Divinity Rescue Corps
120- Going By Instinct

Your knowledge of Transmutation informs you that a grain or bit of animal fat boiled down into water is the closest and simplest action to undertake in order to employ a spell to turn it into glycerine. The amount used will be equal to the amount of glycerine created.

That seemed unrealistic at first, until I realized we had teams and teams of assistants helping at all levels of our operations. It was the God of Productivity after all, and we were being very productive.

I commandeered one of the Nakamamon helping in the field to nurture plant growth, and also cut down the stalks of plants already grown. This was a greenish blob of vines and leaves with two eyes peeking out, and two woody feet beneath.

Identify told me this was called a Shrubber-Nee! complete with exclamation point.

“Well, hello there,” I told it, while fielding more and more requests for Healer’s Resistance. Yes, always Yes.

I half expected the thing to growl ‘Kenobi!’ before slashing outwards with laser swords in its four viney arms. Instead, one of the vines separated from the vine ball and waved at me.

After explaining what I needed, the Shrubber-Nee! went off to fetch what I’d asked for.

This would be a great place to attempt my first ever Instinctual spellcasting. I knew I had underutilized some of my abilities and skills in the past, and that was over. I might not throw too many fireballs, but I could…

“I could do this,” I muttered, and tried to recall what Alan had done the first time I made a potion on the fly.

Somehow the knowledge came to me. Mana coalesced in my body, starting at my core and flowing up into my head. Where it emerged, I tried to envision the same thing Alan had used.

Instinctual Casting (Evocation) check:You are attempting a tier 1 Ray of Frost. You have the Evocation skill at level 1, Instinctual Casting at level 8, Mana Shaping at level 3, and Affinity at level 7. Since you have never cast an Evocation spell and never shaped mana, this check is Extreme, and requires 9 successes. Would you like to spend 9 Tokens for an automatic success?

Total Tokens: 5 Ingenuity and 7 Free Tokens.

I did not want to spend the Tokens… there was no real danger of this having terrible repercussions if it failed. Also, I had 20 levels of skill and attribute. I needed to know if it would be enough to handle 9 successes.

The diagram of how to shape the mana formed into my mind. It was complex, a crystalline structure with layers originating from a single hexagonal point. My hands had to trace this dual pattern, while the mana needed to follow those along.

If anything, I looked like a kid at a rave in the early 2000’s. My dorkiness knew no bounds whatsoever, and I couldn’t have been happier. And when all was done, the system showed me the results of my efforts.

I was astonished to find that my 20 skill levels produced 10 successes.

Congratulations! You have cast a spell.

The spell shot a small bluish beam of light out from my clasped hands and extended fingers. This crashed into the punch bowl and spread frost around the exterior. The crystals rapidly swarmed over it, while I whooped like a loon.

I stopped doing so to find some fifty Nakamamon staring at me.

“Oh stop it,” I told them, and pressed Yes a whole host of times for Healer’s Resistance. With the sparklers of energy beginning to coalesce around them, they marched off in the direction of the town.

On the heels of casting Ray of Frost without any preparation whatsoever, I once again engaged Arcane Alchemy with the intent of turning Tokens into other Tokens. This time I tapped 2 Durability Tokens and turned them into 4 Ingenuity Tokens.

I also realized I might not need to.

When the Shrubber-nee! returned, I used Transmutation to turn an infusion of boiled grains into glycerine. Again, this involved threading my mana into a twisting series of much stranger and more fluid, naturalistic shape than the crystalline structure of the Ray of Frost. And, this was weird, I needed to grab the whole mana formation and twist it with my hands when it was done, so it instead resembled a different shape entirely.

That done, I ended up with 9 successes out of 9 needed, barely succeeding. I knew instinctually that had I used a larger amount of mana, or done a more complicated material, the difficulty would have been higher. The knowledge was just… there.

It was also basic knowledge. For the deeper info I’d need to increase my school-specific Spellcasting skills. Instinctual casting would take me far, but the Spellcasting skills would bring down the base difficulties, because I’d know more of what I was getting into before it erupted in front of my face.

Overall I was pleased. Today was turning out to be a gold mine of progress, information, and it made the weeks and weeks of stagnation feel worth it.

