John could feel his racing heartbeat in his skull. His stomach dropped so fast he was half surprised it didn't crash through his pelvis. For a fraction of a second, he could do nothing but stare in utter disbelief at the state of his comrades.

They were all down, sprawled on the grey floor of the giant room, with crushed monsters arrayed around them.

Jade's armour was dented and battered, and her machete was lying halfway across the room. The woman's grey eyes were blinking unseeingly up at the roof, her lips moving soundlessly.

The visor of Lily's motorcycle helmet had shattered, throwing some shards of plastic material into her face—it wasn't as bad as it might have been if she'd had the visor down, but there was still a lot of blood. She wasn't moving.

Chester was laid out on his side, one of his arms bent the wrong way, his helmet nowhere to be seen, leaving blood to trickle down from his visible ear. His breathing was shallow, laboured, and his eyes were clenched shut.

With no protection to speak of, Doug had somehow simultaneously fared the worst and the best; his body was covered in a layer of blood and dust, not an inch of his skin visible, but he was the only one who'd regained enough wits to try and push himself upright. However, he was moving slowly, and his eyes were bleary, pupils dilated.

Alissa had managed to roll herself onto her side, but she was curled up in a ball like she was trying to protect her stomach. Her teeth were grit with pain, a low groan escaping her lips.

Every single one of them had blood dripping from their ears.

Of the birds, the crow was using its wings to drag itself towards the dove, not quite able to stand. The dove in question was cooing pitifully, staring at the crow. Polly and Zazu were curled around each other, speaking in soft voices that John couldn't make any sense of past the thunderous drumbeat of his heart.

John was on the verge of panic. It was clear none of his comrades—human or bird—were going to be able to contribute to the fight like this. If it was just blue and greens, he might have been able to keep the monsters at bay for a few minutes until the others had got a hold of themselves somewhat, but the yellow rock golem made that impossible. His breaths were coming faster. He didn't know what to do.

Then Level 6 Mind saved him once more, and he took one long, deep breath, and forced himself into a state of clinical calm.

There was no time for indecision. John dived straight into his Skill menu and picked out First Aid, before shoving as many points into it as he could.

-200 Aura

-500 Aura

-1000 Aura

-2000 Aura

-4000 Aura

-8000 Aura

Over 15,000 Aura in one go was a nauseating expenditure, but it was immediately worth it. Level 5 dumped in incredible amount of knowledge into his mind. Running back to his comrades, all he needed to identify the injuries affecting them and how to address them was a glance. The prognoses were grim.

The blood dripping from their ears told him they had burst ear drums, probably accompanied by concussions. The standard way to deal with that was to keep them still, laid on their backs with their head and shoulders elevated. Obviously, that wasn't on option. Luckily, Level 5 First Aid came with some bullshit, so he'd be able to somewhat alleviate symptoms with the right touches in the right places, but he wouldn't have time to get to them all.

He also saw numerous cuts and lacerations that his Skill told him needed to be cleaned, lest they get infected. It picked out signs of bruises, potential fractures, and broken bones, of which every human had several.

They all needed healing far beyond what First Aid could provide if they were going to survive this battle, let alone contribute to it. The only way forward was magical healing.

John glanced over his shoulder as he reached Doug, who had been the nearest person to him as the team's front liner. The monsters were already halfway across the room. He saw rat monsters, crystalline fiends, giant insects, and more. There weren't really a vast amount of them, compared to the teeming hordes they'd encountered. Only a few dozen. But the yellow golem hugely complicated matters.

At least everyone's still breathing, he told himself. For a moment, he'd thought they were all dead. He hastily assessed the old man's injuries up close, bringing a first aid kit out from his Inventory. Level 5 First Aid gave him an absurd level of precision and speed with cleaning Doug's wounds, despite the man's grumbling attempts to wave him off, and a few firm touches to the man's head with his fingertips shouldn't have been so effective. But it immediately became clear that wouldn't be enough. He wouldn't even be done with Doug by the time the monsters were upon them.

John stood up, turning to face the oncoming monsters. The most immediately useful thing he could do for now was to take the yellow monster's aggro away from his comrades while culling as many of the blues and greens as possible. His best bet was to do laps, kiting the monsters around to the other side of the room, then coming back with Accelerate to perform first aid on his comrades in dilated time.

With a plan in mind, John rushed forward, bringing out his tried and true tactic against greater numbers of monsters. He hurled Fireballs at the front ranks, then immediately cast Summon Undead on the blue monsters that immediately perished in the flames. Setting them to attack the greens, he cast Soul Drain on those that were weakened. In seconds, he had half a dozen undead minions wreaking havoc in the enemy ranks, but the rock golem was almost in range, from what he'd seen of its chained arms.

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Wanting to ensure the rock golem didn't splatter his comrades in its attempts to get him, John Air Stepped diagonally across the room, presenting a target that didn't have collateral waiting behind it. Sure enough, the golem lashed out the moment he landed, and he threw himself into a Flash Step that he instantly chained into another Air Step, leaping over the oncoming monsters and finding himself right in their midst, on the other side of the rock golem.

As he sailed through the air, he activated Accelerate, contorting himself around to face the rocky fist that had just crashed into the ground where he'd been a moment before, kicking up a cloud of dust. He nocked and loosed a Death Arrow in one motion, and the target's sheer size made up for the difficulty of the shot. Even with Level 3 Marksman, aiming in midair was awkward, but it was hard to miss a chunk of stone larger than a motorcycle from a distance of less than five metres.

