Gabrio is standing inside a room inside Perlshaw with his mask on. It is a room connected to the ark and is a place that usually receives the injured. The difference is this room caters to the folk who got their limbs cut off or chewed by some beast. This time an old officer of the fleet, who has gotten enough merit on his name is taken to this place.
“Doctor.”
The familiar officer cracks a thin smile. Gabrio nods his head and checks the lump of his arm.
“Got bitten?”
“It’s a new world, good doctor. You gotta take a risk.”
“Son, you know that I can't replace your limb with a tree more than four time. I’ve done enough surgeries to know that.”
The officer turns silent. Gabrio cleans his arm with sterilized cloth and checks his damaged the nerves.
“This will be very painful. I will be connecting every nerve of your body to a new one. It’ll take months and usually four years for you to get used to the arm as yours. Do you understand this?”
“I do.”
The officer quiets down. Gabrio takes a glance at the officer.
“I heard you saved your team by stabbing a short sword into the eyes of that beast?”
“I did, Doctor.”
“Good job. If you were an idiot that did this because you wanted a new arm. I would have made it painful for you.”
Doctor Gabrio takes a very long needle out.
“It’ll be injecting you with an anesthetic. It’ll numb the pain and put you to sleep. Are you ready?”
The officer nods his head quietly. Gabrio injects the medicine and watches the officer sleep. Gabrio takes his attention away from the officer and adjusts the bulb lighting the operation room. Mana enters the room and is carrying a prosthesis.
“Done fitting it?”
“I did. It took a while this time.”
It’s an arm made of bark and twisted roots fashioned to imitate an arm. At first this method was available only to the Elven-kin. Then a lot of limbs went missing and they had to do the fleet a favor by making use of their knowledge to replace the limbs of the sailors and officers who are valuable to the fleet.
“Lot of limbs are missing this time.”
She takes a look at Gabrio’s arms that have been covered with his vitae. Reinforcing his hand coordination.
“I see that you’re already used to it?”
“It does wonder. I can see better and do better. No reason not to use it in an operating room.”
He prepped the housing system that he’ll need to attach. To do that he started by making a surgical incision around the left shoulder and armpit. If someone comes in. He’d mistake the Doctor for taking ‘slices’ of the man. Precisely and without hitting a bone. He takes the chunk off this man’s meat and regularly checks his heartbeat and pulse. Meanwhile, Mana points her palm on the wound and stops the wound from bleeding. Walking over to the barkarm prosthesis.
Gabrio pulls the vein-like root and adjusts the magnification of his mask to see better. He pulls one thin root and connects the vein one by one. He can’t speak to the sprites, but even Grey spirits know what he has been doing for years and usually allows him to do it without Mana’s help. Back then, he had to ask for her help all the time, but now he can do it alone if he must. She does take her time to join. Which allows the implant to be better, He has somewhat mastered the art now. It took time studying the way how the barkarm implant worked. And even himself was somewhat proud about the improvements he made. If he had the right materials and technology. Gabrio was sure he could make a prosthetic made of brass and copper and alloy. Though a bit messier compared to the barkarm that allowed the blood of the person using it to mix with the arm, nourishing the arm.
The arm itself was made from this carnivorous plant that seems to trap the meat and blood of its prey and nourish itself with it. How the barkarm is made is simple. You cut the roots of the plant and then wrap the roots with the bark of a tree. Any tree usually does, but the harder and durable the bark is, the better.
Gabrio has made studies of the barkarm. It functions like an mutualistic relationship where both species benefit from the implant. Though ‘mutualistic’, it doesn’t necessarily mean that having a lot of prosthetics would do you good.
They benefit from it, but too many prosthetics would basically mean having too many symbiotic creatures that feed on their blood draining them everyday. It was around fifty years ago that he had a case of a patient suffering from anemia because of the prosthetic. Gabrio has been trying to solve this problem, but has shown no results. The various experiments he tried only killed the arm and made the barkarm wither when an experimental concoction was applied.
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He did not want to risk patients unless they were individuals who have committed an act so despising that he’d gladly dissect them to test his theories. Gabrio had once questioned his Teacher of his reason why he was so numb when butchering people. But looking at where he is now and what he has been doing for years. Gabrio understood the reason and the need for it. Took him many years to understand doing it. Not for the betterment of mankind. But to simply improve yourself and your knowledge until you can find a better way to do the task.
Gabrio takes a needle and makes a delicate suture around the former bone area and then uses a medical saw to remove the bone and attach the wriggling, worm-like vines that attached itself to the bone. Although the roots attach themselves, he had to make a molding around the area so it can act as the housing system of the limb. Think of it as the root of the plant. It doesn’t matter if you cut off the stem. As long as the root is around then you can always graft another limb to the root.
