"It's already past noon, time for break", Zeph exclaimed when checking the time on his seemingly expensive hourglass bracelet that was strapped to his hand with leather. It was a magical hourglass that didn't require to be put into any position in order for sand to flow from one bulb to another. It was a cylinder with height of about half a centimeter, and it's diameter was enough to sit comfortably on his wrist. The hourglass itself looked like a drawing in the cylinder, silver boundary with tiny golden points that resembled sand, going from one bulb to another through narrow a passage. It was state of the art, not yet released in the market gadget he got as a reward from a noble from capital after completing his request.
The cartographer with him, who was making a rough drawing and writing something on a piece of paper asked if they could checkout right tunnel a little, that was further ahead before going back to the checkpoint. Zeph agreed.
As they were about to turn suddenly a voice echoed from the tunnel they were about to go in.
"H..h......elp!".
Zeph immediately ran into the tunnel, he saw a man lying on the floor.
"Damn, they haven't yet cleared all the civilians from the dungeon". Zeph kneeled and tried to talk to the man, he was only able to murmur. He noticed that the person was loosing consciousness and was holding the back of his neck. It was a pitch-dark tunnel, they only had a single magical fire torch. He also noticed the person's strange attire and his hair color.
Cartographer ran but was barely able to keep up with Zeph, after reaching a point where torches were hanged on the walls, Zeph sped up. He passed all three checkpoints and exited the dungeon while carrying the fainted man.
Outside of the dungeon were camps setup, where nobles, military men, adventurers were residing temporarily. There were also a lot of medical professionals too in the camps. Apparently there were a lot of civilians who snooped into the dungeon hoping to mine some precious magical crystals illegally. Along with them were a lot of animals too, who got corrupted, mutated into monsters and attacked humans. It's because of this almost all medical professionals, including healers, nurses from nearest town were stationed here.
Healers were very expensive and were usually available to nobles, bureaucrats, rich merchants, or at the church as priests. But this was an important incident and grabbed attention internationally, so Kingdom directed the nearest town to send all there medical professionals as well as dispatched some from capital too.
Chino Mizuki was a med student and a healer who was also stationed there. She came from a family of medical professionals and healers based back in her homeland. She was 22 years old, Elfanian immigrant, currently she was in her final year in Berxley Institute of Medicine and Healing Magic. She was very proud of her academic achievements and her University Name. Her university had done breakthrough research in medicine and healing magic and is able to apply healing magic on complex injuries that couldn't be fixed by classical magic, as well as achieved several breakthroughs in non magical medical science. In fact the reason why she came to Gelgaria was to enroll in this University.
Suddenly a man comes into healer's tent where Mizuki and Mable were stationed, it was Zeph, he had an unconscious man in strange attire in his arms. Mizuki noticed the unconscious man's hair color and immediately alerted Mable who then helped Zeph lay the patient on bed. Mizuki meanwhile wore gloves and grabbed a wand made of steel. She asked Mable what was the patient's problem. Zeph replied that the patient was holding the back of his neck. Mizuki then told Zeph to move out of the tent at once. After that she asked Mable to get her appraisal wand and apply appraisal magic.
Magical heeling has come a long way since priests used to use it and then trapped the healed person by demanding the person and their entire family to dedicate their lives and life savings to the church.
There were a still lot of injuries and sickness classical magic couldn't heal. For example, magic has no effect on any diseases and could only treat symptoms as a temporary solution. In case of organ failure, or organ not functioning properly, cancer etc., traditional healing was useless. Magic healed muscles and tissues but in case if bone fracture it was very slow.
If there are some shards of bones or other foreign material inside the body, healing created new muscle tissues around them, since it starts healing the place which is closest to the point of application thus trapping the shards. These shard can create massive problem later on, and you cannot do anything about them once all the muscles are healed, unless if you try to cut entire chunk of muscles completely off in order to remove shards too, and then start healing again. Cutting out entire chunks of muscles had it's own issues too.
