Garen stuck to his word, extracting his vengeance for my low blow with excruciating training. Over the next two days he hung out around the manor all day to train me. I forwent working on my cancer cure for those two days since the Feyblooded were going to go into the local dungeon for a few days. The dungeon near Grimstel was only a rank C dungeon so it would be easy for them. One last run with the full team, try to get down to the deeper floors, then Kira would be forgoing adventuring for about a year.
The benefit of this intense training was levels. I had gained 4 levels in two days, which put me back on track to hit 100 before our escape. Plus with his tutelage in the Sukeshi my Sukeshi Chakra skill and Sukeshi Mastery skills caught up with my class level. My other skills didn’t really level much, but focusing on the warrior half of my class was probably a good thing.
The last boon from our training was that our far less dangerous sparring had gotten me another level in Titan Slayer. That skill was a pain in the ass to level, but constantly increasing three stats and the stat bump when fighting higher level opponents was absolutely worth it!
Alice had joined me in Garen’s trial. Having her with me made me react faster while we fought. The longer she trained with me the better she became at fighting herself. I suspected I would always have the edge with fighting and she would have the edge with magic, but the more time we spent together the more that gap closed.
Hopefully in time Alice would be able to start teaching me rune magic, but for now we just didn’t have the time. She also guessed without the boost of living inside of a magical construct all day it might take me a year even just to get the basics.
I awoke in the morning with an entire day to myself, well ourself if you include Alice. The Feyblooded team were tackling the dungeon today, so I had time to get back to working on my cure.
I placed the emerald bracelet to my skin and channeled Alice into my mind. Good morning. I thought to her.
Mornin. Alice replied. The greeting was somewhat meaningless to her since she was in stasis not sleeping, but she still humored me. More beating our head against a wall on this crazy project of yours?
That was the plan, yeah. Maybe having taken a couple of days off will let me come back fresh. I replied. Do you want to join me, or should I bring the bracelet with me? I needed her to cast her diagnostic magic, but then she could go back into stasis if she was bored.
Meh, I can probably train with runes while you work unless you need both our hands. She sounded not particularly thrilled at the idea. She had been working on more modifications to my magical skills, thus far the only thing she had come up with was of use was attenuating Radiant Blade to effectively turn my Sukeshi into a very safe practice blade. It was dull like a wooden sword, but it actually softened the blow to some extent allowing me to use it with my full strength and speed. A useful trick, but it didn’t actually increase our combat capability.
Lately Alice had been trying to modify my Radiance Conjuration to do things like bending the beam around corners or make the beam even thinner to give it more penetrative power. It was apparently a slow involved process making each of these modification runes. Additionally she could only affix one rune to each of my skills at a time and without her to activate them I couldn’t use them. Thus each of my skills could only have one rune magic modification at a time. It took hours for her to affix a new rune, so it couldn’t be done in combat.
The runes themselves are actually placed directly onto my body, but after just a few seconds they fade away, becoming invisible. They only light up again when Alice is invoking them to modify the skill. She didn’t need to see the place to put the rune on so we’ve been putting them on my back thus far. The air step rune she used to modify Radiant Step was her saved meta rune until she was able to inscribe it on my body.
It was easy enough for each of us to do something different while I was working on the cure. As long as she didn’t use too much of my mana we could each work on different projects at the same time.
We got ready for the day. I let Alice choose our clothes since she had a bit more interest in fashion than I did. Since we’d be researching all day we didn’t have to go for practical training clothes. The first thing she grabbed was the sapphire necklace she… or maybe I purchased, it was hard to tell. Then she grabbed a matching dress. We poked our head out of our room. “Farva, would you mind helping me dress and doing my hair today?” Alice asked.
Farva was serving my mother and Taele their breakfast. “Oh? What’s the occasion, princess?” She asked.
Alice shrugged our shoulders. “After spending days in boring training clothes fighting that brute I just need to… indulge a bit.”
“Not killing yourself training today then?” Taele asked, with an elegantly raised brow.
When a smile came to my lips I could tell it was from both Alice and I at the same time. “Even I occasionally need a day off. I will be working on my other project today.”
“So not a day off then.” My mother said monotone. “Just not getting battered all day…” She continued.
