On my way to the healing hall, a man walked toward me. I stopped and stared. He appeared to be in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a simple robe, but what caught my attention was his beard and the trouble it was causing him. It reached the floor, and every couple of steps, he stepped on it, nearly tripped, then righted himself and kept walking.

I had my suspicions.

Bu Casure

Wizard Level 32

Ha! I knew it.

I checked my Storage and found the last few scrunchies I had left. Took one out, approached him, folded his beard in half, and secured it with the scrunchie. He shot me an evil look, made a sound that was a mix between a growl and a huff, and kept walking. I paused and watched his back. He didn’t take off the scrunchie.

Mahya was not the only genius in our party. Dusting my shoulders, this time not only mentally, I continued on my way.

For another two weeks, I worked in the outpost, regrowing the limbs of Cleaners who had lost them, interspersed with treating new arrivals. In the evenings, I went through the healing books we had taken from the healer who attacked us. They were interesting. Not so much for the knowledge they contained, but for their approach.

With my medical knowledge from Earth, I had always viewed and approached the human body from a physical standpoint, with the mana system treated as a separate layer interposed on top of it. Or maybe not on top, but running through it. The healing books, however, approached the mana system as the primary structure, with the body itself seen as the shell that carried it.

That difference in perspective was new.

For example, where I thought of regrowing a limb as reconnecting blood vessels, nerves, and muscle fibers with mana guiding the process, the books described it as repairing and extending the mana channels first. Once the channels were whole, the body’s physical tissues were expected to follow along naturally, almost like a vine growing along a trellis.

Another example was illness. On Earth, doctors explain diseases as being caused by bacteria, viruses, or damaged cells. In the books, disease was described as distortions or blockages in the flow of mana. A fever, for instance, was not the body fighting off an infection but the mana system forcing impurities out through heat.

This approach prompted me to rethink many things. Perhaps the physical and the magical were not two separate layers, but more like water and salt in the sea, joined so completely that they couldn’t be pulled apart, only seen differently depending on how one looked at them.

I experimented with the idea and had mixed success. My spells were Regrow Flesh and Regrow Bone, not Regrow Mana Channel, so I still had to work with flesh. No matter how I tried to extend the mana channel beyond the severed part, it wouldn’t take. I even tried free mana manipulation with the same result.

On the other hand, when I regrew the main bone and then worked with the first layer or two, something changed. Instead of pushing straight up through muscle, fat, and skin, I cut a mana channel along the new bone and shaped it to match what should have been there. Once that channel was in place, the rest of the process didn’t exactly happen on its own, but it aligned with me. It felt as though my mana was guiding the body instead of doing all the work.

That minor change made a tremendous difference. The strain on the patient’s body was less, the amount of mana required dropped, and the tissue formed more cleanly. Before, I was forcing the body to accept what I was building. With this method, it felt like I was laying a path and the body followed it. The results spoke for themselves. I could regrow half a limb in a single session, rather than spreading it across two or three sessions.

Another significant difference in viewpoint was their approach to disease and how to treat it through mana. They still used healing spells, and Healing Touch was considered the main spell of every healer above level ten, but they didn’t cast it directly on the illness. Instead, they targeted the imbalance or disruption in the mana system, letting the body follow the correction and heal itself.

That detail surprised me, since I couldn’t understand how they functioned without the spell below level ten. It took some digging to find the answer. I’d created my own spell before ever getting the class, and when I worked with Rima, I taught her my spells through mana control once she got the class. Because of that, I didn’t know what the usual progression of a classical healer looked like.

It turned out that when a healer first gained the class, they got Minor Heal, Assess, and Clean. Assess was a weaker version of Diagnose; it only revealed a patient’s general condition, not specifics. At level five, they got Purify, and at level ten, Minor Heal advanced into Healing Touch. That explained a lot. The spells I’d seen Len cast hadn’t seemed to do much, and now I knew why. Minor Heal was indeed very minor.

