It had been a long day. The constant pain didn't help matters. After the wave finished, around one in the afternoon, the healers were in a state of constant activity. All four of them had experience in the medical field and when their mana ran out, they turned to more mundane treatments for injuries. They sewed up wounds, set broken bones, applied tourniquets where required, and elevated limbs to reduce swelling. The collective experience of all of them was not small.
Most had easy enough injuries that a cast or two of healing fixed them right up, just like in the previous waves. It was the handful of more serious injuries that were the problem. Scott, my father's youngest brother, had a deer stomp down on his foot which crushed some of the bones. He couldn't walk on it and it looked red and angry when his boot was cut off. Jonathan had a deer roll up onto his leg after it had died and it bent his leg in a direction it was not designed to go. After Sam's Body Scan, it was revealed that he dislocated his knee cap along with tearing just about every ligament in the knee. His ACL and MCL were obliterated.
After his kneecap was put back into place, he could technically walk, but with nothing to support his knee, it would just pop back out again. Also, putting weight on it was extremely painful. I wasn't the only one who broke an arm, as there was another who held that honor. Mitchie, or Mitchell, as he hated that childhood nickname, had a deer collide with his side. He didn't have a shield to blunt the impact and wielded twin daggers from his rogue class, so his arm took the brunt of the force before snapping.
There were other more serious injuries but nothing as severe as those. The healers worked to stop the bleeding of the numerous puncture wounds first, then after that was taken care of they moved on to other minor injuries. They had tried to use their skill to try and repair the bone before they noticed it wasn't as effective as normal. Two casts of the skill healed up most wounds fine, but that was when the only healing that was needed was to close the wound and repair the damaged muscle underneath. Some of the energy went towards clotting the blood and sealing the wound, but it was used more to speed up the body's natural process than to take over and do it for the body.
That left the repairing of bones; a strenuous and resource-intensive undertaking that took time. When all but the four of us were healed, half of the healers received their 4th level, unlocking another skill option. The discussion about which skill they should take resurfaced. People were getting heated, and some of the comments stuck out from the rest by how loud they were.
"What would have happened if they ran out of mana and someone bled out? They should take Meditation so that doesn't happen. The other options don't matter if they don't have the mana to heal, then they're worthless!"
"Who are we to dictate what they can or can't take as a skill? How would you feel if we forced you to take a specific skill!"
"If it was for the greater good I would do it, no questions asked!"
"Yes but who decides which skills are for the greater good? Should we listen to you with your two divorces and a kid who doesn't speak to you?"
Ohh, that was a low blow. That was a sore spot for Uncle Brayden. He went through a rough patch in life after those events unfolded. After his second divorce, there was a lengthy and brutal legal battle about custody of the child they shared. He ended up losing his house, lost the custody battle, and had to pay child support and alimony for years. His ex-wife remarried a few years later and his daughter turned eighteen not long after so he didn't have to pay for long, but the damage was done.
With only visitation and the occasional weekend, he saw his daughter a lot less. He picked up a second job and started working a lot more, and those weekend visits turned into holidays. After that, it wasn't very long until she asked him to stop coming. To this day Brayden claims his ex-wife turned her against him and poisoned her mind with lies.
He was in a dark place for a while after that. He worked through it with a combination of therapy and drinking until pulling himself out of it. He then went on to marry his current wife, Rachel, and have his two sons Hal and Kyle. Having not been born yet, I don't remember a time when he was like that. His first divorce was better and happened when he was really young. He married his high school sweetheart before they both went off to college. Suffice it to say they grew apart and never really got better. That one was an amicable separation with no bad blood between the two.
Since he was the only one in the family to get a divorce, let alone two, whenever the siblings got into fights, it was used as a snide dig at him. Usually, when things got that far my Granddad would have to step in and sit them down before beating some sense into them. He would always say 'You don't hold grudges with family. You can fight and squabble but I won't let you not speak to each other.' It would take some time after that, but they worked through it. Being forced to come to frequent family gatherings did that.
After that comment, it devolved into a screaming match. Uncle Mark, who made the comment, was the oldest of the four siblings and he didn't take the fact that people were trying to dictate what his wife could and couldn't do very well. The air of civility that had lasted the week after the change finally broke. We had been trying to keep it together for the kids, limiting our yelling and working through our anger. That restraint was gone. Tempers flared, things were said, accusations were made, and fingers were pointed.
You could probably hear us from the forest it got so loud. Before it could get to blows, most of the participants in the argument stormed off. They left behind the bystanders who just looked at each other in uncomfortable silence. I didn't have to worry about what was going on long, as Ashley came up to me and lifted a paste under my nose that knocked me out into blissful sleep.
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Kyle used his [Foraging Sense] and found some plants that when ground down into a paste could be used as a pain killer in small quantities. Or knock you out in larger ones. I was happy to get away from the pain and the yelling.
I woke up the next morning in a much better condition than I thought possible. The pain was mostly gone and my arm only hurt when I tried to flex or move my fingers. My arm was wrapped tightly with strips of cloth around sticks on either side to keep it straight and act as a splint. There was also a shoulder strap to complete the makeshift sling. I rolled out of the cot I was in to join in eating breakfast with a slight groan. My body was stiff from yesterday and didn't appreciate my moving around.