I continued to agree to the requests for Healer’s Resistance, work continued going forward, and still they came. Potions were administered, confusion and fear were soothed, and still they came. Another batch of potion went on the fire and through careful infusion of my mana, we came out with yet another batch. By now I really was the cause of the traffic jam, because these potions took time to craft, and there was no speeding up the process.

That would have to be okay.

Over the remainder of the day, the number of townsfolk we freed rose to 2,000, then higher. We had to stop briefly and stare at Fletcher while he got the last batch of potion cooked up, which he of course did. People were now flooding out of the town, while I used Ray of Frost again and cooled off the potion enough to make it usable. A mob of folks went after the final batch, distributing the final five hundred or so doses in just a few minutes.

Alan came over, disbelief clear on his face. He explained that he hadn’t accounted for the growing numbers, and how that would speed up the situation.

“I personally thought it was going to slow everything to a glacial crawl,” Cinzy said, grinning. She then promptly passed out and was taken to one of the beds to recover.

Several others had also exhausted themselves, and lay on some of the cots reserved for the comatose.

“We should have the God of Productivity back to life as we speak,” I said. The administering of the potion was like a New Year’s Ball drop countdown, with everybody cheering and counting once there were only ten left. They were going nuts.

“Three! Two! One!”

I had been hoping for a message from the UI about how we’d brought a god back to life, but it never came. I sensed more than understood that we were close, so close.

“What happened?” Shakindria asked.

“More like what didn’t happen?” Tara said. “It didn’t work.”

“Who didn’t participate?” Isabelle asked.

“Huh?” Trent asked. “We all—”

“Last time it was on Drat,” Regina added. “He didn’t want to add a piece of clothing. Isabelle’s right, someone didn’t work with us today.”

 All of us seemed to make the same leap, and turn in the same direction simultaneously. Toward the only person left.

There was only the one guy from Jacoby’s team left: Wayne. Half her people had taken Blake’s Boys and the Wizards back to HQ, and the other half were hunting down Archie or just enjoying a backwoods camping vacation.

Except, when I got there, I found the team. Jacoby, the Asian Expedition Leader and Ranger, her Guardians and Wizards, her perma-smiling Bard, and others I didn’t have names or classes for. They stood not far away from the assorted townsfolk and refugees who had all taken part today.

Everyone gave way as I headed over toward them. The effect of having people part like the Red Sea before me must have been a bit intimidating because Jacoby stepped back as I approached.

“Quit that,” I told her. “Wait, what are you doing back?”

“Not that it’s your concern, but we apprehended our quarry, and we are here to take custody of the other one. Wayne informed me that once the god reconstitutes, he may immediately wake.”

I nodded, wheels turning in my head. Having them here didn’t have to complicate things. All could be well. “Probably not until the final cure has been administered, but it’s possible.”

“Why have you come?” she asked, not earning herself any brownie points. Sheesh, the abrasive and paranoid team leader act was old and she’d only been back a handful of minutes. She’d been out in the woods without much help and without much luck for weeks, I told myself. I’d been in town tending to an herb garden and collecting McGuffins. She was well within her rights to be annoyed.

And actually, it turned out worse than I imagined. I didn’t know what the result of Jacoby’s mission was, but in time I would learn.

“Listen, we need your help.”

This she clearly did not like. “What is it?”

I told her.

I watched the disbelieving expression replaced by consideration, then acceptance. She could be reasoned with and reasonable after all.

So, one final time, I consented to giving out a whole bunch of instances of Healer’s Resistance, got everyone in position (including the Guardians), and took a deep, calming breath.

“You’re ready for this,” I told her, trying to sound encouraging.

“We most certainly are not ready for this,” she said.

I turned on Psyspeech and made the next declaration directly into her head. I promise no ulterior motives here, nothing other than getting this solved.

Jacoby narrowed her eyes for a second before turning a harsh glare on me. She blinked at me several times before clenching her fists.

“You owe me one,” she said through gritted teeth. “Another one.”

“Oh… okay.”

“I’m going to claim it too, don’t think I won’t.”

“Oh,” I said, “I believe you.” I did. Would I wake up with my hands already tied above my head, with her naked and shoving her crotch directly in my face? Or something more erotic?

Oh, woe is me.

Together, we ascended into a completely empty town, and up to where Blake was the sole remaining slumbering individual.

