Nathan had a single goal today, to finally sit down and research healing magic properly. If he used all his mana, he would need all day tomorrow to recover in time for the next mission with Brawn’s team.

He started his day with cardio training. He didn’t want to try to run later when he was almost empty on mana. Nathan kept a close on his stamina as he ran, and once he was at 70 points, he stopped.

“Nearly five miles. Not bad.” Nathan glanced at his spear and shook his head in defeat. “Fine, but only because I want to make as much progress today as possible.”

Nathan walked over to the straw dummies that were lined up and started to attack it. He mentally imagined it as the Slime and hesitated. After a second he screamed and thrusted forward with his spear, piercing the canvas body.

Nathan pulled it out and felt off. “This isn't’t how I imagined to train with a spear.” He mumbled to himself. He recalled Elderades training regime and went back to thrusting, mocking her instructions.

“You should be able to thrust at least ten times in five seconds. You should be able to throw your spear at least twenty meters. You should be able to sweep it in front of you and back faster than someone can approach between swings.”

Nathan of course, pointed out that he could just get skills for those movements. El pointed out that you don’t always need skills to perform action. Anyone can use a spear, even without the [Spear Mastery] skill. It’s a representation of how well you can use it. Skills like [Spear Thrust] are similar. It both teaches you the skill, but also reflects on your mastery of it.

Once Nathan was down to 20 stamina he ended his personal training. He felt dumb doing it, and didn’t put his full effort behind the movements. Nathan walked over to a bench and sat down to cool off.

“This is going to be dumb. I hope that the trainer I was promised doesn't treat me worse than she did. I might end up quitting out right then and there.”

Once Nathan was no longer sweating, he walked over to one of the combat overseers.

“Hey there, anyone who wants free healing can come find me at that bench right there.” Nathan pointed at a nearby bench with nobody on it. “The deal is they have to do what I say while I patch them up.

The overseer works as a referee and peace keeper. Both to stop people from killing each other and to keep people from accidentally severing a limb. Nathan wasn’t the only healer there, but they all were clerics or priests and asked for payment for their service.

It took only two minutes before a line started to form in front of Nathan. The first person had a few minor scratches from knives or daggers.

Nathan patted the bench and looked him over. “How many cuts do you have on you?”

“Eh, lost count after twelve. I’m so close to ranking up my [Dodge] skill. I just need some more Health and I can get it to 7!”

If at rank 6 he was this bad, either his sparring partner was good, or 6 was horrible. “Alrighty, just sit still and let me do my work.”

The man sat like a statue. “Damn, if I told him to bark like a dog, I feel like he would.”

Nathan placed his hands on either side of the worst of the cuts on the man's back. His brain tickled like when he was curing Frank, but this time he really noticed it. Nathan sent a single pulse of [Healing Touch] curing the man of 10 Health, and watched as closely as possible to the wound.

Nathan blinked and missed most of what happened. “Damn it, it’s too fast!” The cut was completely healed with no scarring that Nathan could tell. A few of the other near by cuts were healed up as well.

“How much health are you missing….uh, sorry I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Jagah. And I’m at like 60%. Was just above half before you did your spell. My Health Recovery is decent, but not that good.”

Nathan frowned. “I need flat numbers please.”

“My max is 330. I’m at 198 n- oh it just went to 199.”

Nathan nodded and went to his right arm, where the most of the cuts were. “Too small, I either need a large wound, or a way to slow the healing down.”

Nathan finished patching him up enough to stop the bleeding and sent him off. His next test subject….patient was an Elven woman. She only had some bruises and two quick heals patched her up. Nathan couldn’t deduce too much from her sadly.

He looked down the line and called out. “Anyone with broken bones or large wounds, come up front. Everyone else, sorry, but I need to test something.”

Everyone grumbled as two people cut from the line running up to him. One was holding his arm that was obviously broken. The other looked perfectly fine.

Nathan looked at the halfling that looked perfectly fine. “I don’t think you are bleeding out or have any broken bones.”

He held up his hand that flopped to one side and the sound of gravel came from it. “Oh, my hand is probably shattered. I got a skill that makes me ignore pain for several minutes. In two it will come all crashing down on me at once. Will hurt like fucking hell.”

Nathan’s eyes went wide and started to cast heal on him. Knowing he could feel no pain, he gripped the hand directly. He could feel the shattered bones. If he was back in his hospital, they would amputate the hand. Fixing bones like this was impossible.

However, this was something he wanted to test, and badly. He worked quickly by trying to align the bones the best he could before using healing magic. Then he did a full power [Healing Touch] and focused on what he could feel.

Bones started to move around under the halflings skin. To Nathan it felt like worms moving. He did it once more at full power just in time. The Halfling let out a quick scream and passed out from the pain.

