Chapter 475

Arthur leaned on his spear, panting. For the first time, bomoh Umi had stopped. She had even taken out some salves and bandages and was in the process of pressing them to Jan's wounds, wrapping them around. They were minor wounds for the most part, the ghostly creatures attacks more a robbing of vitality and energy - dangerously low energy - than physical, but neither party were foolish enough to take the aid offered.

If nothing else, the pause gave them time to try to cultivate, to draw in some of the energy. Even if they could make the bomoh stop for an hour, they could regenerate a significant amount of the energy that they had lost in the battle, a factor that left them happy to stand around and take whatever muttered imprecations the woman might offer about their techniques and intelligence. 

Or at least, Arthur would have been wiling to take it silently.

"You should have let us rest," Jan pointed out, bluntly. "We could have fought them easier, if we had stopped."

"If we wait too long, they win lah," Bomoh Umi said, shaking her head. "We have to be there before the ritual begins, lah."

"What is the ritual?" Jan said. "We haven't been told, you know."

Which as, truthfully, a lie. They were fishing for details, but the overall play of the Tower and what would happen was the same towards the end. All the energies, everything taken from the ghosts; it was a summoning. Dark magic, to bring forth the aid of the creatures of the night and dark so that the king could utilize it against their enemies.

The entire storyline was rather thrashy and silly, in Arthur's opinion, but who was he to complain about it? It worked, and some Climbers actually enjoyed taking part in the whole process. They said it made more sense to them, to memorise the flow of the story and the quests, allowing them to cross through these types of Towers easier.

He had never seen the point, brute force memorisation was not hard. You just sat down, for a few hours and repeated the Tower details over and over again, maybe writing it, maybe just chanting it. Build a series of rhythms to the memorised work, and you could force it into your brain while doing more important things - like delivering food and running errands for the Ringgit necessary to pay for training.

Stories on the other hand, you had to remember how they went. You had to look at the multiple branches like in this Tower, figure out what options you had to choose, and how best to run them down. In this case, Arthur and Jan had stumbled across one of the best - and most dangerous - paths through the Tower.

Most other Climbers would follow along, help the king put together the ritual and then, having it succeed; be forced to do battle with the escaped hantu. There was never a 'good' result from the ritual, which was, of course, perfectly in line with the usual stories and warnings of such actions. Still, it was - for the most part - easy.

"Summoning, lah. The king is trying to bring back the hantu of his grandfather. His grandfather had a treaty with the orang utan who lived here. They won't treat with him, but they might with his grandfather." 

"That's... different," Arthur muttered. "Very different."

"Very stupid," Bomoh Umi spat. "They want to use the orang utan's power to use the summonings, because they are more connected. But they forget, we are all connected - and the land has a memory too. They use the wrong power, to make the call. And what will come, will not be his grandfather."

"Oh..." Arthur nodded slowly, finding himself relaxing. While the story sometimes changed, the basics never did - or should never have. What she was saying now seemed just another story variation.

Jan, on the other hand, was not convinced. "How you know? How so certain?'

"You don't believe me?" Bomoh Umi snapped. "Then why get me?"

"That's our job," Jan said. "But you kena tahu bagaimana?"

She did not answer Jan, instead tugging on the bandage tight enough to leave a gasp behind before she pinned it shut and came over to Arthur. He knew better than to prod, so he kept silent as she finished with her ministrations. Arthur felt the pulse of Yang energy through the ointment and bandages, noticed how it sped up the healing process and reached within and split his attention, to pay attention to the way it interacted with his body. If he was right, he might even manage to learn a new way of utilizing his Advanced Healing technique.

The other portion of his mind, the one that had him seated cross-legged in the battlefield - luckily, one that required little in clean-up, with the ghosts having exploded into so much dust - focused on drawing in Tower energy. Arthur cultivated, same as Jan, both of them knowing that this short period of time when the ghosts were beaten back and the Bomoh was willing to wait was likely their last chance to cultivate before tonight.

They would be walking again, all the way through the day till night fell once more. The second night sometimes was just a series of running battles, other times, it would be like today. A massive wave that forced them to desperately do battle.

A little less desperate, in this case, because Jan could destroy the waves of ghosts with her own aura. Thankfully, Bomoh Umi had healed up whilst the pair had fought, such that Arthur could not have told she had been injured or crisped at all from the flames. Even for him, it had been nothing more than a tenderness to his skin, like having touched a too hot pan bot before it had burnt through. No boils or flaking skin.

She gave them an hour, more than usual, perhaps because of Jan's question. She instead made herself a small meal, conjuring flame from sticks and stones, boiling water and roasting meat that she seemed to have conjured from nowhere. More interestingly, whilst they waited, she had set a small cloth bag, parted and opened fully such that it lay flat. During the hour, the dust that were but the remnants of the ghosts, that which they had left behind in their destruction made its way over.

At first, Arthur had thought they had just floated over, but when he paid proper attention, he noticed the cause. Tiny little ants, no bigger than his finger were working hard on bringing the dust to the opened cloth bag. There, they deposited the dust over and over again before leaving to collect more.

Higher and higher that pile grew, while the pulses of healing energy in the salves slowly faded. Unfortunately, Arthur had found no great insight from the healing salves. They worked similar to most of the pills and other salves he had consumed or utilized in his time in the Tower, an overflow of energy that excited nerves and muscles and cells to improve and speed up the same process that they had begun already.

Maybe a little more efficient, a little more targeted than his own methods, but only marginal improvements. He found the biggest change was that because the salves and ointments were directly applied, they only targeted a small area - unlike the general use of his Advanced Healing technique. Of course, he had improved it since then; but the retargeting aspect still lacked finesse.

When it was time to go, it happened without warning. Bomoh Umi just packed her gear up, leaving the bag of ghost dust behind as she started walking. Alerted to the movement, the pair finished the last of their circulations, grabbed the dust - their prize for the fight - and hurried after her.

Falling into line beside the older woman as she stomped forward, Jan opened her mouth to speak, only to be cut-off by the medicine woman.

"I know they're going to do it wrong, because I taught them the wrong ritual. Raising the dead should never happen, and I will never pass on that knowledge. Not ever." She sighed. "I just never thought my apprentice would be foolish enough to try it anyway, even when I told him it was not something to ever be done."

"Your apprentice?" Jan exclaimed.

"Yes. Who do you think they was going to do it?" She sniffed. "The rajah?" A cackling laugh. "No, it'd be my foolish apprentice. My biggest sin."