The knife was bad, and it stung more than such a small slice should have. He ignored his body’s reactions. Fighting for his life almost every day for over forty years and suffering injury after injury as a result meant he had built up an impressive pain tolerance. He could have (and had) fought through shattered bones and minor issues like disembowelment when the situation demanded it. Magic could heal those types of injuries easily enough, but you still needed to kill the monster attacking you before there was time to address anything that wasn’t a, ‘I’m going to die in the next half a second’ issue.
These cuts are nothing, he reminded himself.
They were barely worth paying attention to, but he still felt each one. They all hurt, and felt like being pinched by someone not holding back and using their nails at the same time. The main culprit was the knife. He wished he had easy access to something other than a toy, but he also understood why that particular restriction was put in place.
Children, especially ones as young as the ones in this dorm, could be stupid, and you really didn’t want them playing with combat knives, and especially not the type he was wishing for. Extra sharp enchanted edges were definitely a no-go. That could be… Tom pulled his imagination up. That was not an outcome he wanted to think about.
Slice after slice, he kept going. The injuries he inflicted now would have to last him all the way to the afternoon, if he was to maximise his practice time. There would be no opportunities intraday to reapply the injuries, and so he had to make sufficient cuts that eight hours of healing wouldn’t remove them completely. With his mana regenerating fully every six minutes, that was over eighty cuts to heal.
The tip went in and he pulled sideways. Then, between every cut, he tested the slice he had made twenty cuts earlier to ensure it wasn’t too deep. He figured any bleeding caused would have clotted by then. Because it was pitch black under the covers, he checked by running his finger over the cut and then sucking it. Wet blood would get transferred to his finger and dry one wouldn’t.
When he was checking the tenth time, a copper taste filled his mouth, and, with a frown, he applied his healing. He didn’t want his clothes to show blood stains when he left his bed.
Twenty minutes after he had woken, he was finished and rolled out of his alcove with the visible signs of the self-mutilation covered by his top. In the soft lighting of the dorm, he was relieved to see that his covers were spotless. There were no revealing red smears anywhere; not that it mattered. Given what he had learned, he was certain there would be a security process in place to protect him. Probably something like a room wide-channelled clean to make sure any activities like his own weren’t noticed by anything sapient.
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As he climbed down from his alcove, his chest and stomach burned like someone had thrown a cup of hot water over them. With an application of willpower, he kept his expression perfectly smooth, not betraying any indication of the agony every slight movement was causing.
It was pretty funny when he thought about it.
The injuries he had inflicted were the definition of minor, and, while each cut contributed little by itself, a hundred in proximity was more painful than lots of more serious injuries. Examples of the latter ones included the dislocated knee which had hardly troubled him even when running through the trees from a pack of monsters that resembled raptors out of Jurassic Park. The matters were made worse by the fact that whenever he moved, the crusty scabs covering the cut broke and triggered the nerve endings.
Thankfully, there was no one out of bed and active in the room, but he didn’t lower his guard. He couldn’t know how many people were watching from the warmth of their personal alcoves. Tom forced his body to move normally rather than giving into the instinct to hunch over to reduce the effect of his clothes rubbing against his wounds. As usual, he did his business, then went through the cleaning loop that seemed to activate for longer than usual – presumably, it needed more time to remove all the crusted blood that had leaked. The scabs still required to hold the sides of the scratches together would be left untouched. Magic was amazing like that.
Then, with his back forced straight, he faced the day and acted normally - except for secretly applying his heal every six minutes. Half an hour before he was to enter the isolation room, the last of the cuts were fixed and after he went through a cleaning loop it already felt like a distant memory - but one Tom knew he would be repeating every day going forward.
An automaton led them to the isolation rooms and, without fuss, Tom went straight into his assigned one. The moment there was a ding to confirm his privacy, he tore off his top and examined himself in the mirror. His chest looked like a normal child’s, except for a couple of faint lines where the cuts had not fully healed. The vast majority of the scratches were completely gone. For such a crappy spell, it had done surprisingly well. Curiously, he checked on its progress.
Spell: Heal Minor Scratches (Tier 0) – Level 3
This spell allows the healing of surface level wounds with poor efficiency.
The level of the spell had jumped up, but given how many times he had cast it, that improvement was not that much of a surprise. Unless it got some incredible threshold bonuses, it was always going to be crappy, but that wasn’t why he was doing it. He was certain that one of the hidden criteria for an evolution was the number of uses.
With a shrug, he seized his slightly too long spear and threw himself into training until sweat was dripping off him. A quarter of an hour later, feeling physically unable to continue, he grabbed a folder he had noticed from the right of the door. It had the words ‘Current Events’ upon its cover.