I Reincarnated as the World's Worst Healer-Chapter 105: Parasitic Blood vs. the Silver Lion (2)

The transformation wasn’t slow or elegant. Veronica’s body changed instantly, her long hair spreading outward, pushed by the silver magic flowing from her skin, her nails grew, her muscles tensed beneath her clothes, and her eyes shifted from pale yellow to a deep gold that shone in the darkness of the ruined room.

The assassin barely had time to register what stood before him before Veronica was already on top of him. There was no warning, no stance, no battle cry—just one step and then speed, crossing the space between them as if distance didn’t exist.

Her fist struck his stomach with all the force granted by the transformation, and the impact was so brutal that both of them were sent flying outward, crashing through what remained of the wall, falling from the second floor, and landing in the mansion’s front garden with an explosion of dirt, stone, and scorched grass that carved a crater into the ground.

The dust took several seconds to settle. Veronica landed on her feet at the edge of the crater, her long hair still floating with the silver magic coursing through her body, her eyes locked onto the center of the hole they had created.

The assassin stood at the bottom of the crater. Untouched. His black coat was slightly dirty with soil, the undertaker’s hat still rested on his head, and the white mask didn’t have a single scratch. Not even his posture had changed.

Veronica stared at him without moving, processing what she was seeing. She had hit him cleanly, without holding back, with the full force of her transformation behind the blow, and the man had absorbed it as if it had been nothing more than a soft push.

"That was quite direct." The assassin’s voice sounded calm, almost instructional, as he brushed some dirt off his sleeve. "You’re impatient, from what I can see. Throwing yourself like that without knowing your opponent’s techniques is practically suicide, you know?"

Veronica didn’t respond. She tightened her grip on the daggers and studied every inch of the man in front of her, searching for something—anything—that would tell her how he had done that, what spell he was using, where the trick was.

The assassin waited a moment, as if giving her time to reach a conclusion, and then whistled once, short and precise, into no direction in particular.

{{Blood Magic: Blood Parasite: Crimson Sleep}}

From the ground of the crater, right between them, a white rabbit emerged. It was small, the size of any normal rabbit, but its eyes were red and glowed with an intensity that had nothing animal about it. It sat on its hind legs, looked at Veronica for a moment, then opened its mouth and spat a stream of dark blood straight at her.

Veronica jumped to the side, her reflexes heightened by the transformation, moving just enough for the blood to splash onto the ground inches from where she had been standing. She landed crouched, daggers pointed forward, and then she smelled it.

It was blood, but it didn’t smell like normal blood. There was something else in that mixture, something she couldn’t immediately identify but that her instincts recognized as dangerous before her mind could fully process it. It wasn’t exactly poison, nor a common paralytic. It was something else—something designed to slip through the same pathways magic used and tangle the senses from within.

"(This guy hasn’t even shown half of what he’s got yet)" Veronica thought without lowering her guard, feeling the scent of that blood still lingering near the ground. "(And the moon isn’t full. I can’t push the transformation any further than this.)"

She glanced up for a moment. The moon was there, large but incomplete, missing the final edge to be whole. Under a full moon, her magic multiplied in a way that changed everything—faster, stronger, more controlled. But with this moon, what she had was what she had, and it had to be enough.

She mentally reviewed what she still had available. Two techniques. One required drinking the enemy’s blood to activate, and with that rabbit spitting liquid poison, there was no way she was getting close enough to try anything coming from that man. That option was out without discussion.

Only one remained.

"Bite," Veronica said in a low voice, and the silver magic coating her body responded instantly.

{{Beast Magic: Spiritual Pack}}

From Veronica’s body, figures began to emerge. Five in total, one after another, formed from the silver vapor emanating from her transformation, taking on her exact form with unsettling precision. Long hair, daggers in hand, combat stance. Five copies made of pure magic that separated from her and took positions across different points in the garden, all staring at the assassin with empty, glowing eyes.