“I like researching. This is what I do for fun.” I gave her my best innocent smile.
Mom let out a long exacerbated sigh. “Where you got your genius and work ethic I’ll never know. Neither your father nor I wanted anything more than a simple life. I mean I left the royal palace and abdicated just to get it!”
Taele grinned. “She does seem to take after me in that light. I wonder if we had a Rhean priestess grace us with a child she might end up similar.” Taele gave a knowing smile to my mother who blushed deeply. Wait? What was this now? We’re they planning on having another child?
Rhea, the goddess of fertility and a patron goddess of gnolls gave those that took a priestess class devoted to her the ability to initiate pregnancies. Priestesses and much rarer priests with the class could cause a pregnancy using any two people regardless of sex. Although two men would need a woman to bear the child to term. It was an expensive procedure, since there were only a handful of people with the class on the entire continent. Taele and mom would probably have to travel to Kurz to have it done. Certainly not something Halcroft would allow.
My mouth was left hanging and I absently walked out of my room in just my smallclothes. “Wait… what are you talking about?”
Mother’s blush only intensified which made it very obvious this wasn’t just some throwaway comment. They had seriously considered doing this after our escape. “Well, we’d need to marry first of course.” Taele said smoothly, entirely unflustered.
“We had just been talking about our future!” Mom shouted. “We haven’t made any real plans yet!”
Taele leaned over to mom and whispered something into her ear. It was soft enough that even with my enhanced hearing I couldn’t hear it. But based on my mom’s reaction I was confident I hadn’t wanted to. “My daughter is here!” Mom shouted and slapped Taele face, probably a bit harder than she had intended. The loud pop of the contact sounded like it hurt, a lot.
Taele rubbed her hand on her reddened cheek. “Entirely worth it.” She said in a playful tone.
Sex was much more openly discussed among elves than humans, but Taele had intentionally brought the intensely personal up to embarrass my mother. I quickly inferred they both enjoyed this particular exchange, and that was officially more information than I needed about my mom’s love life. “You two are way too happy, it's unnatural.” I said with a bit of edge to my voice. Then glanced at Farva who had a little snicker on her face. “I’ll be waiting in my room, I can’t handle any more of that.”
I quickly shut the door behind me before any of them could add anything. Taele is a bit of a sadist, and I think mom might be a bit- Alice began before I cut her off.
Do not finish that thought, Alice. They are our moms. I thought with a cringe.
-------------------------------------------------
After getting dressed and having Farva work her literal magic getting our hair to cascade in beautiful gravity defying curls, we headed to the stables. I was sure to bring my Sukeshi along in a back sheath since I might need it for regenerating my mana.
Lyssa was there inside the pin with the piglet. It appeared she was feeding her. “Good morning Lyssa.” I said jovially.
She turned toward me before giving me a slight nod. “Princess.”
“How's our little piglet doing?”
Lyssa shrugged. “Well enough.” She grabbed a small now empty bucket before leaving the pin holding it open for me. “You only have a couple weeks left for our bet.” She said with a snide grin.
I took a step inside. “It is taking a bit longer than I initially thought, but I think I’m close.” I didn’t take her bait. Lyssa had done a good job taking care of the piglet, and with only some mild ribbing, was actually polite.
She raised a questioning brow at me. “You’re close but you also took 2 days off to get your ass kicked. Seems strange.”
“Lyssa… I know this may be something new to you, but intellectual work requires clearing one's mind occasionally.” She scowled at me so I decided to throw her a bone. “Nothing clears the mind like having your back scrapped off by a man at least 200 levels higher than you.”
Her deepening scowl relaxed, then began to fade into a soft chuckle. Lyssa shook her head. “You always surprise me, just when I think you are really just a stuck up princess you say something like that. Good to see what is left of your spine still works.” She patted the wooden pin. “Have fun staring at papers and muttering to yourself.”
“I always do.” I gave her a brilliant smile before sitting down at my little desk. As always I turned off all notifications while I did research, and Alice began to use my left hand to work on her rune magic. I ignored the hand and kept working with just my right hand.
