“Does it matter?”
“Hmm, you’re an alchemist, but you also fight, interesting. Give him a contract.”
A guard pulled out a contract. Erik checked it a few times. It was simple, requiring Erik to not share any information and agreeing to the terms that Old Hei had listed.
Erik dripped some blood on it and then passed it to the guard.
The door opened and a young man walked through from the Alchemy room. He looked young but he didn’t feel it; his eyes were old and his brows were pulled together in a thunderous expression.
He pulled out a formula and held it in front of Erik. “I hope you are the fastest,” the child-man said.
Erik took the formula, checked it and put it away. “I hope so too.” Erik nodded to the man and headed out.
So that’s what he wants help with—reversing the changes to his body. Going from an adult to a child must be annoying. Also, with the changes to the body’s structure, I wonder if the mana flows smoothly or not?
Erik walked out of the house and toward the totem.
“Where to now?” Storbon asked.
“Vermire. Be easier to blend in there,” Erik said.
***
Jen headed upstairs to her office, hearing that she had a new visitor. The Alva Healing House in Vermire had grown in size, nearly doubling. There were people looking to become healers all the time. It was a lucrative business, with people looking to cultivate their bodies. There were plenty of people looking for healers and the army would pay people a higher rate of pay if they were already medic qualified.
That’s another thing—all of the medics! With the new healing houses up in Vuzgal, at least it is moving people around a bit more. Though I kind of like it here. I’ll see.
She opened the door and found Erik sitting there, looking over books.
“Hey, Jen. So you must like Vermire—I heard that you got an offer to move to Vuzgal, or back to Alva,” Erik said.
“Are you here to bend my arm?”
“Me? Nope, I’m here to put my hands to work.” Erik smiled.
“You want to work in Vermire?”
“Well, in Vuzgal, I’m known as the city lord. That wouldn’t be a good image if people found out I was working as a healer. I guess making things is one thing, but working for other people when you have a high position is weird.” Erik shrugged. “Then in Alva, well, most people are just increasing their cultivation—interesting but it doesn’t help out as much as your healing house. So, where do you want me?”
“Uh, well, how long are you here for? What can you do?”
“Well, I’m here for at least a couple of weeks unless something takes me away. I can shoot back between here and Alva easy. I’ll work the nights on concoctions in Alva’s Alchemy department. In the days, I’m here—all yours, wherever you need me. I can do triage, first aid, I guess kind of battlefield surgery. I haven’t worked with all of the tools that you have here. You’ve been busy.”
“Sanitation and prevention are the biggest things we focus on.” Jen shrugged. “Well, there are always people looking for treatment. Even with the expansion, we have people coming from across the First Realm to be healed. Doesn’t make the healing houses too pleased, but then they can’t really compete. They’re either too far away or the importance of Vermire to the people around us is higher than trying to pressure the healing house.”
“I’ve heard that there have been threats?”
“Yeah, but what are they going to try to do? Attack us?” Jen snorted and raised her hand as a mana blade appeared in it. “They can try, but everyone is a medical professional here. We’re the most upgraded Body and Mana Gathering cultivators in Alva—be hard to really attack us.”
Erik grinned. “Good to know that you’re safe. Have you made advancements in cultivation?”
“We have improved on your practices to open one’s mana gates. Instead of using mana to punch through the mana gates, we use intraosseous infusion. With the new metals from Alva, we can easily get entry into the marrow or gate section that is blocked. Then we hook people up to a drip that is filled with a mana-concentrated concoction. It will take some time, but with the intraosseous infusion, that injection isn’t going anywhere, so people can work with it. Then, over time...” Jen opened her hand. “The gate gives way and opens up. We are working with different concoctions to see what is better. It looks like the higher concentration of mana, the faster it works. If a person sits in a mana-rich environment and circulates their mana, then they will make a breakthrough much faster than someone who is passively circulating their mana.”
“Which concoctions?” Erik asked.
Jen checked in her storage ring before she put down a folder in front of Erik. She sat down in the chair opposite and pulled out a still warm tea from the morning. She sipped it, closing her tired eyes as she let the smell of the tea and its heat relax her body.
She used a healing spell on herself to deal with the back aches and kinks that she could already feel.
“Experimented with different beast cores and mana stones. Seems that ingredients with a high mana concentration are the best for the basic ingredients to act as a catalyst for mana stones. I keep coming back to thinking that the mana gates are like plaque in one’s arteries.”
Jen looked at Erik as he flipped through the notes.
“It’s thorough and the results are good. You have focused in on the issue, but I am thinking about the possible factors that led to it,” Erik said.
Jen’s eyebrows pinched together.
“We know that people who are born in the higher realms with greater mana density will naturally have more mana gates open than the people born in the lower realms. The mana gates become harder to open when someone has circulated high attribute mana through their body. These deposits, shall we say, of impure mana pass through the mana channels and then pile up in one’s mana gates. If we were to create something that could purify the mana within one’s channels, then the buildup wouldn’t be so high, right?”