I couldn’t experiment with the new knowledge about diseases in the outpost, as all my patients were injured in dungeons and portals rather than suffering from a common cold. Still, I made a mental note of the approach and hoped that targeting the mana system rather than the disease would be easy in practice when I got the chance. Yes, mana followed intention, I knew that well, but sometimes it needed nudges or even strong, pigheaded pushes in the right direction.

Besides that, the books didn’t have anything new to teach me. They possessed solid knowledge of human biology, with drawings that detailed the various systems, and a sufficient understanding of the importance of hygiene. The difference was that they didn’t mention viruses or bacteria at all. Everything was viewed as mana or polluted mana, and the clash between the two.

Another point where they were lagging was nutrition. They didn’t know about vitamins, proteins, carbs, or anything else. Everything was approached in terms of the amount of mana in the relevant food. It was interesting to read, and I was sure that mana amounts had a strong bearing on physical condition, but I still believed my knowledge of nutrition had its place of honor, even in magical worlds. The books and I agreed to disagree.

During those two weeks, I rebuilt the regeneration spirals I had unraveled. My success rate remained at only 96 percent, despite my efforts. It was disappointing, but not terrible in the grand scheme of things. It was still better than 90 percent, for example. Building them was tough, so after each attempt, I took a few days off before starting the next. The fourth spiral, which made it my fifth overall, went easier than last time. That gave me hope, so I pushed on to the sixth. That was a mistake.

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It started steadily enough. I split my mind, created the Absorb Mana aspect, grabbed a thin tendril of mana, and began weaving the rings. The first layers down the cores and the main channel settled into place without too much resistance. It was still challenging, especially when pushing it as tightly as possible to fit as many rings as possible, but manageable. My breathing was tight, my hands shook in my lap, but the spiral held. For a while, it looked like I might actually pull it off.

Then I hit the halfway point and began the climb back up the orbs.

The pressure built too fast. My grip slipped, the weave collapsed, and the spiral shattered. A wild mana wave surged from the unraveling rings and tore through my whole body from the inside out. The shock hit every part of me at once. My chest locked up, my muscles spasmed, and pain exploded through my body like an erupting volcano. My mana channels strained against the surge, fire rolled through them, and locked my body. The harder I tried to hold on, the worse the damage grew.

I gasped for air and tried to cast Healing Touch, but nothing happened. The spell wouldn’t form. Despite the pain, I concentrated as hard as I could and looked inside myself. My channels were shredded. I tried again with Fortify Life Force, desperate to stop the pain, but the result was the same. Nothing. My mana refused to work.

Blood flooded my mouth and dripped from my nose and eyes. My vision blurred, colors smearing together, and every attempt to draw in a breath felt like I was trying to breathe in water, but I couldn’t cough to clear the passage.

Health: 6,512/9,500

Health: 5,182/9,500

Health: 3,974/9,500

I collapsed on the floor, twitching as the wave of mana kept tearing at me, leaving me weaker and weaker. My arms shook, my legs went limp, and finally even the pain dulled.

Health: 1,459/9,500

Mana: 0/14,000

My profile winked out. Darkness closed in, and I blacked out on the floor.

I opened my eyes to a pounding in my chest and coughed hard, spitting out a blob of blood. The ceiling beams swam into focus. I was in bed.

“John awake!” Rue shouted in my mind. His voice boomed with relief, and a thunder of paws and footsteps charged up the stairs.

The door slammed open. Mahya, Al, Rue, and Rabban burst into the room, crowding around my bed in a rush. Four sets of eyes stared down at me like I was some rare exhibit on display.

“What?” I croaked, my throat raw. Another cough racked me, and I spat out a second bloody blob.

“I am happy you are alive,” Al said with a nod.

Mahya’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I’m gonna kill you," she said at the same time.

Rabban glanced between the two of them, then pointed his thumb at Al. “I’m with him.”

Rue, meanwhile, was busy sniffing every inch of me. He broke off every few seconds to lick my cheek, leaving trails of slobber over my face and eye. I flinched, blinking through the mess.

“How did you come to be in such a condition?” Al asked.

