Jen wished she hadn't been able to see what she had. Johan had told her that he had hurt his back in the fall and said that he was lucky. But in reality, he likely just couldn't feel how broken his body was from the back injury. One his arms was completely broken, as in it looked like he had more than one elbow. He had a broken ankle as well. Not to mention the amount of blood surrounding him. He wasn't lying about being lucky. He, by all rights, probably should have bled out.
Jen wasn't sure if the singular potion would be enough to do much for Johan. It would hopefully fix his back enough for him to move better, but it would certainly cause him to feel everything else as well. It was a thought that Jen didn't want to think about.
She was felling guilty as all hell. He had only come to be like this by protecting her. She had a few bruises sure, maybe a minor cut or two, yeah. But Johan had almost died as a result of saving her.
Sure he was the reason why the hole had opened up to start with, but that didn't mean he had to do what he had done to protect her.
"I love you, so why do you do this to yourself..." Jen found herself whispering as she applied the potion to his back, following his instructions to apply it around his spine. She could see bits of shattered bone moving back into place. Johans flesh twitched as it did so, slowly changing from inflamed back to normal.
"That's incredible. Also gross, but wow that's really effective." Jen muttered.
She then sat down next to him while waiting for the older boy to wake back up.
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Johan woke up feeling pain in his arms and legs. Overall it was a major improvement. sure it was painful, but he could now move, although he could feel that his nerves seemed to still have a few issues mostly because he could feel them being pinched and couldn't feel half of his right foot. Hopefully his ring would take care of that in due time. It was a weak healing effect, but enough time would still allow it to fix major injuries, at least he hoped so.
Jen was laying against a nearby wall, the bag of holding laying loosely in her arms. He looked up and could tell that it was now day again, though perhaps early given the slightly darker sky.
Johan slowly called forth his light trap once again. He would use some light spells to heal as it would likely be far easier to gather light mana than water mana under the ground, and he could feel that light mana was still slightly oversaturated anyways, meaning he also likely hadn't been out for terribly long.
After a few minutes of waiting he cast several doses of healing spells onto his arm, feeling the grotesque feeling of bone and muscles moving as the structure repaired itself. The actual spell seemed to make a rough outline of where his bones were supposed to be with a temporary mana construct, and auto correct the bones that weren't in the area they needed to be, and then it would eventually heal once they were in the right spots. It was a rather complex spell, as far as beginner spells go that is.
Either way, he knew his leg would need to wait a while to be healed as he couldn't cast anymore light spells, though he supposed he could *try* to use water healing...
Johan nodded slightly to himself, and began to focus, calling water mana to himself and slowly fixing his leg. Unlike light healing, the water healing spell he knew wrapped the area of effect with a sort of orb of water mana, and flowed like water, acting almost like it was applying a weaker potion the entire time it was there. It took much longer, about 15 minutes, but it did eventually fix his leg.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
After he finished with his leg, Johan decided it would be wise to take stock of their situation.
They were in a, essentially, pit in the ground. There were some small caves connected to the chasm that they were currently in, but he doubted any of them would lead to anything good. They had plenty of food, since Johan was in charge of storing most of it, though everyone had a bit stowed into their own bags for situations where they were separated, not dissimilar to the current predicament. They had essentially infinite water, so long as Johan had mana. The only large problem he now had was... How they were getting out.
Johan had some idea of how to get out, being the same way that he found himself in the situation to begin with. Though he planned to learn Earth Manipulation out right this time, so that he could fix his mistakes, probably should have done that in the start.
Johan quietly took the bag out of Jens hands, and pulled out his book of elemental magic, cycling through pages, in the dim light from above, until he finally found what he was looking for.
If Earthen Wall was simple for him, this was no more than mere childs play now that he had an idea of what he was doing. Johan finished the entire spell in around 15 minutes, and tested it out on the far side of the cavern. He simply just moved the stone from the wall to the floor in almost a rippling manner. It was odd, like the waves of the ocean. Once he knew he had it how to do what he wanted he simply put it back, not wanting a repeat of his current predicament.
Johan decided to wait for Jen to wake up and discuss it all with her, he was still likely going to tunnel up regardless, but he wanted to ensure that she understood it. Once he finished getting up to the surface he would fill it all back in. Then they would simply need to find the others.
It was unlikely that they had gone too far to begin with. Markus was unlikely to leave them behind, let alone how much Anne would fight to go looking for him. If he was lucky he may not even need to go and tunnel if they happened to find them in this hole.
Johan decided to not waste time, and started to work on trying to get ahold of fire mana, he had little else to do anyways. It was a major struggle for him. If he had a great affinity with earth, then it was the total opposite with fire. It seemed way harder than manipulating light, yet it was often considered easier.
Maybe it was because he couldn't apply any prior knowledge to the control of heat and fire. He understood that things were more heat resistant than others, as well as conductive, but he didn't know nearly enough to determine a way to weave it into his magic this time. And unlike wind, which he could easily feel, fire just wasn't as easy to find, even less so in a somewhat damp hole in the ground.
Johan sighed. He would try to get more used to it near a lit fire, where fire mana would be easier to obtain. For now he simply decided to work on boosting his mana control instead since he wasn't making any progress with fire.
The way that Johan did this was that he simply pulled forth as many normal mana constructs as possible, and slowly made them more complex over time. It hurt his head a bit, but it was something that had proven somewhat effective. When he had first done this training he had only managed to create 5 or so at a time, but since then he had also gotten used to more complex structures, like his light trap. Now he could make a total of 13. It was enough that he could make his light trap and not need to focus entirely on it.
Training this way was taxing on his mind as he had to keep tabs on all of the different constructs. It was difficult, but his mind was getting better at doing multiple things at once. His ultimate goal was to be able to multicast, which was considered a skill that determined whether a mage had talent or not. Clara had done this when she imbued potions in front of Johan, marking her as a skilled mage.
Johan could cast almost simultaneously, but he struggled with getting it entirely correct, this was because, well, partially due to him not knowing many spells of the same element, but it was also because his mind could not completely run two separate spell forms at once. Though perhaps, he would be able to correct this in time as well.
Of course, Johan also considered Muscular Strengthening to not count as it was almost a passive ability to him at this point. He was even pretty sure it was active while he slept at this point.