Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

“Can I get a hand over here!”

“Coming!” Thera yelled back, rushing through the floor past other patients to reach one of the many healer’s sides, finding them focusing on someone who’d just been brought in, their large intestine hanging out of a gouge in their torso while they did their best to keep them alive.

Despite everyone around wearing one of Ben’s mana bracelets, there was still a matter of skill needed to finish a task quickly, not something they always had in urgent cases such as that which is where she came in, moving the organ back into place with her magic while forcing the body to cannibalize itself to make up for the lost mass as tissue knit back together, looking no worse for wear other than the drop in overall weight that would leave them a bit weaker until they got enough food in them to replace it as she gave the patient some quick orders.

“Low activity for the next week if you can help it and focus on eating your regular meals, I did the best I can but you’ll be low on blood for a while so you might get lightheaded but you’re done.”

Her bedside manner could have used some work but they were busy enough that she didn’t have time to care. Even if things had slowed down, thanks both to the bracelets and the end of the wave, there were still people constantly fighting across the planet, with some major battles still taking place every single day. The fighting was never going to stop which meant neither was the work, but they had dedicated healers and the demons didn’t, the longer they held out, the easier it would supposedly get.

At least that was what she was telling herself but when she was there it didn’t feel like it. Even walking around deserted or overstuffed cities gave a better impression than being in a single hospital, the surrounding feeling of pain and death was oppressing each time she walked into it, even if she knew that she was making a difference.

Each time she went to one, she alone was enough to make their load manageable, in some cases even more than that with the one she was in serving as a good example. While the hours went on she healed more than could be brought in, leaving the place in a bearable condition for the rest of the light and life mages with her, giving them all just a bit of rest by the time she was finally done.

“Good work today,” The hospital’s director told her, the same woman she’d been working with since the beginning of the second wave who she embarrassingly still hadn’t learned the name of. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired, but who isn’t? I still have some more personal work to do too so I’m going to have to head out soon.”

“Oh, of course. Don’t worry, every one of us here appreciates having whatever help you can give. Will we be seeing you again tomorrow?”

“Mhm, as long as there’s not an emergency I’ll always give you some warning if I’m going to be away so I’ll do what I can.”

“Wonderful, then we’ll look forward to having you.”

They parted from there, Thera back off into the world to what bits of peace it contained.

Since that hospital wasn’t close to an invasion point the city was a lot more packed than others she would go to, acting as one of many places others went to escape the peril of their homes which crowded the streets, even if it still showed signs of danger.

Just walking to the nearby gate, there were already more injured being ferried through for whatever treatments they could get but that was never going to stop and it couldn’t be her sole focus in life. With the way things were looking, no matter how bad it could get their world wasn’t going to fall before the third wave, meaning she couldn’t skimp on her combat either, even with the thought filling her with complicated emotions.

The third wave.

She was sure it was something on plenty of minds but it had only become more so on hers for the recent talk she’d had. Ben wanted to get to a point where he could personally influence the results of the war, something that felt like madness and almost certainly stemmed from all of the negative experiences he’d had since coming to the world, which was one thing. He had an overall terrible evaluation about the safety of the planet and even if she strongly disagreed with the conclusion, she couldn’t deny how he’d come to it.

No matter what was thrown at him, he had overcome it each time. If he wanted to somehow solve the invasion then she wasn’t going to stop him, especially considering that if a god really did need to be dealt with, he most certainly had a perfect skill to handle it.

The real problem was beyond that. He still thought he was going to fail, probably doomed to die in the process. What was she supposed to say or do about that? If he was so certain that the world didn’t stand a chance then even if she wanted to she wasn’t going to doubt him but then the reaction should have been something else. He should be running away, not looking at any way to inch up his odds no matter how still in the negatives they would be.

Just thinking about it was leaving her stressed, with her only saving grace being what he needed to get to that point. As good as he was, he said he needed to awaken two separate skills in the months they had left.

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She believed in Ben, she was willing to place the entirety of her trust and faith in him if it came down to it, but achieving that was another thing entirely. She could comfortably tell herself that he wouldn’t get to that point so he wouldn’t be tempted to throw his life away and she could believe it. It didn’t matter how good he was at raising skills, what he was aiming for was different. Even if she thought he might manage it one day, that timeframe was something else entirely.