I spent the next few hours considering all my past attempts. I began to group them based on outcome; there were ones that failed to do anything to the cells, ones that damaged but did not eradicate, ones that destroyed both cancerous and healthy cells, and finally ones that destroyed the cancer but damaged the healthy cells.
The first grouping were probably all just general failures. They included things like trying to target the cancer based on the order of the chromosomes and targeting specific DNA mutations. There just wasn’t enough for my magic to grasp onto there, and each cancer cell was just a bit different. The other groups all had possibilities.
I debated going through each of the treatments that weren’t in the failure group. Maybe I could try again with a few more levels under my belt. Yet at the same time I wanted a true cure, and if you needed super high stats to make it happen then it would be too hard for others to do.
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Maybe I could try to do two specific treatments at once. I hadn’t attempted that because it just seemed harder than focusing down on one aspect of cancer, like their unnatural growth rate, their large energy consumption, and so on. Yet maybe I just needed more for my magic to grab onto. It was worth a try.
I took a small bit of cancer cells from the graft before healing it back. I concentrated on two aspects of cancer, the darker nucleus and the irregular cell shape. Just like when I had tried each of those separately it destroyed the cells. However, I checked my notes on the previous attempts, the amount of mana it cost was… a bit less than half.
Wait. Half as much mana usage? I went back to my complete list of every treatment I had tried. I tried to imagine all of them one by one before invoking Bioshift. Irregular cell shape, darker nucleus, DNA mutations, extra chromosomes, energy starved, unnatural growth, and many more. I got the complete picture in my mind then activated Bioshift. It used 1 mana. 1 mana to destroy an entire cell sample.
Excitement ran through me as I frantically turned toward the piglet. Hey, I was casting a spell there! Alice thought sending her obvious annoyance at me.
Sorry, big breakthrough. I need full control for a few minutes. I thought back.
There were some more grumbling thoughts from her but I barely registered them as I carefully cut a new sample of cancer and healthy cells. I placed them both down and ran through the same mental images before casting Bioshift on both samples. The small bit of cancer shriveled up and turned to dust, but the healthy cells remained. “Alice, check the DNA of the healthy cells!” I shouted out loud.
Settle down. She thought as her hand did the motions for her meta-spell. A moment later the Streams of information hit me all at once. They… were completely untouched. Totally normal. I did it.
I went to sit down on the stool but missed and fell flat on my butt. “What the fuck was that?” Alice asked.
“I… did it…” I said, totally mystified. It was so simple! How had I not thought of it sooner. I shouldn’t have been trying to get my magic to work on a smaller focus but a more complete picture. The more Bioshift had to latch onto the less Manipulation I needed to fix the problem.
“You alright princess?” Lyssa asked from across the stables. I felt a bit of a blush as I realized Alice and I had been talking to each other out loud. However, the embarrassment barely mattered as I stood back up a big spring in my step.
“I cured cancer!” I shouted, turning to her.
“What?”
I shook my head. “Aging disease, I did it. I figured out how to cure it. Well at least how to stop the progression of the disease. I still need to figure out if I can regrow the area with healthy cells.”
“Cells? Did you hit your head?” Lyssa gave me a skeptical look.
“I’m sorry Lyssa, I need to get to town. I need a real patient.” I said as I exited the pin. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Riza or Edward is?”
“Uh, yeah I saw the old man a few minutes ago in the foyer.” She was still looking at me like I was crazy. It didn’t bother me one bit.
I activated Radiant Step and burst toward the exit. “Thanks Lyssa!”
I quickly found Edward and with his help Riza. “Riza! We need to go to Grimstel right now!” I called out as soon as I saw her. She was following Taele and my mother around as was her job.
“Uhh, why?” Riza asked.
“I did it! I cured aging disease! I need to go see Earl and Hellen!” I said jumping up and down a bit.
“Wait… you did what?” My mother squeaked. Taele just seemed confused.
Riza glanced around then shook her head. “I need-”
I cut her off. “I’m calling in all my favors, please, please. I need to do this now!”
Riza gave me an annoyed look. “Need to find someone to take my place.” She finished her sentence. “I imagine you can wait two minutes.” Her annoyed tone became only more icy. “Meet me at the main gate.” She turned to Edward. “Do you know where Sir Anthony is?”
