F Grade Healer Becomes Strongest Biomancer-Chapter 66: Mio-san

Mori

The nightcore was mid-drop when the gate opened.

She almost missed it. One airpod in, nose running, tissue crumpled in her fist. The bass shook her eardrum while the stadium shook from something else.

The thing that came through the cage had to turn sideways to fit. When it straightened, its shoulders were wider than the gate it came from and its skull sat level with the second-tier railing. It was holding a chunk of the building in one fist.

"Wowzers." She blew her nose. "That’s an ugly thing. Its mother must hate it."

Kaito was leaning against the railing now. "Are you talking about Mio?"

"No, idiot. The troll."

The little thing on the railing hadn’t moved. Sitting cross-legged, daggers across its knees. It looked like the figurines Mori collected. Anime chibi, big head, tiny body. She brought a finger up.

It nicked her clean on the tip.

"Ow."

Yellow eyes, no expression. The dagger was already back across its knees like nothing happened.

"Whatever."

She sneezed. The tissue disintegrated. She fished another from the pack in her jacket and sneezed into that one too.

Below, whoever ran this place stood up. Some goblin kid wearing a crown it hadn’t grown into. It raised both fists.

"BLOOOOOOD!"

From up here it sounded small. A kid screaming at a stadium that screamed back.

Mori watched Mio.

She hadn’t shifted her weight, hadn’t raised the arm, hadn’t done anything a sane person would do when a troll twice the size of a building decided she was dinner.

Then Mori saw her eyes.

Blank. The way they’d gone blank in Sublevel Three when Mori had her pinned at single digits and the geometry started forming above her palm. Like whoever lived behind those green eyes had stepped out and left the door open for something else.

The air thinned.

Mori stopped breathing. Not on purpose. Her lungs just quit. Space bending around a single point, atmosphere compressing, the temperature dropping ten degrees in a half-second even though nothing visible had changed.

She’d felt this once. Pressed her palm against Mio’s sternum, heat pouring through her skin, watching a half-dead girl raise a fused arm and draw runes older than the building they were standing in.

She remembered the excitement. The raw, animal thrill of watching someone pull the pin on something that shouldn’t exist.

She’d said Do it. And meant it. Wanted to see what came out of Mio’s arm.

Kagami had stopped it.

Mori never forgave him for that.

The obsidian arm rose. Green-white lines traced the air above Mio’s palm. Geometry that hurt to look at, patterns folding into patterns, the stadium lights flickering as the runes pulled energy from the atmosphere itself.

The troll charged.

[Final Vigil]

Then came light.

A line, straight and white-green. It crossed the distance between Mio’s palm and the troll’s chest in the time it took Mori to blink and when she opened her eyes there was a hole where the troll’s torso used to be.

The slab hit the dirt first. Then the legs. The upper half was gone.

Mori made a sound. Not quite a whimper but close enough that she’d deny it later.

Mio.

She coughed. Hard, full-body, bent over the railing. By the time she straightened up the bloom was rising off the corpse in waves.

"The hell was that?" Kaito said.

"Shut up I’m watching."

Mio-san.

That day, in Sublevel Three, if she had fired it—

Mori would have died. The state that Mio was in, single-digit HP, body cooking from the inside. Whatever was building in that arm would have eaten her alive. And then everything else in the room.

I see it now, Mio-san.

Mori sneezed.

The stadium had gone quiet. A thousand orcs staring at the smoking legs of their champion. The goblin kid was still standing, crown tilted, fists frozen mid-gesture.

Then the stands emptied.

Green and brown bodies pouring over the railings. Hundreds of them. Converging on Mio from every direction.

Kaito pushed off the railing. Hand on his hilt.

"Spectating’s over. Come."

"No."

"Huh?"

"Let’s keep watching."

"She’ll get overwhelmed. No matter how strong she is."

Kaito took another step.

Mori coughed.

"You know what the primary objective is. Or did you forget?"

Kaito did the thing. The silent twitch of his eye, followed by his shifting foot.

Bingo.

He could never hide his anger well. Mori hated that. There was no use hiding emotions. That was the most boring thing a person could do.

"No," he said. "I did not."

"Segawa-san was strict about it too."

She put the other airpod in, the blare of nightcore filling her other ear.

"Now we see what else that arm can do."

Lightning erupted from Mio’s right hand. Green-white, incinerating three goblins at once, piercing a charging orc straight through the chest. The same lightning Mori had caught and fizzled to ash in her palm.

That felt like a long time ago.

Miooo-san...

Mori coughed into her elbow. The fever made everything soft at the edges except the girl in the pit. She moved like she hadn’t eaten in weeks and everything down there was food. Mio was sharp. She’d figure out Shizuka-san’s ability. Probably even sooner than Yenling-sama when she’d dueled her.

Ignis versus Stasis.

The vivid memory made her thighs tremble.

They didn’t stop coming. Every second Mio didn’t clear her blindspot, another spear found skin. A fireball caught her shoulder. She healed mid-stride and kept swinging.

Then an orc elite caught her clean. Iron mace, full swing, straight across the ribs. Mio’s feet left the dirt. She hit the ground and the rest piled on. Shields and bodies and dead weight pinning her into the dirt.

Mori watched the pile shift.

Mio’s mouth moved under the pile. Mori could barely make it out.

Show me, Mio-san. Show me again. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

She waited.

Nothing happened.

On the far side of the arena, three shamans stood in a line. Staffs raised, mouths chanting in unison. A pale web of light hung between them and the pile of bodies.

Voice-binding. They’d silenced her.

"Now do we go?"

"Wait."

The little thing on the railing didn’t.

A cascade of white hair and toothpick daggers dropped off the edge and fell toward the arena floor.

All six inches of it.