"That is preposterous! There is no way such direct and crazy control of mana wasn't taught early on in the subject's life! It must be hiding political capital he himself holds dear for his barbaric land by inventing such a fallacious story." Said the pain in the ass that was more of a noble than a mage worried about his country's prosperity.

Oh! That's what those figures with two sticks for a torso were! Yeah, they'd probably be friends if the circumstances were different.

“The fact he made sure to include drawings suggesting someone would suggest such speak both for and against such a possibility, but ultimately, it does not matter.” Except to point out that they should probably have that guy ‘audited’ out of here, because this was a far too 'personal' attitude to have when dealing with the creatures they summoned. “Rather, the story about taking him from a stable life where he was to be a doctor or xaman makes me ready to put a heavier oversight around him, if only as an excuse since now we do need to hasten the test of his capabilities to heal others. If his method works even partially on more precise workings, then he’d be invaluable on any battlefield we send him even if he never attends anyone ranking higher than a lower field officer. I believe we can all agree that such a feat would result in commendations and an increase in our budget, so i see no reason so as to not proceed.” Laying it down for all the idiots and officers, she gave people a moment to raise their opinions, but besides a bit of grumblings, no one disagreed.

Fiora had no idea whether their new summoning ritual caused that lightning explosion on the other side or not, but it sure as all heavens was expensive, and even the idiots knew they needed the political capital.

………………….

Straight up getting five points in vitality felt… well, it gave him the beginnings of a boner despite his current emotional instability. The general feeling of better vivacity was mostly felt in his blood flow if he had to guess, or maybe his heart, but it was doubtful if he would get to keep experiencing these sudden bursts of exhilaration without increases in stat that were comparatively huge for his current amount.

It didn’t seem to be the healthiest idea even for someone in his position, so he decided to not leave his leveling for one specific moment unless he was in a hurry or had to pretend to be crippled or something.

All things considered though, he couldn’t sleep. Be it the increase in resources getting him the stamina to keep going, or the ‘nap’ he had just taken, it just didn’t seem like that attractive of an idea to spend his time rolling around on a low quality bed when he could be doing actual, real magic in the training grounds.

He couldn’t actually go to the training grounds without Bob, who he had no way to call. Socially suicidal moves asside, he did start practicing his magic while still on his own room.

With his first few talents unlocked, he even knew what direction to take such training in.

Namely, he would try to get synergetic reactions from the elements. Destructive reactions would also be good to have in his repertoire, but all things considered, he didn’t exactly have the reserves or the time to build the necessary targets for such practice.

Following the example of using the atmospheric composition’s physical characteristics and the ground's chemical characteristics, he tried to think of ways to get other parts of reality to bend to his needs.

By the time he had figured out a good emotion and image to associate with the direct movement of heat between bodies in different states of matter which did not involve the galvanisation of dangerous metals he had to magically feed however, Bob came around, telling him that they were going to test him for medical knowledge and talent for healing magic.

Which was also fine, especially considering the fact that in case he was indeed a good enough healer to be employed, he would be granted a reward. Any request within reason.

Now that he had stamina in the double digits, maybe he could try picking up some kind of kata or just straight up join morning training with the soldiers. His captors didn’t seem that ignorant about psychology tricks, but he could still hope, and even if they were smart enough to deny him, then he’d still request some basic physical training, because he had absolutely no illusions of suddenly being accustomed to his new stats, body or even the system skills, which activated partially on their own and partially on his intent, meaning it was doubtful he would be able to just straight out spam fireballs onto whoever he disliked, especially on the run or in combat.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He didn’t know which philosopher said that the button shouldn’t press you or whatever, but be it common sense or the reading of isekai novels, neither allowed him to trust the system giving him power seemingly for free.

Honestly, if this whole healing thing worked then he should ask for some time with a prostitute or something, because this much stress was not good for him, and he honestly couldn’t think of any other way to unwind around here that didn’t involve getting hooked on some addictive drug.

STDs would have been a bigger worry in his mind before getting a constitution that could be magically improved with the usage of whatever the fuck the system was, but even with it, he wouldn’t try to sleep around without learning how to kill off infections himself.

Some maniac might argue that he should content himself with release of dopamine from exercising (whether he still produced it or not aside), but even now he was attributing both his short and long term survival to it, so it wasn’t like his anxiety would leave those moments of practice alone, nevermind that he doubted his jailers would not use the chance to throw him through another sort of grinder so as to further increase his value, so there was a high chance physical training and conditioning were going to be where he was going to learn how to better heal himself in specific.

Repetition was the mother of learning, and pain was it’s aggressive father.

‘I can’t actually tell if it is a good thing that i will probably look back on this whole thing in the future and think of it as the good days where I prepared for the even worse things reality is going to throw at me.'

Suddenly, becoming a slut seemed like an even better idea.

As he got to the infirmary however, Aki became more serious. He needed to put in the effort to reap the benefits. There was nobody to rely on but himself and for once, social norms would not be on his side no matter what mask he put on. Competence and holding onto the right people were the only things that were going to keep him alive despite his advantages.

And then his resolve was met with blood. So much blood. The only place without a lot of it was the floor, and that was being haphazardly cleaned even now. The smell of puss, vomit, piss and shit was all around, mixing due to the great amount of dead and soon to be dead people.

Whatever had happened, this was the equivalent of shoving a first day university student into an emergency room. The reason for it was even obvious, as there was chaos all around, with one mage near the entrance vomiting a bluish-black paste that was clearly a mana potion and a mesh of voices that sent him into the shocked state that even allowed him to stay still for so long as he observed the room while Bob turned back to rip him out of said pause.

His body screamed at him to run and let other people deal with the whole debacle, that surely he'd only kill more people with his incompetence and waste supplies and the attention of professionals in a hurry as they told him what to do.

Then he put a point into intelligence. There was a slight cold passing through him. He grabbed hold of it and for once, took control of his perfectly sane fears. Stepping forward, he stepped down on his worries and responsibilities.

This was all a puzzle where the reward was locked behind a ninety five percent completion wall and every objective had a hidden timer to failure in it, forcing him to juggle between them. This wasn't a game though, so it didn't matter if he tackled the reason this whole thing was challenging at all and instead focused on increasing his number of teammates and their condition.

So he touched the vomiting guy and helped him. Immediately, his spell took effect and he started vomiting violently. Stomach bile and black residual medicine shot from him in a fast rate, but soon enough it ended while Bob still allowed him to do whatever while watching close by.

As the man was breathing deeply, he burned his own stamina into the next spell, sending a wave of warmth into his target and forcing his face to regain color that much quicker while he physically straightened the shorter man and had him turn to face him.

"Go." He said one of the few words in fataram he had learned in his best impression of a commanding officer while pointing towards the corner holding more mana potions.

The man rushed to obey.

"If that gave him even one more mana pool to keep healing then we're going to need to have you keep doing it." Noted Bob while signaling for him to follow, picking up an empty puke bucket.

He followed and agreed, but for once, not for the reasons he expected.

[You have discovered a new quest: Panic at Karan fortress' infirmary.

Synopsis: After a successful summoning ritual that brought forth a feral creature beyond what even the first response team could handle, the fort has an infirmary filled to the brim and not enough hands at deck to deal with it.

Requirements: Help the best you can.

Rewards: Varying XP and reputation with relevant entities.

Failure: Loss of reputation.

Accept? Y/N]