Chapter 633: Thera's Perspective

Thera woke up to the sound of screams.

That had become her normal though. The hospital was filled with people bleeding and dying and she was resting only a few rooms away from it, the other bunks around just as filled with equally exhausted healers who’d each been doing their best to save who they could amidst the constant swarm of bodies pressing in, with it never being enough. There was always more coming and even after just a week of it she could see it affecting those around her, the light and life mages that were with her each suffering under the weight of what they’d seen and those they’d failed to save, with Thera doing what she could for them once she was up.

While she’d slept she made sure to bind some general healing spells to her soul, letting her cast them out constantly in her ambient mana to help strengthen their bodies for the days ahead, but once she was up she cast with intent, using the dark magic that came so naturally to her to grant them what peace she could.

Unauthorized uses of mind magics were as illegal as ever but as each day had worn on she’d stopped caring. Better to let anyone in a healing role recover as much as they could for the long days that were going to be ahead and better to remove some of the pain the various patients felt than worry about laws put in place to keep people from harming or enslaving one another. Those were just tools to keep people from doing wrong but now, surrounded by reasons to ignore them, she wasn’t going to let them stop her from making a terrible situation at least slightly better for everyone nearby.

It was only once those quick spells were cast that she went out, into the wider hospital to see what damage had been done since she’d helped the night before and found it once more crowded beyond limits.

In her eyes, she could see light and life spirits flying around, doing what they could as the mages did their best too, but she didn’t greet any. The first thing she did was move to the center of it all before pulling out and drinking a mana recovery potion for the day that was going to wait ahead and cast her next spell, earth healing.

One she’d used a few times before, it was a wasteful spell that filled the ground below her with her mana to produce a mild healing effect, but at her levels and her power it acted far beyond its expected limits, being enough to treat any minor injuries so long as someone was in its field of effect long enough and letting everyone treat the more major wounds significantly easier.

That was how the first few hours of her day began, it was how the first few hours of every day began, but once she had managed to reduce the number of patients to a more reasonable amount for the rest of the staff to handle she went off to her invasion point of the day, knowing full well that the hospital would be packed by the time she was back.

Her free hand touched her necklace as she otherwise continued to cast, finding a single new option and taking it without a second thought.

“Annihilation mage.”

These jobs don’t want me to rest.

It seemed most likely that it had been an advanced variant of her last one and given the name, it was exactly what she wanted. She didn’t want to think about anything, didn’t want to notice the world around her, all she wanted to do was kill everything she could as if that could give her the comfort she craved.

So with the time she had left before going back to the hospital, she was more than ready to try and carry out the annihilation her new job seemed to demand.

After she had finished, both her slaughter and another round of mass healing that came after, Thera was finally able to rest late into the night, only once she’d worked herself to the point of exhaustion as she laid down for what sleep she could.

It was only in those few moments when she had nothing to do that her mind wandered despite her desires. It left her small bed feeling far too big without Ben there to share it as she did her best to feel whatever scrap of hope she could that she’d see him again as the world went to hell around her.