Kochugunshikan Boukensha ni Naru

Editor: Thor’s Stone

“So how was it? Healing magic, I mean.”

“It was amazing! To think the wound would really close up in a short time like that. Oh, by the way, how much magic power is needed to cast the Heal spell? Uh, compared to something like, say, Fire Ball.”

“Let’s see. It can be said that you need ten times as much magic power needed for Fire Ball in order to cast the Heal spell.”

“Hm. It costs quite a lot of magic power, doesn’t it? Oh, and why did you need to ask the patient before you casted the second Heal spell?”

“It’s because having healing magic applied on you actually costs quite a lot. Did you notice that the wound still wasn’t completely healed earlier? I could have healed it up completely, but didn’t because the patient may not be able to afford it.”

I see. So it was to ask if the patient only wanted the bones to be healed, or include the wounded flesh as well.

“How much does it cost anyway?”

“My fee is normally a thousand Guineas per session. I’m not sure how much they have to pay the nurse and doctor though.”

It really was expensive. That amount would already allow one to stay at a high-class inn for ten days.

“You may think it’s expensive, but that sort of injury would take at least a couple of months to heal up, right? With that in mind, paying for healing magic so one can quickly return to his or her job can be said to be more preferable for a lot of folks. Even more so for injuries like those that can easily get fixed up by the spell.”

“So there are some injuries you find trouble treating as well?”

“There are. In cases where the bones are crushed into small pieces or broken in a complicated way, there usually would be some lingering aftereffects even after treating them with Heal.”

I see. That makes sense.

In the end, what I managed to observe earlier when the Heal spell was used was the bones and wound healing up as they were bathed in the light caused by the spell.

I thought analyzing it shouldn’t be too hard before, but it exceeded all my expectations. It looks like replicating that effect would be difficult.

“So, did that make you feel like buying a Heal magic tome, perhaps?”

A hint of expectation can be traced from the chief’s tone.

“So, uh, how much does a Heal magic tome cost anyway?”

“Cause you have the privilege of a member discount, you can get it for the low price of 136,000 Guineas.”

Expensive! Our money right now is just roughly 80,000 Guineas. It isn’t enough at all. But it’s not like I have any intention of buying one even if I did have money. And anyway, the money is the funds of the entire party, so I can’t use it without consulting Cleria and Elna first.

“It’s way over my budget. I need to save up quite a bit in order for me to buy one.”

“I see. How unfortunate.”

The chief’s expression clearly expressed her disappointment.

When we arrived back at the Magic Guild, today’s lesson finally started.

The lecture was finished by lunchtime. The contents of today’s lesson were the proper use and application of magic fluid, magic wires, and the like.

When I came back to the inn and met up with the girls, I saw Elna dabbing a wet cloth on her cheek. It seems Cleria managed to hit her there with a wooden sword during their spar earlier. It was red and a bit swollen.

“This is all due to my inexperience. I am truly sorry, Elna.”

“No, this is my fault for misreading your current skill with the sword, Ria-sama. To think that you have improved this much. So please lift up your head, Ria-sama. You should be proud of yourself for being able to hit a royal guard like me.”

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Elna was in much pain. She insisted she was fine, so we still decided to go out of the city and head to the clearing we made use of as magic practice grounds yesterday.

After having our lunch at Tally’s Place, we tried checking up on the Adventurer’s Guild, but found that no one has responded to the request yet. Well, I expected as much.

We finally reached the rocky area we went to yesterday. Cleria and Elna grabbed magic stones again in order to try extracting magic power from them, just like yesterday.

I mulled over the Heal spell I observed in the morning.

(Have you managed to analyze the process by which the spell this morning was able to initiate healing of the injury?)

『Unable to analyze.』

Yeah, I thought as much. It was just light shining down on the wound after all. No matter how I think about it, I can’t imagine what sort of principle was used to initiate healing of the wound by just shining light on it.

(Right, what type of method do you use to repair wounds anyway? It doesn’t matter if it’s just the basics. Can you show me some holo-vids on the subject?)

『Video is ready.』

Afterward, my surroundings changed. A huge close-up shot of a wound appeared before me. This was a video record of the wound I made on myself via cutting my arm a while back, zoomed in to a large degree.

The mouth of the open wound grew larger and larger until I was swallowed up inside it. Yeah. It seems I entered the cut. Curiously, there was no blood gushing out of the wound. It was probably Nanom who filtered it out so I can have a clearer view.

I kept going deeper and deeper until I managed to reach the deepest part of the cut. I stopped falling, but the image in front of me got larger instead. It continued zooming in until I was finally able to view things at a cellular level.

Within the deepest part of the cut, I was shown a cross-section of a cell that was enlarged to appear about one meter in length before me. But of course the actual wound wouldn’t look something like this. I’m sure Nanom arranged it so I can easily understand the vid.

A maintenance bot then appeared. So this maintenance bot was prepared by Nanom? I’m sure the nanomachines comprising Nanom don’t really look like this for real.

The maintenance bot grabbed both halves of the cut cell and pulled them toward each other, and finally used some sort of adhesive substance to glue them back together.

