SSS-Ranked Surgeon In Another World: The Healer Is Actually OP! - Chapter 297: Authority Expands!
Chapter 297: Authority Expands!
Meanwhile, Isolde’s silver gaze scanned ahead, piercing through forest and frost as though the terrain were translucent. “At least four high-density concentrations deeper within. Likely evolved variants.”
Duke smirked faintly. “Good. It’s been a while.”
They accelerated and vanished into the frozen horizon.
Bruce didn’t waste a second.
He surged forward, boots barely grazing the frost before pushing off again. Ice-laden trees blurred past him as he moved, his Authority spreading outward like an invisible tide.
One kilometer.
Anything within that radius collapsed.
Monkeys launching from treetops. Monkeys bursting from snow-covered burrows. Monkeys diving from cliff edges with shrieks of fury. The moment they entered his range, their vitality shrank, their bodies withered, and they dropped. Again. And again. And again, like rain falling in reverse.
Bruce’s expression remained calm, but internally he was calculating.
Vitality Sovereign didn’t consume mana in the conventional sense. It was efficient, terrifyingly so. But scale demanded something else entirely.
Focus.
Each target registered within his awareness. Each vitality signature touched. Each reduction calibrated precisely to restrict without killing.
Thirty thousand.
At some point, he stopped counting.
The world streaked by in frozen blurs. The air cut sharply against his face, but sensation dulled beneath concentration. Ahead in the sky, Duke and Isolde moved like twin comets, their auras carving paths through the frigid atmosphere.
They weren’t even at full speed. Just moderate, to them.
Bruce could go faster. Much faster. Multiple times faster. But that would require him to stop using Vitality Sovereign, and dividing his attention was the cost. Every attempt to push his movement speed while maintaining wide-scale Authority control forced his mind to split, awareness, suppression calculations, spatial positioning, forward momentum. The more he divided, the slower he became.
He inhaled sharply.
Strain crept in. A faint tremor behind his eyes. His thoughts felt heavier. His Authority radius shrank, one kilometer compressed to five hundred meters.
He clicked his tongue under his breath. “Annoying.”
The world tilted faintly for half a second as fatigue brushed the edges of his consciousness. He slowed, barely.
Then he invoked Heal.
Not outward. Inward.
Golden warmth surged through him, but this time it didn’t knit flesh or seal bone. It flowed into neural pathways, into cognitive strain, into the overtaxed threads of thought he was stretching too thin.
The heaviness dissolved. Clarity returned. His perception sharpened like a blade freshly honed. The tremor vanished.
Authority radius expanded once more.
The monkeys within range shuddered and collapsed in renewed waves.
Bruce exhaled slowly as he ran, golden energy stabilizing the storm within his own mind.
This was no longer a simple siege.
This was a proving ground.
The golden warmth from Heal settled fully, dissolving the lingering strain behind his eyes. His thoughts, which had felt slightly fragmented under the weight of mass suppression, snapped back into clean alignment.
Then something surfaced.
A familiar interface flickered faintly across his perception.
[You’ve healed.]
[Your mental strength has increased.]
[The range of your Authority has increased.]
Bruce blinked mid-stride, boots skimming over frost-hardened stone as another wave of Frost Fang Monkeys collapsed within his expanding radius.
“…Huh?”
The notification didn’t vanish. It lingered just long enough for comprehension to take root.
Mental strength increased? Authority range increased?
He tested it.
Heal.
Golden light threaded through his neural pathways again, not restoring damage this time, but reinforcing capacity. The sensation was different. Less like mending. More like widening.
He kept Healing again and again.
Each pulse felt like tightening the structure of his mind while simultaneously expanding its boundaries, like reinforcing the walls of a dam even as more water surged behind it.
His awareness sharpened. Expanded.
One kilometer. Two. Three. Four.
Five.
Bruce’s pupils dilated slightly as the world exploded outward.
Perception didn’t stretch gradually. It detonated. He could sense everything within that radius, every Frost Fang Monkey scrambling through snow-laden branches, claws digging into bark crusted with ice. Every shriek vibrating through frost-heavy air. Every SSS-tier fluctuation deeper within the Labyrinth, dense and predatory, pulsing like slow-burning suns beneath the surface.
He felt the subtle drift of wind currents weaving between ice pillars. The faint compression of snow where smaller creatures burrowed. The way mana rippled beneath frozen rivers like blood flowing beneath translucent skin.
At full concentration, when he narrowed his focus, he could perceive micro-fluctuations in vitality, tiny tremors of exhaustion, subtle surges of aggression, heartbeat rhythms, the slightest distortion in aura signatures.
It was overwhelming. The sheer influx of information would have shattered a normal human mind. Even an A-Rank would have collapsed under the weight. Most S-Ranks would drown in it.
But Bruce had never been normal. From the moment he awakened, he had been operating beyond conventional thresholds.
He continued running. Non-stop. Processing, suppressing, observing. Each step efficient, boots barely lingering against the frost before pushing off again, momentum carrying him in smooth arcs over fallen bodies of shriveled monkeys. The forest blurred around him as branches snapped overhead under the weight of leaping beasts that immediately collapsed mid-air the moment his Authority brushed them.
He moved like a surgeon in motion. Precise. Efficient. Calm on the surface.
Inside, his heart beat steadily, not with fear, but anticipation.
The frost-laden forest stretched endlessly ahead. Massive mountains pierced the horizon, their spines carved from jagged ice and ancient stone. Glacial rivers wound through valleys like luminous veins, glowing faintly blue with concentrated mana beneath their frozen surfaces. In the distance, the terrain shifted from forest to crystalline plains where ice formations rose like fractured cathedrals.
Bruce exhaled slowly, breath turning to silver mist.
“How vast is this SSS Labyrinth…”
His gaze flicked briefly toward the pale sky. Velmora was classified as an SSS World. If this place was comparable in scale,
A faint chuckle escaped him. His eyes gleamed with something dangerously close to excitement.
He expanded his awareness again, deliberately pressing against the new limits of his range.
Beyond the endless waves of A-Rank Frost Fang Monkeys, there were other signatures. Larger. Heavier. Denser. Some moved with slow, deliberate confidence, nothing like the frenzied monkeys.
Something prowled deeper within the frozen expanse. Something old.
He smirked faintly. “Let’s see what else you’re hiding.”
He was aware, too, of something else.
