"Sam, take care of the new arrivals. I'll take care of these. Stabilize them and wait for me."
The wounded kept arriving, and Grandma's house was already full. There were no more beds, and we were putting them on the floor with some blankets.
Judging by their clothing, they looked like adventurers. From what I heard them saying, a pack of adult Luven had ambushed them while they were hunting.
While I tried to stabilize the people who arrived, which wasn't very difficult, their wounds weren't very deep, and the skill with healing magic I'd gained over the past few weeks helped me a lot.
"Hey kid, come here. She's the most seriously ill right now, please don't let her die."
One of the adventurers entered, holding a young woman in his arms. The girl was missing an arm, bleeding everywhere, and her clothes were in tatters. She seemed more on the other side than with us.
I left those I was treating to go help the newcomers, only to see more closely how badly the girl was feeling.
Her chest was slightly sunken in on one side; her companions had tried to stop the bleeding, but had completely failed. The poor girl was whiter than a sheet; her arm was torn off just below the shoulder, and her face bore a large claw mark running diagonally across the face.
The first thing I tried to do was to safely stop the bleeding. Although I hadn't reached the level of those spells, it was the most important thing at the moment.
After sealing the blood vessels in the girl's stump, I began to look at the dent in her chest. The blow she'd received must have been brutal to reach this point. Her chest felt like there was a vessel in it, the ribs in the area were so fractured that some bone splinters had surely lodged in her lungs or were still hovering there. From what I'd learned, I knew I couldn't heal things as they were. Magic was very effective on open wounds, but careless healing could be fatal. And these kinds of wounds were the worst to heal, where you had to reconstruct the bone and know the proper positioning between the entire group of muscles and skeleton. It was something I hadn't expected.
Seeing Grandma Thea always doing it with simple clicks or quick chants, made me form a bad impression of healing magic.
The more I studied, the more I felt like I was entering a black hole. The worst part is that, as Grandma said, women had an advantage, and it was absolutely true. The type of energy or mana needed for healing was more present and understood better with women.
In these nearly three months of training, I hadn't just learned about the human body, I'd also learned about the channels through which mana flows, mana cores, the types of magic and elements there were. Not to mention the training with my father, which was still just as deadly, if not worse since the fight with the Kriel knight.
The more he examined the poor girl, the more shocked he became. Almost her entire right side was in disrepair, her arm severed. The first five ribs closest to her stomach were almost gone; she looked like a jigsaw puzzle of bones.
The men who brought her began to grow impatient and could only beg for help. They knew that the only place that could help them was Thea's, and they wouldn't dare raise their voices to anyone here.
I began listing what I thought I should do, from most to least serious. Starting with his arm, which had already stopped bleeding, then his ribs and the nearest organs. I began examining his organs, casting a kind of mana rope. It was a type of spell that allowed her to examine patients without having to cut them open. All you had to do was channel the mana into a kind of tube or vine and cut your way through to successfully examine what you were looking for.
Although the wounds were terrible, they hadn't reached his organs. Her right lung, liver, and stomach were bruised but not perforated.
Now came the most difficult step: trying to realign the rib bones, something I feel unprepared for, but still want to try. Using the same examination technique, I had to pull each bone splinter away from the organs, almost like playing catch with tiny bones, using different spells and visualizations to achieve this, both cleansing and stopping the bleeding.
I began pulling at each of the splinters with one hand, while with the other I tried to cast small cleansing spells to completely clear the path. Once all the bones were grouped together and more or less in place, it would be easy. It was just that between all the splinters, they would resume a shape more or less similar to what the five broken ribs had before.
It had been a while, and I was still very focused, pulling off each splinter one by one, trying to do each rib from the 5th to 10th. There were large pieces and small pieces. On the other hand, I was sweating profusely; it felt like I'd just taken a bath. I felt dizzy and had a headache. I didn't want to stop since I was making good progress.
