Viridian Gate Online: Schism: A litRPG Adventure (The Heartfire Healer Series Book 2)

by E. C. Godhand

  “Even if we can sneak past them, won’t we be screwed when we get inside?” I asked.

  “The higher-level ones tend to get out first, so, probably not. The ones inside will be closer to our level,” said Keres.

  “You speak as if you’ve seen this before, Keres.”

  She didn’t say anything. The zombies heard our voices and lifted their heads.

  “We need a plan, quick,” said Bri’jit. We ducked behind the bushes and kept our voices low.

  “Alright, alright. We’ve got um... sunflowers?”

  “Sunflowers need light to function, Liset,” said Keres.

  “Right, and undead don’t like light, right?”

  “Still not undead,” repeated Bri’jit.

  “The sun’s setting behind the forest. We’ll have to make torches if we want light,” said Keres.

  “It’s not the same. I don’t think it’ll work,” said Bri’jit.

  We all sighed.

  “What do we have that they don’t?” asked Bri’jit.

  “Courage? Faith?” offered Keres.

  “Functioning body systems?”

  “Shut up, Liset,” said Bri’jit, her breath coming quick. She glanced over the bush at the totally-not-undead undead creatures and bit her lip. She sat and slammed her fist against the dirt. “We have nothing. I had one job, and we’ve failed before we even got here. This is bullshit, and it’s all your fault!” she hissed, jabbing me in the center of my chest.

  I touched the sore spot on my sternum with a wince.

  “We only have sunflowers,” muttered Bri’jit, burying her face in her hands. “What good are sunflowers with no sun?”

  I lifted my hand and remembered the Divine Spark branded like a spiraled sun on my chest. It lit up under my hand, like a candle. I was a Hieromancer. My job was to literally wield holy light. Even my new mechanic Bri’jit had praised earlier, Divinity, depended on others to help power that light through faith in me, and like a thousand candles held together, I had become a bonfire. Even my ability to cleanse the environment put me at least on par with the sunflower. I knew what I could do. A sunflower could do more than lift spirits.

  I grabbed Bri’jit’s hand and touched it to my chest. She glanced up with a start, confused, but saw the light and her eyes widened.

  Without another word, she leapt over the bush and darted for the nearest potted sunflower. Keres stood to follow, but I grabbed her wrist and bid her to wait. Bri’jit returned and shoved the flowerpot towards me.

  “Do it,” she commanded.

  I had the cantrip I had used earlier that morning and held my hand over the sunflower to shower it in light.

  The seed face opened large, bright eyes, and it smiled at me.

  “Hi!” said our new friend.

  Keres and Bri’jit fell on their butts in shock, but I burst out in a quiet giggle and hugged the plant.

  “We have a sunflower! We’re saved!” I kept laughing. I wiped happy tears off my cheeks with the heel of my hand.

  “Alright. Here’s what we’re going to do...”

  PvZ

  We quickly reviewed my plan. Veracity cost 50 SP and three seconds to cast to cleanse each sunflower that had been blighted by pollen. It’d take a bit more for my Divinity meter to fill up again to try and cleanse the zombie heroes all at once, like we did the boars. Keres, with her high Dexterity and dodge, would dart out and bring back the flowerpots and line them up like soldiers in front of me. Bri’jit would do her best to try and stall the zombies with her Tranquility chime and incense to keep them calm and soothed, but when her spells ran out, there’d be a wave, and we had to be prepared.

  The focus first was sunflowers. They were my healers, and the light I’d shine on them with the cantrip would, in theory, give them light to power the other plants. They had to be protected, so they were the backline. The other plants... well, we’d hope the stories were true, and they’d do something for us.

  Keres returned with another sunflower. I poured light over it with my hand, and it too woke up and greeted me with a sweet smile and a “Hi!” I faced them all towards the zombies that were shuffling towards us. They saw my light and were drawn like moths to a lamp.

  I must’ve been doing something right, because our quests updated to use the environment to “gain entrance to the mausoleum.”

  Keres stared at the horde headed our way. “This is insane.”

