I'm woefully aware that I don't have enough mana to heal this person, and using [Broken Blood]'s exploit to heal a stranger isn't worth the relapse in damage to my life force. Optimally, I shouldn't flood this man with mana to treat every symptom but instead heal the root cause and let other healers take it from there.
Or... Do the bare minimum if finding the source of these afflictions evades me. I handled the patient's chart that the personal nurse provided and skimmed through it. I'm not absorbing it into my [Lexicon] as it would destroy the pages, which is rude. The notes can be summed as so;
The patient was first thought to be afflicted by divine wrath but was later disproved by a priest. Sources of taint indicated a ritual gone wrong or the work of a cursed artifact. The difference is crucial because the patient would recover if the artifact was destroyed. Unfortunately, even with mental magic, the patient can't communicate to confirm anything. An ancient curse or bloodline disease is also possible, but without a family history, it would be hard to judge.
They tried a level 300 healer that couldn't solve the issue. They regenerate all the missing matter all for naught. He hollowed out again. They tried potions that even Rain couldn't create, and they did little to help. They are only here because they 'ran out of money.' His 'guardian' is in a fracture, earning credits to fund the subsequent treatments.
His medical bed is heavily enchanted to keep this man alive, even if only an inch of him is left. This person must be important, even though the charts specifically redact any personal information. I'm going to heal this man in three steps.
The first step is the examination. The more I pick apart a target, the more information [Scientific Insight+] gives me. With some prodding with my healing, I'm hoping to glean some insights. The second step would be to fix him. The third step is, if all else fails, I will do the bare minimum and walk away.
[Cavity Syndrome]
[Skeletal Hollowing]
[Empty Vessel Syndrome]
[Form Disorder]
Those are the four things I have to fix. I use small healing injections to test reactions... and there is nothing. It's like something is sucking all the mana away. Huh. Maybe this is simpler than I thought.
Traditional healing spells don't heal like mine. They have rules, regulations, and sometimes requirements to cast successfully. All I need is contact and an inkling of what I'm healing. I put my mana into someone, and that mana heals them. They spend mana to conjure healing. Whether that is speeding up natural processes, using a different energy, or even temporal manipulation. They recite incantations, do a ritual, pray to a higher power, or physically stitch someone up to heal. My healing is more pervasive than others.
I think I have a hypothesis on what's going on. The patient has so little mana that his body is cannibalizing itself. It's wringing out the natural mana within his body, causing these crevasses. Negative mana or something.
If I was a doctor, I would prescribe mana potions. But I'm not. It's technically more efficient if I give him mana with my healing since it's multiplied by five, not including my [Life Bringer] title or even my [Enroot] skill.
[Life Bringer A
The user has ushered a new or old form of life back into the world. Creatures of life appreciate your contribution.
Nurturing and healing others is more efficient. (x2)
Infants are protected under your gaze.
Gain affinity with life and nature.]
[Enroot
The user may convoke the Enroot skill once a day. Until dispelled, the user will be rooted in place like a mighty tree. The user can draw nutrients from the ground to assist with healing or hunger.
Desolate Biome: x1
Average Biome: x1.5
Lush Biome: x2]
Unfortunately, I didn't have that title before I picked my affinities, or else I could've gotten one more... actually that probably would've killed me. But since it's an element I seem to be involved with quite a bit with my blood-sucking relic, the verdant dragon heart pumping in me, and hell, even that weird ass star that I'm purposely ignoring because I feel like it'll be a can of worms to look into what it actually is, it would've been my affinity of choice if I *had* to pick one.
Hindsight is 20-20.
Now that I think of it, have I ever used [Enroot] for its intended purpose? It's a skill to increase healing, but the downside is that it keeps you stationary. I've been abusing that tidbit every chance I could. Although this is the "Prime Territories," we are in the heart of a massive city, so the best I could hope for is a 1.5x bonus to healing.
...a single point of my mana will heal 17~18 health with these conditions. I heal 90 a second for free. Damn.
Just for shits and giggles, since I know small increments haven't worked so far, I dump roughly 20,000 health into this guy. That's most of my remaining mana, but I don't care. Rain sponsored me some potions for this event, so as long as I'm down with potion poisoning/sickness, I have all the mana I want.
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I almost wanted him to blow up, but the unfathomable happened. It worked. It worked well. There were no changes initially, but then he started ballooning outward. Gaps closed, and color returned to his skin. The first thing to go was [Form Disorder]... and thats it. He still has cavities and hollow spots, but he doesn't look on the verge of death... or a character in a horror manga.
I could feel a 'hole' sucking in all the healing before momentarily getting full, allowing the rest of his body to receive the rejuvenation. It's like the reverse of what I have. I'm leaking lifeforce, and this guy is hungry for it. Maybe that's an inaccurate parallel, but who cares.
