Azarinth Healer: Book One - A LitRPG Adventure, page 1
AZARINTH HEALER
Book One
RHAEGAR
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Hey all. This is Rhaegar. The book is out. I decided to have the dedication and thank you note at the very end.
Thank you for reading Azarinth Healer.
Contents
1. Where is the Magic?
2. Big Bad Wolves
3. Glowing Moss
4. Exploration
5. Civilization
6. Library
7. Broken Bones
8. Death
9. Graves to Dig
10. Catch a Ride
11. City Life
12. The Arena
13. A Relaxing Afternoon
14. Party Life
15. More Bad Dogs
16. Loss
17. Bracers and Books
18. Through the Fire and Flames
19. The Bigger They Are
20. Superhero Landing
21. The Unlife
22. Consequences
23. Sun
24. The Queen
25. Woman and Monster
26. Not a Title
27. Road Trip
28. Actual Healing
29. Force of Nature
30. Claymore
31. Arrival
32. Slice of Life
33. #Traveling
34. Dungeon Diving
35. Outclassed
36. Sparring and Advice
37. Azarinth Leecher
38. Centurion
39. Traps
40. Fire and Ash
41. Trash Compactor
42. Sushi
43. Reasons
44. Newcomers
45. Cake
46. Alice
47. Darkness
48. Treasures and Fire
49. On the Trail of History
50. Ashen Healer
51. That’s No Bird
52. New Companions and Enemies
53. Return
54. Cards and Poison
55. Dungeon Crawl
56. Clean-up Crew
57. Screaming Steel
58. Resisting
59. Praetorian
60. Scythes and Swords
61. Sharing is Caring
62. Survivors
63. Politics and Power
64. Snow and Ice
65. Shadows
66. Hunting
67. Evolution
68. Books and Nobles
69. Return
70. A Dark Night
71. Old Beings
72. Decisions and Ale
73. Ravenhall
Afterword
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ONE
Where is the Magic?
Ilea focused on the dull sound of her fists hitting the bag. Her world narrowed. Her own breathing and heartbeat grew distant as she pummeled blow after blow into her inanimate enemy. Nothing mattered but the moment, every bit of thought focused on the single-minded task.
She loved it.
A shrill beeping sound woke her from her trance. Her phone, lying on the padded floor nearby, announced the end of her final set. Sweat poured from her brow as she looked around the gym.
She smiled, feeling that some of the tension in her body had finally faded. It would’ve been nice to continue, but responsibilities called.
She picked up the phone a moment later, then grabbed her towel as she made her way toward the exit.
“Bye Mark,” she called out to the bald man engrossed in a conversation with another customer near the counter.
He smiled at her, pausing his discussion to flag her down.
“Ilea, hey, I just wanted to ask again about you joining the local tournament prep classes. Are you sure you don’t want to give it a shot?”
She stopped and looked at him, wiping her face with the towel.
“I appreciate the offer, really. You know I’d love to, but with uni starting next week I just can’t.”
The younger man who had been chatting with Mark raised his eyebrows.
Ilea noticed his stare and locked eyes with him until he shifted his attention away from her.
“Mark, are you kidding me? I’ve been training every day for the past two weeks and you won’t let me join the locals,” he said, his voice a slightly higher pitch than he’d likely intended. He wasn’t quite whining, but it was close.
The new guy was obviously upset, but Mark just smiled at him.
“Jon, be careful, or she’ll show you the reason why I want her to go instead of you or anybody else. Two weeks doesn’t make a tournament-ready fighter. Ilea is the real deal.” He nodded to Ilea and smiled.
Of course, she knew Mark understood her situation. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little bad about repeatedly turning him down.
Mark had always been there for her. He never interrupted her sessions other than to correct her form. He constantly crowed about her ‘potential’, but it didn’t matter. She had crunched the numbers already and didn’t plan to end up as a thirty-year-old still working in a fast-food joint – with a fucked-up face to boot.
Even if she somehow won at the locals and moved on to become a professional, she wasn’t ready for destroyed knees at the age of forty. Not to mention the risk of more severe injuries.
