Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) by Dakota Krout (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

the pods detonated with the force of a brick of C4. Even as far away as Joe was, he still took three hundred eighty-six points of damage to his shield.

Exquisite Shell: 1519/2346.

Joe wasn't concerned for his own health; he was almost certain that that blast was a last-ditch effort to take out as many Dwarves as possible, and he was positive that it had a significant effect on the Dwarves who were only protected by metal and personal constitution. He wasn’t wrong; as his vision returned, Joe spotted twisted bodies laying all over the ground, even if most of them were still alive and kicking. The Dandy Lion was still alive as well, though it was slowly toppling to the side as its root system finally disintegrated to the point that it couldn’t hold up the oversized Guardian.

Joe felt something *click* in his mind, and he realized that the ritual had ended due to lack of input. His mana came flowing back to him second by second, and he sprinted to the nearest Dwarf, who clearly had a collapsed lung. Blood-flecked spittle sprayed from the Dwarf’s mouth every time she breathed out; her mustache was already matted and sticking to her skin. Even so, she managed to ask Joe questions as he started to treat her. “Is… *hack*… is that a rib poking into my breastplate? It got *cough* through the armor?”

“It did, but don't worry, you're going to be just fine. Mend!” The Dwarf managed to hold back a scream as Joe shoved her rib back into her chest, and his spell took the pain almost instantly.

“You better make sure to leave me a scar!” the Dwarf threatened him, not even slightly playing. Even with just a single treatment, she was already breathing and speaking easier. “No one is going to believe that one of my bones was hard enough to cut through Manasteel!”

“It had some help-”

The Dwarf cut him off instantly. “Yo, bro! This is an accomplishment; don't be trying to take that from me!”

“If you're well enough to mess around like this, you're going to be just fine.” Joe left her there to recover, moving to the next, and treating the most serious cases he could find. He only glanced up from his work once, when cheering broke out near the downed Guardian. Havoc was standing near the enormous plant, and had gripped just below the base of the flower, where the stem was attached. In one powerful heave, he had torn the entire Lion’s head off of the weed. The cheering reached a fever pitch and the bloodthirsty Dwarves started hacking up the rest of the Guardian.

Joe shook his head and kept moving among the injured.

“These Dwarves are insane.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The fort had been captured, the remaining Dwarves healed, and the fallen troops recovered. Standing and watching as the fort was slowly re-grown into a Dwarven-held area, Joe found that he was at something of a loss for what to do next. It seemed that everything in this Zone was geared toward large-scale conflict and group raids. He specialized as a crafter and was effective at single-target or small-party combat. The main questline here was pushing him into Zone-sized issues, and all the things that he had to do just to pay off some of the debt ‘he’ had accrued was pulling at him.

“I’m caught in the survival trap.” Joe sat on the destroyed grass in the keep. The realization came only after he had finished healing as many Dwarves as he could reach before the remainder stabilized themselves or died. No one had seemed overly concerned at the thought of dying, which was a testament to the sheer amount of faith they had in the respawn system. They had been influencing him heavily, and it was only after seeing the brutality and lack of care for their own—or each others’—lives that he had been able to step back and ponder the situation.

“I keep skirting around this issue… it’s just so much easier to let someone else make the choices.” Joe’s head was in his hands; luckily, the last of the Dwarven blood had already been erased by his Neutrality Aura. “I need the land I’d get from becoming a Noble, my guild needs it. I need to do quests to make this happen, but… this is just… war. I don’t want to be in a war. I want a giant enclosed space where I can practice my magic. My military days are supposed to be behind me.”

“Other people can activate the rituals, so why did I come out here and do it personally?” Joe thought about his circumstances for a short while and tried to face the facts. “It’s because I don’t feel that others can do the job as well as I can. So what? Am I all-powerful? I could always make a backup if they fail. I don’t need to be doing this. I don’t need to bull-rush ahead; I need to sit back and make a plan instead of just reacting to what comes my way.”

“Joe!” Havoc startled the human out of his introspection and motioned toward the fallen Dandy Lion. “Can you do anything with this? Want it before it vanishes?”

Joe eyed the massive Guardian corpse with interest and nodded. “Well. There might be some benefit to coming out here.”

As he made his way toward the pile of organic material that would become aspects, Joe’s eyes flicked to the notifications about his skill increases.

Skill increase: Mend (Journeyman 0). Congratulations on reaching the Journeyman ranks! You’ve done so much of the healing! Twenty percent more of the healing, for sure! Bonus gained: Maximum Mend. Upon casting Mend, the target can gain bonus health for up to 30 seconds. Maximum health: 50% of maximum health from skill.

Skill increase: Retaliation of Shadows (Journeyman I).

Skill increase: Coalescence (Student V).

Skill increase: Exquisite Shell (Beginner IX)

Joe didn’t want to acknowledge how nice those skill increases were. He wanted to maintain his resolution to work on his skills