The biggest problem Ajax now faced was how was he going to try and adapt the healing magic he analyzed, unlike the other forms of magic he used before this one was a lot easier to mess up and had a much bigger impact than just lighting himself on fire briefly.

Any actual application would have to wait a while for his mana to regenerate as he was down to one hundred after recharging the mana crystal that final time. Kate on the other hand was very happy with having had three times the mana to practice with, on the way back she even went over the few details of using healing magic that weren’t covered in the deal she signed.

This pattern of him staying with Kate repeated over the next three days. Despite the teacher’s reluctance to have an outsider staying and listening in on their training there was no justifiable reason to kick Ajax out and with his help Kate mana supply shot through the roof.

On the fourth day Kate had the day off. This would be the perfect time for Ajax to go hunting. This way he could use the tried and true method of testing anything dangerous on something else before you tried it on yourself.

Outside the city the first thing he ran into was a wild boar. This was very much reminiscent of the first battle he ever had though the opponent now was so trivial a flick of his wrist would be all it would take to kill it.

He mercifully knocked out the boar before proceeding to spend the next few hours inflicting all spurts of shallow wounds through different methods. He wanted to be versatile for all types of damage, starting with crushing damage from a hammer, a slash from a sword, a piercing from an arrow to even a tear that claws would inflict.

He had seen Kate heal all of the different types in the last few days but found he had more success in dealing with crush and slicing damage than the other two. Most likely because these did the least amount of direct damage to the skin and muscle he was trying to heal.

By the time his mana ran out he was confident in using light mana to heal any damage that didn’t go past the muscles so long as he was still in one piece. Unlike what he expected it was surprisingly cheap for him to use healing magic on the boar, though he suspected that was because of the low physical stats the boar had.

It was barely past lunch time when he returned with two boars back to the city. The boars were low level enough that nobody would bother to tax an adventurer for them. Tomorrow he would try his hand at healing some internal organs but for now he had a few questions that Kate might be able to help him, not only that but he was really curious if disinfecting a wound would help reduce mana cost.

“Hey Kate.” he greeted as he all but crashed as he sat down on the chair.

“Hey Ajax” she smiled back “You look just like I do after I get a particularly difficult patient at the end of the shift.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out how my own take on the healing spells would work. Experimenting with something like that means I run through mana quite quickly.” he explained.

“You were doing what?” she all but jumped out of her chair. “That’s really dangerous, something very bad could happen if you don’t know what you are doing.”

“I know that. It's why I tested it all out on one of the two boars” he pointed to the cellar where he stored the meat he butchered. “Today I managed to get a decent idea on how to deal with all types of muscles and skin damage. By the way does the amount of mana required to heal increase depending on the physical stats of the patient?”

Kate had calmed down once he explained the part about using the boar as a guinea pig. As a healer she wasn’t all that happy about the fact that he was experimenting on living beings but she understood that this was the best course of action. Every great discovery came at a cost and Ajax was working on a whole new field of healing magic so that had to come at a price, better it be a few animals in the forest.

“Yes the amount of mana required does change but the way it does is very specific. Anything to do with your organs and blood is tied to a person’s vitality, since everyone spends a good portion of their stats there it always requires a lot of mana to heal any of those. From there muscles are directly related to strength, bones and skin to endurance and, oddly enough, joints and blood to dexterity. There is also a correlation your eyes and ears have to perception but it is much lower so they usually stick to vitality.”

This wasn’t good news but it was definitely something he was expecting. He would still stick to practicing on low-stated creatures so he would get an idea of how a complete spell was supposed to work but he knew doing anything meaningful for himself would cost much more.

“There is something else I wanted to ask you about. I noticed that all of your spells start off by coating and cleaning the wound.” he trailed off there waiting for confirmation.

“Yes, that's the first part of any spell. There are numerous records of doctors trying to create spells that skip that step but all have had massive problems with infections.” a small shudder went through her at the memory. “You shouldn’t be trying to remove that part. There are plenty of @#$% that we can’t see that form infections.”

The reason she disliked living beings being used as test subjects but understood it was because she had seen exactly what happens when a wound isn’t cleaned on a goat. Initially it was fine but three days later the leg started to get infected from the inside.

Ajax assumed that the word he hadn’t heard before was the equivalent of microbes in this language. “I wasn’t planning on doing that. What I was wondering was if there was a way to make spells cheaper by doing most of the cleaning before casting the spell.”

“And how are you planning to do that?” She was both cautious and curious about his line of thinking.

“Well, the process of infections seems really similar to that of food spoiling. It might be similarly cleansed by similar methods.” Ajax didn’t have almost any knowledge about infections from his past life, all he knew was what worked so he was now spouting bullshit that would lead to an answer he knew was correct.

“I’m not saying we should salt or pickle wounds now” he quickly followed up once he saw the skeptical look Kate was getting. “But what if something like Alcohol might work to clean out most of the bacteria? After all drinks with a high amount of alcohol in them don’t spoil.”

“That …” Kate hesitated a bit before she continued. “I’m not going to say it sounds like a good idea, but the logic is there enough that it might be true. I’ll look into it as a side project, we are encouraged to look into new things while working with the Healing Union”

“I’d be more than happy to help out” he started to offer but they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

Ajax got up and opened the door to find one of the young kids the guild used as messengers throughout the city standing there.

“I’m looking for an Ajax,” the boy said.

“I’m Ajax”

“Could I see your guild badge sir?”

Ajax was momentarily surprised but he realized that some form of ID would be required to deliver messages from the guild, otherwise anyone could just say that they were Ajax. After he showed the kid his badge a letter was produced for him and the messenger ran off.

Ajax came back to the table as he read the letter, he initially thought that it might be something official, or that maybe something important was taking place at the guild or in the city.

“Something happen?” Kate asked.

“No, just that you’ll only have me for another two days to help out with testing that theory.” he shook the piece of paper he received. “This came from the team, in three days we depart for our next delve.”

Ajax was excited to go on another delve. He had enjoyed the last one and couldn’t wait to see what other scenarios the dungeon might throw at them on the next floor. Not only that but the letter had also mentioned that he wasn’t going to be a porter for this next trip.