Julius appeared on the frontlines, and it was absolute mayhem. Disciples from both the Burning Sun Sect and the Inferno Array Sect were desperately fending off wave after wave of ants. Each disciple took down multiple ants, but the issue was the outrageous number of monsters.

For every ant that was taken down, three more took their place. People were already getting tired, and mana was being used faster than it could be recovered, even with the help of many support mages.

Julius recognized several people spearheading the defense. Kora and her team were carving through the ants with brutal efficiency. Marcel was at the helm, his armor and skills funneling the ants through him. He was demonstrating his immense strength as each blow killed or crippled an ant.

Thomas was at his side, cleaning up anything that made it past him. Yelena was using her cursed flames and support magic from the back. She had activated some kind of weird skill. Her body was almost pure flames, as if she were a fiery wraith. Any attacks that made it through to her in the back passed straight through her.

Kora was the real force of the group, though. She was in the center, and her aura was on display for everyone to see. The sense of purity he got from it was different from normal. There was a dangerous feeling to it now, a little more menacing.

Her aura wasn’t only effective at removing any corruption leaking toward them, but her flames were extremely powerful. They shone with a brilliant white, and she was waving her arms in wide arcs as she sent these flames toward the army of ants. Occasionally, she would summon a pillar of fire from the heavens that smited the horde with impunity.

Seeing that they were doing fine, he looked at the field to see who might need some support. He spotted a team on the edge, looking like they were on the verge of being overrun. A powerful Tier 4 ant variant was attacking them, and their frontliners were having a hard time dealing with it, as well as the countless other ants.

It got really bad when it managed to sneak past a tank's guard and wrap its pincers around their hips. Perhaps if it weren’t one of the stronger variants, he would have been fine. But unfortunately, these variants were much stronger than their weaker brethren.

Julius could have sworn he heard the sound of shattered bone all the way from where he was standing. The tank, to his credit, didn’t give up. He grasped hold of the ant and started to release immense amounts of fire directly into the beast’s face.

The ant let go of the man’s body, retreating backward, and let out a shrill cry. Julius knew what that meant and watched as several bodies near the ant started to glow. Fortunately, he wasn’t the one who understood what was happening, because he felt a powerful wave of disruptive mana slam down on the ant. It was backed by the collective force of multiple skilled mages' willpower.

He didn’t know how, but the skill it was trying to use flickered but ultimately failed to activate. The ants who'd been about to explode instead staggered back. The black light radiating from the shells faded, and to his astonishment, they keeled over, completely lifeless.

The tank that’d been injured tried to get up, but the damage had been done. His legs were almost severed at the hips, only still attached because of the armor around his lower body.

The man’s teammate tried to help, but they were busy handling their own ants and could do nothing as the man was swarmed by an increasingly large wave of ants who must have realized the opportunity and weakness of this group now that they lost their tank.

Another frontliner was injured, taking a sharpened limb in the stomach. His team managed to pull him back and shield him before he got overwhelmed, but it was clear they were being pushed back by the relentless pressure. A mage in the back went down when a blast of mana made it through and slammed into their face.

Julius stepped forward, his kinetic energy surging through his legs, tearing the ground with each step. He maneuvered around the line of backline supporters, and once he was close enough that the mana cost wouldn’t be that high, he used [Void Step] to cross the rest of the distance.

He made it just in time, too. The large wave of ants was collapsing on this weakened section of the defense. He pulled the tank who’d sustained the serious injury by the collar of his chestplate, tossing him back. Then he stomped his foot into the ground. [Field of the Shattered Will] ripped out of his leg in a cone of destruction. Both the ground and the ants in their way were torn apart.

He didn’t bother to look back at the injured man and sent a small amount of life mana into him. This healed the worst of his wounds and made sure he didn’t die of blood loss. However, Julius didn’t stop his attack on the ants there. He had carved open some space, and he was going to make use of it. He stepped into his empty area, full of dead ants, and slammed his hands together. Another pulse of kinetic energy roared out, clearing dozens of ants from his vicinity.

Any thoughts of hiding his kinetic energy were gone. Kinetic energy was his most efficient method of offense, and in situations where he was facing a large number of enemies, he needed to conserve his mana.

His intervention had worked, though. The pressure on this section of the defense was alleviated, and people were already pulling the injured from the front lines, with replacements taking their spots.

Julius thought about staying out here and taking out as many ants as possible, but thought better of it. He needed to save his mana and stamina. Plus, these disciples were handling it well on their own, especially now that most of the danger had abated.

Mages were reinforcing this part of the defenses, and blasts of mana rained down on the approaching ants, who were forced to protect themselves, halting their advance for the time being.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Seeing that he wasn’t needed, he turned around and headed straight back. The disciples parted for him with whispers and various looks. Some were flat out relieved that he stepped in to help them. Some were awed by his demonstration. But there were a surprisingly large number of looks that bordered on fear. When his eyes turned in their direction, many of them avoided eye contact.

He ignored those people and instead went straight toward the injured. He was still a healer after all, and from what he could see, healers were in short supply. He was greeted by someone unexpected.

“There you are. You know how long I’ve been looking for you?” Healer Gui asked as he healed a disciple with a large gash in their neck. Blood was everywhere, but the man wasn’t bothered at all and quickly healed the wound with so little mana that Julius couldn’t help but stare distractedly, lost in his fascination. His focus skill had activated unintentionally, and he was doing his best to memorize the man’s mana movements.