Outside tissues healing first also was a big problem since it left lower tissues unnoticed which could cause internal bleeding later on. If outer tissues healed first, they also interfered with inner ones, leading to inner tissues reduced in mass overall, after healing was completed, say for legs they will have to use a crutch for rest of their lives, as once the injury is healed, nothing could be done. You have to make repeated cuts on muscles and heal them again and again, for a month to gain that lost volume of inner muscle tissues and this needs to be done with intervals for body to regain lost mana through proper diet, thus increasing the cost of already expensive healer for recovering completely.
Classical or Traditional magical healing only involves just applying mana to a magical crystal with healing properties, and it in turn releasing crystal's own specialized mana and performing healing. One needs knowledge of how crystal works and how specialized staff works and also required a lot of practice too. It also depended one's genetic makeup. Because genetics dictated how much mana can reside in your body, how quickly one recovers after losing mana, and what type of mana is it. If one is a child of a brilliant healer, the child itself will have immense specialized mana and thus aptitude of becoming a brilliant healer like parent. Although one can practice to store more mana and recover it quickly but it seems to be people blessed with genes always step ahead of competition. Only way for lower mana healers was to acquire knowledge of human anatomy and try developing methods where less mana can heal human.
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According to Morrison theory, developed by a brilliant doctor, healer and research mage Dr. Elbert Morrison who is a professor in her university and still working on some other research, classical magic only sped up the process of natural healing. It cannot make new tissues and blood out of nowhere, and cannot generate entire body parts like a limb or an organ. The patient must have necessary "mana" in their blood for new tissues to generate. This "mana" is a form of nutrient that the body creates for itself and this nutrient can convert into various other nutrients, like proteins and minerals as well as entire tissues.
In fact Morrison theory also states that in Homo Genus. Genus being unit of classification containing different species. Organisms classified may reproduce but child may or may not be sterile. Child usually in same species is naturally sterile and have features of both parents. While interspecies may depend on the species involved in the pair, child will be born but may or may not be sterile. That means, demi humans like goblins, cat people, lizard people, dwarves, wolf people, elves, orcs, all possess this "mana" along with humans. This mana is like a nutrient that human body generates for itself using other basic nutrients. "Mana" cannot be taken in a body from outside source.
There is a limit to how much a person can heal. When body no longer have enough concentration of mana, nothing will happen. So the patient needed to be given proper diet of normal nutrients so body can develop mana, and some healing to be done everyday, making even deep wounds in organs and fatal head injuries completely recover anywhere between a day to a week.
Mable points her wand almost touching the neck and starts using appraisal.
Use of appraisal magic was also something that her University has successfully carried out research at. Appraisal magic is usually used to reveal strength according to traditional magical knowledge. But in fact another research mage from her university has theorized appraisal basically registers concentration as well as fluctuations in mana. Human blood, according to Morrison contains mana.
Alfanzo, research mage who theorized about appraisal, has also devised a way to distinguish between mana fluctuations of different types of tissues and use appraisal to reveal what might be wrong with the body. Of course, it's not the magic type alone, it's how one uses can also make it unique.
There is no special way or some long spell needed to be learnt. Instead, one needs to learn something even harder than some spell. Human anatomy, how different tissues mana fluctuations are and what might be wrong with them as different type of problems register different types of fluctuations. Appraisal can be used to detect shards and exact places of injuries as well as nature of injuries. Alfanzo believes that appraisal magic will also bring revolution in diagnosing of diseases. Not just injury caused by external factor but even diseases could be healed with magic and not just their symptoms. There is currently research going on in that field within her University, Mizuki too wants to take part in it and not just get stuck being a healer.
"Mizuki-sama there is a spinal cord injury, severely burnt type under uppermost cervical bone 'atlas' and muscle tissues around the area is burnt too, and there is a square shaped flat area from which there is literally no mana coming through, it's a shard, a metal piece but very huge".
"Take of his shirt"
Mabel turns him, lays him on his back, she opens buttons of his blazer, then fiddles with the strange cloth tied to his neck. Then she just goes ahead and cuts it with a scissor, his shirt had buttons too for some reason, but it made it easier since she just had to open them. She again turns him sideways and pulls the blazer and shirt gently off.
