Chapter: Gun Nut

With that Erik and Rugrat had to make some hard decisions, which of their babies did they want to take.

“Dammit, how the hell am I take any of my guns in a two by four meter space?

“It’s going to be hard,” Erik agreed.

Rugrat had a sour look on his face as they were driving along a bumpy road leading to Erik’s cabin in the woods.

From what he found online, he drew two conclusions. Previous wounds before the curse would heal but at a slower rate. If someone was injured, they would heal faster than normal, but nothing death-defying.

Every time someone was hurt, the speed which they healed increased.

People’s body’s don’t only push past physical limits like how much they can lift, but also how many injuries they can take? Doesn’t that mean that the more damage you take, the faster that you’ll recover?

It was one hell of an idea, but it had far reaching possibilities.

They made it to a hardware store. Erik drafted up a list and gave it to Rugrat.

He jumped out of the truck and went to go get the items on the list.

Erik reached into the backseat, grabbing a knife that hung off Rugrat’s bag. He rolled down the sock on his left leg.

He looked at the stump there right above the knee.

He started to think of how crazy this all was, that it was just him clutching at straws.

I might be, but like Rugrat said, isn’t it better if I just tried, what’s the worst that can happen? Erik paused for a moment. Maybe I shouldn’t think that while holding a knife.

He shook his head and cut his leg with just enough pressure to break the skin and draw blood. He flinched slightly and put the blade away, setting a timer on the phone as he continued his research.

Erik looked over the different spells that had been created already and some of the hypotheses people had come up with for what worked, what didn’t and why.

It seemed like the spell and words weren’t important, but rather the word association and one’s thoughts.

For example, there was one person who yelled meatloaf and it turned the ground into a quagmire, then said pizza and created a sea of fire in front of them.

“I do not want to see that guy’s cooking skills in person,” Erik muttered.

He took a deep breath and put the phone down. He placed his hands on the leg he’d stabbed. “Heal.” Erik watched the Mana bar in the corner of his vision. Nothing happened. He thought on what people had said in the video. He not only needed words but the intent and association.

He closed his eyes, thinking of his leg. He thought of how it must look like inside, based off the x-rays, the different scans and what the doctors had told him.

He started to feel as if he were looking through his leg, seeing the skin, moving deeper through the fat, muscle layers, the nerves and tendons, blood vessels and to the bone and down to the marrow. It was as if he could see the burned-off nerves, the sealed blood vessels and sculpted muscle to round out his nub.

He continued to look through the layers, as if he could look through it all as if it were a layered scan.

His head started to hurt as he felt tired. He opened his eyes. His Mana bar blinked at him. There wasn’t much of the blue left in the bar.

His eyes went wide as he pulled his hands from his leg. His Mana bar stopped flashing so angrily. Every second, his bar increased in size; after two seconds, it stopped blinking and continued to grow, refilling itself.

Erik laughed to himself in victory. If I can see through my leg, then there’s nothing saying that I couldn’t heal myself!

Hope true, tangible and understandable hope beat in Erik’s chest as he sat back in his seat.

He could cast a spell! His lethargy only continued for a few moments before he jumped into action, he didn’t have any time to waste!

Once his Mana bar was refilled, he placed his hand on his left arm. He once again remembered the same feeling from before.

He saw through it, seeing the interior of his arm in brilliant detail. He felt less strain as he looked at specific things. After nearly a minute, he had to stop as the Mana bar flashed at him once again.

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“So the more in-depth my assessment, the more Mana that I consume,” Erik said. It had been roughly forty seconds he had studied his leg for. “I didn’t have to use a word, though.” Erik turned thoughtful. “Maybe if you break it down, then you might not need the actual words but only the same visualization or cue to cast the spell?”

He once again started to go through the different spells people had shared. He went through the healing spells, paying attention to what people were thinking when they’d used these spells.

It doesn’t seem like most of these people had a background in medicine. These are way too general. Seems that they were looking to just heal a wound, nothing overly complicated. Even some people said that it took them days to do something, but in time that their whole body felt better.

Erik closed his eyes. Instead of just looking to examine one thing, he tried to get a full scan of his body. He only got to see the muscle layer of his body when his head felt as though it were going to explode. He stopped. Sweat covered him. His heart raced and his adrenaline spiked.

A feeling of doom had filled him, as if knowing that doing anything more would have dire consequences.

“Okay,” Erik said, pulling himself back together. “So, large-scale magic costs a lot, really fast. Small-scale is greatly reduced and specific casting costs even less, so working on a smaller scale and increasing looks like to be the best expenditure of Mana.”

He waited the nearly thirty seconds it took for his 20 Mana to regenerate. It wasn’t much, but to him, it seemed there were multiple ways to reduce the expenditure.