“It makes some sense, but resources cost. The concoctions we’re injecting people with cost anywhere from three mana stones to an Earth mana stone. How much will a concoction cost to purify a person’s mana? Wouldn’t it just be cheaper for them to undertake the procedure in Alva?”
“Making a pill or concoction to do that would be hard as well,” Erik said.
“Wouldn’t a mana gathering formation with the right kind of Alchemy plants around it be better?” Jen sipped from her cup. “Use the formation to draw in higher mana; the plants suck up the different attributes and then you’re good to go. A dungeon core would be perfect due to the high purity, but the plants might help. Though we don’t really need all of this down here.”
“Why?” Erik asked.
“People aren’t that old. The older a person, the more impurities they’ve sucked up into their bodies. It takes them a lot longer and a lot more resources to open a mana gate.” Jen sunk into thought. “I wonder if doing too much might have stunted them for later growth.”
“Hmm?” Erik held his chin, playing with his beard.
“Well, with higher levels and stats, you can draw in more mana, right? Power grows through three ways: levels, cultivation, and resources. With Mana Gathering Cultivation, you can open your mana gates at any stage of your Mana Gathering Cultivation. There is a sort of paradox, though. The more mana you can circulate and use to break your mana gates open, the faster it’ll open. At the same time, the more mana you can draw in, the more impurities that enter your body.”
Erik snapped his fingers. “That makes much more sense now! Qin—she was never able to use mana due to her constitution. Then, with opening one of her mana gates, the surge of power was like a breeze through a dusty house—the dust or mana gate debris shot out of her mana gates. The effect was many times more effective.”
Jen and Erik looked at each other, their minds opened to a new possibility. They both pulled out books and wrote down their findings a
nd followed their line of thinking before they could forget it.
“No wonder people treat Vuzgal as a holy land. If someone was to draw in purer and highly concentrated mana while increasing the Mana Gathering Cultivation, then they would be able to open their mana gates with greater ease.”
***
After their meeting and new theory, Jen took Erik around the healing house. Wearing their masks, it was hard for people to pick them out. Erik checked on a few people.
“Infections are everywhere and the most common thing we deal with. Though, thankfully, after someone gets over the infection, they won’t have further complications with it for the rest of their lives,” Jen said. “We started to take out the infection from the infected, then infect others and heal them, temper them against ever getting the infection. We give it to babies and the elderly for free as they’re at risk the most.”
Erik’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Good job. I forgot about that, to be honest. Guess I took it for granted.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. So where do you want me?”
“Need some help in emergency!” someone yelled. “Team coming in!”
Jen was moving and Erik followed after her.
There were people coming in—some unconscious, others screaming out in pain. It looked chaotic as other fighters were bringing them in on stretchers.
They were stopped and the patients given tags and sent to different areas of the emergency ward, which was broken up to triage people right away. There was a Red, Yellow, and Green section.
Erik and Jen moved to the Red section as there were people coming in already. A man came into the bay; a Clean spell was used on him as the team with him shifted him onto the bed.
He was groaning and turning, in pain. His face had been mauled.
“Cracked ribs, internal bleeding, possible punctured lung, obstructed airway.” Erik read out the tag attached to the man as people cut his clothes off him.
“All right, I need an air tube.” Erik used Simple Organic Scan on the man, picking out the different injuries.
“Tourniquets, numbing concoction on his missing limbs.” Erik looked to see that tourniquets were already being applied and a drip was readied of a Stamina/healing mix.
Erik was passed the laryngoscope. He moved the guy’s head, holding him steady. He held the man’s tongue out of the way and fed the breathing tube down the man’s throat, allowing him to breathe normally.
Erik checked the patient over. He used a minor healing spell on the man’s brain as he had a slight brain bleed.
“Hook up the solution. Keep an eye on him. His shoulder is shattered and his ribs are in a bad way, but nothing life-threatening.” Erik turned and looked at a new patient who had just entered.
He moved to them as he used a Clean spell on his clothes.
Another medic took over before he got there.
“Okay, we’ve got a collapsed side, ruptured organs, brain, heart and lungs—we work with those first. She’s losing blood internally. We need to take her into surgery. We’ll fuse her wounds internally. We can heal them later.” The medic’s words were clipped and professional as he checked the person.
“Her Stamina is looking good. All right, let’s move her.” They got her onto a bed and then headed for the operating rooms.
Another person came in. They were unconscious. Their arm was a mess and their head didn’t look natural.
Erik checked their tag and used Simple Organic Scan on their head. “Stamina NOW!” Their nerves had been torn, their skull had been shattered, and there was a hole.
Erik started using healing spells on the man, healing the brain and the veins that had been badly damaged. He checked the man’s body as he was cleaned and an IV was inserted; someone squeezed the bag to get it into the man faster.
Erik fused the nerves together, making sure to pay attention to the rest of the man’s body so he didn’t send him into a Stamina fatigue spiral.
