Chapter -2147483633 (Pocket Sized)

  The ranger [Healer] woke and sat up. Looking around at her surroundings, she found that things hadn’t changed from the dark, filthy tent she’d been in before losing consciousness.

  “Oh good, you’re awake. From the lack of any sound outside, I’m guessing you got them all.”

  Alex looked over with bleary eyes at the face of her [Leader], Marcus, nodded, and replied, “I guess so. Channelling that for most of a day was bound to do it. Still seems weird that the system considers that skill as healing.”

  “In any case, whatever they had on us to drain mana has cleared, so good job there. Should be able to get out as soon as Atalanta has enough mana.”

  Alex looked over at the other woman who smiled back at her and said, “Soon.” The terse response wasn’t unexpected, as Laconians like her tended to be efficient with their words. Looking the powerful woman over, Alex finally noticed that the intricate runic tattoos which had spanned her body for as long as the two had known each other were no longer present.

  At this discovery, Alex simply raised one eyebrow, certain that her meaning would be understood. Atalanta’s smile turned into a full teeth on display grin. “Class up,” she said in reply. “Active/Passive now.” Alex nodded at this information and returned the smile.

  Now that her eyes had time to adjust, she looked around the rest of the interior and noted the presence of the other five rangers, Pliny, Lucius, Quirinus, Quintus, and Martelius. Nyssos had hopefully delivered their message of distress and gotten a message off to a sentinel, but that turned out to not be as necessary as they had feared. Had they bothered to layer more mana drain curses on the healer, or bothered to kill her outright..

  Alex actually wasn’t sure if they could have killed her. She had quite strong personal regeneration in passive skills, but had never had cause to find out exactly what the limits actually were. She didn’t want to think about the amount of trauma finding out those limits would cause. Therapy wasn’t exactly a thing, and the less said about the field of psychiatry the better.

  At least that Elaine person had stopped the proliferation of the humorism theory over a century ago. Whoever she had been, Alex was certain she’d come from Earth, same as her, but obviously hadn’t ever graduated from medical school. As a matter of principle, Alex had gone through the entire document and corrected a number of glaring, obvious errors, then added additional information to the end, adding an entire extra scroll to the document and signing her name to the cover as a contributor.

  She’d then handed the corrected document over to the man who’d been her mentor at ranger training, the sentinel known as Night, asking him to look into distributing the new version. He was responsible for sponsoring the entire program of embedding healers into ranger teams, after all. Alex assumed he’d have an interest in those healers having the best information available. He had seemed somewhat wistful at that, but requested the woman return to see him once she reached past level 300.

  As Alex mused on the nature of magical healing, the rangers continued to sit in silence inside the dark tent for a while awaiting the slow return of Atalanta’s mana, until suddenly, an intense pressure wave from a loud impact passed through them, knocking out one of the support posts. The tent subsequently collapsed on top of the team.

  After a moment, a voice called out in the dark, “Well, this sucks.”

  Pliny was the master of understatement, and Alex couldn’t help but to laugh. Most of the others joined her, but the laughter died down after only a few moments. The mirth was cut off completely when Quirinus spoke up and said, “What do you think that was?”

  Marcus replied, “Had to have been Gravity. No one else would have reached us this quickly, and impacts like that are her specialty.”

  “Ada is in the direction that blast came from,” said Alex, quietly.

  “Wait, she’s still alive?” said Quirinus. “Are you sure? We watched them take her head off, Alex.”

  “I’m sure. Didn’t you notice the light from her class advancement was still going? Plus, I just.. know. I know she’s close.”

  The tent was silent for a while.

  Then, the sound of swords clashing together reached them from the distance, muffled by the tent draped across all their heads, and yet plenty loud enough to be unmistakable.

  No one seemed to want to be the first to speak, but Lucius finally volunteered. “Do you think that's them? Ada and Gravity, I mean,” he said.

  Alex sighed and replied, “Probably. Unless someone survived, but I can’t imagine any of the deserters having enough vitality to live through what I did.”

  “Um, what did you do, anyway?”

  “If I built my image right, gave them all an aortic dissection. It’s one of the most efficient ways to reliably kill someone nearly instantly with a minimal amount of mana.”

  “It still feels weird hearing a healer talking about efficient ways to kill,” said Lucius.

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  “Yeah, well, that’s what you get from having a druid instead of one of those oathbound initiates.”

  The collapsed tent returned to silence for a while until Atalanta finally spoke up and said, “Mana’s full.” Then, the tent lit up red as the previously hidden runic tattoos began to glow. She then pulled her arms apart and the heavy chain joining the two manacles on her wrists popped and separated, then she bent and ripped off the manacles at her ankles. The light dimmed as she stood and ripped the canvas of the tent open, exposing them all to the rising sun. Her body flared crimson once again as she went between the rangers, peeling the manacles from all of their wrists and ankles.

  Now free from their bindings, the rangers stood as a team, but found that the sounds of battle had ceased.

  “That was impressive,” Lucius said, looking over at Atalanta. “New skill?”

  She replied with a grunt, “Evolution. Strength boost skill absorbed the runes and became passive with an active overboost state. Burns from the inside while active, but active regeneration skill counters damage.”

  “Huh, you know you’re really quite terrifying, right?”

