Frostbound [LitRPG Apocalypse]-Chapter 196 - Heart of Magic

Gabriel

He's alive. He had to be. There's no way that he died.

Gabriel's mind spun. Seeing the explosion nearly made his working thoughts crash. Like a short appeared causing all rational thought to shut down.

Watching Hal sprint off alerted him to something going on and watching Rachel and his mother follow behind, he couldn't stand there and be left behind.

As he ran the same things kept playing in his head. He even pulled up their faction on his status sheet to make sure leadership hadn't changed. Seeing Christopher's name still listed was his only rejoice, but even so, who was to say it would remain?

The time they were in the dungeon together. The time they had spent enchanting the castle. The hours spent designing defensive formations. The long talks about how they would set up the defensive Wards for the City. The memory that stuck out was the gruff and disheveled version that met them at their family home.

Gabe still remembered the rush of joy at seeing his brother again after returning.

All of the memories since played on repeat as his feet pounded the earth in the direction of everyone else. He noticed the wave of something flowing through the air, but he couldn't put his finger on what.

His best guess was that it was essence.

He wasn't familiar with the energy, not as much as mana, but that was the only thing his mind could come up with. Not that he had ever seen it before. Rachel talked about it once but he couldn't remember what she had said about it.

His focus was on the matrix behind skills rather than the ephemeral substance.

Hal had long run out of view with his insane speed, but he caught up soon enough.

What his vision picked up made his breath hitch.

Hal kneeled next to a smoldering form of what looked vaguely human. There wasn't any black blood or Demonic mana coming off the form so Gabriel's mind ruled out it being a Demon but worked to temper his rising hope.

Sure, the form had the right size to be who he suspected it to be, but there were also not a lot of identifiable features to confirm right away. And he certainly didn't want to proclaim it to be his brother only to find out it wasn't.

The fall afterward only hurt more than it already did.

Rachel and his mother reached where Hal knelt first, as they had taken off before he had. Rachel had the levels on him to be faster and his mother's affinity made it nearly impossible for him to catch up.

Gabriel skidded to a stop next to the previous two and he felt the rest of those running toward them nearing.

Everything heightened as he tried to process everything his senses were taking in as quickly as possible.

His gut clenched as he took in what was now in front of him. Who he hoped was his brother was splayed on his back, motionless as Hal, Rachel, and his mother did their best to treat the injuries.

There were just too many of them.

The largest, and most glaringly eye-catching, was the missing arm. The stump was cut off just after the shoulder and blood flowed freely from the missing appendage.

His face was black and blue from the fight while also having a massive gash adorning his left cheek reaching from just after his nose to the side of his head. All of his hair was missing, burnt off both his head and his beard.

Both legs were oddly angled, most likely from the fall, but even the remaining arm was proportioned wrong compared to Gabriel's memory. The last one he had of his brother whole where he watched the same body he was observing now charging off.

Along both legs and torso there were numerous lacerations of various sizes and depths along with puncture wounds abound. One such wound pierced clean through his leg and came out the other side. The only good thing was Gabriel confirmed it was his brother he was looking at but he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

What confirmed it was the lingering Ice in some of the wounds. While he didn't doubt most had blown off in the explosion, Gabe could feel the frozen water covering some of the wounds.

Taking in the... extensive injuries, he just stood there, his mouth agape. He didn't know what to do in the face of such a scene and froze.

Rachel

"You couldn't have caught him!" Rachel admonished while pressing her hands into the missing arm's stump.

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"He was shooting down like a meteor, how exactly was I supposed to catch him?! I did my best to cushion the fall with my Wind!" Hal said frustratedly, as he worked over the body.

Hal was the first to get to the impact sight, but even with him here there was a sizable indent where the body landed.

Rachel wasn't exactly sure on what she was doing but did her best anyway. She had done generic first aid before during the waves and tried to do the same now. She wasn't even sure if there was still a pulse but the blood was still flowing and that was as good a sign as any.

If it had stopped...

Luckily, Ashley came running up next and immediately dove into action.

Mana flared and skills activated in quick succession. One after another was used and the amount of mana pouring in was enough for Rachel to be surprised. She couldn't help but watch the woman's mana work.

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"Is he going to be alright?" Elizabeth asked breathlessly.

"I'm not sure," Ashley answered right away.

Even without a medical degree, Rachel didn't put much hope in what they were doing. It was just... too much. Even for who everyone in their family knew was the strongest.

There were some things you just couldn't come back from.

After Ashley's skills flared, she reached down to start doing what she could manually.

While holding on to the bleeding stump, Rachel felt the healing mana wash through the body and felt something thump. Not to get her hopes up, she waited for it to happen again.

Thump.

His heart was still beating! He was still alive!

"There's a pulse!" Rachel couldn't help but utter the words after she felt the thump.

How is he even alive?

She instantly began to question how. She had witnessed the explosion taking place and knew he was at the center of it. He was very likely the cause of it. Yet he was still alive somehow.

Was he in front of the shockwave of force and instead of being crushed got sent sky high instead? That still wouldn't explain how he was still alive but she couldn't focus on that right now.

She could feel the beating getting weaker.

The Healer chugged another mana potion as the mana continued to pour out of her but it was like pouring water into a rickety bucket. There were too many injuries to fix and not enough time or mana to fix them.

The crowd around them continued to build as they worked but the bystanders were forgotten.

Rachel tried to think of anything she could that would help. She knew Chris had a skill that worked better in the cold but she wasn't sure if that would boost his Vitality enough.

She also knew he had a [Meditation] skill that would do the same but he wasn't conscious to activate it.

