Yulk Alta

Adventurer Level: 7

Orc - Nulevan

Many things were running through my mind as we continued our journey. The fragile sturdiness of life, the luck we've had in our most recent exploits, curiosity regarding Renv, and above all else Nick's ability to continuously cast Minor Heal. Did casting it continuously have any benefit over casting it as a one-off? Can everyone cast it continuously, or just Nick? He had seemed confused while we were discussing it, as if he was surprised by our surprise. Is it just the basic nature of the spell to cast it continuously? If so, how did we not discover this sooner?

I'd been taught my healing spells by a specialist, who had studied under other specialists, who had learned the concepts behind healing magic from ancient tomes. As far as I know, that's how every healer actually learns healing magic. Technically, you should be able to learn the spells on your own with a good deal of knowledge about anatomy and physiology, but I'm unaware of anyone who has.

This is likely due to the fact that trying to learn anatomy and physiology on your own is difficult to do legally, and most who attempt to do it illegally end up facing rather dire consequences. Well deserved, to be sure, but the end result is that they're not in a position to pass on any secrets they garner.

I'd previously told Nick that he might be able to cast healing, just to see if he could. He seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge, so it wasn't a stretch to imagine he knew a thing or two about how a body functions. If he hadn't, I would have taken him to a specialist when our travels were somewhat less urgent. Nick has saved us a trip, but simultaneously opened a can of crawlers without a single fishing line in sight.

"And that's how I learned the spell," Nick explained to a shocked audience.

Even Nash's mouth was agape, despite his attempts to remain stoic. The dwarf had asked plenty of questions, demonstrating an unfamiliarity with magic. Imlor looked paler and paler as the story had gone on, likely due to it describing his near demise.

Imlor's a clever one, he'd quite easily put together the fact that if Nick hadn't been with us, he'd have died. Even if he had ignored Renv's urgent situation with the bandits and continued on, his cart would have been right next to the explosion when it had occurred. That kind of proximity wouldn't have allowed for survival, even if he'd managed to avoid shrapnel.

"Well, it's no wonder you lost consciousness," I said with a smile. "You burned through all your reserves, and you were injured on top of that. It would have been odd if you hadn't passed out. Not quite as odd as continuously casting Minor Heal, though."

"Why's that odd?" Nick asked.

"Because it's like wind-spear," I answered. "It has a singular effect. Or at least, that's what I was led to believe. I don't even know what the benefit of holding the spell actually could be."

"Well," Nash interjected, "Imlor had a through and through. One minor heal would have stopped the bleeding and maybe stabilized him, but it would have taken a bunch of castings to close the wound entirely, right?"

I turned to look at my brother, who had once again found the stone I'd been blindly stumbling over, and gave him a silent nod. I had dismissed anything odd about Imlor's wound due to the powerful nature of Nick's casting abilities. My mind had simply written it off as another instance of one of his spells being more powerful than it should be.

Stupid of me, to be sure. Unlike some spells, healing spells don't get more potent the more magic you put into them. They have a set cost and a set result, which is why there are different types. Minor Heal can stabilize someone that is mortally wounded for a time, Lesser Heal will repair internal injury and regenerate lost blood, Major Heal can repair gratuitous injury and broken bones, and Greater Heal can regenerate lost limbs. Each spell grants a brief amount of regeneration, and can also do what the previous levels can but cost exponentially more magic to cast.

As Nash pointed out, these spells have a compounding effect. Meaning that, depending on the wound, casting minor heal three times can be more efficient than casting lesser heal once. But Nick had only cast Minor Heal the one time, so it shouldn't have been possible to completely heal Imlor. Therefor, the benefit to continuous casting minor heal is that it has a similar effect to casting it multiple times.

A blood-drenched piece of wood clattered to the floor of the cart, originating from one of Nick's wounds. This wasn't the first time it had happened and Nick, having become used to this by now, casually picked it up and tossed it over the side of the cart. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

"Nick, was that the last piece of shrapnel?" I asked.

Nick took a moment to consult Ten and then nodded.

"I'd like to do an experiment," I smiled. "Ask Ten if it's okay for me to cast a healing spell on you."

"Ten says that would be okay," Nick said after another moment.

"Good," I said. "Laeh Ronim Tsac."

I tried to hold the spell, and was surprised when it actually worked. We watched the wound on Nick's hand close with a mixture of shock and glee. The glee was mostly from me. However, I also noticed that the spell was very quickly draining my magic reserve. I stopped the spell before I ran out of magic, but it was a rather close call. I wouldn't want to be passing out like Nick had.

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"Well, that answers several questions," I said, managing to stifle my excitement. "First, you can continue the regenerative effect of minor heal by continuously casting it. Second, it costs magic for every second that you maintain the spell. Overall, it's more efficient than casting the spell multiple times. We'll need to have the official literature updated."

"For every second?" Nash asked. "Is it better than... um..."

"Lesser heal? Not quite. I suspect that if lesser heal can also be continuously cast, the regenerative effect would be much more efficient," I answered. "I'd love to do more experimentation, but it will have to wait."

"I know some pretty advanced healers," Renv added. "If you'd like, I can bring this to their attention and make sure they credit you and Nick with the discovery. They would happily perform the experimentation that you want done."

