Chapter 115. The Light Wasn’t Just Flowing Out of Her, It Was Tearing Through Her
"Clara... Clara, it’s too close! I can’t—"
"Don’t look at its face, Ellie! Look at its joints!" Clara’s voice was right in her ear now, steady and unshakable.
Clara had stepped forward, placing herself partially between Ellie and the monster, her bow drawn to its breaking point. "Focus on the target!"
"The light is your weapon; use it to blind it! DO IT NOW!"
The fear in Ellie’s chest transformed. The terror didn’t vanish, but it became fuel.
With a sob of pure desperation, Ellie thrust both hands forward. "LIGHT BURST: SUPERNOVA!"
The explosion wasn’t a beam this time; it was a sphere of blinding white radiance. The light erupted outward in a sphere of pure force, slamming into the Ravager’s face.
The creature shrieked as its optical sensors were seared shut.
"Now, Clara!" Ellie screamed.
Clara didn’t miss. She released a heavy, enchanted bolt that whist0led through the air with a deadly hum.
WHIRRR THWACK.
The bolt punched through the creature’s open mouth and exploded through the back of its skull. The Ravager’s head collapsed inward with a wet CRUNCH, its body collapsing like a puppet with severed strings.
Silence was brief and deadly, settling between them for three seconds.
Clara turned around immediately, grabbing Ellie’s shoulders with hands that were steady despite the chaos. "Look at me, Ellie!"
"Look at me... You did it... You held the line." Clara smiled. "You’re okay."
Ellie collapsed against Clara’s shoulder, sobbing with relief as the adrenaline began to crash. "I thought... I thought I was going to die..."
"Not on my watch," Clara whispered, her eyes already scanning the horizon for the next threat. "Now dry your eyes."
"We have three more patrols coming and we still have ammunition to spend."
The battlefield had shifted from a controlled engagement to a desperate war of attrition. The screams of the wounded were now as constant as the wet tearing of flesh.
Through the haze of blood and smoke, Ellie heard it not just the monsters, but the human sounds: the ragged gasps of a soldier clutching a severed femoral artery, the wet gurgle of someone choking on their own punctured lung.
"Clara, I can’t just keep casting light magic!" Ellie cried out, her voice cracking as she saw a nearby student collapse, their entrails steaming in the cold air. "There are people dying right next to us!"
"They need help!"
"Ellie, stay behind me!" Clara shouted back, but her own voice sounded strained, almost hollow. "If I fall, you’re exposed!"
"I have to try!" Ellie’s resolve hardened through her tears. "I’ll switch to support!"
"I’ll keep them alive as long as I can!"
Ellie pivoted, abandoning her offensive stance. She closed her eyes for a microsecond, focusing not on the destruction, but on the life force coursing through the survivors.
"Holy Radiance: Mending Pulse!" she screamed.
Instead of explosive bursts, she unleashed waves of soft, golden luminescence. The light washed over the wounded like warm honey.
A student’s gaping chest wound began to knit together with an audible SQUELCH, the flesh crawling back together in a grotesque display of accelerated healing. It wasn’t perfect; it was painful, a searing cauterization of wounds, but it kept them conscious.
But the cost of Ellie’s shift was a catastrophic opening in their defense.
"Ellie, watch out! They’re swarming the rear!" Clara’s warning was cut off by a wet THUD.
A wave of Ravagers, sensing the weakened perimeter, surged forward like a black tide. Clara was alone in the gap.
She drew arrow after arrow with mechanical fury, each shot finding its mark with a deadly THWIP CRACK, but for every one she felled, three more took its place. Her quiver was running dangerously low.
Thwip. Thwip. CRACK.
"Come on... come on, you bastards!" Clara hissed through gritted teeth, her fingers bleeding from the friction of the bowstring.
A ravager leapt from a pile of rubble, its serrated mandibles snapping inches from Clara’s throat. She ducked, but another slammed into her ribs with the force of a battering ram.
CRUNCH.
The sound of a breaking bone echoed sickeningly. Clara gasped, blood spraying from her lips as she was thrown backward into the dirt.
"Clara!" Ellie screamed from thirty feet away, but she was trapped, pinned down by the need to keep a dying boy’s heart beating. "Clara, get up!"
Clara scrambled to her feet, her vision swimming in crimson. Her bowstring had snapped during the impact, leaving her with only the heavy, reinforced wooden limb of the weapon.
She was out of arrows. She was out of options.
A ravager lunged again, its claw extended to disembowel her. Clara didn’t retreat.
With a primal roar of defiance, she swung the heavy bow like a club.
WHACK.