  “We’re priests,” I said. “We put all of our faith in a being we can’t see or touch or hear. Since when are we sane?”

  “Are you sure this will work?” asked Bri’jit, clutching her staff, her eyes wide. The reality of what we were up against was sinking in.

  “Nope!” I laughed. “But we’ve got ‘dead’ and ‘possibly dead,’ so we might as well try.”

  They exchanged looks but set about their tasks. Bri’jit stayed behind the sunflowers with me, lit incense in the censer in her staff, and used her crowd-control spells to slow them. Keres returned with a sweet pea pot and I directed her to place it in front of the sunflowers, which were glowing with the light borrowed from me.

  I didn’t waste all that time growing up playing games on my mother’s phone at her office for nothing after all.

  I cleansed and woke up the Sweet Pea, whose voice was even higher and cuter.

  “Hello!”

  A beam of light from the sunflower poured into the Sweet Pea, turning it into a Peashooter, which implacably chucked small rocks like bullets at the zombies. Curious, I cast Veracity on the light beam itself. This seemed to amplify it, and the rocks the Peashooter threw were blessed. Not only did they do increased damage with the blessing but the bits that were hit were cleansed.

  Three zombies were closest to us. More than the little Peashooter could handle. Keres brought two more, one under each arm, and set them down. I gave them the same treatment to get them fired up. The first managed to shoot the candle off the first zombie’s head, while the second did its best to knock the bucket off the next zombie. The third zombie marched ahead, using its door as a shield.

  “Keres—” I breathed nervously.

  “On it,” said Keres. She picked up some branches strewn around the trees and lit the end with holy fire in a flick of her wrist. She placed them in front of the Peashooters, amplifying their damage, making sure to stay low and not be hit by the projectiles. The flaming rocks ate the zombie’s door-shield and what remained of his flesh. He, and his companions, shuffled, stumbled, and collapsed into the dirt.

  “Yes!” I yelled with a small fist pump. Damn it felt good to finally be able to do some damage for once.

  Bri’jit looked up from a break in her spells and gasped at me. “Have some respect for the dead, jeez,” she scoffed. “These are our honored ancestors.”

  I stared at her in bewilderment. “Our”? She was a Traveler, like me. The Dawn Elves were hardly “our” kin, even if their AI actualized them into people. Technically that was true for Keres though. Her family might’ve been in that lineup. She had a point. I wasn’t about to be happy about blowing up someone’s grandma, so I settled down.

  When I glanced back at the lawn, I felt the blood drain from my face. The zombie with the flag had gotten closer, leading a horde of zombies that followed his rally. Whatever the ancestors had forgotten to time as their bodies and minds decayed, they remembered following their elders. They remembered war.

  It’d be too much. As fast as Keres was working to bring me sunflowers, Peashooters, and torches, it wasn’t enough to wear down that many in time. What’s more, Keres would be overwhelmed, and our supply would run out. Bri’jit was doing her best to calm them, but there were too many. If we couldn’t even CC them, I didn’t want to think about having to fight them properly. Acuity pulled up their levels as a series of question marks, and their Health bars only showed a percentage. I didn’t want to think about what would happen when the zombies stomped on our sunflowers. None of us would give up on the citizens of Ascomere like that. But I
wasn’t too keen on letting them munch on my brains, either.

  I only let people eat me if they asked nicely.

  I tried to cast a heal on one that had just popped into range, but it did nothing. My heart sank. In games, healing the undead damaged them. But V.G.O. wasn’t a game, not anymore. And as Bri’jit said, these weren’t classified as undead.

  We needed something else. I wasn’t giving up. I searched through my inventory, past the flowers and herbs and food, to the Orb of Antishade. Hector had said it could blow up even Aspects, so surely it would take out the zombies. It weighed heavy in my hand. Something in my gut, something I couldn’t explain, told me to put it back, so I did.

  Then again...

  I pulled it out and felt my breath quicken as the zombies closed in. I shut my eyes tight and shoved it back deep into my inventory. Blowing it up to keep it out of the Temple’s hands wasn’t a solution to my bigger problem, either. I put it away and pulled out a cherry instead.

