Nero strode up to Wendy and put his hand on her head.
"This is going to hurt, but tell me when you can't take anymore," he said, then covered her body in blue flames. He was not trying to give her hypothermia, although that would indeed be the result if he kept the flames on for too long.
Instead, he was trying to eliminate any remaining cursed energy that was covering her body, and the sudden drain on his aether reserves told him that there was quite a lot of it.
"Enough," she said hoarsely, before she finally pulled out the purification card from her deck. Nero more or less knew all the generic cards on sale, which is why just a glance at the picture on the card was enough to let him know that this was not a common card. Wendy must have acquired it from someone who had a special recipe.
Whatever it was, using it did not bring her relief. Instead, a few seconds after she used the card, Wendy began vomiting out black and brown sludge. The stench of rotting flesh hit Nero, but he did not so much as twitch his nose as he waited for her to finish, which did not take long.
Wendy was left severely weakened, so much so that her limbs were trembling under her own weight.
"You okay?" Nero asked as he helped her stand and move away from her own vomit.
"The curse around that creature was way too strong!" she said, with a hint of fear in her voice. "My skin felt like it was on fire and my lungs felt like they were being torn apart! How the hell are you fine?"
She might not have been actually asking him, and was just exclaiming, but Nero looked around and saw Henry and Charles coming in closer, observing the dead lemur.
"I'll teach you when we get back," he said quietly.
Wendy was startled, mostly because she had assumed that it had a lot to do with his ability. But if it was something that could be learned, she would not hesitate. She only nodded, which was pretty hard to notice because her whole body was trembling at this point. Even though his flames had helped her, they also left her feeling chilled.
The others also started coming in from where they had been watching. Now that the lemur was killed, their mission was technically over. Adam placed his hand on Wendy's back, and though he himself was still weak and exhausted, began to heal her.
"Do we need to get proof or something?" Charles asked as he studied the corpse. After it died, the static that had surrounded its body disappeared, and the pressure Nero felt being exposed to had reduced, but had not vanished.
"No, the mission is to just kill it. Any body parts it has will be cursed, and we're not equipped to transport cursed items. In fact, considering how strong the curse was on this thing, I don't think we can use its shelter to spend the night. Let's just create our own."
Everyone was curious, so they observed the lemur for a bit, but as soon as they felt curses begin to influence them they quickly left. They could somewhat understand why Wendy's condition was so poor even though she didn't suffer any damage from the lemur - just being close to it was damaging enough.
But the comparison once again brought the limelight to Nero, who was just as close to the lemur as her, but seemed completely unaffected.
Just to be sure, however, the three curse combat specialists purified the group once more. As it turned out, Wendy was still not completely curse free and required more treatment. Even Nero was not completely unharmed, as a curse had taken root in his eyes, though exposure to his flames suppressed it heavily.
But his eyes were not something that they could treat, so he would have to go back to base before he could be fully treated. Fortunately, the curse had gone dormant for now. Nero had a feeling that as long as kept summoning his flames around his face regularly, the curse would not be able to build up any energy to become active.
The next part, despite Nero's great versatility, actually did not require any help from him at all. In fact, it was the artisans and four aetheric specialist recruits who finally had a time to shine.
Since they were unable to find a decent spot for shelter, the four instead used various cards to study the natural flow of aether in the forest, and found a region with a steady flow.
"When you can't find a good spot for shelter and need to compromise, finding a place with a natural aether flow is your best option," one of them explained to Nero when he questioned them.
"People often think that a region with a high aether concentration is good, or maybe a low concentration. They have various justification for it, but the truth is, both of those are equally bad. A high aether concentration is more likely to give birth to an Apparition curse, especially at night, while a low aether concentration is likely to be a sign of curses that have been active in the region.
"A flow of aether, on the other hand, means that the aether is moving, so any curses that appear will move along with it. It also means there have been no curses in the area for at least a short period of time, or the flow will have been disrupted. It's not a perfectly secure option, but that's why it's called a compromise. Plus, we can tap into the aether flow and harness it for our own purposes."
Nero got to see first hand how exactly they did that. The artisans carried with them their grimoires, which were filled with over a hundred cards each, making them impractical to carry around on a mission, but useful nevertheless.
Nero watched as the recruits first studied then established the aetheric flow leylines, which determined the position and location of the shelter they would build. Housing 20 recruits required a sizable shelter, so they had their work cut out for them.
But in this regard, they showed a level of competence they had been lacking so far. They used cards to clear the ground of all grass, even removing the roots in the process, then they used other cards to bathe the ground in flames, cooking the dirt.
There were a few minor pops and a few strange smells as various gases escaped the flame-covered ground, but ultimately, the result was hardened earth, almost making it seem like tile.
Then the artisan distributed a few cards to the rest of the group, for creating the walls of the shelter would require more aether than any one of them had. This was one of the major drawbacks of being a Neophyte.
Not only were the cards they could use of the lowest quality and least complex, but they didn't even have the aether to do anything substantial with them.
But institutions where they lacked quality, they had to make do with quantity. The process was started by the aetheric specialist recruits who carved out an outline of the walls in the tile, and used a card to raise about 0.3 metres of all the necessary walls before they had to stop.
They passed the cards to the others, and they continued to raise the walls, doing nothing else for fear of damaging the structure. Even Nero had to contribute with this part.
Name: Ground alteration
Image: A house made of dirt
Type: Manipulation
Star rank: 0
Ability: [Manipulate the ground around you]
Flavour text: "We are a product of our environment, just as much as our environment is a product of us," Hilary Bouvin
The card was technically quite powerful, since it was a Manipulation type. Getting such a card to be level 0 was incredibly difficult, no doubt, since Manipulation cards let the caster directly manipulate the world around them. But as a result of being a 0 star card, it's efficiency was absolutely terrible.
It took the entire group, excluding Wendy and Adam who were in no condition to help, to raise the shelter walls high enough for them.
But getting the walls up was only just the beginning. Over the next few hours, as darkness began to spread over the forest, they made use of various cards and abilities to ensure that their shelter was well protected from the dangers of the night.
Once it was ready, everyone went in and shut the door. They couldn't afford to keep any lights on outside, as that would attract too much attention, but they couldn't allow themselves to be in the dark. For that reason, the inside of the shelter, which consisted of basically just one massive room, was illuminated by a soft yellow glow produced by balls of light in each corner of the room.
Illusion type cards which could produce balls of light were actually quite aether efficient, so it was not a problem to keep them on the entire night. In a corner, they had also created a basin, where the recruits were once again taking turns using a card called Aqua Dribble.
Name: Aqua Dribble
Image: A small puddle of water on the ground
Type: Elemental
Star rank: 0
Ability: [Produce 100 - 200ml of water that drips from the casters forefinger]
Flavour text: "Once, we were at the mercy of the elements. Now, we play with them in our hands," - Iskunder Macedon
Much like Manipulation type cards, Elemental type cards were a great burden on Neophytes. But when none of them had any water all day, it was a burden they had to bear.