Waking up, the first thing Aki did was check his status, the several notifications showing him that he'd gained not one, but two new skills and even another level in energy transfer.
This, in turn, gave him some more points, but he was quite surprised he'd managed to intimidate the people in the wall into obedience, because there is no way a skill like 'Inspiring shout' came from anywhere else.
He could see how he could evolve this skill in several ways, same for 'Flame of hatred', he just didn't have the resources or specialised knowledge necessary.
After sleeping for nine hours straight, he was more than ready to go about healing more people though, so he decided to just get to it, his efficiency increased from both familiarity and skill level ups.
By the time he had to stop, he'd taken care of nine more people, both because he used his full reserves and because these people had less severe cases, only a few left on the infirmary now.
Two were still sick, but there were also three men that had body parts cut off because they'd been bitten by a lucky zombie. He could do nothing for them, likely even after he reached S rank spirit he'd be unable to grow back whole limbs that were not his, nevermind how much time that would take.
Some more volunteers appeared and he did his best for those still there, easing their pain and completely closing their wounds, but it still left a bitter taste on everyone mouth.
By breakfast time, Aki had to run from the people trying to treat him to a meal though. At the very least, it was quite awkward to be referred to as the flaming hero.
There was no way in hell he was sticking to fire as his only element.
Using the mayor as an excuse did wonders on all villagers, but it did bring forth the question of who in the actual fuck was the mayor. He didn't even know if they were male or female, because apparently the language used around here did not have need for pronouns that distinguished such, and the system somehow translated everything to his head exactly like that even if it wasn't the best way for him to understand.
Reaching the building he'd left just the other day, Aki quickly found the bean pole gentleman on the entrance, and as he asked to have breakfast with the mayor, he happily said he'd come for the same reason, assuring him that they would not be outside of their office yet, guiding the young man through the wooden doorways and into a room he had not yet gone through. Knocking on the door, they heard the voice of the rude ginger woman.
Aki had honestly half expected her to be shamelessly giving head to the mayor and still invite them in or something, but no, the frowning young woman was crunching paperwork all on her lonesome, a painting of what he could hardly call the same person behind her, depicting her wearing a crimson dress and some tasteful jewelry.
"What?" She spat. Again, literally. On a pot much similar to the one on the conference room.
"You were literally the last person i thought would be the mayor." He admitted, which seemed to greatly irritate her, because she immediately broke her quill.
"And what of it?" She angrily spat, for once it seemed she was actually just angry.
"You asked, so of course i told you my mind." He smirked at the woman who looked ready to strangle him. "Actually though, i came to invite the mayor to breakfast, and the gentleman here says you have not had anything yet." The implied offer gave her pause, mostly to check the time on the window, but ultimately, she nodded, following both man to the kitchen, where they then found the older woman eating some toast with some honey and a glass of juice.
"Linda?" Confusedly noted the red head as all sat on the same table, Aki immediately taking the juice pitcher and putting a cup for himself.
"Mayor." She greeted. "I came to have a conversation with the 'flaming hero', since i am now free with an empty clinic." Her eyes followed the young man shamelessly picking plenty of sausages, eggs and toast while filling a second glass of orange liquid.
"Good to know, we can talk right after breakfast, i don't really have anything better to do for the rest of the day anyway. Except convince the mayor to tell me i can take an expedition force towards the undead to strike away at them." He smiled at her, motioning for the younger woman instead before biting one of his sandwiches with two eggs, four sausages and three slices of bread. People at the table stared at him for a bit more than one reason, of course.
"I'm not letting my people go into that valley even if you promise me your head if one of them is hurt fatass!" Immediately declared the somehow redder woman as she hit the table.
"You take out a new spell out of your ass and cast it multiple times to see if you don't turn into a pig. Anyway, the mayor needs not worry, i will be going on my own towards the source in some three more days even if i can't convince you." He rebutted, this time the old woman by his side standing up and hitting the table.
"You can't!" But her only answer was the looks of those in the room and the sound of another bite at the sandwich. "The people need you! You may be powerful, but they are at least a thousand strong down there!" She chided him.
"You done?" He asked the heavily exhaling woman, who simply twitched a brown. "Good to know someone cares, but honestly, i'm neither strong or stupid enough to fight a thousand of those zombies by myself, nevermind what is controling and creating them. No, i was going to completely collapse the valley she mentioned, a few days of work should be enough to burry them with a well placed spell if i use the surrounding's pollution to fuel my idea." He slowly explained before taking another bite of his breakfast, leaving a succulent last piece resting in his hand.