I tuned Riza out as I was about to book it toward the main gate. Mom grabbed my arm before I could Radiant Step away. “Did you… really cure it?” She looked pale.
“Uh, yeah I think so. I have to do this one final test with Earl, I need to be sure I can recreate healthy… tissue where the… uh… growths are.” I tried to not use scientific terms.
I tried to pull away again, but my mother didn’t let go. “Alea! Stop. Sometimes I forget you are only 12…” She shook her head, she lowered herself a little so we were looking eye to eye. “If this works it will change elven society… really all societies but elven even more. Elves almost all eventually die from aging disease.” She paused, biting her lip. “I never expected this to actually work… Just be safe, if too many people find out-” She gave me an obvious look implying the unsaid ‘before we escape’. “- you could be in danger.”
That sobered my manic mood. “Right… balance of power and all that…” I murmured. “I’ll keep it just to Earl and Helen in town and ask them to keep quiet until I can publish the cure. Once the information is out there for everyone I probably won’t be targeted.”
Then she hit me with the concerned mother look to end all concerned mother looks. “This is… well it will change everything… so I can’t tell you to stop, but be careful.” She looked me dead in the eye.
“Shalia’s right. Be careful.” Taele added, placing her hand on my mom’s shoulder.
“Yeah… I get it. I have to do this though.” I just had to hope the look on my face was more confident than I felt. Their warning was sobering. I had to be really careful with this.
Mom let go of my wrist. “Alright go on.” Her voice was a bit shaky.
I paused for a moment before wrapping her in a big hug. “I love you mom.”
She picked me up easily, hugging me back. “I love you more than you can ever now”
After a long moment she let me down and I activated Radiant Step bursting away. “See you in an hour or so!”
Riza met me at the maingate and we made our way each using movement skills to go as fast as we could. My dress was getting in the way a bit, but truthfully it wasn’t all that bad. I wasn’t even sweating by the time we got to Grimstel, I used mostly magic for my skill, so I had only barely exerted myself physically.
The guards at the gate saw Riza about to ask her to stop to pay the entry fee. “Halcroft business, I’ll pay you on the way out!” She shouted as we both zoomed into the city.
Along our way to Helen’s clinic we just happened to find Earl out on patrol. “Earl!” I shouted as Riza and I particularly appeared in front of him. “Come with me to the clinic. I might be able to help you a bit with your symptoms.” I lied not wanting to let any information out to his partner.
He gave me an odd look before he turned to his partner. “Uhh mind if I-” He began.
The woman scoffed. “Go, it’s been slow. Plus anything to keep your long bathroom breaks under control.”
Earl spluttered out a thank you at the last bit. He followed us over to Helen’s clinic.
I walked into the door happy to see no one at the clinic. “Helen.” I said loudly. “I need your help~” I particularly sang the last bit.
Helen came out from her examination room with a potion in her hand. “What is-” She took a look at me and raised a brow. “-What has you so happy?”
I motioned for Earl and Helen to come closer. They leaned in. “I need you two to stay quiet about this for a few months if this works, I need to publish my cure before anyone finds out.”
“Wait…” Helen began. “You didn’t…” Her face fell slack at my grin.
“You actually did it?” Earl asked. “I thought you just figured out a way to make it a bit better.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to need to cut you open again, but I am pretty dang confident I’ve done it. I just don’t want people coming after me for the cure.”
Earl nodded knowingly. “Yeah that makes sense…”
“To be clear, if you say anything it will be me you have to answer to.” Riza added giving them both a stern look.
Helen shook her head literally waving away Riza’s threat of certain death. “Well what are we waiting for?” She walked back into the next room and we all followed after her.
While Helen grabbed various potions I prepared the knife and Earl took off his armor and shirt. “I can’t believe I’m letting a kid cut me open… again.” Earl scoffed as he laid down on the table.
“Shush, you’ll be the first person to ever have aging disease truly cured.” Helen chided him.
We quickly prepared everything and I cut into his abdomen in the same approximate place I did last time. I kept Critical Care active to stop most of the bleeding. It still got everywhere, but it was the amount from a bad cut not a major exploratory surgery. Having found the mass once I was able to get to it again easily.
