8 Overheal

"How long since I've passed out...?" Lothair stared into the tall ceiling while he steeled his mind to prevent the influence of nearby forbidden books.

Terma did the same, albeit letting out a couple of wry chuckles.

"Just a few seconds."

"It feels like an eternity for me."

"You're lucky if it's only an eternity."

Lothair finished up compiling all of his memory along with his next course of action. After everything that he went through, it would be hard to not feel paranoia of what is about to come in the future.

He then turned his head to the side, staring at the Terma with a half-closed gaze. "If you did just the minimum amount of size for the forcefield to only enwrap your body, you can leave with a lesser mess on the floor."

"Of course."

"Then why did you help me?" Lothair frowned his eyebrows. "I didn't sense any slave mark, there is no forcefully pledged contract, nor are there any bombs underneath each cell of my skin."

"Why so serious?" Terma weakly smirked. "Don't worry about me, my regeneration is proven to be the slow but resilient type when I'm near death."

Lothair lazily got up and sluggishly placed himself in front of Terma.

Before grabbing him by collar, clenching and anchoring his nails through the thick folded fabric.

"You helped me without asking anything in return??"

Terma maintained his cheeky smile even in this situation.

"Who said that I'm not going to ask for a favor?"

"Right, I apologize."

Lothair immediately dropped him.

To be assisted and not suffering any in return is a great shame for demons. But more than that, to be rightfully accused of helping others without seeking any profit is worse than death.

"Demon don't apologize." Terma coughed a few of his blood thay clogged his throat. "At least not genuinely."

Before Terma knew it, Lothair stood straight while facing him, aiming his open palm forward.

A grin danced across his face.

"No matter how I see it, you can ask for a greater favor from everyone outside this little Nerd-Wick."

Lothair remembered that vivid feeling of abhorrence that he experienced back then. A flow of unjustifiable warmth, strings, yet bubbly chime.

He then began attempting to recreate the same kind of all-mending force that was exposed to every fiber of his existence. Using his soul, he mashed, welded, and stretched his Ayin into an elastic piece. It was then processed again and again until he felt the same amount of disgust that he felt from the original piece.

His eyelid twitches. His veins tightened from the amount of stress, and his heartbeat drastically increased. There were many frames of times where Lothair almost retched from the amount of repulsive energy he channeled to his palm.

Lothair loathed that warmth so much, he was able to practically imitate it into reality.

"What are you trying to do?" Terma found it both scary and amusing at the same time, he couldn't even find a better word to say in this situation.

"A little bit of experiment." Lothair's eyes widened, while his pupils shrank from the pain for trying to draw the amount of power beyond his comfortable space. "You see, I find it a little bit jarring to see my guide laying half dead on the floor before I kick the bucket. So I thought to myself, what if I have the power to completely remove the pain? Wouldn't it be efficient to waste less time in wailing and regenerating your bone marrows?"

"Wait, you don't mean…?"

Terma grinned in disbelief.

"Right, I will cast a healing spell on you, right here, right now!"

"That's one heck of a jest you did there, Lothair. I almost thought you'll do it for real." Freezing sweat drenched down from Terma's forehead. "You're actually joking like the usual, right? Because you're starting to undoubtedly scare me as of now…!"

A faint hue of green began to emerge from Lothair's palm lines.

"I'm afraid that I'm not jesting this time, Terma."

He then pushed the accumulated warmth with great force of his propelling 'semi-spell'. Unlike the kind bathing green that he was experiencing within his illusive pilgrimage, his healing was discharged in the form of light shrapnel — with the majority of them not even hitting Terma's body parts.

"GAAAAAAA!!!"

Terma screeched in pain. Some of the shrapnel closed the wound, replacing the blood loss, the point of enhancing the specific bodily function. Some of the shrapnel though, ended up making some of the cancer cells grow at a rapid pace, before exploding to create even bigger wounds.

Some of the stray projectiles that hit the pool of blood began to form a large bump before spreading smoothly like it was freshly out from an open wound.

"Ah." Lothair acted dumb, putting a surprised smile on his face. "I guess the healing factor is volatile enough to do that. Guess it's better to use a wind-component for the first semi-spell," he quietly muttered.

A semi-spell is coined slang for a 'semi-component', it is a supportive element that makes complex spellcasting possible.

To put it simply, it was a lesser complex piece to affect the application of the main, most important piece.

Similar to how a hammer works. The blocky chunk of steel is the main course of utilities. It was a heavy, durable, piece of metal that might be limited yet possessed a greater potential of usage when combined with another component.

When given a handle, which is the equivalent of a semi-spell, it became a useful tool for hammering nails, skulls, or a problem in life.

Semi-spells acted as a building block on how to turn something simple into something terrifyingly complex. Skill wise, the amount of semi-spells that a spellcaster can allocate to a spell depends on the proficiency of the main components of the spell.

Lothair laughed as he scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment, while Terma was writhing more pain than before.

"I caught… what you did." Terma stuttered as he tried to correct the demon in front of him. "You, you used a pure propelling force as the semi-spell. I noticed the shift, made by the air resistance, that changed the properties of the particles. The problem… might lie in how you mold the healing factor… your spellcasting prowess, is as bad as ARRRGHH-"

Lothair discharged his 'healing' shotgun-like spell at Terma's lower half in close range.

It was very effective.

In causing pain.

Feeling euphoric from being able to cast a spell properly for once, he blasted the same healing shrapnel onto the same spot.

It was terrifyingly effective.

"W-WHY YOU ARE STILL USING THE SAME SPELL COMPOSITION??"

"No particular reason."

"WHYY???"

After he received more 'healing' shrapnel that actually heals him, Terma sprinted away from Lothair like his life was on the line. Due to his pre-scouting before he invited Lothair into the party, he knew which path to take all the time.

