The sister act, p.28
The Dark Healer (Book #5): A Historical Progression Fantasy Series, page 28
Alex Toxic & Nadya Lee
The Dark Healer
Book Five
A Historical Progression Fantasy Series
Published by Magic Dome Books
The Dark Healer
Book # 5
Copyright © Alex Toxic, Nadya Lee 2025
Cover Art © Natalia Radaeva from DrakArt studio 2025
Cover designer: Vladimir Manyukhin
English translation copyright © Dan Veksler 2025
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2025
ISBN: 978-80-7702-018-3
All Rights Reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
New and upcoming releases from
Magic Dome Books!
If you like our books and want to keep reading, download our FREE Publisher's Catalog, a must-read for any LitRPG fan which lists some of the finest works in the genre:
Tales of Wonder and Adventure: The Best of LitRPG, Fantasy and Sci-Fi (Publisher's Catalog)
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About The Authors
Chapter 1
OLGA WASN’T THE LEAST BIT INTERESTED in how many people might be lying in ambush for us, or where and how they had been prepped. She didn’t care about any details. I had watched our aggressive competitors’ departure alone. When I had my conversation with the superintendent, everyone had already finished breakfast and returned to their rooms. In proportion to her growing mastery, Olga was also becoming more unruly. Especially when I was nearby, she tended to lose all caution altogether. My presence was synonymous with safety for her.
In most cases, that was fine. But I wanted my pupils, especially my own descendant, to never forget their heads. Even in cases when no special preparation was required, I wasn’t about to neglect it. Not in front of my students. They needed to learn to see it as an intrinsic part of being a battle magician, and not to charge mindlessly into battle even when victory seemed to be guaranteed. Better to spend a couple more hours prepping, than to scrape pieces of your comrade off the ground later.
Luckily, for now, Olga was the only hothead in the group. The others’ responses were much more reserved.
“What’s the rush?” Alan was horrified by her carelessness. “Max hasn’t even briefed us yet.”
“I must agree,” Prokhor said. “We don’t even know how many, or where they are.”
Alina didn’t say anything, but by her frightened gaze you could see she would be the last one to lunge into battle.
“What does it matter how many?” Olga shrugged. “If they’re planning on attacking us, then we’ll have to fight them anyway. Right, Max?” She turned to seek my support.
“Yes,” I said, “but the guys are right, too. Never forget about precautions. Olga, do you think you could take eighty armed men at once?”
She hesitated. “No, but you…”
“You shouldn’t be concerned with what I can do,” I interrupted her. “First and foremost, you have to rely on your own strength. Will your shield withstand Manticore fire?”
She thought for a second and nodded.
“How about a whole Manticore magazine on rapid-fire, at point-blank range?” I continued. “At what point will your energy run out? How about Prokhor and Alan? I can’t cover everyone, and I’m not interested in losing any of my warriors to win a fracas with a gang of bums.”
“Eighty?!” Alan said in horror. “You think they’re all out there?!”
I nodded. “That’s why we’re going to improve our chances now.”
I opened the door of the chimeramobile and got out, followed by the others. Fred drove the truck, and Arnold had stayed behind at the fort to do admin work and keep courting the superintendent’s friendship. But Prokhor, Alan, Alina, and Olga all now watched me with interest as I walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk. There didn’t seem to be anything in there, but a couple of boxes of ammo. But then the masking lifted and a mini-chimera became visible to my pupils.
“Furball?!” Alan exclaimed in surprise and joy. “I thought we weren’t taking chimeras with us.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Olga said in a hurt voice. “Max didn’t even let me take Archie.”
“Archie isn’t strong enough yet for a place like this,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d want to risk losing him.”
“Furball’s no stronger!” she objected. “She’s weaker even. What is she doing here?”
The mini-chimera gave her the kind of haughty look a spoiled cat might muster, then gracefully ran up my extended arm to sit on my shoulder.
“But she has several clear advantages your revenant doesn’t. Furball is tiny, very wily, and most importantly she can mask and go into a shadow. She can evade pursuit capture many times easier than Archie, who can’t even climb trees.”
“I see,” Olga said and sighed sadly.
I knew how she felt. She really loved our dogs — not just Archie, Phobos and Deimos, too. We had not taken the hounds with us either, because they would have attracted too much attention on the train and in the fort.
“You see now?” I said to Olga. “You understand why it’s important to prepare?” Precisely so that we can catch and create more animals. We’re going to need them, and not just to take care of the volunteers, but also to help us hunt the monsters in this focus.”
“Where are they, by the way?” Prokhor asked. “We’ve been standing here for several minutes and haven’t seen a single one.”
“We’re probably not as appetizing to them as the crowd ahead of us,” Alan said.