He reached with his right hand to his left arm nub. Unlike his legs, which had been cut off above the knee, he thought that this might be a bit easier and there was less to regrow.

He scanned his arm three times, getting a clear picture of what it looked like. Each time left him a little bit more tired, even as his Mana regenerated. He scanned his right arm, building up an image of it and checking over what the complete structure looked like.

After two scans, he grabbed Rugrat’s bag again and found a marker inside. He circled his arm at the end of the nub.

“All right, well, all good ideas need to be proved or broken in the end.”

He rested his hand on the nub again, focusing his mind on it. He felt the tug as he started to use Mana.

He thought of the marrow growing, the bone sheathed around it, the veins, muscle tissue, tendons, nerves, fat, and skin. His entire body was drenched in sweat as he felt himself reaching his limits after only a few seconds.

With gasping breaths, he opened his eyes. His head spun as he felt dizzy. His green bar had dipped some as well. He looked to the mark on his arm. It seemed as if the nub had grown some, but if it had, it was so small as to be hard to measure.

He recovered his energy and once again sunk his mind into his arm and thought of his arm growing. It was slow, as if at a snail’s pace. He didn’t even take time to look at his arm. He stopped only when he was near exhaustion, pushing himself again and again.

His green bar continued to drop as he felt more and more drained. He didn’t know how many times he had carried out what he had hoped to be a spell.

He looked to his arm to find that the line was now behind by a firm inch. Erik stared at it, dumbfounded. He laughed out loud and fist pumped into the air. “That’s right, mother fuckers! I’m growing back my arm!”

He yawned, feeling tired and starving. He looked to his arm. His upper arm looked more defined, as if all of the fat from it had been drained out.

“So while I used magic to make the new limb, a part of the materials came from my upper arm,” Erik surmised. “Going to need a ton more food and calories to keep this going.”

He focused on his right leg and drew another line. As he thought of the different parts of his leg growing, he paused.

“I’ll call this complex healing. It’s really in-depth. What if I was to just pour Mana into my leg and stimulate it to grow? Like a tree.” Erik recovered his Mana, thinking of what he wanted to do, the association between the word and the actions he wanted to happen. Once his Mana bar was filled, he put his hand on his leg.

“Basic heal,” Erik said. The Mana poured into his leg, slow at first, but then he found that he could speed up the rate at which he increased the Mana going into the spell as well as reduce it. He sped it up and could visually see a small section of his leg growing.

He recovered his Mana and tried it again and again. His upper leg became more defined as his leg grew. His leg was much larger than his arm but the rate of growth for his leg was matching it and he wasn’t burning as much Mana.

Now he only had to think of the words basic heal and a blue glow would surround his fingers and his leg. It was barely visible in the dimming light of the day.

He moved to the other leg and used the concentrated growing spell that he’d used on his arm. He cast it on his left leg the same amount of times as he had on his right leg. It hadn’t grown as long, but, his left leg was thicker, its structure stronger.

He went to his right leg that he’d used the basic heal on and started to sink his mind into it. He tried to change the leg. It was much harder to do it to something that was already formed; there were a few slight issues but nothing that would have a great impact.

I’m going to need a lot more time to figure out more of these spells. Once I have a whole bunch of them, then I can use them for each situation.

He was thinking of using the spells much as a surgeon would use different surgical instruments to get the desired effect. It was medical instruments, drugs, and therapy all rolled up into one. The more he knew about each component or what he could substitute in, the faster his results would be.

Could I use something else to get the nutrients and stuff I need from? Maybe raw meat? Form it into what I need and fuse it together?

With just this one revelation of spells being able to heal, his mind started to open previously closed doors. He started to write down ideas that he had, losing the concept of time.

Rugrat chucked his new purchases into the rear of the truck sometime later, startling Erik.

He looked to see food supplies being tossed into the bed of the truck.

Rugrat tossed the cart into a bay and jumped into the truck.

“You get everything?” Erik asked.

“Yeah. What you been up to in here?” He looked to his bag that had been opened and the sheet of paper and pen in Erik’s hand.

“Look!” Erik held up his left arm, a big smile on his face.

“What?” Rugrat asked after a few seconds, a perplexed look on his face.

“See that line?” Erik pointed to the line.

“What about it?” Rugrat shrugged.

“That was how long my arm was when you left the truck,” Erik said.

“Wait, so, huh?” Rugrat looked at how Erik’s arm was now a few centimeters longer.

“I can use magic! I can heal my arm and my legs!” Erik laughed out loud.

“Shit.” Rugrat held his head and wiped off his cowboy hat, shocked by Erik’s words.