How it works is a mystery to Gabrio. But the barkarm itself mimics the movement of the hand. He had a theory that the bio-electrical pulses from the nerves synchronize with the roots to create a hand movement. He didn’t have technology so he could assume as such. He wondered if he could study such complicated studies if their technology improved?
Although the fleet is reliant on the Elven-kin medicine most of the time to heal immediate wounds. Gabrio did not allow himself to be comfortable with that and had continuously improved the medicine technology of the fleet-kin. Gabrio did not have the arrogance to think that he could do it all alone so he had drilled it into his students that they must continue improving if they want to reach such a level. The weakness of elven-kin medicine is that it cannot pinpoint certain diseases. It heals the external and is weak when healing internally.
Thus he had to make a point to study internally as possible. Sometimes they are lucky enough to have willing test subjects while the sinners given to them are put to good use by experimenting on them.
Three generations worth of doctors and surgeons constantly improving and learning. He didn’t allow them to slacken. Not when he remembers how much discrimination and mocking disapproval that he had gotten in Aon for being a ‘quack’ of a profession that killed a king. Thankfully, his years of service in the fleet had changed that and only a few, mostly the elven-kin, remember that there was a time where having a Doctor on your name was something to laugh at. Though he had to admit that he was mostly acting as a physician and surgeon. Arkshelled simply didn’t have the resources and medicine had to be used sparingly.
Life in a still greater sea caused a lot of problems. Measures had to be made and compromises had to be done. There were conflicts over food and death because of divers going their way to get resources for the fleet on sunken islands and waters where they find buried ore.
Though the prospect of a giant island like this has made him rather optimistic for his studies. It also helped that it had been quite a while since he didn’t have to worry about resources. The fleet right now is scouring the land, gathering ores, resources, and making food. The fleet also had plans to create a floating city and it was simply an idea crazy enough that it might work.
There’s a part of the island that is loose. To put it lightly this part of the island is barely attached to the main island and seems to be floating naturally. Gabrio had a good look on that island and how it worked. One of the craftsmen with him, who was far smarter and clever than him, made a conclusion that because of the air-filled chambers below the island that allows the island to be less dense than the volume of water it occupies, thus enabling it to float despite its size.
The idea was to attach the gigantic roots that are growing on the side of the Arkshelled and have it be dragged by the island. The elven even proposed that theoretically, with a ten man group they could connect and disconnect the island if they needed to. Which means that even if the island walks on land, it wouldn’t flip the island to the side since it could be just disconnected.
The island is on the shores of the Tundrae. Transporting supplies and also accepting the supplies and storing them inside of the island where they’ll be kept for the people who didn’t leave the island. There are many who left the island to explore, but most of the time they returned to Arkshelled after seeing some of the places that the fleet had started to work on.
Or that seeing someone getting their arm bitten off his body had sent some warning to the would-be explorers of the fleet to think again when it comes to exploring.
Then again, he might have just taught this fool. He did teach his grandfather, who was Robert’s son and in a way he had taught Aron how to shoot a gun, wield the bow like his great grandfather, and fight like Caldor Ando when facing monsters. He did wonder if he should teach him how to fight like Jester or the elven-kin’s Soundless usually do, but he had to stop himself.
He must admit that seeing a student come up to him with a missing arm scared him. It never becomes something he can take lightly and without care. Hence, he had to do it himself since he needed to be the one. Mana teases him for being overprotective, but it was his nature and personal satisfaction to see his students doing well.
After the mind numbing connection of every nerve. Gabrio took a short rest and waited for Aron to wake up. Mana handed over a drink and allowed themselves a rest.
When Aron woke up, he was looking at his barkarm.
“Does it fit?”
“Like a glove, Doctor.”
“You are a soldier so I had to add some extra. You can feel it, can you? Try extending it.”
Aron raised a brow, confused. Then he focused on his arm and a stake came out of his forearm.
“A stake you can use for emergencies and then a wooden shield. Not strong enough to endure hard devastating blows, but it can be of good use when saving your life.”
“Can you put a gun on it, Doc?”
“No. It’s impractical to do. How are you even going to aim straight?”
“What about a cannon, Doc!?”
“I’d put you to sleep if you don’t stop talking nonsense.”
Aron grins. Gabrio flicks his finger on his arm and he grits his teeth and makes a sad face to Mana.
“Auntie Mana! I think he’s bullying me.”
Mana gave him a cold smile. “You need to really act your age, Aron. Oh my, you’re no longer a cute toddler.”
“So cruel, you two! Wait until my grandson is born! You'll see”
Aron lay back down and stared at his arm. “I’ll be careful. Thanks for the arm, Uncle.”
Gabrio sat on his stool and then sighed. “Let me check your arm again just in case.”