Lothair would occasionally shoot his 'healing' shrapnel towards the fleeing sheep. He noticed that some of the projectiles affected the object it hit, with some of the forbidden books suddenly lit on fire, or a rapidly growing sapling on the bookshelf made out of wood.

"This is surprisingly fun," muttered Lothair as he ran like a killing-robot with a big sinister smile, unfazed by all of the influence of the surrounding forbidden book.

Through sheer effort of utter fear and killing intent, they managed to bulldoze through multiple strong influences of forbidden knowledge. As if, their drastic shift in emotion overcame the corruption dealt by those precarious books.

After quite the jog, Terma decided to use his mysterious 'instantaneous' spell, for a purpose that he definitely didn't expect when he met with the wimpy Nerd-Wick.

"I apologize for my rudeness." Terma's chest huffed and puffed as he sprinted across numerous racks of forbidden books. "But I must stay away from you at all costs."

Right before he activated his spell, a half meter dense crystalized form of the healing prospect was embedded into, and through, Terma's right ankle.

"KH!!"

Gritting his teeth, he shrugged the pain and went on with his spellcasting.

The spell was successful, but instead of him disappearing and reappearing somewhere in an instant like he usually does, he stayed in his current position.

Not even a second after, his whole right leg burst into heated smithereens. Terma fumbled as he fell into a roll, crashing into the bookshelf filled with forbidden knowledge. Thanks to his fast instinct however, he was able to cast a strong warding forcefield to fend off the otherworldly influence.

All of that turned him into a vulnerable, and crippled demon at the mercy of his predator.

Seeing how successful he was, Lothair sluggishly moved his body left and right as he advanced forward, tilting his head alongside his waving walk with an unhinged smile on his face.

"Originated from Owen's Chronicles, the Epic of Seventeen Catharsis, there was born a demon with high perception of time, capable of seeing through the gap between the incision of dimension of his surroundings.

"That demon wrote a spelltomes called the Unjust Algorithm series. On volume 17 in the subject of Reconfiguration of Time, page 193, a vicious spell known as 'Overclock' is recorded.

"Overclock is a spell that hastens the time of its target, it's possible for biological material and non-living material alike. The offset however, would be the limit of how fast one could hasten their connected time due to the law of mass and momentum." Lothair giggled maniacally. "Using Weight Nullification spell as a semi-spell for Overlock, you're able to remove limit of how fast can you be, only to be restricted with the amount of Ayin you possessed as using both of those high-tier spell at the same time could lead to a permanent implosion of the soul."

Everything that was made by Ayin, no matter how bound it was to the physical materialization, would all soon disperse back into the crack of space and time.

Thus, all kinds of influence fueled by Ayin would act like a flow of itself — when clashed with another form of non-complementary opposing flow, the influence halted or even broke depending on the intensity of the clash.

Lothair used this principle. He condensed the volatile nature of his self-learned 'healing' force into a long and sharp crystal form. When the crystal impaled Terma's ankle, the entrapped healing factor began to spread to the new vessel, creating an intense flow of processed Ayin into Terma's leg.

Just as Terma cast his specialized Overclock on himself, the flow of influence clashed with the one on his leg, rendering the effect of the Weight Nullification spell on his right leg into zero. Though, because of the questionable, inherent nature of time-manipulation spell the effect still apply for albeit in lesser result.

The target that Terma set however, was closer to the speed of light more than anything, a partial amount of speed of such level would still be dangerous. The unchanged mass on his leg, together with the violent factor of the healing spell was enough to rupture the flesh and bones.

"As expected of you, Niche-Wick, you're the first one to crack the code of my specialty, while also using an appropriate method to immobilize me..." Terma forced a smile with every pride he possessed. "But did you realize that you're committing a great taboo by spraying those wicked particles at every corner of this library???"

Although there was a miscalculation on Lothair's part.

He didn't know that his 'healing' force had the similar if not the same level of influence with a high-tier spell such as the Overclock. Not a mere Overclock, an Overclock combined with another high-tier spell as the semi-spell.

Maybe there was a reason why the act of healing and being healed was deemed as a taboo — aside from causing a massive distress and disgust to both the wielder and victim.

"I already calculated. The essence will disperse overtime. Three days to be precise. Nobody will find out." Lothair gave him a thumbs up.

"Hahaha, you didn't care about the taboo in the slightest."

"So do you."

"Well, I'm always the odds one out amongst my peers." Terma painfully chuckled. "While I'm disgusted to the point of wanting my whole bowels gone, I didn't mind. Instead, I should be worrying about how I should survive with my leg fully gone!!"

"Hmmm. I didn't see any sign of regeneration. Are you sure you possess a natural regeneration?"

"I do," Terma said calmly with a wrathful smile.

"Maybe the healing factor managed to overwrite your regeneration."

"As if I know, this is the first time I experienced it. There is no such records of a spell that alter the regeneration factor of a demon this easily..."

So for the next half hour, Lothair commenced his questionable, dangerous, and illegal experiment session to see if he could recover Terma's state into normal without growing another limb or two.

It took one hour more than expected.

But thanks to it, Lothair was able to grasp the limitless potential of his newfound power.

As Terma acquired a new trauma.

"That's scary…" Terma muttered with shaking lips. "Scary…"

Meanwhile, Lothair looked fully refreshed as if he just got out of a wonderful warm bath.

"Phew, doing this is good for my skin." He wiped his forehead before untying his long silver hair. After his hands was freed from responsibilities, he gazed at his palm with excitement, wondering if he could name this new specialty spell of his. "To be able to mend the very aspect it touches, beyond the concept of repair and healing. This power… I shall name it-

"Overheal."