  The woman gave him a big grin, “Thank you so much for saying so. I really do try hard at it.”

  Shaking his head at the exchange, Marcus looked over at Alex and asked, “Well, is Ada...,” but he drifted off, leaving the end of his question open-ended.

  “No, she’s over there, still not dead,” said Alex as she pointed.

  In the direction she pointed, the view was entirely obstructed by layers of multiple tents piled atop one another. As Marcus looked in the direction indicated, however, two women crested the top of the heap. The taller woman certainly was garbed in the equipment of a sentinel, complete with the badge resembling his own ranger insignia with the addition of the sentinel’s starburst surrounding the eagle. This was Sentinel Gravity.

  The other woman resembled Ada, but wasn’t tall enough. Marcus recalled Ada as a giant of a woman, well over three and a half ra, considerably taller than even most of the men he knew, but this woman was barely over three ra.

  Though he continued trying to reconcile his confusion, Marcus nevertheless held up a hand in greeting and called out to the sentinel, “Greetings, Sentinel. I am Ranger Marcus, commander of Team Thirteen, and I thank you for coming to our rescue. If it is not too presumptive of me, may I ask who your companion is?”

  “Oh, hey Marcus, it’s me, Ada,” the shorter woman replied, interrupting Gravity before she could even open her mouth.

  At this, Alex took off running for her partner, embracing her as they met. She didn’t care that everyone else was watching. She didn’t care that right beside her love was a sentinel. No, all she cared about was that Ada was alive and in her arms again. “Ada, I’m so glad you’re ok.”

  Ada looked around, eyeing a few of the bodies of those traitors laying around the camp. “I’m feeling a hell of a lot better than the rest of this lot, anyway.”

  “We need to talk, but later. About that skill, I mean. And some.. other things.”

  Marcus finally spoke up and asked, “Ada? Why are you..” he drifted off at the end, not quite sure how to ask the question.

  “Why am I short?” Ada gestured with one thumb indicating the taller woman next to her. “This maniac decided that a high velocity landing on my head was the best way to introduce herself, and I lost some mass.” She shrugged.

  “Look, I already apologized for that,” said Gravity. “And besides, you survived didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but not for lack of trying on your part. Fucking inconsiderate. You’re damn lucky that I’m apparently indestructible. So, um, does anyone want to tell me about what happened and why I woke up with my head on a spear and my body nailed to a tree?”

  At that, the sentinel’s face took on a more incredulous expression -- her eyes opened slightly wider, and her chin dropped leaving her mouth agape. Even though Gravity had seen the woman survive her high velocity impact strike, which by all rights should have crushed her into a bloody pulp, she’d also survived a beheading? No, that was impossible for a mage, unless she had a powerful healing class for her secondary, but no, the woman said she’d only just unlocked it. This didn’t make sense.

  She looked Ada up and down, and asked, “How are you so resilient? Your appearance and level do not match what I’ve seen you do.”

  Ada shrugged and said, “Dunno, I just am.”

  “I... see. Fine,” she replied, eyes narrowing. She turned to the ranger [Leader] and issued a command, “Report, [Ranger]. Why am I not killing a cohort of deserters right now?”

  Marcus stood up straighter and began to deliver his report.

  Ada only half paid attention to the part she had missed, preferring to focus instead on the fact that Alex, only now realizing that, yes, she did love and had been feeling distressed over her unknown fate, was now a considerable number of centimeters taller than she was now. Ada glanced down at the blond’s cleavage and wondered if she’d be able to get away with smushing her face in there while everyone was focused on the report their leader was delivering, but something Marcus said caught her ear.

  “We discovered that the attacking force was equipped with standard legionnaire issued armor and weapons, but rather than employ standard rank and file attack formations, they were much more disorganized. Their tactics were more reminiscent of disorganized adventurers who were only somewhat familiar with fighting together as a group. It is my opinion that this is the only reason why we were able to hold out as long as we did, and I estimate we were able to reduce their total number by one hundred and fifty before our defensive bunker was breached. Alex, our healer over there, is the sole reason why we survived at all. She is also responsible for removing the threat to the empire posed by this encampment.”

  With that pronouncement, the sentinel looked over at the two women still clinging to each other. “Her? You’re a [Healer], I can see that plainly, but your level.. By the color, I’d guess you’re somewhere around 400? That’s well on your way to unlocking your third class. There aren’t many who can boast the same accomplishment.”

  Finally releasing one arm from her newly pocket sized lover, Alex turned to the sentinel to reply, “Thank you, the praise of a sentinel means a lot.”

  Ada, finally able to pry her attention away from Alex’s cleavage, glanced around at all the fallen bodies, “Hey, so what happens now? Aren’t we in some danger of having a flock of ornithocheirus drop in on us with all these bodies laying around?”

  Looking up, Marcus turned a circle in place. “That is actually a very good point,” he said. “We need to find where they stashed our gear and the wagon.”

  “Wait, I got this,” said Ada. She closed her eyes and felt the area around her for concentrations of mass that [Metal Manipulation] wanted to grab onto. Feeling something heavy, she pointed and opened her eyes. “Over there. It’s covered by some debris, but I think it’s the wagon.”

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  Based on the world from the original work by Selkie Myth

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