I paused. “Alright this will take just a moment, I need to concentrate.” I said seriously. I began to imagine the same image I did before, except I also imagined regrowing healthy cells where the cancerous ones were now. Since Earl was intentionally lowering his resistance there wasn’t a penalty to doing this, however the moment I activated my spell, I felt my mana drain to zero. Just like that a bit more than 4500 mana disappeared in an instant.
Wait… 4500 mana? I checked my mana in the upper left hand of my vision seeing that my mana pool had nearly doubled since I last checked. When had I last checked? Before I came to the stables… I must have leveled, I must have leveled a fucking lot.
For now I ignored that as I felt the magic activate, the cancer began to shrivel into dust. I also knew it wasn’t just this large mass that was fading away, all over his body cancerous cells were being destroyed. At the same time I could feel healthy cells replacing the cancerous ones. I looked down at his colon seeing that where the cancer had been there was now a thin layer of healthy cells. Crap, I didn’t have enough mana to completely fix everything all at once!
I needed time to meditate and recharge. For now we could close him up though, having seen it work and getting the cells to come back I was now confident I could do it without having to see the mass. “I need to regenerate my mana, I have to do that again, I shouldn’t need to see it again.”
Helen was staring totally shocked by what I had done before my words brought her back to the world. “Right. I can do that.” She said absently before applying Light healing to restore the surgery sight. “Stay down, I need to restore your blood too.” She told Earl who nodded.
As she worked on Earl and cleaned him up I began to meditate. It took about 30 minutes to get my pool back full while everyone waited with only hushed conversations. I used Bioshift on Earl again to remove cancer and replace them with healthy cells. This time only a bit more than 3000 mana was used and the process was complete.
It was damn expensive to try to do this all at once, however it worked! I needed to recommend that people take the healing in stages when I publish my findings, but it fucking worked! I cured cancer.
“How are you feeling?” I asked at the end of everything.
“I mean better than I have in years, but I won’t really know until… you know.” He said with a chagrined look.
I shook my head. “I’m confident it worked, you are cured, I was just worried it may have taken a lot out of you.”
“Oh, do you mean the hunger? Yeah I was eating constantly while you were meditating.” He pointed to a nearby table I had entirely ignored. There were remnants of what had obviously been a large basket full of bread and cheese.
“Good thinking…” I said absently, noting that I needed to also include that recommendation in future treatments. Now back to my suddenly huge mana pool. I turned my notifications back on for the first time in more than an hour.
*You have earned the achievement ‘The Cure for Cancer’. You gain a permanent 10% bonus to each of Vitality, Animus, Magic, and Manipulation.*
*Level up. Bioshifter Curist level 33. You gain 2 Vitality, 1 Animus, 2 Magic, and 3 Manipulation.*
*Level up. Bioshifter Curist level 34. You gain 2 Vitality, 1 Animus, 2 Magic, and 3 Manipulation.*
…
*Level up. Bioshifter Curist level 100. You gain 2 Vitality, 1 Animus, 2 Magic, and 3 Manipulation.*
*Your class Bioshifter Curist has reached its maximum level, excess experience will be applied to its class evolution once you class up.”
*Level up. Elven Adolescent level 25. You gain 2 free stats, 1 physical stat, and 1 mental stat.*
*Level up. Elven Adolescent level 26. You gain 2 free stats, 1 physical stat, and 1 mental stat.*
…
*Level up. Elven Adolescent level 40. You gain 2 free stats, 1 physical stat, and 1 mental stat.*
*Your class Elven Adolescent has reached its maximum level, excess experience will be applied to its class evolution when it is unlocked.”
*Custom Reminder: Skills Pretty, Noble, Dual Consciousness, Enhanced Memory, Bioshift, and Critical Care, have not leveled up enough to cap.*
*Pretty has leveled up, level 27.*
*Noble has leveled up, level 31.*
*Dual Consciousness has leveled up, level 29.*
*Enhanced Memory has leveled up several levels, level 32.*
*Fire Affinity has leveled up several levels, level 35.*
*Bioshift has leveled up several levels, level 67.*
*Critical Care has leveled up several levels, level 44.*
Suffice to say, I was somewhat dismayed by this sudden turn of events.