Chương 67: Chapter 68 - The First Rule

"Humans, mostly," Arien answered carefully.

"I worked for a local Healer for a while. I wouldn't really call it formal practice, though. I helped receive patients, cleaned up, prepared things during treatments… occasionally I used small amounts of Life mana to accelerate healing."

"Occasionally." The way Lamaral repeated the word made Arien uneasy.

"Yes, Master." They continued deeper into the ward.

"And that is how you achieved your Specialization?"

"No. That happened later, Master." For the first time since they had entered the ward, Lamaral glanced at him.

"How?"

"I treated my sister's employer, Master. She'd had problems with one of her knees for years."

"And she allowed an inexperienced child to tamper with her body using magic?" Lamaral asked it calmly, which did little to reassure him. Arien frowned.

"She was in a lot of pain. And it wasn't the first time I'd treated her. She always felt better afterward." Lamaral gave no indication whether she considered that a satisfactory answer. They walked in silence for several more steps before she stopped beside one of the beds. A middle-aged man lay asleep beneath a thin blanket. His right arm was wrapped in bandages from the elbow down, and the exposed skin above them looked feverishly warm. Sparse particles of Death mana drifted around the wrappings.

Lamaral gestured toward the arm.

"Heal it. No spells. Use only Aspect mana, and affect nothing above the elbow. If you feel yourself losing control, stop immediately." Her blue eyes settled on him.

"I'll be watching." That did not make him feel any better. He had no idea whether she doubted his claim or simply tested every new student this way. Either way, this was not quite how he had imagined meeting his supervising Master. Arien suppressed a sigh and stepped closer to the bed.

"Should I remove the bandages?"

"No." He gently placed his hand against the feverishly warm skin just above them. The patient twitched but did not wake. Arien glanced at Lamaral one last time. She offered no advice or indication of what she expected, so Arien closed his eyes and focused on the patient. Questions about Lamaral and the purpose of the test faded as he reached for the familiar sensation of Life mana. As before, an intricate network of vessels, nerves, and muscles emerged within his inner sight.

Everything below the elbow pulsed with the familiar spectrum of colors. For the first few minutes, Arien did nothing except observe. The injury was nowhere near as severe as Sanrey's had been. The bones appeared intact, and most of the damaged tissue was already knitting itself back together. Someone had treated the arm before him, which was probably why Lamaral had chosen this patient for his test. The longer he studied it, however, the less satisfied he became.

Several torn nerves and muscle fibers were healing, but not cleanly. The pockets of Life mana left behind by the previous treatment had been spread broadly through the damaged area, encouraging regeneration without paying much attention to what, exactly, was being rebuilt. It would probably heal well enough, but several warning points suggested that some of the damaged tissue was not recovering as cleanly as it should. He also noticed foreign mana circulating through the man's body. Lamaral's.

Her mana kept carefully away from the damaged tissue, close enough to intervene without affecting his work. She wasn't helping him, she was watching. That made his decision considerably more complicated. The safest option was to reinforce the existing treatment and stop there. But the poorly healing areas bothered him, and he thought he could do better. He hesitated. Lamaral had instructed him to heal the arm and affect nothing above the elbow.

She had said nothing about preserving the existing constructs, but neither had she given him permission to dismantle another Healer's work. Worse, he had no idea whether interfering with it carried risks he simply didn't understand yet. He tried to recall every word Lamaral had spoken since they met, searching for some clue as to what she expected from him. One word Lamaral had used earlier kept bothering him: tampering. Arien's jaw tightened slightly. He knew he was inexperienced by Academy standards.

He knew there were enormous gaps in his knowledge. But he had not spent years blindly pouring mana into people and hoping for the best. He had studied, experimented, observed the results, made mistakes, and gradually improved. He understood the body through concepts he remembered from Earth: cells, nerves, infection, circulation, inheritance. That knowledge shaped the way he interpreted what his Specialization showed him.

Whether Erador's greatest Healers understood the same processes through completely different magical theories, he had no idea. He trusted what his Specialization was showing him. Carefully, he increased the flow of Life mana into the man's arm and touched the nearest healing construct with his own. The construct came apart, and Lamaral's mana immediately shifted closer to the injury. Arien hesitated, but when she did not intervene, he continued.

Arien dismantled the remaining inefficient constructs one by one and replaced them with his own bubbles, as he called them. Each was smaller and more focused than what had been there before. He placed them where the tissue needed the most guidance, concentrating some around torn nerves and others around damaged muscle or the remaining warning points. Once everything was in place, he began accelerating the regeneration itself.

He started slowly, adjusting the flow whenever something failed to respond as expected, then gradually increased the amount of mana as damaged tissues tightened and reconnected beneath his awareness. Several warning points faded, though a few stubbornly remained. Arien kept adjusting the constructs until he lost track of time. When he finally pulled his attention away, his legs had gone stiff and nearly half his mana was gone. How long was I doing that? Twenty minutes? Thirty?

He rubbed his eyes and looked across the bed. Lamaral studied him for several seconds before speaking.

"Do you know the most important rule of Healers?"

"First, do no harm?" Arien guessed, drawing on one of the few medical principles from Earth that had survived intact in his memory. Lamaral's eyebrows rose slightly.

"A very sensible rule. But no." She folded her arms and glanced toward the sleeping patient between them.

"The first rule is: never heal what you do not understand. You dismantled another Healer's work," she continued.