“We have to do this, don’t we?” she asked.

“You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

She gave me such a Look it had a capital letter, and prompted an intimidation check. Waving her hands as if to banish the check from in front of her UI, I was pleased to see it disappear.

“Okay people, we planned for this! Let’s do it!”

Her people all got to work, and at that moment, we reconstituted a god.

By bringing these parts together and praying to the god with your time and with your effort, you have successfully reconstituted it. The god has been brought back to life. If enough time passes without intervention, the sickness will take it once more. It will die and discorporate yet again. The consequences of this will be more severe than the original death.

A clock began ticking away, signaling how much time I had to create and administer a cure. I say a clock, but it was essentially a circle in my user interface already ticking. Luckily, it wasn’t an ugly red, but a soft powder blue with a sliver of yellow beneath. Concentrating on it, it explained how the circle would empty every twenty-four hours and leave behind another colorful clock circle. Red would be the final color.

We had a week.

Well, we had to inspect the god itself, and see what we were dealing with. I needed diagnostic tools, a long nap, and maybe a roll in the hay with one or several young ladies.

The nap would wait. The young ladies too. Right now, it was crucial for us to consolidate our gains and ensure we kept momentum on our side. With all that in mind, I announced my intent to head back into town, see the god, run my diagnostics, and then call it a day. Letting the rest of the team know they could have the rest of the day off, I grabbed my tools and set off.

It had been over nine hours of work for all these people, with hardly a break or a breather anywhere in between. I had channeled a mind-boggling amount of mana. The typical shift that came over my body, which gave me green hair and pale skin, had receded from me using it all up.

It only took us five minutes of heading into town, and then five minutes of walking the streets before we saw it.

The god appeared as a man festooned with a number of piercings and littered with hundreds of tattoos. All of these were glowing white, and would have come across odd, except that his skin was nearly pure black. They depicted people at work: cutting down trees, standing in fishing boats and hauling up nets, setting up traps or racks of drying skins or stocking shelves with potions. There were smiths hammering amorphous metal somethings on anvils, people shoving spears into training dummies, casting lines on their fishing poles, and these were just the ones I got a load of on my first scan.

He wore a fur loincloth, fur-lined boots, ornate leather wristbands, and a whole lot of tool belts, some with pouches. The divine tools we’d found before were all hanging off these.

Also, and no biggie, he was at least twenty feet tall.

Tara’s mouth dropped open. “Holy—”

“You gotta not do that,” I said. “It literally is holy here. So it doesn’t matter whether you say ‘mackerel’ or ’crap’ or ’shift’, it’s going to be on the cusp of blasphemy.”

She smiled at me.

“I know, I’m an atheist too… or I was, or at least agnostic. But…” I gestured vaguely at the gigantic man-shaped thing. “You can touch it, it’s real.”

Tara laughed.

The Diagnosis skill required me to use a complicated series of individually wrapped and mana-shielded stones to detect the probability of mana… issues. There were so many problems with mana, it was its own eight school profession, with all of them having different ideas on what worked, and all of them being correct. You might think it made no sense to have eight different theories of relativity, where each one worked, but clearly you’d never experienced magic before.

Each magic diagnosis crystal needed to be run over the form of the god from head to toe, close enough to His body that if He moved, I would be swatted aside. If I survived the physical damage, there would be hefty divinity poisoning to handle.

So far, He hadn’t moved though.

Over the course of the next very tense five minutes, I did the diagnostic check, including rewrapping and replacing the crystals so their detection energies didn’t overlap and corrupt the gems into uselessness. It was another one of those Healer-does-this-the-slow-way situations, while around me everyone held their breath.

“Fletcher—” Regina started, but someone shushed her.

We will be here to catch you if the god should stir, Larelle’s implacable voice told me directly in my brain. A comfort, but a small one. I was the Healer… who was going to heal me?

Oh wait… Regina, Tara, Vellenia, Cinzy, Ivy, and Isabelle had all gotten healing powers from me once they were ‘brought into the fold’ using Entwined Ecstasy.

I gave a low whistle while I worked, thinking about how I had spread the seed of being a Healer, the rumored most dangerous class to be, by getting freaky with a whole bunch of gorgeous and willing women.

This is Fletcher about to go to Hard Mode.

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