Chapter 43 Healing

The others went to sleep, giving Lucas some time to figure out what to do. His dried-up hands were discolored, having a mix of white, purple, and green spots. Either way, something was wrong but at least he was lucky enough to not feel anything. He didn't have any feeling in them anymore like they were asleep.

As time passed, Lucas regained his memories. It took some time before random images started to pop up. Thinking about what happened to his eyes and hair, he couldn't explain it in any way. He just didn't find any kind of clue as well. He did have some idea what happened to his own hands.

'we used darkness in our hands like we would've used earth to strengthen our muscles, but why do we still have my hands? Darkness consumes everything, no exception, so how?'

'The darkness was powerful enough to destroy the bear's hide, but not completely consume it, so was it just a tiny bit of darkness, or it was imbued with willpower to not consume us?'

'Could be, our nerves are gone and it looks like the blood has stopped flowing, so maybe those were the sacrifices for using such a powerful attack.'

He tried to look inside of his own body, visualizing his own wounded hands. What he saw was a sorry sight. Giant blood clots were formed around his wrist, the veins were practically destroyed, and the nerves weren't even visible. Some muscle was still there, though it was also destroyed and had scratches, even the bones looked broken.

'I guess it was just a minimal amount of darkness to fight with. The pathways are in a little disarray, but not seriously hurt, a little Light magic could solve it.'

Although the magical pathways were quite easy to fix, his hands required an entirely different solution. The clots blocked the blood flow into the hands, making his hand look a lot worse than it actually was. Light magic could solve most of these things, but Lucas didn't have the necessary energy in him. He had slept for some time, but that wasn't enough to fill up his reserves.

'We should choose a safer location.', he was about to try some things out but didn't want his failures to hurt the few companions he had left.

Taking a different building to settle in he started to think of a way to patch himself up. 'During the fight we influenced the air to contain runes of light to brighten up the room, can we do the same but with different runes that heal?'

'I don't think that will work, the outside would be 'healed', not us. We would need to force it into a dome that we can place our hands in.'

'We don't have such a powerful grasp on the energy to do such a thing. Tch, we should've brought one of those potions.'

He still had a few of Venion's training potions left. His stash had depleted after a lot of training, but he still had about five left.

'We both know that there's no use crying over spilled milk, besides, we need those for later.'

Lucas couldn't destroy the blood clots because the blood didn't have a proper way to flow. It would immediately destroy other tissue or flow out of his hands. He needed the tissue in his hands to be fixed before blood started to flow through them again.

A healing spell could fix most issues, but Robert was asleep and he didn't have any energy left. 'Even if we had the energy, how would we even make the spells? Our hands are useless in this state.', Lucas realized then that while he could not use his hands, the monster he fought never even bothered to use them in the first place. 'If even those stupid spiders can do it, why would I be limited to using simple hand signs?'

And thus started his special training, he would imagine certain runes that would make simple spells like a small fireball and try to push his intentions into the atmosphere around him. In the beginning, nothing ever happened, his mind could not force his surroundings to take shape in a specific meaning.

Sadly, he didn't have the training or understanding to influence anything in the air, all his intentions resulted in nothing.

Time passed and after a good sleep, the others were awake. Since they slept the moment they got out of the mine without bothering to wait for nightfall the two woke up somewhere in the afternoon.

Robert and Liam quickly noticed that their strange third member wasn't there. Going outside they started to call for him. It didn't take long before Lucas came out of his own building revealing that he didn't heal his hands yet. They looked even worse. "What the hell did you do to your hands to make them like that?"

They had traces of frostbite and burns added with all previous symptoms. Lucas looked tired and exhausted, he had been looking for a way to fix his hands but had to wait until Robert was awake and willing to help him out.

"I experimented but didn't have enough energy to complete it, Robert, can you heal my hands?"

"Sorry Lucas, but I don't know how I would do such a thing."

"Don't worry, you just need to fix the tissue of my hand, I'll do the rest.", Robert had an incredulous look, 'How can he experiment with his own body like that.'

"Alright, fine by me, but don't blame me when your hands are still not healed after I'm done."

A simple healing spell later and the tissue was fixed, the nerves were back together with whole blood veins, but the clots and strange elemental things were still there. "Give me a minute.", Lucas sat down, and focused his will to create darkness energy, he let it quickly flow through his pathways before letting it destroy the blood clots. The moment the blood flowed into his hands, they hurt like hell. 'Please work', the fire and cold elemental energy on his hands were planted on them for a reason. Plus they actually were combined with a few light particles. The frostbite slowed the blood down due to the shrinking blood vessels, to make sure that his hands didn't take too much away from his main body. Once his hands were completely filled with blood, the fire particles activated to warm them back up to a suitable temperature for a human body.

"Hahaha, it worked, I knew it would work.", Robert and Liam didn't know what to say, to them, it didn't look even slightly logical, rather it looked borderline psychopathic. "How does that make any sense?"

"I read a similar procedure in one of the books back in the library, I thought I should try it out now that I could." After explaining how he thought things would work out, Robert was flabbergasted. "You're crazy, that could've completely backfired and destroyed your hands you know!"

"It did hurt a lot, and it still hurts a lot to move them, but they're fixed, are they not?", with a smirk on his face the two muttered something along the lines of unbelievable. Sitting down on the ground they planned on how to clear out the remaining monsters.