"Mable grab me a tube, I'll have to make a small hole".
Mizuki first uses scalpel to make an incision and then uses a retractor to open it up. She then takes the tube and presses it hard against the atlas directly above the location of metal shard as pointed by Mable. She then uses a fire scalpel to cut out bone and tries pulling the bone through the tube. While pulling the bone out she notices that the metal shard was attached to the bone itself as well as to the spinal cord. So she uses a bent to reach to the lower point of the shard to separate shard from spinal cord, after doing that she pulls out the bone along with the shard, puts in on the tray and grabs healing wand.
"Mabel are there any other shards here".
"No Mizuki-Sama"
Mizuki then inserts her wand in the tube and just touches the spine and starts healing magic. After cord is healed up, she pulls the wand out, and then separates the shard with the bone. Takes the bone and inserts in through the tube and then places the wand above it just touching the bone and heals the bone, re attaching it to it's place. Now the work of tube is over, since it fixes its sharp edges of the bone and allows to stabilise surgical equipment while dealing with minor invasive surgeries, and keeps incision open to stop it from disturbing the surgeon, since the incision was quite small. She then removes the cylinder.
"Are there any other shard in surrounding muscle area"
"No Mizuki-Sama, just burnt tissue and blood clot".
"I guess this guy is a noble, so lets heal him completely, he looks like he is well fed".
Mizuki then cut all the burnt tissue, and places of blood clot, and heals them slowly, moving outward with each cut, making sure inner tissues are healed up first. She takes Mable's help to know how healing is going on. Finally she heals skin, she holds skin together tightly with forceps, otherwise the new tissues including skin formed will be a lot and will make entire area very loose because of all the extra muscles and skin that will look like a tumor. Also holding skin closer together, means less skin needs to be formed, since only the cut needs to be joined again, which in turn requires less nutrients, which is basically mana since healing is being done magically.
After Mable declares that the patient is okay, Mizuki immediately throws her equipment on the tray and goes to the sink to wipe her sweaty face and hands.
Mable meanwhile looked at the weird clothes. They was an ugly texture of greenish brown. It was like dirt. His shirt, blazer and pants, all were of the color of dirt. She thought to herself why would a noble wear such bland and ugly clothes.
Then she looks at very athletic looking body, very unusually tall and muscular body. She wondered how much he worked out. And then remembered the weird cloth tied to his neck. What was it?
"Mable, what you're looking at?, hurry up and clean the patients neck, the tray and put his clothes blazer and shirt somewhere other than floor." Mizuki said while she sat on a chair in a corner of the tent.
"Mizuki-sama did you noticed his dirt colored clothes, they are so weird and ugly, like one would stand out like a sore thumb in a party just for being ugly, its something not even a servant would wear, but this guy's hair doesn't tell me he is a servant. Maybe he was just wearing servants clothes, like pretending to be servant? Was he preparing for some drama? What do you think?"
"Why do you ask questions like these, if you asked this to some other doctor just after such a delicate surgery you would've been fired".
"Well I just noticed, the clothes were just something even I haven't seen on any nobleman's butler, I would say even they wear better, is this young brat trying to make butlers look even more poor in whatever drama he is preparing to mock them in front of his family and friends? And what's up with the piece of cloth which was around his neck, is he suggesting that butlers are nothing more than slaves who should be treated as pets?"
"What's with you and butlers?, anyway it's actually quite talented that you didn't noticed the most weird thing."
But then she immediately remembers something more absurd. It's like she didn't registered it first because how alert she had to be during surgery. Making sure there isn't any mishap happening while Mizuki is operating, like accidently surgical tools making some injury or some other injury she didn't noticed, or healing of upper tissues happening first before lower tissues are done healing. Or patient heartbeat going down critical level. It was the massive shard. It was in the patient's body, just in there, with no signs of it going in there, it's like it just magically appeared there, or was always there to begin with. Green colored, square shaped shard.
At this point the patient slowly opened his eyes.