Recovery

Lyra found herself hopping outside of the dungeon's entrance, only to bump into someone else who had just been forced to exit. There weren't many others who had come out of the dungeon yet, as they would need to pass through the door in their respective rooms like she had with hers. She couldn't help but stare back at the dungeon's entrance, wishing Kantan could have left with her. When her eyes came to where the portal should have been though, she found nothing but smooth stone.

A soft sigh escaped her lips as part of her felt guilt at everything that was happening. If she hadn't been so aggressive in turning down Bamor, maybe he wouldn't have done something so drastic. As much as she wanted to go back in and support Kantan, his need for her was outside the dungeon. With one last glance at the dungeon's entrance, she turned around and made her way toward the group of townsfolk who were coming to greet those who were leaving.

Moving was difficult with her injured leg, and before long a couple of medics arrived to help escort her to the medical tent. As she was being led toward the medical tent, Elder Zho came to congratulate her and receive her escape talisman and essence conversion artifact. "I am glad to know that you did not need to use your talisman, Lyra. If you had, I would have had no hope for the rest of the students." Her teacher wore a happy and confident smile, which under normal circumstances would have made her happy.

She managed to force a cordial smile, while nodding. "It was harder than I thought in some places." Lyra was trying to piece together what she was going to say about how she got injured, and seeing her teacher's expectant look led her to tell half of the truth. There were too many students who hadn't left yet at a first glance, which means that a lot of them were about to leave the dungeon without killing the floor guardian.

The floor guardian was a demonic wolf, which was comparable to a rank 2 demon in some ways. When the other students left without having fought it, it was bound to draw some attention. It would be weird for to act like nothing had gone wrong, especially since one of the other teachers was talking the the student who had left just before her. Lyra could already see a confused look on that teacher's face as the student was talking. "While the dungeon was hard, I don't think I completed it the traditional way. The last demon I fought was a demonic spider, which isn't what the dungeon guardian was supposed to be."

Zho frowned at her words, and seemed to think for a while. "You say the last demon was a spider, and not a wolf? That is unusual for sure. Was there anything else that was out of place, something that might have made the dungeon change its operation?" She was surprised at how not surprised her teacher was, wondering if he had already heard something about what had happened.

She put a mock face of thinking for a second before she replied with something that everyone must have heard. "At some point not long after I finished dealing with the spider i heard something roar deep within the dungeon. I was busy healing my leg and replenishing my chi, so it had really caught me off guard. The roar didn't last very long, but it set my nerves on end like nothing else has. The spider was the one to hurt my leg, but it was nowhere near as scary as that roar was."

Elder Zho seemed unsure of her story, but didn't seem to bring up any of his questions. He simply patted her shoulder briefly before giving her a warm smile. "Well it is no matter for now, you are injured and need to be tended to. At the end of the day, you completed the trial the dungeon had for you and I can feel the chi in your chi is active. Congratulations on becoming awoken and welcome to the Astaire clan." With that, he took the artifacts she had been given and left to convene with the other teachers.

Lyra didn't have much time to look at them, as she was being led into the medical tent, but she saw many thoughtful or worried expressions between the group of them. The medical warriors were few, but there were plenty of nurses and assistants that could handle most basic wounds. There were not many aspects that dealt with the human body that didn't focus on destroying it. Water, light, and life warriors were the only warriors that could directly cause some type of healing effect on others, each focusing on various types of healing.

Water warriors focused on cleansing and purifying people of toxins or poisons. They would clean out a person's blood and channels, allowing for a person's natural regeneration to work as efficiently as possible.

Light warriors worked in a similar fashion, but they focused on forced regeneration. By infusing a person with light essence you could destroy harmful substances by disintegrating them. If you had a piece of shrapnel that was in a bad place and couldn't be removed normally, a light warrior could destroy it with a fine precision and allow healing to continue. They worked best on battlefields where they needed a rougher hand, or people's wounds were more severe.

They could use the light to cauterize wounds to prevent people from bleeding out, not unlike a fire warrior could. The key difference between a fire warrior and a light warrior trying to heal someone, was that fire was inherently uncontrollable to such a fine degree as light essence. Light was like a scalpel, while fire was the hack saw.

Life warriors were the rarest of the trio, only one or two existed in the kingdom according to common knowledge. One worked for the king as a personal physician, while the other was more myth and legend. The second was a recluse that only came out in times where dangerous diseases or war were present. He would only heal civilians, ignoring the army entirely. The king had tried to recruit him multiple times, but he was a high enough rank that it was hard to force him to do anything. It was rumored that he was a peak Ruby rank warrior, which is on par with the King.

Life warriors work in a much more direct way than the other two types of healers, as those aspects only partially focused on healing. The life aspect was not capable of causing physical damage like other aspects. Life damage only interacted with a person's life force, which was both a blessing and a danger. If a life warrior wanted you to live, you were likely going to live. They could sustain your life force directly even if you were heavily injured, granted it cost a significant amount of energy. Life warriors could help your body fight an infection or parasite by strengthening temporarily enough to destroy them. With enough time and energy they could regrow limbs. Lyra had even heard that the King's life warrior had once rebuilt someone from just the head. He had maintained the person's life force after they were beheaded, and then grown a body from the neck down.

The Astaire clan was nowhere near important enough to have a life warrior, but there were artifacts that had been made by life warriors in the past as well as alchemical potions. Since she had passed her trial, she was quickly brought to a chair near one of the tents walls. At the wall of the tent was a cabinet with pill jars and potion bottles that were managed by the clan for special events. One of the nurses grabbed a pill bottle from the shelf and retrieved one. The scent from within the bottle was herbal, and incredibly powerful smelling. The nurse handed Lyra one of the pills and explained that it was meant to help her leg recover exceptionally quickly.

Lyra quickly down the pill with the help of some water another nurse had brought her, and waited for the effects to kick in.