Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (beach books .txt) 📗

off me. “Good news is, you’re going to live… because I’m sure as shit not training a new goddamn bodyguard,” I said, mock-glaring at Tang, who’d started to come round again and was now pale and sweating.

“Bad… news?” Tang whispered in question.

“Well, you’re going to be a bit fucked for a while…” I admitted, having seen the level of damage further up inside of Tang’s body. I’d originally hoped it was a small area that was affected, but it wasn’t. The impact of the wood on his side had driven links of chainmail into him, and the main, solid part of the wooden splinter had done terrible damage to his kidney and lung, but the real issue, and one that would take time to heal, was the dozens of smaller splinters, and fragments, and the fungus that had coated the wood, which had apparently spread off in all directions inside of his body.

It was like an infection-laden shotgun had gone off in his side, spreading its load in as far as it could, and the fact he was still alive at all was down to Arrin’s general healing.

I couldn’t let him continue with it, though.

I stopped him before he could do a fourth heal and shook my head, then turned to the others.

“I need him inside and out of this wind; I need a lot of light, and a shit-ton of mana potions.” We got up, crouching down around Tang, and taking a limb each.

“Sorry, buddy,” I muttered. “On three: one, two… three!” I heaved him up with the others and we carried him, whimpering, and leaking copious amounts of blood, over to the wheelhouse.

Yen shoved the door open, and we staggered inside, finding Jian seated at the controls, with the wisp hovering next to him, explaining something. The walls of the room were coated in a mist that flowed and billowed, but showed extremely rough images of the world around us.

One part of the black ship, lifting as the others were behind us in a pursuit course, was massively magnified, making it almost impossible to see anything else of the ship, except for the occasional movements of others as they crossed a particular section of the deck.

“There!” Yen directed, weariness filling her voice, and we started towards the map table that she’d nodded towards, Stephanos and Miren, who’d clearly been helping Jian, leapt back and stripped the table of everything, making room for us.

We dumped Tang down as gently as we could, making him pass out again, and I downed a mana potion before casting ‘Battlefield Triage’ again. I stabilized him first, then started seeking out and manipulating his insides, forcing flesh to knit and organs to regrow in specific patterns. I tried to force the splinters out, along with the contaminants, rather than healing the body around them. I found myself having to redo areas that both Arrin and myself had already healed in our panic… grimacing as I drew a dagger and started to cut the seemingly healthy flesh, knowing that if I didn’t get it all out, there could be terrible repercussions later.

“What can we do?” Yen asked, fear and exhaustion filling her voice as she looked down at her friend.

“Nothing,” I said shortly. “Just defend the ship. I can’t help out there if I’m going to save him.”

“We can do that,” she said, straightening and looking around. “Miren, Stephanos, with me. Grizz, you and Arrin as well. Frederikk, you help Jax, and come get me if he needs me; beyond that stay out of the goddamn way,” she ordered weakly, taking charge. “Jian, do you know where you’re headed?” He nodded, gesturing to the front wall.

I glanced up before returning to my work, having seen the fleet in the far distance. I continued working on Tang as Jian explained his reasoning.

“I’m making as good a speed for them as I dare, but I can’t go all out. We’d drain the stones, and the ship might not hold together long enough. All we can hope right now is that the fleet sees us and turns back to help, as they’d make mincemeat of those assholes, now that there’s half of them gone,” he said darkly, turning back to the wisp. “So, the core charge level in engine three is six percent lower than it was? Is that an error, or…?” He asked, having already dismissed us all from his mind.

“Ty’Baronn,” I heard Yen say suddenly, and the demon looked up at her from where he crouched sullenly against the wall. “How far will your plasma attack reach? Can you hit the ships?”

“Not for three more hours,” he said in a bored tone, and she growled in frustration.

“Fine; you can damn well keep watch, though,” she said gesturing out of the door. The demon looked at his master, who waved absently at him to go, and he scowled, following along.

I heard the door bang shut behind them, and then I lost all track of time again, focusing in on the wounds Tang had taken.

Periodically, I would stop, drinking another mana potion, then starting back in. Rather than most healing I’d done before, where it simply took a huge amount of mana and *boom* it was done, this required finesse and patience, healing sections slowly as I forced the splinters out, but keeping him alive at the same time.

Those were two things I had little of at the best of times, but for a friend, I’d damn well make sure I learned them, I growled to myself internally.

I finally sat down after almost an hour. The constant cycle of using all my mana and then replacing it with potions had drained me to the point that I was shaking and having difficulty concentrating.

As I rested, I took the time to inspect the room, suddenly aware of the motion of the ship. I’d felt it before but dismissed it as unimportant, but now, I watched the front wall, seeing a flare from one of the ships, followed by the