Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Chapter 633: Thera's Perspective

Thera woke up to the sound of screams.

That had become her normal though. The hospital was filled with people bleeding and dying and she was resting only a few rooms away from it, the other bunks around just as filled with equally exhausted healers who’d each been doing their best to save who they could amidst the constant swarm of bodies pressing in, with it never being enough. There was always more coming and even after just a week of it she could see it affecting those around her, the light and life mages that were with her each suffering under the weight of what they’d seen and those they’d failed to save, with Thera doing what she could for them once she was up.

While she’d slept she made sure to bind some general healing spells to her soul, letting her cast them out constantly in her ambient mana to help strengthen their bodies for the days ahead, but once she was up she cast with intent, using the dark magic that came so naturally to her to grant them what peace she could.

Unauthorized uses of mind magics were as illegal as ever but as each day had worn on she’d stopped caring. Better to let anyone in a healing role recover as much as they could for the long days that were going to be ahead and better to remove some of the pain the various patients felt than worry about laws put in place to keep people from harming or enslaving one another. Those were just tools to keep people from doing wrong but now, surrounded by reasons to ignore them, she wasn’t going to let them stop her from making a terrible situation at least slightly better for everyone nearby.

It was only once those quick spells were cast that she went out, into the wider hospital to see what damage had been done since she’d helped the night before and found it once more crowded beyond limits.

In her eyes, she could see light and life spirits flying around, doing what they could as the mages did their best too, but she didn’t greet any. The first thing she did was move to the center of it all before pulling out and drinking a mana recovery potion for the day that was going to wait ahead and cast her next spell, earth healing.

One she’d used a few times before, it was a wasteful spell that filled the ground below her with her mana to produce a mild healing effect, but at her levels and her power it acted far beyond its expected limits, being enough to treat any minor injuries so long as someone was in its field of effect long enough and letting everyone treat the more major wounds significantly easier.

It was something she’d been doing every morning and evening and the effect of the spell lasted hours but it still wasn’t enough to make up for the tide of bodies, being sent in to be healed so they could be sent out to fight and die again, a constant rotation of misery all around.

If she were going to be remotely optimistic about it, she would have tried to look at it as a good way to gain or raise defensive skills but she wasn’t willing to be so positive. Anyone she healed that morning had just as good of a chance of being dead by the evening and with nothing that could improve her mood she went to her section and got to work, flooding patients with power as bones and flesh knit back together and limbs or organs regrew, letting the most severe of cases stand up once more to go off to whatever battlefield they came from.

That was how the first few hours of her day began, it was how the first few hours of every day began, but once she had managed to reduce the number of patients to a more reasonable amount for the rest of the staff to handle she went off to her invasion point of the day, knowing full well that the hospital would be packed by the time she was back.

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There was no changing thing though, every role she’d been given was important and every one needed to be fulfilled, so with no other choice she went through the mini gate and up the walk to the spot she’d been stationed within the fortress, casting spells as soon as she got there.

Fire anywhere and she’d hit a demon, it didn’t need any aim or accuracy, with the only thing to look out for being to make sure she didn’t hit any warriors below, not that that was a worry. All of them were sticking close to the walls of the various forts, it wasn’t like demons were a line to be broken through. In the end, they were a force of nature to be withstood, with Thera at least feeling like she was making a dent.

As much as she didn’t like wearing it, Thera felt like she was getting used to the circlet Ben had given her, the tool splitting her mind into multiple branches and letting her cast more spells at once, watching as that meant that swaths of demons were swallowed by the earth, her magic pulling them under and crushing them in case there were any who would survive that, with the few nearby that would avoid her attack trying to push away from the suddenly empty space in front of them, assuming a trap with no way to know that such a level of power had come from a mortal.

Seeing those brief flashes of fear would have even felt good if she weren’t so constantly drained by it all. She had no way of knowing how many she’d killed while she’d been fighting since the gates first opened, it was a number she’d only be able to get once she checked at the adventurer’s guild, but it was going to be in the tens of thousands at least by then, maybe even more beyond that.

It was an insane flood of experience for her current job, even with it being a harder one, and as the hours wore on and she killed more and more, it proved to be enough to finish it by the time she’d nearly finished up for the day.

Her free hand touched her necklace as she otherwise continued to cast, finding a single new option and taking it without a second thought.

“Annihilation mage.”

These jobs don’t want me to rest.

It seemed most likely that it had been an advanced variant of her last one and given the name, it was exactly what she wanted. She didn’t want to think about anything, didn’t want to notice the world around her, all she wanted to do was kill everything she could as if that could give her the comfort she craved.

So with the time she had left before going back to the hospital, she was more than ready to try and carry out the annihilation her new job seemed to demand.

After she had finished, both her slaughter and another round of mass healing that came after, Thera was finally able to rest late into the night, only once she’d worked herself to the point of exhaustion as she laid down for what sleep she could.

It was only in those few moments when she had nothing to do that her mind wandered despite her desires. It left her small bed feeling far too big without Ben there to share it as she did her best to feel whatever scrap of hope she could that she’d see him again as the world went to hell around her.