+400 Aura

Hitting the golem's arm had a profoundly different effect to striking its face. The actual damage done by the necrotising arrow was the same, blackening a semi-spherical area of its stone. But a deep shudder thrummed along the chain that connected that piece of rock to the rest of the golem's body, carrying all the way to the stone that made up its head. The effect carried through the entire network of its chains, and it seemed to shiver all over.

As he landed, John realised he must have hit the chain itself, at least partially. His eyes narrowed. This was the way forward.

The giant yellow started slowly turning itself towards him, dragging its extended arm with it. The crowd of monsters closed in all around him, leaving him no room to fire any more arrows just yet. Instead, he spun on the spot. Accelerate still had a good fifteen heartbeats left, and none of the monsters were fast enough to match him as he combined Mana Blade in one hand with Soul Drain and Summon Undead cycling in the other. He formed minions out of every monster he cut down as soon as the fell, seeking to carve a wide path around the rock monster while trying to make sure all the monsters in the room were focused on him.

The rock golem seemed less coordinated than it had been a moment ago, and its next attack was comparatively sluggish. He was fairly sure he would have been able to dodge it without Accelerate. It crushed a line through the other monsters several steps behind him. Even its head was slow, struggling to track him as he circled it.

John's eyes narrowed. Last time he'd seemingly won the upper hand on it, it had pulled out its shockwave attack. Why hadn't it this time? Was there a cooldown? Or was that simply in response to how Shadow Stream had seemingly shut off its vision?

Either way, John's plan mostly seemed to work, and he was able to escape the scrum of monsters and dart back towards his comrades in short order. Things still weren't looking good, but everyone appeared to be conscious.

Jade was on all fours, vomiting. Lily had rolled onto her side and had an elbow beneath her. Chester was on his back, making a visible effort to take more even breaths. Doug was kneeling, trying to watch the battle but clearly still disoriented; his wounds were visibly closing, fast even by Accelerate's standards.

Alissa had massively overtaken him in the healing department though. She was on her knees at his side, hand on his shoulder, her mouth moving in slow motion, likely trying and failing to get through to him in his current state. Her bodysuit was still covered in dust and grime, and there was still detritus in her hair, but the skin of her face was pristine, her eyes sharp.

It only took John a heartbeat to understand. She must have been holding onto a level for healing, just like I've been doing. That was his best guess, at least. He didn't see how else it could have been done, unless she'd been hiding a healing ability.

Even if he was wrong about Alissa and she'd healed some other way after all, the sight of her had given him an idea to get them out of this mess: he needed to get the others to level up. There was one obvious way to do it, too. Though it being obvious didn't make it easy.

He had no idea how the fuck he was going to get their systems to accept that they'd contributed to the battle against the rock golem, after all. But it was the best chance they had.

For now, he rushed to Jade, as she looked the worst off of the lot. A Level 5 Skill put him well into the realms of the supernatural, and he was able to rapidly relieve her nausea just by massaging her upper back in specific pressure points, then ease the dizziness from her concussion by rubbing circles into her temples. She wasn't anywhere close to healed by any stretch of the imagination, but she soon stopped vomiting.

With about eight heartbeats left of Accelerate, he went to Lily next. Everyone with corrosive ranged attacks would be able to contribute pretty easily to the battle, and hopefully earn some points for their systems. He didn't know what he was going to do about Doug and Chester yet. Maybe he'd carry them right up close with Accelerate and hope that counted for something.

A glance with First Aid told him Lily had multiple fractures ribs, which was a pain he couldn't really ease with a massage. He could manoeuvre her into a more comfortable position she'd be able to shoot from, though, and that gave him the idea to shift everyone towards the back of the room. You weren't supposed to move people with concussions, but he was going to try and get them to heal anyway, so figured it didn't matter.

It took five more heartbeats to shift everyone to the back wall, and judging by the looks on their faces they were decidedly unimpressed about it. He didn't have time to explain, though, as the yellow monster was lumbering back towards them again.

Only Alissa didn't need to be moved. He paused for an instant, shooting Alissa a significant look, pointing at her, then at the others, then at the yellow-souled monster. With that done, he turned on his heel and started launching Death Arrows at the rock golem, this time aiming for the chains that linked its stone limbs. He briefly wondered what that had looked like to her. He could only hope he got the point across.

Speed Casting more than proved its worth, and half a dozen arrows tore through the air in less than half as many heartbeats. Most of them struck rock and began the grim work of corroding large chunks of the monster's body, but one scored a direct hit on the chain that linked the two rocks that made up its hand and forearm respectively.

Accelerate came to an end just as the Death Arrow's effect on the chain showed itself. It was rather violent. The chain darkened, and the two links closest to where the arrow had struck gained a ghostly green sheen for a moment. Rearing back, the rock golem lifted its arm and shook it, as if trying to dislodge a bug. That turned out to be a big mistake on its part.

The added tension strained the chains, the green aura brightening, until they snapped with explosive force. It was like there had been excess energy stored within the chains, and breaking the link expelled it. A smaller shockwave burst out, and John was quietly thankful he'd made the choice to move everyone back.

As it was, the monsters took the entirety of the damage, flattening the nearby greens and blues and sending the yellow stumbling back. The rock hand hit the ground with a mighty crash, crushing a handful of monsters.

John couldn't stick around to admire his handiwork. "Tell them to attack the yellow for points," he shouted to Alissa over his shoulder as he charged back into the fray.

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