Nash gave me a knowing look, but I held up a hand to keep him from speaking for me. He knows how much I love scientific inquiry, and having others perform experiments in my stead would typically be a worst case scenario for me. However...

"Normally I would rather do the experiments myself, but since we're speaking of magic that can save lives I will gratefully accept your assistance," I replied.

"Really?" Nash asked.

"Yes. We don't know if we will find any answers in Bolisir, and we've given our oath to aid Nick in finding his way home," I said. "It would be difficult to travel and research these phenomena simultaneously, at least while observing any semblance of scientific rigor. Since this may save lives, time is of the essence, therefor it only makes sense to have someone else begin research immediately."

"That's pretty mature of you," Nash said with a proud smirk.

"But if we do find answers in Bolisir and wrap things up quickly, I can always join in on the research," I quickly added. "Scientific competition is healthy, after all."

"Yeah, that sounds more like you."

We all had a good laugh, and when we were finished Renv looked contemplative.

"You said you swore to help Nick find his way home? I already gathered that he's not from around here, but how far away are we talking?" he asked.

"I'm right here, you know," Nick chuckled.

"Oh, right, apologies. Then I redirect my questions to you, good sir," Renv bowed his head apologetically.

"That's alright," Nick said. "I'm from a different world, and there's no way to know how distant that world is. I'm kind of assuming that it's an alternate reality kind of thing, but I guess it's possible that I was abducted from my world by aliens and brought here for some reason."

Nick noted that we were all staring at him incredulously.

"Well, it's a thought," he said quietly.

"Someone from a different country might have abducted you and brought you here?" Renv asked.

"No, not that kind of alien," Nick quickly explained. "Like, a different species that has the ability to travel through space."

"Space?" Nash asked.

"Yeah, you know, above the sky?" Nick asked in return. "If you go up high enough you end up in space."

"He's right," I confirmed. "Not much is known about space, so I suppose it's possible. Magic is definitely the more likely possibility, though."

"Why's that?" Nick asked.

"Because space is very, very big. The sheer distances involved would require magical traversal," I explained. "So even if you were abducted by space aliens, magic is probably what brought you here."

"I don't know," he said. "My people were to the point of limited space travel and some were even living in space stations. We were about to get to the point of consumer space travel, so there's been plenty of scientific theories among my people regarding how to travel space faster. It's possible someone beat us to it."

We all stared at him once again, this time with our mouths agape. There were so many questions running through my mind all at once. What was space like? How did his people get up to space in the first place? What did they find? Why the hell hadn't he mentioned that before? He noticed our slack jaws.

"I haven't been to space myself," he explained. "There isn't any air up there, so you've gotta wear a special air-tight suit with tanks of air that feed into it. It also costs a lot of money to build the vehicles necessary to get there, so they only sent the best and brightest at first. As more experiments and flights were performed, rich merchants started going to space themselves. As far as I know, they were only able to just barely make it to space."

"There isn't any air in space?" Nash asked.

"That makes sense, actually," I said. "The higher you go up a mountain, the less air there is. I'm assuming that the space carts were launched from the tops of mountains?"

"We call them space ships, and I don't think so. I know that they launch a bunch from a place called Cape Canaveral, which I'm pretty sure is close to sea level," Nick said. "I don't think it makes much of a difference. Space is really far up, even compared to the tallest of mountains."

"What did your people find in space?" Renv asked.

"Well, it's like Yulk said. Everything is really, really far apart. In between the planets and stuff there's a whole lot of nothing, too. So there wasn't a lot of interest in exploring space outside of specific scientific communities. I do remember seeing some news about plans to mine some asteroids, but I don't know what became of that."

"What about on the planets?" Imlor asked.

"Well, we landed remote control robots on some of them to explore and see if we could find life, but as far as I know we didn't find much. People were getting excited about finding water on one of the planets, but other than that they're pretty barren. I don't think any of them have breathable air, either," Nick shrugged.

"Wait, you said that humans don't have magic," Nash said. "How did you make ships that made it that far into the sky?"

I watched Renv's expression as Nick explained humanity's method of travel via explosive propulsion. I had been shocked to learn of it, but the dwarf was absolutely flabbergasted. It was hard to see Imlor's expression, but he was obviously paying close attention to what Nick was saying. I chuckled slightly, enjoying the novelty of the conversation.

"So even without magic, your people can fly like birds?" Renv asked.

"Not really," Nick said. "We've got a bunch of different kinds of aircraft, but I'm pretty sure all of them move much faster than birds do. Plus, most planes carry a bunch of people at once. It's the fastest way to go from one continent to another."

"That's amazing," the dwarf replied.

I had to agree. The more I learned about humans, the more I wanted to know. I desperately wanted to compare our development to their own, but I doubt that Nick would have that kind of information at his age.

Plus, there are certain aspects of human history that he is obviously uncomfortable sharing. I could imagine why, everyone has darkness in their pasts they'd like to forget. If kingdoms form on a bed of flowers, it's because those flowers were fed with blood.

"There's something up ahead," Imlor called out.

"What is it?" I stood to get a better look.

"It looks like..." the gnome paused, "a checkpoint?"