She shook her head and continued toward the exit. The petulant sound of ‘Jon’ still complaining behind her nearly made her stop and reconsider the whole thing. But she didn’t. She had already signed up for a different life.
It’s a hobby, and that’s what it will stay.
With what she had in mind, she could at least help people who were willing to risk destroyed knees.
Walking out of the gym, she was met by the bright afternoon sun. The inner-city street was lined with parked cars of differing colors, gray blocks containing offices rising up behind them. A sports car blasting rock ’n roll skidded to a halt as a kid ran past, the shouts and curses ignored in turn.
Ilea smiled and crossed the street herself, checking briefly for any other cars.
The walk back to her small one-room apartment was brief. Once inside, she dropped her towel on the pile of unwashed clothing near the door.
Sunlight filtered through the half-closed blinds and illuminated the battlefield of a room that hadn’t seen much cleaning in the past couple of days or even weeks. Dirty bowls, food wrappers, and empty bottles littered the table, piled around two screens and a half-covered keyboard. The ground was covered in clothes, books, and various other debris.
Tomorrow I’ll clean up, I swear.
The thought wasn’t meant for anybody in particular but was simply a reminder of the trained shame she should feel at the scene before her.
Ilea closed her eyes and smiled. It wasn’t the largest place, nor the most organized, but hey, it was hers.
She undressed on the way to the shower. Some cold water was exactly what she needed after her workout. The bliss was short, mostly to save a little bit on utilities. After she had dried off once more, she started looking for her work uniform.
“There you are.”
She found it stuffed in a corner of the room. She frowned at the wrinkles on it before throwing it on the big pile near the door alongside her previously discarded towel. Luckily, she had three sets, one of which had been washed and was at least somewhat folded in the drawer below her bed.
“Time to get to work.”
She sighed and left her mess behind.
“Good day and welcome to shitty fast-food place 87. What would you like to order?” she asked, greeting the person in front of her in a monotone voice.
“Did you just say shitty fast-food place…? Well, whatever… I’d just like a coffee and the cheeseburger deals. And only a little sugar, I’m on a diet.” The man winked at her as she typed the order into the computer in front of her.
“Anything else?” she asked.
The man shook his head. “Your company with the coffee, if that’s on the menu?” He smiled at her. It was every bit as creepy as she’d expected.
“I’m afraid slavery is illegal, sir, although I hear the chicken nuggets can tell some interesting tales.”
He frowned at her, brow furrowing as he attempted to process her response.
Small jokes helped pass the time a little. At first, the repetitive job had offered a kind of meditative quality, but at this point she’d been do
They’d just shoot me anyway. Not like I could actually do anything. She sighed at the thought.
“That’ll be 3.99.”
The man, still frowning, put the money on the counter, and Ilea placed the requested order on the tray in front of her before handing it to the man.
“Have a wonderful day,” she said without meaning it in the slightest. She saw her own radiant smile and piercing blue eyes reflected in the man’s thick glasses.
He marched off in a huff, clutching his low-calorie meal of burger and fries.
Just one more week… Well, not quite.
The monotony continued until her reverie was broken by the sound of Jeff’s voice as he came to take over her place a couple of hours later.
“Hey Ilea, you’re not coming in tomorrow, right?”
“No, I have orientation at my college. All day.”
He smiled. “Oh, interesting. So we’ll be seeing less of your beautiful face around here from now on then? Major?”
She grunted and replied, “Medicine.”
She knew he studied philosophy, but Ilea needed something a little more… hands on. Contemplating the nature of existence definitely had its place, but it wasn’t quite as immediately useful to her as punching a bag of sand. She wanted to see some progress. The field of medicine as least had clear uses and results.
“Oof, that’s a tough one. Didn’t think you’d go that way,” Jeff said, making her raise an eyebrow. Ilea had thought about what to choose as her major for a while and knew she definitely wanted to go into the health sector. Nursing school was an alternative, but her snarky comments would likely cause problems with the potentially stuck-up doctors. So why not infiltrate their ranks? The tuition was the same, and she could always change her mind in the first semester. Maybe something with nutrition might be interesting. Working in a gym would be acceptable. Or maybe therapy or something.
First, though, she had to survive the organizational nightmare that was entering academic life.