“I was building a regeneration spiral and lost control.” My throat felt raw when I spoke, like I’d swallowed glass.

Mahya took a deep breath, gave me one last murderous glare, then her shoulders relaxed. “How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” I croaked.

She bent down, slid an arm under my back, and half lifted my head and shoulders. Al stepped in with a vial in hand and tipped a potion into my mouth. Swallowing burned worse than talking, and I winced as the liquid went down.

Rue hopped onto the bed, turned in a circle, and settled beside me with his head on my chest. “John go sleep to be healthy.”

Health: 2,223/9,500

Mana: 500/14,000

I tried to cast Healing Touch and nearly screamed from the pain. Looking inward, my channels were in tatters.

The same scenario repeated a few more times. My health continued to climb steadily, albeit stubbornly, until it reached 6,558/9,500—then it plateaued and wouldn’t rise any further. My mana crept up even slower, reached 932/14,000, and then stopped too.

I tried casting spells again and again, only to almost black out from the pain. Each attempt ended the same way, with zero results. Mahya stood nearby with her arms folded, her eyes dark with worry, watching me flinch and choke back cries every time I tried. I caught her glare, but I didn’t stop testing, which only deepened her scowl.

It took me a while to figure it out, but then a thought struck. If my channels were wrecked, how was my mana still climbing at all? Examining myself carefully, I found the answer: the channels leading to my eyes were intact. At least that. The problem was, I had no idea how to channel mana through my eyes to repair the rest of my channels. After a long, frustrating deliberation, I admitted I couldn’t do it and needed an alternative.

“Mahya, give me something to bite down on,” I said.

Her head snapped up. “Are you serious?” she asked, her tone sharp.

“Dead serious,” I rasped.

She narrowed her eyes, muttering something under her breath, but finally yanked a belt from her waist and slapped it into my hand. The evil eye stayed firmly in place. Although I knew the anger stemmed from worry, her bedside manner needed serious work.

With the belt clenched between my teeth, I reached inward, grabbed a tendril of mana from my Spirit orb behind my diaphragm, and began the long process of repairing the damage from the inside out.

It was torture. Like forcing a hot iron rod through my arms and legs, carving a channel through the wreckage inch by inch. Every nerve screamed, sweat soaked my clothes, and I trembled on the bed while Mahya hovered at the edge of my vision, fists clenched, caught between wanting to stop me and letting me push on.

Later, Rabban dropped into the chair beside the bed, his broad shoulders slumped as he looked at me with concern. “Rue told us you were hurt. We rushed back from the zone and found you half dead. Sonak rushed to the alchemy lab to drag Al over, and only his potions kept you alive. You were out for two days before they took hold, and you finally opened your eyes.”

It took another week of that brutal channel work before I could cast spells again. Only then, at last, did my mana climb back to full. My health followed once I could cast spells and heal myself the rest of the way.

During this time, people from the Cleaners heard I’d been hurt and wanted to visit me. We didn’t want them finding out about the house, so I hobbled out, shut it down, and stayed in the small place I’d rented. The local manager came by twice, and the rest of the workers from the healing hall also dropped in several times. They were so relieved to see I was alive that it was genuinely touching.

The gang kept themselves and me fed by buying food from restaurants, griping the whole time about how it wasn’t nearly as good as my cooking. Honestly, that was nice to hear.

Eventually, I was back on my feet, feeling fine, and even Mahya stopped shooting me the occasional death glare. To thank them for taking care of me, I made us a proper dinner—Mexican food, with my own twist. I cooked up beast bear enchiladas smothered in sauce, roasted peppers stuffed with spiced meat from those nasty mana-portal birds, and a big pot of rice with beans and herbs. For Rue, I set aside a mountain of smoked crabs.

With the speed at which he demolished the crabs, and with Rabban steadily helping him along, I suspected we would have to return to Tatob and visit the crab portal. On second thought, that would also give Mahya a chance to sell the turquoise fur in Saa.

Yeah, life was back to normal.