“Hey! Are you listening?”

Julius jolted out of his thoughts. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Where have you been?” Healer Gui was already moving on to another badly injured disciple; this one had both arms missing and a giant slash from his shoulder to his hip.

“Umm. Fighting ants?” Julius didn’t really know how to answer, and so he said the first thing that popped into his mind.

“Ants, huh?”

“Yeah, I fell in a hole,” he added belatedly.

“Hmm. Probably because you were haphazard and sloppy, just like your healing,” Healer Gui commented with a scoff.

Julius didn’t even flinch from the man’s words; he was used to them and ignored them with practiced ease.

“So what are you doing here? Did you run out of cookies? Or did you just miss me that much?” he asked with a teasing smirk.

Healer Gui’s hands were glowing softly as the disciple’s chest wound healed over. The chest, which had been heaving up and down rapidly, slowed down. Their relief was evident. But for some reason, the man wasn’t healing the missing limbs of the disciple. Julius knew that was well within his abilities, but chose not to.

Healer Gui brushed his head with the back of his hand and took a sip from a flask. Julius suspected the man was using direct contact in order to limit mana usage. “First off, no. I just needed to stretch my legs. I didn’t even know that you were being sent out here. And secondly, yes. You should have left me more. What, are you stingy or something?”

Julius stifled a roll of his eyes. Healer Gui knew very well that Julius was being sent on this mission. Although he wasn’t expecting the man to actually admit that he wanted more cookies.

“Why aren’t you healing his arms?” Julius asked, changing the subject.

“Because it will be a waste of mana, we can heal it after the battle concludes. Mana is the most precious resource at the moment, and I can’t be wasting it on dead weight,” Healer Gui responded coldly.

Julius frowned. “Dead weight? Don’t you think we need everybody we can get?”

Healer Gui finally lifted his head and stared at him like he was missing a few screws. “Do you really think they would be able to contribute to the fight even if they got both arms back? Their mana and stamina were practically depleted.”

“So you are just going to leave them as a limbless little nugget instead?”

“Nugget?” A perplexed expression on the healer's face.

“Never mind,” Julius waved his arm.

“Hmm. Well, it's good you are here. You can help me with the injured.”

“Me? I thought my healing was sloppy and haphazard. Wouldn’t you rather have someone else who is more skilled?”

“We don’t have enough healers. Not to mention, your skill is useful, and despite your sloppy healing knowledge, your other abilities are good enough that you should be able to heal at a faster rate than these other healers while also optimizing your mana expenditure.”

“Aw, thanks,” Julius said, rubbing his head pridefully.

“Stop messing around and get over here. We don’t have time.”

Julius sighed, but heeded his instructions and found a patient immediately. It was a female disciple who had just been dropped off. She was bleeding from two punctures in her chest, a lung had already collapsed, and blood was filling the other. His spatial skill and senses could already diagnose her issue.

He let his focus skill activate, feeling more comfortable with it the more he used it. He quickly let his healing skill funnel into the woman, while using his aura to gently remove whatever traces of corruption made it into her body. He took Healer Gui’s advice and made sure to be careful with his mana, and slowly the flesh on the woman’s chest healed over, looking good as new.

She gasped awake, trying to sit up, and flailing around. He used his kinetic energy to keep her down. Her chest was healed, but she was choking on the blood still remaining in her lungs. He probably could have removed it with his healing skill directly, but that would have wasted mana. So instead, he used a mixture of aura and kinetic energy to manually drain the blood from her lungs. Now that they were healed, he wasn’t as worried about damaging her lungs.

It was a little nasty, but eventually a bucket of blackened blood was drained out of her throat. He used some fire mana and aura to destroy the blood; it barely took any mana, so he didn’t care about the expenditure.

The woman immediately felt relief and dropped back to the bed with a sigh.

Julius, on the other hand, took a step back, reading the notification he’d just received.

Heal five fatal injuries in a single day (1/5)

Okay, so apparently the notification hadn’t been talking about his own wounds. Perhaps that was why he was given this requirement,

Fortunately, he was in the perfect place to complete those requirements and was suddenly a lot less worried about completing his skill evolution test.

When he stood up, he noticed that Healer Gui had been watching the entire time. The healer’s expression was blank, and he didn’t know what the man was thinking. But eventually, he nodded, satisfied with what he saw.

“Well done. Crude, but efficient.”

Julius held back his smile. That was notable praise coming from the man. He hadn’t heard him say anything that positive about anyone else.

Despite that, he still frowned. The reason for that was the cost of that “small” healing. It had cost more mana than he expected, and that was with Healer Gui’s approval. He could see why healers were in short supply and allocation of mana was so important. It didn’t matter if they had a million mana potions in stock; there was only so much a healer could do.

At least that was until he remembered his new item. He chuckled and quickly removed the thin blanket from his dimensional space. The fabric was just as soft as he remembered, and before the confused Healer Gui, Julius gave it a good shake and placed the blanket on the ground. Then, to Healer Gui’s bewilderment, he started to remove food from his lunchbox.

Julius, on the other hand, grinned widely. He really wanted to see just how effective this blanket could be, and this would be the perfect time to test it.