Is that supposed to signify medicine? It was too metaphorical that it turned into an educational vid aimed at kids.

Another maintenance bot appeared and did the same thing to another cell. More and more maintenance bots appeared, repairing more and more cells. They were so numerous in the end that I already lost count.

And then the image gradually zoomed out. I couldn’t see the countless bots mending the cells now, and saw the wound gradually closing up instead.

The rate of the wound getting fixed sped up little by little. The speed of the wound closing up was faster than me floating out of it. And in the instant I thought I would be swallowed by the flesh closing in on me from both sides, I was pulled out of the wound all at once. Whew. That scared me.

But that last part was clearly unnecessary, right?

It would have quite a lot of impact if the vid was paired with sound effects.

(Is this really how you do things?)

『Of course not. But the video is mostly correct, figuratively speaking.』

Was Nanom actually making fun of me or something? Oh well.

Since I don’t have any other references I can use, I guess I should just make do. Let’s try it out then.

I’ll form an image first. The maintenance bots rode on a stream of bright light and flew toward an open wound. Uh, of course maintenance bots don’t ride light rays like this in real life. Shall I replace the image of light completely by maintenance bots? Nah, that just sounds weird.

Oh right! I should just turn the bots into light spirits! Cleria did mention about her believing the existence of spirits if I remember correctly. It was somehow cute of her. It was very girly. Well, this planet very much felt like some sort of fantasy world anyway.

I changed the image. The spirits of light flew out toward the open wound along with the light beams. They were spirits of light, so I imagined their bodies to be like that of a space warship in the middle of warp – intangible and without a definite physical form. Afterward, they gradually penetrated the wound.

They’re spirits, so I’m sure they had special medicine particular to the country of light that they come from. The cute light spirits took out the medicine from their pots and started applying them to the damaged cells in order to repair them.

After applying the special medicine, the spirits cheerfully pulled the two splits closer to each other in order to put them back together. The number of spirits increased the longer the light shone on the wound. Like that holo vid from earlier, the wound gradually closed up.

Nice. It feels like I can use this image.

(We’re gonna try healing an injury.)

I took out one of the knives Beck gave to me as a gift and cut my arm with it. It bled out a little and felt a bit painful, but the pain went away almost immediately.

I had Nanom load the magicle charges. A [READY x10] notification soon appeared on the corner of my virtual HUD.

I tried repeating the image I created earlier inside my mind.

Heal!

Light was released from my palm aimed at the wound on my arm and started shining on it. The tiny spirits began flying out toward the wound.

Ah, it kinda seems like I saw the cute spirits hard at work fixing up the damaged cells on the wound.

The cut gradually closed up. It finally disappeared completely after a short while – as if it were never there in the first place.

Hey! I really did it man! Is this really okay!?

Well, I already did it, so it’s no use making a fuss about it now.

Come to think of it, I didn’t really need to aim my palm at a wound in the first place. But it would seem weird if spirits suddenly appeared from mid-air or something, so I decided to go with the whole palm thing when casting Heal anyway.

Oh yeah, wasn’t it possible for me to heal up Elna’s swollen cheek now? She was holding it in, but it still looked painful.

But I can’t use the image of cell halves being pulled back together in her case though.

I’ll try creating a different image in my head. The cute light spirits placed their medicine jars under their arms and started permeating the cells of the injury. Once they found swollen cells, they would pull out the medicine jar under their arms and would start applying it to the cells. After a short while, the swelling of the cells finally disappeared.

Let’s try with this image then. ……But will this really work? I wonder.

I can’t use it on Elna without testing it out first, so I decided to bruise myself instead.

(Please shut off my left arm’s sense of pain.)

After confirming that the sense of pain was nullified, I took the knife again and hit the back of my hand with the handle.

Uwaa, I think I overdid it. It looked like a pretty painful bruise.

I had Nanom load the magicle charges and repeated the image I had from earlier inside my head.

Heal!

The reddish bump gradually settled down and completely disappeared a few moments later.

Great, I did ! …I went and did it, oi. I had Nanom restore my sense of pain and confirmed that there were no problems.

“Elna, can you come over here for a bit?”

“What is it, Alan?”

“Please stay still for a bit.”

I stood in front of Elna after telling her not to move and raised up my palm. I placed it right next to her bruised cheek.

Elna turned red in embarrassment for some reason and started mumbling softly. Cleria looked shocked and seemed to want to say something.

Heal!

Light was released from my palm. Cleria and Elna’s expressions started changing after seeing that.

Elna’s bruise was healed up in no time.

“Do you feel any discomfort, Elna?”

“…No. The pain in my cheek is entirely gone. Was that the Heal spell?”

“You’ve become able to use Heal, Alan!?”

“Yeah. Actually, the branch chief of the Magic Guild demonstrated the spell to me this morning. It tried it out and managed to cast it successfully.”

“”Haaa〜…””

Both of them made a big sigh and looked exasperated for some reason.

Cleria and Elna’s magic reserves ran out soon, ending today’s magic practice session. We then went back to the city afterward.