The reinforced wood connected with the creature’s temple, sending a spray of black ichor flying, but the creature’s momentum carried it forward. Its claws raked across Clara’s left shoulder, tearing through leather and flesh alike.
"AAGH!" Clara screamed as crimson blood soaked her uniform, the wound deep and ragged.
Desperation took over. Clara became a berserker, using the bow as a brutal melee weapon.
She stabbed the pointed tip of the bow into a scavenger’s eye socket, SQUISH, and used the curved limbs to hook the neck of another, slamming it against a stone pillar with a bone snapping THUD.
But she was bleeding out, her movements becoming sluggish, her breathing coming in ragged, wet gasps.
"Clara, stop! You’re hurt too badly!" Ellie cried, her hands glowing brighter as she desperately tried to extend her healing aura toward her friend.
Clara stumbled, her legs buckling.
"I... I can’t... stop..." she wheezed, blood dripping from her chin onto the blood-soaked earth. "Keep... keep them alive, Ellie... just... keep them alive..."
Another ravager loomed over her, its shadow swallowing her broken form. Clara raised the splintered bow one last time, her eyes unfocused but burning with a dying ember of fury.
The air seemed to freeze as the Ravager loomed over Clara. Its massive, serrated claw rose like a guillotine, poised to split the wounded girl in two.
Clara could only stare up, her vision blurring, the taste of copper filling her mouth as she gripped her splintered bow with failing strength.
"NO!"
The scream didn’t come from Clara. It came from Ellie.
Something inside Ellie snapped. The sight of Clara, her rock, her protector, her friend, bleeding out in the dirt while monsters tore through their comrades shattered the last dam holding back her power.
The desperation wasn’t just fear anymore; it was a raw, primal fury that demanded life where there was only death.
VROOOOOM.
A sound like a distant thunderclap echoed not from the sky, but from Ellie’s very soul. A shockwave of pure magical pressure erupted from her body, knocking back the nearest scavengers.
Then came the light.
It wasn’t the harsh, searing white of her previous attacks. This was something different: a deep, pulsing rose-pink that glowed with the intensity of a dying star.
Ellie’s hair began to lift as if caught in an underwater current, strands glowing like filaments of neon silk. Her eyes bled into solid pools of luminous pink.
"I won’t let you die!" Ellie shrieked, her voice layered with an unnatural, harmonic echo. "I WON’T LET ANY OF YOU DIE!"
SHHHHHHHHHHHH!
A massive dome of pink energy exploded outward from Ellie’s position. It moved like a living tide, a tsunami of restorative magic that swept across the battlefield.
As the pink wave washed over the wounded, the effect was instantaneous and terrifyingly beautiful.
A soldier whose legs had been torn apart screamed as bone fused back together with wet, grinding sounds—CRACK SHLICK—and flesh knitted closed in seconds.
A girl clutching a punctured lung gasped as the hole sealed shut, her breathing returning to normal in one miraculous heartbeat.
The black ichor of the dead seemed to evaporate as the magic forced life back into the cellular level.
The wave hit Clara. The deep gash on her shoulder didn’t just heal; it vanished, leaving behind only smooth, unscarred skin.
The cracked ribs snapped back into place with a series of rapid-fire POPS, and the exhaustion drained from her limbs as if her very muscles were being rewound.
"Holy... shit..." Clara whispered, feeling the surge of vitality flooding her veins.
But the cost was visible. As the dome expanded to its limit, Ellie’s body began to convulse.
The pink light wasn’t just flowing out of her; it was tearing through her. Blood began to leak from her nose and ears as her mana reserves were forcibly drained beyond their limits.
With a final, thunderous BOOM of energy that sent a shockwave rippling through the ground, the light vanished.
Ellie collapsed. Her hair fell flat, her eyes dimmed, and she fell to her knees, then forward, her face nearly touching the blood-soaked earth.
She was trembling violently, her breathing shallow and ragged, completely spent.
Before the remaining scavengers could capitalize on her collapse, Clara was already moving. The restored strength in her legs made her move like lightning.
She grabbed her sword with one hand and her bow with the other, stepping in front of Ellie’s prone form, creating a deadly barrier of steel and wood.
SHING! SLICE!
Clara cut down two approaching creatures with savage efficiency, her movements precise and lethal.
"Stay back from her!" she roared at the swarm.
After clearing the immediate circle, Clara turned slightly, glancing down at the unconscious Ellie. A genuine, awestruck smile broke through her battle-hardened expression.
"Thanks, Ellie," Clara murmured, loud enough to be heard over the distant chaos but soft enough to feel intimate. "That was... fucking incredible."
"That trick with the hair? Totally cool."
"Thanks... Clara..." Ellie chuckled.