Breakfast was uncharacteristically quiet and went by quickly. After most were finished eating and making their way towards wherever they were needed, Abigail came over and sat next to me.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
I let out a chuckle before saying, "Like I went skydiving without a parachute."
She smiled at that before asking, "Is there any pain? Can you feel your fingers?"
"Only a dull pain, but I expected that and yes I can feel my fingers." I then proceeded to give her a one-finger salute to prove my point.
She then went through a checklist of different questions followed by poking and prodding different spots while asking if it hurt. I think she did some of them on purpose as there was no way some of them were scientifically relevant.
As she was one of the two Healers who had reached level 4 I wanted to hear what she thought on the discussion earlier.
"What do you think about your next skill?" I asked.
"Oh don't even get me started. Everyone here can go pound sand. There is no way I'm letting any of y'all pick what skill I take. That being said, I already picked one so it doesn't matter anyway." She seemed fed up by that topic and some of her frustration came back again.
She gave me a pointed look, daring me to say something. I may not be the best with women but I know a trap when I see one, so I steered clear.
"Well, what did you get?" No, I wasn't scared of my sister. It was a logical next question.
Instead of answering she put a hand on my broken arm and I could feel an energy penetrate through my skin and muscles and settle into my bone. It started to itch and irritate the area around it.
"Hey, what are you doing? That's uncomfortable." I said, startled at the events.
"Shut up, I'm helping." She said.
After she said that I could feel the bone start to mend and put itself back together, fusing together where it was healed enough. It felt odd like someone was lightly brushing my skin with a feather, but deeper.
"Just tell me what it is." I asked her.
"It's called [Mend Bone]. After we saw how inefficient healing a broken bone was, we searched for a way around that. There's also one specifically for other parts of the body; muscles, organs, skin, you name it. There wasn't anything for re-growing limbs so maybe stick to just breaking them." Abigail said.
"I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Next time I'll stop and ask the beast nicely to just break my arm and not detach it." I said sarcastically.
"Don't be a smart ass, you know what I meant. No re-growing limbs, so be careful. We think that it will be possible if we get to a higher level. I mean with all the things we've already seen, the possibilities are endless." She said.
We both took a second to fantasize about the future before she got up.
"Alright I have to get going, these cats won't wrangle themselves." She said starting to walk away before turning back around, "Oh before I forget, go add your points to the wall. We need to see how many we got for this round. When we worked the math out, the next wave should give us enough but I want to double-check after this wave is totaled up."
After saying her piece, she turned and walked away. I knew it was only going to be a few more waves before the wall was done but I didn't think we were going to finish it so soon. Thinking deeper about it, it made sense. The first wave gave everyone 10 points for a total of 300. The second gave 40 each, for a total of 1200. The third gave 90, for a total of 2700. Summed up made it 4200 just for wave completion, not including the points for killing the animals that came in the wave. When it was all totaled up, it was a staggering amount of points. Far from the first day where I was browsing the shop looking at all the cool things with my measly 15 points.
I was under doctor's orders of bedrest, so when everyone got up to start working, I had nothing to do. I had enough free time yesterday to go over and review the battle, thinking of ways to improve and what to do differently. Any more would be nitpicking so I turned to magic training. I spent most of the morning trying -mostly failing- to manipulate mana. I was making steady progress so it wasn't hopeless.
I also had a lot of time to think about my new skill choice and what to get. One of the things we had been trying to learn was if we could teach skills to others. There were multiple attempts to try and walk someone through the feeling a skill had when in use but nothing worked. We could barely manipulate mana so far and teaching a skill was quite wishful thinking. The idea was to all take different skills so we could teach them to each other but that idea was scrapped after there weren't any results.
Going back through the options revealed that there were just as many as the last time I looked through the list. I had an offensive skill in Power Strike and a defensive one in [Fortified Body]. That left my options open to pretty much anything. I could double down and get another defensive skill, but we were about to get walls after the next wave. I could get another striking skill like [Sweeping Slash] or [Extended Blade], but the same reasoning came back. We were about to get walls next wave, I didn't know how many attacks I would do with my axe. Would I be behind the walls throwing javelins the whole time? Would I be defending the gate on the front lines?
There was just too much I didn't know to make my decision easier. One thing that I knew for sure was that I would be throwing at least something every wave, and that solidified my decision. I chose [Throwing Proficiency(Beginner)] as my third skill.
Throwing Weapons (Beginner) – Using basic proficiency with throwing weapons adds a minuscule bonus to the effect of agility and perception when using a fitting throwing weapon.
There were the same numerous options as with melee weapon proficiency, like [Axe Throwing Proficiency] and [Javelin Throwing Proficiency] but I opted for the generic one so any weapon I threw would benefit. Whether I threw my axe, a knife, or the javelins, all would be boosted.
Being at the beginner tier was a downside but I would never improve if I never got the skill and practiced. I couldn't keep putting off long-term improvements for short-term benefits forever and proficiency skills added a steady boost to every action during combat and didn't require mana to use.
With the choice made, I closed all the system screens and got back to what I was doing before. Since I couldn't work, I was put on babysitting duty. I didn't have to watch all the kids by myself as that would be a disaster, all of the injured people were helping with the kids.
It was going to be a long day.