The next morning was spent in a mixture of tracking and healing. Since Kate was going to get the basic framework for a Healing Union project started he was going to keep on training his healing magic. The problem came as he first tried to see what the limitations on healing bloodloss were.

To say that the test was initially a rather surprising failure would not be an understatement. Much like Kate had already told him, creating something from nothing took a lot of power. Both chanting and runic healing got around that with lengthy chants or complex patterns that would strengthen the mana and help it create. His style of casting couldn’t do any of it, he spent half his mana pool and had little more than a pint of blood to show for it. Not to mention that said pint of blood came from the total of three pigs who all bled out in the four hours.

For his fourth experiment he changed his angle. Instead of trying to create more blood through the direct healing spell he tried to get the bone marrow to create more. This had mixed results, not the least of the reason for it being that he was mixing the light healing spell with a holy spell to speed up the process.

He ended up running the test on two more hogs and came to some unfavorable conclusions. First of all regenerating blood would require food, not the biggest of surprises seeing as he was speeding up production and not creating but unlike every game he ever played in his past life here he also got to deal with the full process. A lot of intake also means a lot of waste, it was astounding how much shit came out of these hogs.

The waste was not the only problem with his new method however. Speeding up blood production also fried the marrow. From what he could tell after three experiments he would be able to get maybe two thirds of his full blood volume before it would have any immediate detrimental effects on him.

Other good news was that half his mana now produced more than ten boars worth of blood. Since this process wasn’t tied to the vitality of a patient, though higher-statted people would need either higher quality or quantity of food, he now had a reliable way to recover from blood loss.

With this all out of the way all that was left for him to test tomorrow would be the more fragile internal and sensory organs.Ajax didn’t bring any of the meat back this time, dealing with all that shit cut his appetite and he left it there to draw predators for tomorrow perhaps that way he could spare the boar population.

He did get a few odd looks from the guards that knew him when he returned empty handed but none said anything since they all also knew he was an adventurer now and going out for a few hours just to train was nothing new.

The plan to help Kate with the project planning that afternoon went completely out the window. First Tom had also had the day off and Kate hadn’t even been halfway through the boring procedural stuff by the time he returned. Secondly Alana and Judy had decided to apprehend him for the afternoon, both had been informed of his upcoming delve and had decided to give him a quick rundown of anything and anything of worth that they could use.

They had also informed him that he would be getting him new croc-skin gear tomorrow. A full set of gear despite providing the materials would cost him close to eighty gold, with everything he had gotten from selling his share of the loot he might be able to cover it. That idea got shut down rather quickly, the girls told him the cost was taken care of, while they might not be able to do that for his stat potions, something less than one hundred gold was not a problem for them anymore.

On his last free day he only spent two hours hunting and training his healing. This wasn’t because he wanted more time to rest but simply because he ran through most of his mana in that time. The session also proved highly productive.

The good news was that he was able to heal the more fragile organs in the body, yes the eyes seemed to come back colorblind, ears and nose also affected hearing and smell but they were repairable. Of the internal organs that was a much longer story.

Anything to do with the brain and heart was a hard no. Not much of a surprise there anyway and also not something that could benefit him as if he had to heal those for himself he would be dead already. The lunges were doable so long as one half of the lungs were intact and could function somewhat while he healed the damage. While this worked with a patient he knew it wouldn’t be something he could use on himself.

The other organs were all fixable, at least when it came to direct damage. When it came to poisoning all he could do was remove the toxin, any damage that had been done he wasn’t able to reverse. This also meant that he wouldn’t be able to revert the damage to his bone marrow should he need to speed up blood production. This wasn’t as limiting as it sounded since he knew as long as he got to a proper healer they would be able to revitalize those for him.

Thinking about dealing with blood also led to him realizing that blood types and transfusions weren’t used in this world, this might be something worth looking into but first he should just see what the reaction to his alcohol project is.

Returning home he spent the entire afternoon trying to make heads or tails of the way the Healing Union would set up a healing project. Since he wouldn’t be one of the people verifying and only the co-author of the project it didn’t matter all that much, the problem came as he tried to subtly lead Kate to the answer he knew should be correct.

“Seeing how ale can still spoil, I would guess that the higher the concentration of alcohol the better it would be.” he argued. “Not only that but since we aren’t interested in taste we can further distill the drinks past the usual 50% content they have at most.”

“That’s something that should be experimented with.” Kate argued back. “We’ll be trying out everything from just using water to ale to the hard stuff. Now that you mention it though we could also go above what is normally served, not only that but we should also try some of the mana imbued drinks that are served to higher vitality people.”

This was a part Ajax was unsure about. He didn’t know what effect mana concentration would have, both when dealing with high mana infections and alcohol. He did have a few guesses that a high mana infection would be more resistant to low mana disinfectant but he didn’t know anything about just how efficient things would be and what ratios were at play.

Their discussion was soon put to the side as Ajax, Kate and Tom all headed out to one of the nicer taverns to meet with his parents as well as Judy and Alana. As they got there Alana seemed to be quite in a mood.

“Should I ask?” he whispered to Judy once he was sure Alana wouldn’t overhear.

“No, best you stay away from that topic.” While her tone didn’t give anything away the way she clenched her teeth told him the problem also affected her as well.

“Is there something I can do to help?” He decided to follow that advice but still wanted to help even if he didn’t need to know the cause.

“Nothing you can do.” she shook her head. “The problem has already been handled, suffice it to say the reason for it was her brother acting entitled because he is the boss's brother.”

That cleared everything up so he did his best to keep the subject of conversation away from anything related to that topic for the evening. It wasn’t all that hard to do as once the topic of different sorts of booze was brought up because of the project Kate would be working on everybody had their focus on all the types of drinks Kate would have access to. Their flawless logic being that it had to be tasted first to ensure it was the right stuff.

Ajax woke up early the next morning. He had learned from his previous trip and now he made himself some tastier food for the trip to the dungeon village. Travel rations were still the way to go inside the dungeon but he could afford some luxury for an extra two days.

With all his gear packed and ready he headed out to the meeting spot. As Ajax arrived he noticed that about half the team had already gotten here. The first thing he noticed once he approached the team was the tomboyish girl that was talking to Jones, more specifically the porter bag she was carrying as it was the same one he carried last time.