I nodded. “Exactly. We haven’t gone far from the fort walls yet. Some of the nearby monsters were destroyed by the cannons on the fortress, and the rest are following the truck motorcade. Furball is going to be very helpful indeed,” I smiled.
“Huh?” Olga raised her eyebrow.
Rather than explain, I ordered the chimera to go searching for victims. She jumped off my shoulder and disappeared among the mutant trees.
“Wait,” I said.
Just a few minutes later, Furball came back, dragging a dead flyer as though it was a tiny sparrow.
“That’s for you,” I said to our chimerologist Alina. She seemed to be slightly in shock and hadn’t made a sound this whole time. But, once there was work to do, she snapped out of it.
“I’ll go get the tools,” she said, heading toward the truck.
“Wait,” I stopped her. “Take the flyer with you. You’re not going to work on it out on the grass, right? There’s a folding table in the truck. And it’ll be safer for you.”
“You’re right,” she said, coming back. She picked up the dead monster without the slightest squeamishness. When she was working, Alina was decisive and unwavering — a different person.
Furball went back out for more, and over the following ten minutes, brought us six more flyers. Which was more than enough for Alina to build a big powerful bird with a mega-sharp beak and claws, which was at the same time compact enough to maneuver among the trees. Alina had taken into account the nature of the environment. She hadn’t modeled the chimera after an eagle, for instance. No, in the creation of this new bird-chimera, she was inspired by another powerful predator — the owl.
Once I brought it to life, the catch began to rain down on us at a manifold redoubled pace. Furball and Owl avoided the exploding jumpers, of course, but our new chimera caught flyers on a practically industrial scale.
Furball now took on a new task. Like a hunting dog, she would now track down fatties for us. The mini-chimera couldn’t take them on alone, but she was very good at leading them to us or keeping them where they were until we arrived.
“That is a very weird sight to see,” Olga commented. “Furball looks and acts so much like a cat, but right now she’s like one of our hounds.”
“Nah!” Alan said. “How can you compare this cutiepie to those huge monsters?”
Alan had hated Phobos and Deimos from the beginning and always tried to avoid them, but Furball held a special place in his heart.
“I think they’re cute, too,” my granddaughter argued. “You’re just afraid of them!”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Alan furrowed his brow. Then, as if to prove he was telling the truth, he was the first to attack a large and spikey fattie. He almost got hit first, so Prokhor and Olga had to cover him.
I was trying to minimize my own involvement in this hunt. It was a good opportunity for my pupils to learn to cooperate and not rely on my help.
Luckily, even in powerful foci like this one, there were enough medium-strength monsters, which made it easier to build a new chimera army.
* * *
“Are you sure they’re coming?” yawned a sharp-nosed volunteer with a mutilated ear, whose nickname was Ratface. “Maybe they’ve pissed their pants and are hiding in the fort?”
“Yeah,” the crew-cutted, stocky Dan seconded him. “The soldiers won’t protect them out here.”
There were laughs all around. Most of these guys were of the opinion that the only reason the newbies had survived the night was their personal acquaintance with the superintendent. Even in a place like this, connections were everything.
“Even so,” Ratface spoke again, “we’ve been hanging out here for over an hour. We’ve spent a third of our ammo, the monsters keep coming. And our long-awaited guests are still nowhere to be seen.”
Bran, a tall, bearded man — one of the surviving Black Wolves — replied, “They’re coming, don’t worry. They were so full of themselves, there’s no way they’re not coming. But if it makes you feel better, let’s send a few guys to meet them. Maybe the assholes are lost.”
There was another burst of loud laughter, accompanied by a few gunshots.
“Good idea,” Dan said. “I’m tired of hanging around here. Who’s coming with me? Ten minutes there and back. We’ll at least see if they’ve left the fort yet.”
Two other team members came forward, leapt into an armored pickup, and drove off.
They did not return — neither ten minutes later, nor thirty.
“Shit, you don’t think Dan and the guys got whacked by monsters, or those jackasses, do you?” Ratface said what everyone was thinking.
“Go check on them if you want,” Bran answered rudely. “Most likely, they fucked off and ditched us.”
The Black Wolves were extremely irritated that things weren’t going according to their plan.
“Maybe I will,” Ratface exploded. “Let’s go, boys!” He signaled to his team and they all went back toward the fort.
They did not come back, either. Mutiny began to brew among the volunteers, gathering mass and momentum like an avalanche. But the authority of the Black Wolves kept everyone from dispersing. Besides, each team was hoping to snatch one of the brazen newbies’ vehicles for themselves. Not to mention have some fun with their girls. So, they kept waiting.
And now, at last, their patience was rewarded. The upstarts’ souped out Lambo appeared on the horizon, followed by their van. They stopped just short of the fork in the road where all the volunteers were gathered.
“Maybe they suspect something?” one of the remaining cleansers said quietly.
