I Reincarnated as the World's Worst Healer-Chapter 111: Purifying Fire vs. A Thousand Parasites (2)

The man in the crow mask dropped from his elevated rock fragment toward the burning ground with a speed that wasn’t careless at all. In midair, before his feet could touch the green flames, he pulled a flesh tentacle from his palm and drove it into the ground as support, using the tension of the tissue to suspend himself above the fire without needing to step on anything.

The flames began consuming the tentacle immediately. The purifying fire spread through the tissue from the point of contact upward with a speed that left no room for negotiation, burning every cell of the parasite forming that improvised limb without stopping for a second.

The man cut it off before the fire reached his palm. A clean, drama-free motion, severing the tentacle from the rest of his body like someone shutting a door to keep the cold out, and he landed on another elevated rock fragment that was still out of reach of the flames below.

He repeated the process. Another tentacle, another support, another cut before the fire could finish its work. Then another. Burning through parasites one after another with the same methodical calm he had shown all night, using his own internal creatures as disposable fuel to stay off the burning ground.

"This spell is incredible." His admiration didn’t sound fake as he watched the green flames covering every surface of the cavern, with the attention of someone learning something new and finding it genuinely fascinating. "It can kill my parasites with ease. C-rank parasites erased by a simple combat Healer. That’s impressive."

Ebony didn’t respond. She watched him move between the elevated fragments, calculating distances, evaluating the pattern of his supports, looking for the moment when one of those tentacles would last long enough for her to close the distance before he cut it.

She didn’t find it. The man was too precise and too fast with his cuts, and the distance between them was enough that any jump she made would be visible in time for him to dodge.

The killer raised his palm.

Worms shot out from his sleeve like projectiles, one after another, with speed and trajectories that were anything but random. They went straight for Ebony, aiming for any exposed inch of skin, any point of contact that would let them do their job.

Ebony started running. Across the cavern, without a fixed direction, using the uneven burning ground to change angles with every step and throw off his aim. The green flames radiating from her body left a visible trail behind her, all that magic energy she still couldn’t fully contain—too much for one body, too much to keep still.

As she moved, she started picking up rocks. The largest ones she could lift with one hand without slowing down, holding them just long enough for the purifying fire to coat them, then hurling them at the man with all the strength she had.

The rocks burned green as they flew through the air. Any contact between that fire and the killer’s skin would be enough for the purifier to do its job, and the man knew it, dodging each projectile with short, efficient movements that never wasted more energy than necessary.

That’s how they stayed for a stretch Ebony couldn’t measure precisely, both moving through the cavern in a ranged battle where neither could touch the other—her throwing burning rocks, him firing worms and dodging with a calm that was starting to get irritating.

"This is taking too long." The man sounded genuinely bored for the first time that night. "Let’s speed up your defeat, girl."

He clapped his hands sharply and spoke with the same calm tone as always.

"Spread and sicken life."

{{Blood Magic: Blood Parasite: Spore Rain}}

He spun violently in the air, and from every corner of his clothing, hundreds of small structures burst out, filling the cavern instantly. They looked like dandelion seeds, light, drifting with that deceptive slowness of something that doesn’t seem urgent until it’s already too close. But they were made of fleshy tissue and glowed with the same reddish magic as everything he created.

Within seconds, the entire cavern was filled with them. They descended slowly from the ceiling toward the ground, covering everything, leaving no open space, no angle without a floating spore in the way.

Ebony looked at the cloud surrounding her and immediately understood the problem. There were too many to dodge, too dense to move through without touching any, and at the same time the killer kept firing worms from above, not giving her a second to think.

She clenched her fists and started punching. Every spore that got close enough met a fist wrapped in purifying fire and turned to ash before it could touch her, but the pace it demanded was brutal—both hands working nonstop, burning one spore after another while her legs kept her moving through the cavern to avoid the worms falling from above.

One spore reached her shoulder before she could intercept it.