"Do you even know how hard such work would be with only one mage?" She sneered.
"Didn't you come here to tell me that?" He rebutted, snorting before chewing on the deliciousness he'd built. Luckily there was another one.
"You..." She gnashed her teeth, looking like she wanted to kill him.
"You are also very pretty miss, but I am not making gestures about groping you here." He laughed, an innocent and sweet thing that didn't seem proper coming from someone so dangerous.
That defeated Linda. She fell over in her chair and dunked another slice of bread with honey, stuffing her mouth angrily. He needed to know.
*****
"So you mean that your former teacher is likely to be the lich raising the casualties of a battle of long ago, though you know not why it is happening now?" Aki sumarised, not really interested in the life story of the hidden witch of the village. He'd parsed through some books as she talked, which had taken more than a couple of hours, but only a few on her personal collection were of any interest, the rest being flowery language he already knew about. "And you think you can convince him to stop or something of the like? Not how these things work sweety. If he was concious and free he'd have come to kill you so you could be together for eternity, life is but a burden to the undead. Of course, if you still want to accompany me as a clean source of energy i won't complain." He pointed out, pure logic more than enough to figure something like that.
"You can't be sure until you try." She frowned.
"Ok. You can come with, but don't expect me to not blast his ass at any given chance. Now, for the actually important part, has your teacher been runing from an organization or individual?"
"What? No, he was just retired. What does this even have to do with the problem, do you think he's being used as some part of a scheme?"
"Dear, of course he is. Liches that can raise so many undead are not generally stupid enough to just send several hordes slightly bigger each time till he conquered all small livable spaces around even if he had hundreds of thousands of corpses to use as material, nevermind that he should not have simply risen himself if there wasn't some kind of externuating factor making sure that he defied his ultimate demise. Not in this amount of time at least, but i doubt he just randomly survived a melting pot enough to evolve and get back his magic after... You already stopped following, didn't you? It's ok, not everyone is interested on the study of the forms of pseudo imortality though the wide world." He shrugged, confirming that indeed this was not someone at all related to the incident, someone that the perpretator likely didn't even consider existing.
The woman before him seemed tire for some reason, so he left her be and took the books he deemed as having new information to a chair on the corner of the room. His mystical knowledge skill had recently leveled up through him creating a new spell for himself, but more knowledge could alway be useful even if it was just a slightly more effective way to use his energy. He'd have plenty of time to practice at night.
And he did. Instead of overextending himself this time, he used other people's energy, his flames shining brighter each time he threw them.
Bigger fires that exploded with more intensity, smaller and faster projectiles that took only two or three zombies, a cascade of flames when the horde reached the walls...
Aki did everything he could think of and slightly changed the intent behind the magic several times before it finally leveled to apprentice rank. Strangely enough, it didn't have an option to choose an ability, immediately assigning a corrosive effect to his flames, which became closer to orange in colour yet somehow became hotter. He didn't think it made much sense, but it likely had to do with his intent and emotion behind the spell. Unfortunetly, both his Inteligence and spirit had already hit D rank and for some reason were not affected by it's level up, but this oportunity showed him that leveling up spells ment he could cast with the same amount of mana and more power or less mana for the same amount of damage of before leveling up.
This ment a great deal for the young man, who instead of trying to convince the mayor to help him, immersed himself on the books he'd previously deemed a waste of time. They turned out to be just that, but at least he was getting used to translating what these generaly criptic books intended.
At the third night however, he called Linda to the walls and began to meditate much like on the first day, eyes closed in consentration and energy sometimes leaking of his hands and arms, a strange presure mounting on the people next to him until...
*Vwooooom*
A globe of light formed between Aki's hands, but before anyone could react to that, it released a scorching ray that cut a line through the horde, burning a whole half moon into their formation before small explosions were heard.
"Excuse me." The softly smiling youth said before grabing the back of the neck of the witch, who shreeked as she felt extreme cold.
*Keee*
Creating an even bigger ball of light in the air, Aki twisted himself and clawed at it, five lines impacting the distant line of remaining undead, igniting it's targets on impact, though the light had seared itself onto the eyes of the living watching what just happened, the stars appearing when one blinked showing that indeed, the claws had exploded in both light and fire instead of just detonating. It'd simply been too fast to properly understand.
{Detected forced evolution! Flame of hatred: Aprentice (Uncommon) has become Ego's briliance: Beginner (Rare)! All stats retained! VIT, SPR and INT increased by 3!}
He smiled. While the cost was at least three times higher, it's damage was spread much more evenly while being able to be focused. This would be acompanying him for a long while.