“Nah, can’t be. They’re more likely to be glad we’ve cleared everything here,” Bran snickered, trying to play it cool. Only for some reason, he was now covered in goosebumps himself.
Then, right from behind the newbies’ van, two extremely large fatties with antlers like a mutant moose’s made their way toward the men at an incredible speed.
“Fuck!” one of the shooters from the nearest pickup truck to the monsters managed to scream, before they lifted his vehicle with their antlers and threw it, sending it flying several yards.
* * *
How lucky that of all possible fatties, these were the ones we got — ones with massive, heavy antlers. Alina just had to finetune them a little, literally making two enormous monsters out of four. Now we watched from a safe distance as they watched soccer with our enemies’ military equipment.
The enemies themselves were screaming like stuck pigs, not understanding how these monsters could be so invincible. Each one of them was an experienced cleanser and they didn’t panic easily. On the contrary, it had taken them just a few seconds to regroup and take better positions for shooting at our moose. Which would have worked great if they had been regular focus monsters. But alas, to our chimeras, even a hail of Manticore fire was not even a nuisance.
And then, they were attacked from above by several owls. So far, though, there was more chaos amidst our enemies’ ranks than there were casualties. The chimeras’ main task at first was not to kill people, but to destroy the automatic guns and heavy artillery. The moose would overturn the jeeps and armored cars, while the cows just tore the guns off of their mounts and threw them away. All to take away all the enemy’s fire support so our whole team could enter the fight without wasting shield energy on withstanding heavy artillery fire.
Once that was done, my pupils would not be held back any longer. Only Alina stayed back in the truck, but even she was driving several chimeras from there. The others literally crushed the opponents’ morale by lunging into hand-to-hand combat. When the volunteers realized we all had magic shields, their ranks were seized with true panic.
“Magicians! They’re magicians! How is that possible?!” The desperate wails were heard all around. The only answer they got was shadow scalpels piercing their bodies.
“Fifteen!” Olga reported gleefully as she ran past me on her way to yet another victim. “Who has more?” She had turned this bloodbath into a contest, in which she had come in second only to me. I wasn’t keeping an exact score, but it was definitely in the several-dozen range. I didn’t tell her that, so as not to upset her. “Sixteen!” she exclaimed again after successfully throwing a shadow dart into an escaping volunteer.
Prokhor and Alan had a much harder time. Their shields weren’t as strong yet as Olga’s, so they had to be a lot more careful.
Even so, it was all over in just a few minutes.
“Twenty-six,” Olga said, standing over the body of her last victim.
“Eleven,” Prokhor said gruffly.
“Can I pass?” Alan said, upset.
“Oh come on,” Olga said. “We’re all friends here. Besides, I’m your teacher and I need to know how well you’re doing.”
“Eight,” he said reluctantly.
“Hmm…” Olga said, disappointed at first. But then she suddenly remembered the importance of positive reinforcement in pedagogy. “You guys are doing a good job,” she said. “Just keep working on those shields.” She even clapped Prokhor on the shoulder, which embarrassed him and he blushed.
Naturally, my cunning granddaughter did not ask me how many I’d killed, so as not to ruin her own triumph. It was pretty amusing to watch her play the bigshot.
“Alright,” I interrupted the bacchanalia of self-congratulation. “Don’t forget where we are. The chimeras are protecting us right now from the focus monsters, not letting them get close to us. But that’s not so you can rest after the fight. You’re not that tired,” I snickered. “Go gather the loot! The sun is still high!”
The smile slowly faded from Olga’s face and she soberly surveyed the battlefield. There was truly a load of work to be done.
“Why don’t we just raise wraiths?” she asked. “Let them clean up.”
“Because there’s another task here for them,” I answered. “Besides, they can’t evaluate the state of the vehicles and other equipment. So hop to it. You too, Alina,” I called out so she could hear me inside the truck. “Don’t even think of sitting this out!”
Frightened, Alina flew out of the trailer like a bullet, saying, “I wasn’t expecting to!”
My pupils reluctantly spread out on the field of battle to assess the state of our catch. While they did this, I did indeed raise a few bodies — the ones in acceptable condition. Some of them were now busily collecting the dog tags off the dead volunteers. I was going to have to hand these over to the superintendent. The rest of my newly raised servants headed right into the depths of the focus. We still had business to take care of here.
Chapter 2
AS ALWAYS, THE FOCUS MONSTERS didn’t pay any mind to the dead, so the wraiths encountered no resistance whatsoever in reaching the cleansing stations and replacing the crystals there. I had sent the shadow scout with them so that I could see their progress and evaluate the risks that would arise on the journey to the center. None of what I saw surprised me. As in all other foci, the deeper in you go, the more monsters there are, and the stronger they are.