  Yes. Okay. This could work.

  Bri’jit lowered her hands from casting her spells and wiped sweat off her brow.

  “Bridge,” I said, holding up the cherry.

  “You got any more bright ideas?” she hissed.

  I made the cherry glow in my hand. “Only if you’re okay with us blowing up your ‘honored ancestors,’” I said.

  She glanced to the wave of zombies encroaching on our position and heaved a sigh. “We don’t really have an option, do we?”

  I cast Veracity on the cherry and held it in the sunflower’s beam of light to charge it. I held it out for Bri’jit to try some of her spells on it. She added a spell called Spirits of the Sun. In my palm, the little red fruit grew and became a Cherry Bomb. I heaved my arm back to throw it, but Keres snatched my wrist and took it from me.

  “Too weak,” she muttered, rolling her muscled shoulders back. I didn’t know whether she was referring to me or the bomb until she added her own spell and lobbed it far into the crowd.

  The cherry bomb shimmered with the combined holy power of three priests and exploded in the middle of the horde, knocking the high-level zombies to the ground. As they pushed themselves onto their rotting legs, an orb of light rose out of the remains like a mirror ball and shot focused rays of light at each of the zombies. No zombie on the lawn seemed out of reach, and one by one, they collapsed and didn’t rise again.

  The only one left was the flag runner, who got pelted with flaming rock after rock until he too, fell.

  My knees gave out and I knelt on the ground behind the line of sunflowers. Keres retrieved the flag, a relic of her people, while Bri’jit prayed for the fallen. The lawn was clear, for now, as the last bit of the sun slipped behind the horizon. Storm clouds rolled in above us.

  “You’ll stand guard while we go inside, right?” I asked the first sunflower.

  “You got it, boss!” said the flower with a bright smile.

  I needed a drink.

  While Keres gathered up the bodies in a pile to be reburied later and Bri’jit continued her rites, I pulled up my notifications. I hit level 13.

  <<<>>>

  x1 Level Up!

  You have (5) undistributed stat points

  You have (1) unassigned proficiency point

  <<<>>>

  I immediately sunk two points into Constitution and three points into Vitality. My Stamina was still pitiful, and my Health bar needed to be longer if I wanted to live. I thought about increasing my Divinity skill with my proficiency point, but decided on the third tier of Charity, which seemed to be a group heal.

  <<<>>>

  Skill: Charity

  You beseech your God on behalf of your target to restore life to the weary and the broken.

  Skill Type/Level: Spell/Adept

  Cost: 150 Spirit

  Range: 40 Meters

  Cast Time: 3 seconds

  Cooldown: N/A

  Effect: Restore 50 Health + Spell Power to up to five members of your party instantly. Base healing done scales with level by 5% x lvl. Starts with the lowest % Health and chain-heals accordingly.

  <<<>>>

  The Spirit cost was high at 150 Spirit, but compared to casting individual healing spells to five times, it was an economical way to heal the whole party at once. Not to mention, individual healing spells would take at least fifteen seconds, during which time they could take damage that killed them, versus this level’s three seconds.

  My companions were too busy with their own tasks to take an interest in what I was doing and give me grief over it again, but I still imagined what they’d say. “Do you really want to be a cook?” “Look, I’m not saying there’s no value in opening a restaurant or inn and providing a hot meal to weary travelers, I’m just wondering if that’s right for you.”

  I thought of the lovely meal Chef Boyle served me and my friends that morning, and how I got to help. I did have fun. I could see myself doing that if I couldn’t be a priest anymore. But I couldn’t bring myself to put a point into anything but Hieromancer. I caught my breath and watched Bri’jit doing her religious rites and collecting Corrupted Gravedirt and Bonedust along with Sour Poppies and Fear-Me-Nots for her quests. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Unlike her, I never got to learn how to be a “proper” priest. Exarch Jericho’s religious teachings could be bought for the right price, at the right levels, after showing the right amount of deference and devotion to him. Not the Aspect. To him. Like a damn cult.