It latched onto her skin instantly, embedding something small and cold into the tissue, and Ebony felt the poison enter with a speed that made its purpose clear. It wasn’t meant to kill—it was meant to shut down, to erase consciousness quickly and cleanly without damaging the body left behind.

She burned the spore and the wound in the same motion, the purifying fire destroying the parasite before the poison could spread further. It hurt—more than she expected, because burning her own flesh along with the parasite wasn’t the same as burning just the parasite—but it was the only thing that worked within the time she had.

She knew she couldn’t keep this up. Every spore that touched her was a small dose of poison, and even though she burned them quickly, it wasn’t always fast enough to stop all of it from entering. The accumulation was slow, but real, and at some point it would become a problem even the purifying fire couldn’t handle easily.

She looked at Veronica on the ground. Unconscious. Vulnerable. In the center of a cavern full of floating spores and a killer who had no reason to leave her alone if she stopped being useful as leverage.

Ebony swallowed hard at what she was about to do.

She jumped toward the killer with everything she had. No elaborate strategy, no calculated angle—straight at him, driven by the speed her overloaded magic gave her with every push of her legs.

The man dodged effortlessly. Ebony passed by him without touching him and slammed into the cavern wall, which answered with a deep crack, a long branching fracture spreading from the impact point upward.

She got up and tried again. Another clean dodge, another impact into the wall, another crack joining the others. The spores took advantage of every landing to inject their small doses, and Ebony burned them one by one without stopping, forcing herself to heal between jumps to stay conscious.

"Heal." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

{{Life Magic: Heal}}

Her body responded instantly, clearing the accumulated weight of the last few minutes in one sweep, closing wounds, neutralizing the poison that had taken hold, restoring the clarity the spores had been slowly erasing. The full cycle in seconds.

The killer looked at her differently this time. Not the calculated admiration from before, but something more genuine—someone processing a gap between what they expected and what they had just seen.

"That wasn’t a mistake," he said quietly, almost to himself. "She can actually heal herself."

Ebony didn’t give him time to finish that thought. She grabbed Veronica’s body with both hands, calculated the angle toward the tunnel entrance above them, and jumped with everything she had left in her legs, throwing her upward in the cleanest arc she could manage.

Veronica shot upward through the dirt tunnel, her unconscious body rising through the dark shaft with the speed Ebony’s momentum gave her—toward the surface, toward the ruined garden, toward anywhere outside that cavern.

"Saving a corpse?" the killer said, genuinely puzzled. "How ridiculous."

Ebony dropped back down to the cavern floor and looked up at him with a smile that had nothing to do with rest, even though her body begged for it. "I just didn’t want an audience for the main show, idiot."

She started jumping. Not toward the killer this time, but toward the ceiling, striking the rock with her burning fists with every impact, taking the spores that drifted close and burning them, healing every time the accumulated poison threatened to tip the balance, without stopping, without slowing down.

"Heal."

A strike to the ceiling. A new crack spread from the impact point, connecting with the fractures in the walls, forming a web of damage across every surface of the cavern like stone on the verge of collapse.

"Heal."

Another strike. The network of cracks grew denser, deeper, small fragments beginning to break loose from the ceiling and fall to the burning ground where the purifying fire consumed them without distinction.

"Heal."

The last strike was the strongest. Ebony’s fist drove into the rock with everything she had left behind it, and the sound it made wasn’t a crack, but something deeper, more final—the sound of something that had endured all it could and had no reason to keep doing so.

She landed on the cavern floor and looked up.

The entire ceiling burned with green purifying fire, covered in flames that had spread from the ground during the fight, and the cracks running through it in every direction had turned it into something that was no longer a ceiling, but a collection of massive fragments held together by habit alone.

They began to fall.

First the small ones, then the medium ones, then massive chunks that shook the cavern floor with every impact, all burning green, all infused with the purifying fire coating them from surface to core.

Ebony watched them fall, fists still burning, breathing fast, standing at the center of the cavern without moving, staring at the man in the crow mask with the only expression she had left after everything that night had dragged on.

"Nice shitty rain you’ve got." Her voice came out hoarse but steady. "Let’s see how you like mine."