Veronica watched the man’s reaction, searching for any sign of discomfort, surprise, recalculation. She found nothing useful. The assassin tilted his head slightly to the side, as if appreciating the spell from a technical perspective, then clapped once, sharp and loud.

From the ground of the garden, rabbits began to emerge. Black ones, with swollen tumors on their heads glowing red, came out of the earth in groups of three and four, positioning themselves between the assassin and Veronica’s spiritual copies without any apparent disorder.

Each one exploded almost at the same time, bursting outward and scattering blood across the ground in a wide radius, covering the grass, the stone debris, and the edges of the crater with dark pools that spread far beyond what should be possible for such small bodies.

{{Blood Magic: Blood Parasite: Contaminated Vapor}}

From all that blood spread across the ground, vapor began to rise. It wasn’t natural vapor, nor did it move like smoke from something burning—it rose with intention, filling the space between the assassin and Veronica’s copies until the man in the white mask disappeared completely behind the dense, reddish cloud.

The five silver figures stopped instantly before entering the vapor. One of them extended its hand into the cloud—just the fingertips—and the moment the red vapor touched it, that part of the figure began to dissolve, fading like mist exposed to heat, disappearing in seconds.

Veronica immediately pulled the copy back. "(It can corrupt spirits. That’s not just magical vapor, it’s something more concentrated, something that consumes spiritual energy on contact.)" She processed it quickly, without lingering too long. "(If I send my copies in there, I’ll lose all of them before they even reach him.)"

But she couldn’t just stand there watching the cloud while the assassin did whatever he wanted inside. She whistled once and, with a gesture, ordered the five copies to circle the cloud from the outside, forming a perimeter around the red vapor to cut off any escape. If she couldn’t go in, at least she could make sure he couldn’t come out without facing one of them.

Then she looked at the ground. The remains of the destroyed garden were full of stones, fragments of wall, chunks of debris of various sizes. Veronica grabbed the first one she found, weighed it in her hand for a second, and hurled it into the cloud with all her strength.

With the transformation active, that wasn’t just a thrown rock—it was a projectile. Something of that size moving at that speed could break bones if it hit a head, and Veronica knew it perfectly. She grabbed another. Threw it. Another.

The five copies mirrored her movements without needing orders, picking up stones and hurling them from their positions into the cloud, creating a constant rain of projectiles entering the red vapor from every possible angle.

Hundreds of small stones, some larger, some mere fragments, all passing in and out of the vapor without any sound coming from within. No impacts, no reactions, no confirmation that anything was hitting its mark. The cloud absorbed everything in silence.

Veronica kept throwing. Not because she believed she was hurting him, but because she needed time. Lucian, Daniel, and Ebony were still upstairs, and although she had left them in the adjacent room without checking their condition after the explosions, she knew that if she bought enough minutes, one of them would wake up. They had to.

"(Hold on. Just hold on. Alone we can’t beat this guy, but together we have a chance. I just need time.)" she repeated to herself as she kept throwing, maintaining the rhythm, no pauses, no lowering her arms.

The copies maintained the same cycle, circling the cloud, throwing, repositioning. None attempted to enter. The red cloud didn’t expand, but it didn’t dissipate either—it remained dense and still, as if something inside was holding it in place.

And then the ground beneath Veronica’s feet moved.

It wasn’t a tremor, not a general vibration. It was something specific, localized, right beneath where she stood. A second later, two pale hands burst from the ground and grabbed her ankles.

They were human hands, thin, with a silver ring on the right ring finger that glinted for a moment before the grip tightened completely. Veronica reacted instantly, trying to jump back, but the pull from below was faster and stronger than she expected.

The earth split open, and Veronica was dragged down in a single violent pull, swallowed by the garden’s ground before she could plant her daggers anywhere, before the silver copies could react, before she had time to say another word.

The five silver vapor figures remained standing in the garden, surrounding a red cloud that no longer had anyone controlling it from outside, in a ruined and silent garden where the only thing still moving was the red vapor slowly drifting through the early morning air.