So that meant on that front there was nothing to worry about, with only an entirely different problem left. She understood why he believed that things wouldn’t end if they just survived past the third wave, even if she wanted to hope it was a reality she could still prepare for, meaning she just had to get better herself to deal with it, gaining what strength she could in the time they had left. If things didn’t end there then that just meant they’d need to hang on through a fourth wave and a fifth and however many it might take for the demons and their god to get to the point that their world wasn’t going to be conquered, and with that frame of mind she went out to the untamed lands.

“Princess, over there!” One of the spirits swarming her directed as she flew above the trees, looking for targets to practice her magic on and coming across the very sort of herd she wanted, with demons within her reach.

She instantly changed her direction, going out to them while she silently spoke back.

“How many?”

“Twenty.”

Perfect.

It was a small enough size that she’d be able to manage but not so small that she wouldn’t be able to test her spells and she brought herself to the ground hard, the sound of the crash being enough to draw the monsters in while she was still a bit away as she prepared her spells for all they were worth, filling the ground with earth and life mana and watching as the dirt around her sprung up under her power, taking the shape she desired and moving out in preparation of what was to come.

An artist she was not but as far as golems went, the proportions weren’t terrible and they moved like she wanted, towering above her and looking powerful by the time the first demon came into view, looking like it thought better of its target by the time the rest showed up as some tried to escape, losing that option as she raised up a wall behind them to keep them in place.

“No running away.”

Now given no chance to escape, they had no other option but to fight and with the choice made on their behalf they wasted no time, some lunging forward while others tried to caste their own spells, easily blocked with her power while the golems began their slaughter, smashing through flesh and breaking bones and the beasts around her scampered to survive, some being lucky enough to avoid her blows while she regarded them largely with disinterest.

She was seeing that the golems were less efficient than her usual way of doing things but it was still a chance to experiment, one she wouldn’t reject as her tests continued, pulling over a wad of demon flesh to reshape it under her power, filling it with her mana and watching as it consumed the earth around them, remaking itself into a clone of what one of her spells had just destroyed.

She still didn’t have the experience she needed to comfortably alter a homunculus to suit her purposes but that was something she could work on more in the future, for the time being, her goal was to practice something else she’d usually fail at; controlling them.

It should have been a similar process as creating the false life of a golem and by and large it felt like it but it created a different sort of strain on her magic, leaving more areas to manage, even as she successfully got it to move under her power.

“Okay, I can do this with a bit more practice but now that I have this to work with I can try more for the rest of the day until I get the hang of it, that just leaves one more thing to try.”

Controlling golems and homunculi were in essence applications of the same sort of spell, but there was one more related one that should have been just barely under her domain of power. As life magic grew it became closer to death, letting spells cross over until they eventually reached beyond to the realm of souls but with where she stood she wanted to try it for whatever growth it would give her and firing off a small stone bullet at one of the remaining surviving demons, she once more filled it with her power.

If the other two spells came down to filling something with a false life then there was no reason she couldn’t apply it to something else, something that had been alive only moments prior and as her mana flooded the still-warm corpse she watched it twitch before jerkily getting up, the core of itself gone and replaced with her will.

But it was the worst by far. Shaky on its feet and taking so much more mana than anything else, she doubted she’d be able to use it in a fight, even if it was working, killing the idea that she could turn any corpses she made to her side in a future wave. Her mana would be much better placed elsewhere.

“Hmm, but if I just want my own army to fight with then I should be able to use my dark magic pretty effectively if I just raise it more,” She thought aloud, paying no mind to the only surviving demon by that point. “There’s no reason I couldn’t control what comes through a gate to focus on killing each other. Okay, that’s something worth looking into, I’ll need to practice it.”

Using mind magics may have been illegal on people but even if the system recognized demons as such, the people of the world didn’t, meaning there’d be no harm, all she’d need was to get the experience with it, eyeing the only one that had managed to hang onto life despite its growing injuries.

“Mmh, it would be better to find another crowd, not much point here so I guess I should finish up.”

“Wait!” It cried out. “Mercy!”

It was enough to make Thera pause, tilting her head to the side as she appraised it before crushing it in the earth beneath its feet. She knew intelligent ones had made it through to the world and the idea that one might think to beg, either genuinely or as some trap she couldn’t say, wasn’t out of the question. To its misfortune though it seemed that despite the system effect she was under, the uncountable demons she’d slaughtered in the second wave had left her numb even to their pleas and paid it no mind, even as she raised herself in the air to talk to the spirits once more.

“Okay, I don’t need to be home for a while yet so let’s see if we can find some more.”