“I will go first. My aura is in better shape than many others, but it’s taken enough damage that a repair should be easily noticeable. Before the attacks, I was stronger than even Cassie is right now.” A tall, raven-haired witch announced.
“Come on over then. Depending on the damage, this shouldn’t take long.”
Wolfe patted his knee, and the witch took a seat, giggling a little when she was seated.
“It’s like the Halloween parties when someone dresses up as the Witch Mother, and we all beg her for ooh, ungh.”
Her words turned to moans as Wolfe worked, and her thin aura suddenly flared in density, then contracted against her body as he fixed the damaged nerves.
Then, he began to link the repaired nerves together, a process that he hadn’t tried before with the rookies at the Academy. He then began a cleansing which forced out the remains of the gas, causing her to sweat an acidic liquid that was making holes in her clothes and turning her skin red.
Before the burns could get too bad, Wolfe began pouring mana into her body, and her aura flared back to life, much thicker than it was before.
“The toxins need to be washed off. Get out of those clothes and shower right away.” He warned her.
The witch ran out to the shower room that Priya had built while the rest of the team stared at him in awe.
“That couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. She still feels weakened, but the aura her body it’s producing is as strong as ever. It looks like that process is very close to a full recovery.” Priya noted.
The rest of the team was giving Wolfe pleading, hungry looks, so he turned to Cassie and Ella for approval. “At that rate, it will only take a few hours to fix the worst of the damage. After that, a few days rest should be enough for them to recover enough that they won’t be considered crippled anymore, even if they’re not back to full strength.”
“We will work with whatever you can give us during the raid. It’s better to fix them all first.” Ella agreed.
It was hard to deny the benefit of the process, as the one Witch that he had tried it with appeared to be back to her full potential. It seemed that as long as their aura hadn’t totally collapsed, their recovery process was much faster than when the witch was starting from scratch.
ƥαṇdα-ηθνε|·ƈθm
“I knew that was coming. Somehow, there is always a reason for everyone to be naked.”
“You can use an armour spell to preserve your modesty.” Wolfe reluctantly added.
The witches laughed and changed clothes, using armour talismans created by their former units to create a new outfit so that Cassie would stop glaring at them.
While they got ready, Stephanie moved to sit in Wolfe’s lap, and Ella created a stool for the patient to sit on while he worked.
[My head is itchy.] Stephanie complained in Wolfe’s mind, subtly asking him to pet her.
Her feeling of victory when he finally did was so strong that even the Servants turned to see what she was up to, unable to ignore her emotions through the bond.
For the next two hours, Wolfe worked to repair the witches’ potential so that their aura could recover naturally, finishing with the Servants, who didn’t bother getting dressed and simply brought a bucket of water with baking soda from the pilfered cooking supplies in it after seeing the amount of acid that the others had sweated out.
It was a good call. Many of the witches needed minor healing for the blisters and rash, even after five minutes of work. These last few had gotten it much worse, and it would take him quite a bit of time to sort them out.
It struck him as he worked just how young most of these witches were. War wasn’t an old person’s activity, and most of them had been serving their mandatory duty of six months at the front lines of the Monster Tide after leaving the academy.
Only a handful were over twenty years old, but the things they had seen had changed them. There were many more haunted looks, thousand-yard stares and hollow eyes than he should have seen in any group, much less one that young.
To Wolfe, his own mortality was barely real. He fought, he ran, and he fought again. But the witches could not afford to be as carefree when the humans had made weapons specifically to target and disable them. Chemical weapons that did nothing to Wolfe except make him cough. With [Detect Hidden] active, the gas didn’t even block his sight.
“That’s everyone. Get some rest, and you should be at full fighting strength within a week. As far as I can tell, your condition now is the same as when you deplete your aura for a ritual. Just rest and recover.” Wolfe directed them as he finished with the last patient.
He hadn’t noticed, but all of the witches had gathered in the room again and taken a knee, waiting for him to finish. Once he did, they spoke in unison, giving a solemn pledge.
“We owe you more than we can pay. For as long as you need us, or until we would have recovered on our own, we will work to pay off our debts.”
Wolfe felt the surge of magic as [Favour] recognized their pledge, and then each of the fifteen witches’ necks gained the same encircling mark that the Servants had.
The effect of the pacts activating caused a huge surge of energy from them to him, and Wolfe felt his second mana focus solidify and a third begin to form.
The addition of those bonds had been all the push that he needed, and the completion gave him a newfound sense of immense power, resonating with the first mana focus and multiplying its efficiency, which should lead to much less mana used per spell.
Then, the power flowed backward through his Familiar Bond as well as all the Servant Bonds, and the sigils on the witches suddenly changed from a pair of black orbs to three of them in a triangle pattern.
Wolfe’s mana density, which had been stable for what felt like ages, began to climb rapidly, so he began to cycle mana through all twenty-two linked Witches, pulling it back and forth to purify his energy until the density hit a plateau again.
As the only one without an official link to Wolfe, Priya was the only one in any shape to speak after that process was complete, but she was too busy inspecting the marking on the neck of the witch closest to her.
“Wolfe broke through. That’s the mark of a Demonic Noble. The raw power that he has now must be absolutely insane.” She whispered to herself in awe.
At the rate that he was progressing, it was clear to her that he hadn’t hit the limits of his natural talent yet, but as far as she could tell, he was already the single strongest magic user in any of the Southern Covens. It was just a shame that he was lacking so much knowledge.