“Might change it after a semester or specialize. A lot of the basic classes overlap.”
He nodded and smiled thoughtfully, as he always did. Philosophy majors had a reputation, after all.
“Well, good luck either way!”
A solid ten hours of sleep after her shift had ended, Ilea lay dozing between the numerous pillows on the bed. She was only semi-conscious and was enjoying the feeling. It would have taken the full force of the sun to force her to shift even an iota. Not leaving waking up to chance though, the small alarm clock next to her bed sprang to life, and the room was filled with an ear-splitting noise.
Ilea groaned and, with an outstretched arm, swiftly disabled the hated device.
“Fuuuuck, it’s too early.”
Going back to her pleasant dozing, Ilea lay there for another fifteen minutes until the first of her five back-up alarms on her phone sprang to life. After another half an hour, the final one had been disabled, and with another groan – and all of her willpower – Ilea finally managed to sit up in her bed.
“Mornings suck,” she declared to the world and any gods that were listening.
Not quite awake, Ilea grudgingly left her warm nest and entered the small bathroom in her flat, her morning autopilot helping her dodge all the stray items strewn across the floor.
Only after standing in the shower for ten minutes did her eyes slowly begin to open. Then she snapped fully awake when she nearly slipped upon getting out of the shower. Her whole world tilted and her stomach lurched, but she caught herself at the last second.
“Avoided death there…” she murmured, leaving the bathroom with a toothbrush in her mouth.
Fighting to get her socks on, sniffing some clothes that had only recently been added to the pile, and going back shirtless to the bathroom, she spat into the sink.
This is going to be every single day for years now. Are you ready?
After finally locating a semi-clean outfit, Ilea made it out of her apartment, grabbed a coffee on the way, and got onto the bus. She watched the houses and streets fly by as she sipped from her first cup of the morning.
The disheveled young woman staring back at her from the murky glass of the bus window looked anything but ready to her.
The orientation day went by in a blur of introductory speeches, new faces, fancy buildings, and teachers of all shapes and sizes. By the end, it was all just one big multi-colored educational blur in Ilea’s mind. A typical boring college day.
It was just the first day of hundreds, maybe thousands like it. Great.
Ilea returned home with her new, packed schedule, including a bunch of papers she didn’t know what to do with. Her floor was already filled with detritus, so she was forced to choose the chair instead to dump them on.
“Why aren’t they giving us these in digital form?”
The mountain of paper was at least a tree’s worth. Something like the fabled internet could really improve the archaic school she had chosen. Or at least its impact on local forests. Sinking onto the bed, Ilea decided to check out the latest trends in cat videos. It had been a long day.
Her friend Rory texted her a few times, but Ilea ignored her. They had chosen the same college, and Rory was downright ecstatic to start what she called ‘the next big part of their lives’.
Ilea wasn’t quite as enthusiastic. Sure, she wanted out of her dead-end job, and the various majors she had been considering provided some interesting options. But really, she just wanted to do whatever felt right. She didn’t want to feel stuck, and right now, that’s what she was.
Sure, she had some choices, some freedom, but not to the extent that she wished. There were other options, but they came with their own issues. Studying something in the medical field presented the most reasonable choice.
The ‘next big part of my life’? What then? Meet some guy, get married? Get a fucking house?
It all felt so suffocating. So normal.
She decided to look at more cats instead of confronting her existential dread. She wondered if Jeff could offer some insights, but she assumed he would just offer to share some of his weed instead.
Sooner rather than later, a rumbling reminded her of the purest primal need. With this thought driving her forward, she forced herself to get up and check the fridge. A single pan covered loosely with an ill-fitting lid laughed at her, filled with the curry she had tried to make two days before. It wasn’t a good one.
Adding some more chili and pepper as well as a dash of pure hope, she heated up some of the meal before turning on her computer to check if her favorite producers had uploaded any new videos.
Nothing new today. Man, that sucks. Streaming it is then.
She first wasted nearly half an hour with indecision, but in the end, she sat through four short episodes of a new show about forging.
Eventually, another primal need reared its head, and Ilea decided it was time for bed. Lying on the bed, she stared at the ceiling and frowned.