Erik paused and he checked the man. “Arm is a mess. Skull is cracked. Need to drain excess blood there. Nerves are reattached. Immobilize his neck so he can’t damage himself moving his head around. Spine is still shattered. Observe him. Stamina for now. Inform me if he wakes up. Don’t give him healing solution yet—might need healing spells yet.” Erik wanted him to have as much Stamina to work with in case he needed to do more work.
The team with the man carried out their work and Erik looked around.
It was two hours later that Erik stopped working on patients. He felt bone-tired and he used a Clean spell on himself again.
He checked the reports on the different people. He looked for the information on the man with the massive head trauma. He couldn’t find it and he talked to an orderly. “Do you know where the man with the head trauma went?”
“The one with the shattered arm? He was stabilized and moved to a ward. He hasn’t woken up though,” the orderly said.
“Thanks.” Erik knew he couldn’t dwell on it. He might come back okay, or he might be a vegetable, memory loss. Erik shook his head, automatically going to the worst-case scenario as he flicked through the red clipboards. All of them looked stable so he looked at the yellows that hadn’t been seen to yet.
He picked up a clipboard and headed into the Yellow bay, where there were several people with bad injuries.
Erik started to get to work with his patient who had been hit in the hip, cracking it. She’d hit a tree, dislocating her shoulder, and fallen unconscious for some time.
“Am I going to be able to walk again?” the woman asked with a broken voice, tears on her face.
“Of course you are. When was the last time you ate?” Erik put the clipboard down.
She seemed confused by the question.
“When was the last time you ate?” Erik repeated as a medic came over to assist. “Numbing cream.”
“Uh, I think this morning,” the woman in the bed said.
Erik checked the time. “Okay, that should be enough for the hip.” Erik checked the woman’s head, some minor bruising but it didn’t look to have lasting damage.
The medic passed him the numbing cream.
“Good ole Wraith’s Touch.” Erik smiled, looking at the name on the tub. He took some of the cream and put it on the woman’s hip.
Once her leg was numbed, Erik started healing the muscle and tendons, pushing the bones back into their original place.
Erik then used Bone Heal on the bones. He didn’t heal the bruising and he took a look at the woman’s shoulder. He used some more Wraith’s Touch. He got her to sit up and moved her arm, popping it back into its socket.
He wrote down some notes.
“With a bit of healing on the muscle and tendons, it won’t pop out easily later. The bruising on the hip will flare up in a few days and then go down. No lasting damage and a good lesson to patients to not run into a beast lair,” Erik said.
“Understood,” the other medic said, listening attentively.
Erik filled out information on the yellow clipboard, put it on the end of the bed and he moved to the next one.
He checked the man’s clipboard and used his Simple Organic Scan. They were stable and would be okay once they had some more Stamina and could be healed further.
Erik kept going, moving through the room.
Chapter: Change Base of Operations
Glosil was in Vuzgal. The totem activated; the people had been cleared to the side. The gates were opened and in a dazzling flash, the empty area around the totem was filled with soldiers. They moved off the totem, riding their tell-tale armored panthers. They marched away from the totem.
Glosil felt pride looking at them. They had high levels when they had left but they didn’t have the confidence or skills to go with it.
Now they were like a changed unit. With the new reorganization, the next level of training, the Dragon Combat Company was complete.
They marched out by squad and platoons.
The close protection detai
ls are missing still, but training for them will start next week.
People of Vuzgal turned to look at the passing military, who created a powerful display as they followed the roads to the training grounds.
Glosil put away his viewing orb that allowed him to look through other viewing orbs that had been given to the flying undead that roosted at the top of Vuzgal.
“Atten-shun!” Yui ordered.
Tiger Combat Company came to attention. Behind them, there were nearly eight hundred new recruits.
The massive doors to the military base opened, allowing Dragon Combat Company entry. They marched onto the training area and marched into position next to Tiger Combat Company.
“Dragon Combat Company, halt!”
The doors to the outside world closed and people looked at the ranks of soldiers that now rested inside the training square.
Glosil marched up in front of the two groups. Domonos and Yui dismounted, marched up to him and gave him a salute.
He saluted them back.
“Battalion, at ease!”
Twelve hundred feet and bodies moved as one as everyone relaxed.
“Feels good to say battalion. Hopefully I’ll be saying regiment shortly,” Glosil said to Yui and Domonos but his voice could be heard by those in the ranks.
“Captain Yui Silaz, you and your Tiger Company will head out for advanced training. Captain Domonos Silaz, your Dragon Company will begin the next rota of training here in Vuzgal. You will also take over the protection of Vuzgal and the city lord’s interests. Do you understand your orders?”
“Yes sir!” They both responded, looking straight ahead.
“Very well. Turnover will take a week. Get each other up to speed and I best not hear about too much trouble.” Glosil then let his eyes wander over the ranks.
“Atten-shun!”
Everyone responded as one.
“Dis-missed!”
They turned and walked off the parade square as the leadership started to pass orders and people were organized. The newly arriving Dragon Company needed to get moved in and the training needed to continue for the newest recruits.
***
The Fifth Realm Page 59