She had to stop herself from setting her hands ablaze with fire to cauterize the wounds. That was how she usually applied first aid. To stop the bleeding, she normally just seared the wound shut but that wouldn't work on Chris.

Some of his wounds were still frozen over with ice and if she went in blazing, it would cause more harm than good.

A bell went off when she thought that.

If she couldn't cauterize the wounds, then they needed to freeze them shut.

"Gabriel, encase him in Ice!" She shouted.

It was a longshot, and completely untested, but it wouldn't hurt to get him into a colder environment. It was the only idea she could come up with to both stop the blood and help the overall situation.

Noticing that no mana flared or ice growing, she turned to see the man standing stock still with his mouth open motionless. It took everything in her to not smack him over the head but she couldn't pull her hands away from the stump.

"Gabriel!" She yelled.

That got his attention.

"Encase him in ice!"

Kicked into motion, he began to follow her orders and ice began to build over Chris's body.

It started frosting over the bleeding stump, allowing her to pull her hands away and it wasn't long until the entire thing was covered in a thick layer of the stuff. The only thing left uncovered was his face.

"Keep going!" She said, "Drop the temperature as much as possible!"

Frosty crystals continued building and Healing mana continued to cascade through his body before it suddenly cut off.

Everyone turned to Ashley accusingly and under the deadly glare of so many, the woman rushed to defend herself. "I've done all I can. His body can't take any more Healing."

"What about potions? Does anybody have any potions?!" Elizabeth shouted.

"Those won't help either." Ashley shot down, "His body physically can't take any more healing. If we push any harder he will reject it."

That poured cold water on everyone present.

To learn that they were all hopeless to do anything but watch. With Ashley sitting back on her knees with all she could accomplish finished, Gabriel was left as the only one doing anything.

His frosty mana continued to pour out of him and into the growing encasement. Rachel even picked up on the use of his Law.

"What about enchantments?" Gabriel broke the silence that had built, "If I can carve a Healing Rune into the ice, will that help?"

Ashley sputtered for a moment, "I... think so? I'm not sure how the Runes work exactly, but from what we've seen, they boost the natural healing of the body. Using them should be fine... I think."

Better than nothing.

The uncertainty didn't sound comforting but at this point, they would take anything they could get.

After her answer, the ice around the body began to shift. She could see Gabriel visibly struggling, but he pushed on nonetheless.

It shifted into loops and curves of what she knew to be a Rune. The growing sigil gradually turning into something she had seen before. What the exact Rune meant was beyond her and without being told, she wouldn't have known what it did.

Without anything to do, Rachel could only sit and watch as the changes took place. What started as normal ice shifted into artistic grooves and aesthetic curves.

It wasn't a quick process, but the ice shifted noticeably until the process was completed. The finished Rune flashed as it concluded taking form and she could feel the mana shift and take effect.

"Rachel, I need help powering it," Gabriel said as mana continued to pour out of him.

Wordlessly, she started doing the same.

Enchanting was still beyond her knowledge, but her senses could pick up what was happening to the mana. The Rune siphoned the provided mana through the carved grooves, changing it along the way into something she couldn't sense, before injecting it into the... encasement.

Her mind wanted to call it a coffin but she refused to do so. He wasn't dead yet, and she wasn't going to call it a coffin until she was forced to.

Rachel closed her eyes to watch the process and focused all her attention on the flowing mana.

Chris's body absorbed it naturally, as it was surrounded by it, and it coursed through his mana channels. This was usually where the body would filter it through the central mana pool they had to get rid of any unwanted affinities.

Instead, some of it was lost as it traveled through the body, seeping into various places. The Healing taking effect.

It didn't noticeably change anything, but it made her breaths come easier knowing there was at least some kind of healing taking place.

Other than noticing the mana break off and suffuse into his body, she saw the magic doing something else. Something she wasn't sure how to describe.

It was like his heart was taking in the Ice mana around it and using that for some reason. Why would his heart be sucking in Ice mana?

"He doesn't have a human heart!" She exclaimed aloud unintentionally.

She remembered watching him evolve but it was easy to forget the change he had made. It wasn't like she could see his changed heart for the continued reminder.

Rachel knew that certain creatures evolved in various ways and it was impossible to have knowledge of them all, but some were widely known facts and even their tutorial had information about them.

It was mostly the strong and powerful creatures that they used as examples. Mainly, Dragons. Dragons were known to be one of the fiercest creatures in the Universe and they were commonly used as examples in the information packets they had access to.

One of the main things they talked about was the value of a Dragon's Heart. The Heart of a Dragon was where all their magic originated and where most of it was stored. It was where they drew their strength from and where their famed Dragon Breath started.

The magic it contained was immense and the value of such an organ was astronomical. Rachel had to do a double take when she saw the prices of lesser Draconic species Hearts, let alone an actual Dragon's.

Still, Dragons weren't the only creatures whose magic resided in their Heart, other notable ones were Titans, Fire Titans along with all the other types, and most relevant, Giants.

While Chris didn't have the Heart of an actual Frost Giant, he had one with traces of the Frost Giant bloodline, which was enough to have at least some of that effect.

His Heart drew in the Ice mana and used it as fuel to pump out blood full of vitality. Honestly, Rachel was surprised his blood wasn't glowing blue from the effect but instead only tinted deep purple.

With his Heart's Vitality in addition to the Healing Rune, there was nothing more they could do but watch.

"Will he live?" Elizabeth asked again.

Everyone turned an ear to hear the answer.

"I'm not sure,"