Nathan was able to hold him up since he was so small. He continued to focus on the bones and was astonished. “It’s not only growing bone back, but it’s fully reconnecting everything!”

He would have spent every penny from his Earthly bank, plus everything he owned here to be able to watch an MRI of the bones being replaced.

Nathan felt the halfling's hand and was surprised to feel it was perfectly normal. Granted, until the little guy woke up, Nathan had no clue if the nerve endings were fixed. “Yet, I have a hunch they are.”

Nathan turned to the human with a broken arm. “Don’t suppose you can suppress pain too?”

“Nope, this already hurts like a bitch. Landed wrong on the obstacle course”

“How much Health are you missing?” Nathan asked, curious as to what a broken bone equaled in missing health.

“Missing 40. However, it’s a broken bone, so my stamina dropped a fuck ton.”

“That’s something I didn’t know. Broken bones make you lose stamina?”

Nathan poked his arm, causing the man to hiss back. “Alrighty, I promise I am going to fix that, but hold on a moment.” Nathan walked over to the first aid kit on sight and grabbed supplies to make a splint.

The man eyed Nathan, obviously worried at the lack of healing magic being applied to him.

“Okay, going to have to jolt your arm around, so don’t scream too loudly, if you need to bite down on something, I have this stick for you.” The bit was denied and Nathan shrugged.

He did his best to make the splint quickly and as painlessly as possible. A few priests were chuckling at Nathan at his non-magical solution to the problem. Other onlookers were either impressed by his first aid, or unimpressed by the lack of spell usage.

Once the arm was properly splinted. Nathan knew that arm was as aligned as he could get. He then cast [Healing Touch] at twenty mana.

“There we go, how does that feel?” Nathan asked.

The man made a flat face at Nathan. “Couldn’t have done that in the first place? It’s all fixed. Back to full health, thanks mate.” He started to tear off Nathan’s splint as he walked back to the obstacle course.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what’s your Health Recovery!”

He didn’t get a response, but if missing 40 Health was a problem, then it probably wasn’t very high. “Why did 20 Mana fix his arm and 40 Health?”

Nathan noticed a blinking light that more than likely held the answers he needed.

Skill Up:

Cardio -> 3/∞

Increase speed by 1% per rank. For every 5 ranks increase Stamina Recovery by 1%.

Field Medic -> 4/8

Increase knowledge of wounds and how to treat them in a battle scenario.

First Aid -> 5/5

Knowledge on Proper Medical Aid.

Healing Touch > 5/10

Touch a living creature and spend up to 50 Mana and the target will Recover an amount double to that amount.

Knowledge (Vitamancy) - 10/∞

Increase knowledge on the magic of Life.

Skill Unlocked: Second Aid - 0/5 [Tier 2]

Increase effectiveness of First Aid based skills by 5%

Skill Acquired: Vitamancy Novice

Increase Vitamancy spell effectiveness by 10%

Nathan stared at his mental medical monitor reading over slowly. He was not only ecstatic at the fact he had access to his first Tier 2 skill, but he received a skill as well. On the other hand, he was confused. [Vitamancy Novice] only increased healing effectiveness by 10%, where did the other 30% come from?

As soon as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. It was a combination of First and Field Medic. “The splint reduced the amount of mana needed to fix his arm!”

Nathan quickly left the training yard and ran to his bunk. The fact his [Spear Mastery] never improved didn’t cross his mind at all. He pulled out his books and flipped page after page looking for anything about what he discovered.

“If I can use physical applications to fix wounds to reduce mana costs, just how inefficient are healers being?”

Nathan grabbed the book on Gemstones and paused. He knew Ragnork used a few gemstones himself to improve his healing spells at the clinic. He also used Holy Water and who knows what else to aid in his work.

With a sigh of defeat, Nathan sat down on his bed. “Great, when I thought I made a breakthrough discovery, it’s apparently already well known. Just something I was never told because I am not part of their damned church cult thing.”

His depression only lasted for a few seconds. The fact he made so much progress in a single day was motivating. He might not have any mana, but if using real world applied medicine can help, he will need supplies on his next mission.

“If I go on another mission.” Nathan still didn’t want to fight, even after what El did to him yesterday. However, he made an agreement with himself. “Monsters are that, monsters. So long as we don’t fight people, everything will be fine. It’s like how it used to be in the old times when America was still being explored. Hunters were hired to get rid of dangerous creatures, that’s what they are. Dangerous monsters. A threat to the innocent people.”

Nathan decided to wait to buy supplies until he knew what the next mission was. Which tomorrow would be the team meeting. He also would finally get to meet Thu. He kept an eye on the empty bed all week in hopes to find evidence of his elusive roommate. Yet, no signs of anyone being there existed. None of his roommates saw anything either.

With nothing to do for the remainder of his day, Nathan stopped by the frost desk to update his records with his newest skill acquired.