When I was finally able to put it back in place and cast the healing spell on the rib, I could finally breathe in peace, finally close the chest wounds, and cast a more general spell on any open blood vessels.
I was finally able to breathe and began to examine the poor girl again. Just as I was starting, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder.
-"Great work, kid. I didn't expect you to make so much progress in just a few months." Grandma Thea said as she looked at me.
I looked back at the girl, and from what I could see, she was much better. Her colour was returning, although a lost arm couldn't be recovered, or so I thought. At least there was no more pain in her abdominal area.
I stood up ready to return to the other patients, only to almost fall again, one of the adventurers had managed to grab me and managed to hold me so I wouldn't fall.
-"Thank you very much, thank you very much. Thank you for saving Linna. Now you should get some rest. Thank you again, if you ever need anything, just let us know, we'll be there for you." said one of the mercenaries who brought Linna, while the others just nodded.
I was sitting near Grandma's room while I tried to recover. We had already stabilized the most critical patients, and only minor treatment remained.
-"Sam"- I heard Grandma call me.
-"Ma'am"- I answered, entering the room where she was.
-"Congratulations, Sam, you did a great job. I never expected you to be able to do a technique considered advanced in just three months."
I just smiled and nodded at the praise. I suppose all the knowledge I had, plus the long years of fighting in the forest, training, and forging, have helped me achieve a good degree of control over mana.
"Even though you succeeded this time, you shouldn't be overconfident. I understand that you did it for the girl, but what would have happened if instead of helping her, you ended up killing her?"
-"You always have to weigh the risks when healing, Sam, and while this time there wasn't much to lose since the girl was in terrible condition, what would have happened if the energy had been diverted? With how fast you've learned, you should have already read that part."
"Energy deviations aren't easy to treat or manage. If something were to happen to you, I wouldn't know how to look your parents in the eye. Great work, but be more careful next time," Thea told me with a very serious face. To which I could only nod and look down at the floor.
I knew I was taking big risks, but I believed in myself and my abilities. I knew that, even though I was short on mana and needed to continue developing my core, I was almost certain I could at least help and control the mana I was using.
Energy diversion was very dangerous for all beings who used Mana. If the energy begins to escape uncontrollably from your body or goes down paths it shouldn't, two things can happen. The first, as my mother told me, is that you can simply explode. The second, completely opposite, is that all your mana escapes in a failure of control and you're left as dry as a raisin. There are others that are a little milder than death, but they're not much better, really. The most feasible, if you manage not to die, is to become stupid; your brain is practically fried from the lack of control.
After the little scolding, I was ready to leave with Nixen. I was very tired, and Grandma didn't need any more of my help for today. Nixen already knew the way very well, so it only took us an hour to get back to the house, where my mother already had dinner ready.
While we were having dinner, I proudly told them what had happened today. They just looked at me in surprise and congratulated me on the great job I'd done. They both stared at me with wide eyes, paying close attention, as if they didn't want to miss a single part of the story.
The days kept passing, my father still wanting to kill me, or so I thought. With everything I had on my hands, I didn't have time to go to the forest. In the mornings, I trained with my father almost to death, only to let Nixen practically drag me to Grandma Thea's house, where I would study almost until dinnertime.
One day as I was leaving Grandma's house, someone yelled my name, running towards me.
"Hey, I'm Fedrick. One of the mercenaries you helped," said the bearded and tanned Fedrick, a grin on his face. It made him look a little grotesque, but I could tell he meant well.
-"Hi, I'm Sam"- I replied.
"I just wanted to thank you. Our group is ready to go again, which we'll be doing in the next few days. Remember to find us if you have any issues; we're always happy to help. You can find us in the guild or leave a message. We call ourselves AndonWings. Don't forget that."
"Okay, it's a pleasure. I hope to see you again in better condition next time," I replied as I started to walk away, almost running, trying to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Why would a group of mercenaries want to call themselves winged boars?
End of chapter <3