  Cian had offered to take me in like he had all the other priests that Jericho rejected, but he was his own version of awful. Where were the comforting rites? The prayers on behalf of the community? The belonging to an order of like-minded people who worked for good in the world?

  Yvonne was an Imperial Augur and followed Gaia. In that I didn’t feel quite so alone. And I did have proof in my hand and the world around me of her existence and her concern for the world she created. I even wore her golden bangles on my wrist as a “well done” pat on the ass that restored my Health the more Spirit I spent. But all of these could be lost. They could be taken away.

  And if—no, WHEN—I lost them, would I still believe in Gaia, or curse the injustice?

  My companions finished up their work and hailed me as the storm clouds rumbled overhead.

  Requiescat in Pace

  We entered the mausoleum just after a crack of thunder opened the skies. Heavy rain pelted the mint-colored glass dome above us. Lenity, my holy shield, had done nothing to protect us from the elements. Lightning that ravaged the sky illuminated the claustrophobic darkness, and our elven Night Eye showed everything in a blue haze.

  My quest had updated with our success. Get to the Heroes’ Rest? Check. Cleanse the Blighted Gardens? Check. Now to prevent a dungeon from forming and make sure Bri’jit survived.

  Keres shook the rain out like a wet dog while Bri’jit joined me in wringing our robes out over the thirsty potted plants that dotted the small square room. It felt awkward to take off my veil in public. I’d only worn it two days, and could never be called a modest person before, but it felt a part of me now. Protective like a blanket swaddling me. But we were all priests here. My long blonde hair was messy in its crown braids, so I fixed it as Bri’jit fussed over the state of the place. In their haste to get back to the city, the ancestors had shattered priceless vases and knocked down familial banners embroidered with names of progeny underneath the crests. The soapstone floor was littered with the filth of the grave and stained with streaks of dark, aged blood.

  A magnificent golden brazier hung off four chains from the ceiling of the dome. Inside the cresset, the tiniest glow of embers occasionally flickered to life with a passing breeze from either of us.

  “It’s dying,” breathed Bri’jit, her voice choked. She set about grinding the proper herb with a mortar and pestle while Keres stacked Deadwood for her. I breathed life into the embers to keep them going. Not too much, or it’d go out. Two small puffs.

  “This must always be lit,” said Bri’jit,
not slowing her pace as she dumped Bonedust and the oily mixture of grave flowers over the firewood.

  “It is the ward that keeps evil at bay and protects our civilization,” explained Keres, taking over for me like we were switching out during CPR. “In times of darkness, the fire must always burn. The light of the Hvitalfar must always shine.”

  Bri’jit took the remaining lit incense from her staff and placed it on top of the stack. Keres snapped her fingers and the whole thing lit up in a brilliant blaze.

  We all heaved a collective sigh.

  “There’s so much to do here,” said Bri’jit, looking around. “I have to light the incense and mop and—”

  Keres placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get to that later.”

  I checked my quest again.

  “What does ‘Prevent a dungeon from forming’ mean?” I asked.

  “We have to get to the heart of the catacombs and I have some rites to do,” said Bri’jit, still tidying up despite Keres’ pleas to take a breather.

  Keres rolled her eyes and had me sit with her on the last unbroken bench in the place. She rubbed her full belly. I felt like I did when my mother decided to have ‘The Talk’ with me.

  “Like anything else in this world, dungeons are born,” said Keres. “But like a lot of things that might grow into life, not all of them make it. The elders explained that whenever there’s a lot of death in one area, say a battlefield, or sometimes a mine, Cernunnos decides to grow a dungeon there. The dungeon heart develops, but until it starts beating, it’s not considered a dungeon, and Cernunnos would forgive us for destroying it.”

  “Like the Catacombs of the Forsaken,” I said.

  “Only there, we couldn’t get to the heart in time. I’m not about to let that happen again.”

  I glanced over at Bri’jit, who was shooing a spider away from its home. The spider was shaking its front legs at her in response. “How are undead made, then?”