"Holy shit. That's never happened before. [Regeneration] just closed the gaps, but the patient looks healthy... relatively," Says the nurse, checking his vitals and writing on a clipboard.
"Uh. Uh." The bandaged man grunts.
"Is he making noise? I have to call someone! Excuse me." The nurse walks three feet away before turning and saying, "Thank you." He takes her phone call right there, not straying too far from her only patient.
Uh. I wasn't done, but unless I've read the nurse wrong, she thinks and implied that I did all I could since I managed to get this far. Welp. Since I'm rooted, my charity volunteers to push this guy's bed to the side and bring me my next test subject. I already learned so much from this one guy... I can't wait to continue.
Something I haven't paid any mind to is that my PR manager is on stage behind me, acting like a host to a party. The sick and injured are cared for and given food if their condition allows. There are cameras around filming this whole ordeal, which I don't mind.
My next patient wasn't the next in severity, but whoever was closest. I thought it was the man with a bad case of male-pattern baldness, but it was instead his paraplegic child. She's in a wheelchair and looks no older than eight. She doesn't say anything while her father gives a sob story while I'm sucking down a mana potion. It takes a while for the mana to metabolize, so I listen to the man rambling in front of me.
"My wife died in the quakes protecting my daughter, but she suffered from a traumatic injury to the spine... With losing our house and having only half the income in the household... it's hard. My wife's life insurance company is delaying payments and might even go bankrupt without me seeing a single credit. My job's insurance is only enough to afford a wheelchair. Can you do anything, Mr. Vincere?"
The man kneels on the ground in front of me. After pleading his case, he silently sobs as his head is lowered. He goes to cling to my leg but stops himself. His daughter tries to console him, but her arms are too short to reach her dad. I place both my hands on each of their heads.
Kneeling. Reserved for beings of reverence, tyrants, or idols of power. It's an act of subservience. Some cultures have bowing instead, or even prostrations, but it's *mostly the same. I am not fond of this. In this instance, I am not a respected nor an authoritative figure. To this man, I am the only source of hope. His desperation in healing his daughter is tangible enough for me to control. You could make people go against morals and ethics if you abuse the desperate and dangle hope on a fishing lure.
It's a sickening feeling to be treated like an idol of power. Without respect or authority, I haven't earned this bow of submission. I don't get it. I'd rather have someone as a lab rat than a desperate soul, so I will remove the source of the desperation.
I mended the little girl's spine, which unsurprisingly didn't take much effort or mana. People with lower stats/levels are easier to heal. I didn't get much experimentation from this healing, so I also injected healing into the father.
My hands left a girl's health and a bald man with hair. I rejuvenated his weakened follicles, invigorating them. Once I pinpointed and understood how to heal them, I could even replace the follicles that fell out. It was more mana-consuming than I thought, but I got the job done. This is good information. I learned I can stimulate hair growth and completely regenerate missing body parts.
"W-what?"
"Daddy, look! I can stand now!"
"W-what? That's amazing. I-I don't know how to repay-"
I cut the man off with a gesture to be quiet. I didn't need to use a skill. He just stopped talking. He bites his lip to keep the tears from streaming out. They hugged and had a heart-to-heart conversation in front of me that I electively tuned out to think about the implications of curing baldness.
It's technically regenerating a body part. That means I can regenerate body parts. It seems like a 'no shit' from the outside, but I was under the assumption that I couldn't 'target' a lost limb. If someone gets an arm cut off, I heal it into a stump rather than a flesh wound. But I can probably manipulate my mana enough to actually regrow the limb... And that has other implications, such as faulty or intentional limb manipulation using an open wound and a shit ton of mana.
How does the body differentiate from a wound on the shoulder and a wound on the back? This would require more testing and a few more books on genetics.
"Thank you, mister metal tree man."
The little girl hugs my legs and holds hands with her dad as they walk away. She gives him one of her hair ties to her dad since his new flowing black hair gets in his face as he looks down at her.
As a man with tumors growing all over his body makes his way to me, a set of doors burst open, and a person pushing a gurney starts yellowing out and drawing attention to themselves.
A man who seems to be a civilian is pushing an emergency medical personnel in their own gurney. He yells out, "Help! Help! We need a medic!"
In his haste, the man accidentally pushes the injured man down one of the auditorium's stairways, and the gurney bounces and rattles all the way down in front of me.
"FUCK! Catch him!"
The gurney bumps off me, but I grab it before it gets out of reach. A man in enforcer gear is profusely bleeding from multiple holes in their armor. A symbol on their helmet, over their heart, and on their back (assumedly) shows an IV bag hanging off a cross-like staff. Who the fuck attacks a medical man. Damn.
I turn to look at the man who brought him in, to ask him the big questions like, what is going on? Who did this? Why is he on his own gurney? But the civilian collapsed after witnessing the E.M.E (Emergency Medical Enforcer) roll down the stairs.