster shook her head. “They burnt my fur and killed my tail.”

Through their connection, Matt could feel how devastated she really was, and despite her trying to put up a brave front, he could tell this was getting to her. She had been burnt before, with damage worse than this, but they were always near a healer, where they could fix the damage and then Liz could pour a hair growth potion on her to get her good as new.

But inside Minkalla, using a potion like that was both frivolous and dangerous. A hair growth potion was technically a healing potion and would add some healing cooldown to her already stressed body.

Essentially, Aster was going to have to stay like this.

He reached out to pet her, but she flinched away and said, “I’m not pretty enough to pet.”

Matt ignored her as he scratched the top of her head, careful not to disturb her burns, and pulled her out of the sink to work more healing lotion into her leathery and charred flesh.

While he worked, he murmured words of comfort to her, which eventually put her to sleep.

With her taken care of, he got to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom and proceeded to pull out the remaining lumps of enamel that remained from his front teeth.

It was excruciatingly painful, but he suffered in silence. The others were all passed out and needed their rest.

After downing a healing potion and casting [Bandage] on his ribs, he put his armor back on and stood guard while the others rested.

As he sat there, he meditated on the disastrous fight. Without his AI able to record, he couldn’t review it directly, but Tier 11 memory was essentially flawless for short-term situations. Long Zhiyuan likely hadn’t meant to lead him into an ambush, but it wasn’t impossible. Meanwhile, the ten were definitely connected to the ones they’d fought earlier, and that Claude had warned them about, but they were still substantially superior to the previous group. Any two of them were easily a match for anyone on Matt’s team. In an even fight, Matt felt like his team probably would have a slight edge, but they were outnumbered more than two to one, so they never really stood a chance.

Their coordination and teamwork had been exceptional as well. Not flawless, but for such a large team to perfectly weave spells and attacks without ever once interfering with plans or blocking lines of attack was extraordinary, to say nothing of the gear they’d been using. Their bodies were tougher, their magic was extraordinarily powerful, and they almost seemed to move as a single unit.