“Look at you,” Lucas yelled down at the enemy tank. “You’re shouldering your entire team’s safety by yourself, yet they don’t seem to care at all about you. They could easily pack themselves tighter behind your shield and make your life easier, but they spread out instead, leaving you jumping back and forth. How pitiful!”

Linnaeus failed to move out of the way in time, and an arrow sank deep into Lucas’s right thigh, dropping him down to 181 Hit Points in a single strike. Even worse, the second the arrow struck, the spell began to backfire.

Arcane Energy was channeled through circuits into a focus crystal which was affixed to the staff, and the player then used his individual willpower to craft the spell until it was ready to activate. With his mind being assaulted by the pain from his newly acquired injury, it took everything he had in him to maintain his concentration. The spell had already absorbed a large amount of energy, and as it started to battle its way out of the necklace and into his body, Lucas fought with all of his being to push it in once more and not let it overpower his mind and cancel the spell completely.

It felt like someone was pounding a large metal spike through his chest, just above his collarbone. The sensation then spread outward from that point of origin like a spiderweb, with most of the pain heading toward his head. I can’t fail. I need this to succeed, Lucas thought, steeling himself. I can do this. He inhaled deeply and tried to control his breathing while he did everything he could to stabilize his mind. He recovered after a few tense seconds, but it was only a brief mental state of mind that did nothing to heal his leg or actually finish the spell.

The reflux of energy had ravaged his upper body and dropped him down to 109 health. Viola could have easily healed his injuries, but she had her hands full keeping Linnaeus’s health topped off so that he could remain in the air. An occasional burst of fire had started soaring toward the airborne ape along with the arrows. Linnaeus was thankfully moving in a way that kept Lucas mostly safe, but that didn’t leave him with much room for error.

The fact that Lucas wasn’t getting heals for the moment was an added pressure, another layer of anxiety he had to push out of his mind. For some reason, he suddenly thought of Liu’s scarred face and what she must have gone through during the accident. Despite major recent leaps in medical technology and the best care money could buy, that wound had still left its mark.