"You recognized that it was inefficient, correctly identified several areas that were healing poorly, and replaced the existing constructs with ones better suited to the injuries." For a moment, Arien thought she was praising him.

"I'm certain you knew that you did not fully understand those constructs," Lamaral said.

"And you lacked the knowledge to recognize every complication that removing them might cause." Arien opened his mouth, then closed it again. There wasn't much he could say to that.

"I thought I could improve the treatment, Master" he admitted.

"You did improve it," Lamaral said.

"That does not mean you made the right decision." The words landed considerably harder than a reprimand would have.

"You were safe today because I was monitoring every change you made. Had you made the patient's condition worse, I would have intervened before any lasting harm was done." Arien looked down at the patient's arm for a moment. Lamaral continued before he could answer.

"Healing is extraordinarily seductive. Perhaps more than any other branch of magic. You see pain, you possess the ability to remove it, and every instinct tells you that doing something must be better than doing nothing. Then the patient thanks you. Their family thanks you. If you are good enough, strangers begin treating you as though the gods themselves placed you in their path." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Her voice remained calm, though the last words carried a trace of weariness.

"After enough years, it becomes very easy to believe them." A patient coughed somewhere farther down the ward. Lamaral glanced briefly in that direction before continuing.

"Consider a wound that appears to be healing properly. The pain fades, the skin closes, the patient goes home satisfied. But the Healer fails to notice contamination deep inside the wound." Arien immediately understood where she was going.

"The spell heals over the infection, Master."

"Precisely. And because the patient feels better, they return home instead of seeking further treatment. Several days later, they are considerably harder to save." Lamaral let that settle before continuing.

"There are less obvious examples. Healing the wrong tissue. Encouraging damaged structures to regenerate incorrectly. Repeatedly forcing a body to repair itself beyond what its Vitality can safely sustain. Some mistakes reveal themselves immediately. Others wait months or years." His thoughts immediately went to Alia. Vylda. Sanrey. Everyone he had ever touched with Life mana while still learning through trial and error.

"Did I make a mistake, Master?" he asked. Lamaral studied him for a moment before answering.

"Not here." That helped, though not as much as Arien had hoped.

"Aspect mana is considerably more forgiving than structured Healing spells," she explained.

"Especially once a proper Specialization has formed. You are guiding a natural affinity rather than forcing a predetermined magical effect onto the body. That does not make it harmless, but catastrophic mistakes are less common." She glanced at the patient's arm.

"Your treatment was wasteful, excessively complicated in places, and much slower than it needed to be. But it was not dangerous."

"And the people I treated before my Specialization, Master?"

"I cannot tell you, I wasn't there." Lamaral studied him for a moment.

"However, if you truly used only small amounts of unstructured Life mana to encourage ordinary recovery, the risk of serious long-term consequences is low. Today I wanted to see how you treated a real patient, and whether you understood the risks of what you were doing." Lamaral's expression softened slightly.

"And for what it's worth, there is no question that your Specialization is genuine. Congratulations."

"That's a relief, Master." He hesitated.

"And I've never actually used a Healing spell, so I suppose that makes the chances even better." For the first time, Lamaral seemed genuinely curious.

"If you've never used a Healing spell, then how were you diagnosing injuries well enough to achieve First Specialization?"

"Uh…" Arien scratched his cheek, suddenly finding the explanation much harder than the actual healing.

"I sort of see what's inside the patient."

"See?"

"Not literally." He searched for the right words.

"It's more like a projection in my head. Vessels, muscles, nerves. After I gained the Specialization, damaged areas also started appearing differently. They pulse in different colors depending on how serious the problem is. Master" Lamaral studied him more closely.

"And you can distinguish individual structures that way?"

"Not perfectly." Arien felt increasingly self-conscious.

"I know it sounds vague. I never really had proper terminology for most of it." Lamaral remained silent for several seconds before giving a slow nod.

"I see." Arien wasn't entirely sure what she had understood from his explanation, but she appeared satisfied for the moment. After a brief silence, she asked, "Tell me one more thing.

"Why do you want to become a Healer? Money? Prestige? Or do you simply want to help people?" Arien blinked at the change of subject.

"Honestly? I don't want to be a Healer, Master." Her eyebrows rose again. Arien decided there was little point pretending. Lamaral was going to supervise him for years if everything went according to plan, and beginning that relationship with a lie seemed unwise.

"I want to be a Mage," he said.

"Travel between countries, learn new forms of magic, explore places I've only read about. I like Life magic, and I want to become good at Healing, but I don't want it to be the only thing I ever do." There was also the matter of crossing into Tyranny, rescuing the family members, and bringing their kidnappers and murderers to justice, but he decided that part might sound a little strange coming from an eight-year-old. Lamaral regarded him in silence, and he had to resist the urge to add something more respectable.

Then she laughed softly.

"Ah. To be young again. You have no idea how many dreams disappear beneath paperwork, obligations, students, patients, and people who suddenly decide that your time belongs to them." A trace of wistfulness entered her voice, though it vanished almost immediately.

"Still, there are worse ambitions." Her expression grew more serious.

"You have talent, Arien. More than I expected. That will make some things easier at first. It will not spare you the work that comes later." She gestured around the ward.

"From now on, you will spend part of your time here after regular classes. You will assist me, the other Healers, and whichever senior students are assigned to supervise you. You will observe treatments, learn the procedures of the Infirmary, and gradually begin working with patients." Arien nodded.

"Until I specifically tell you otherwise, you will not use spells or Aspect magic on a patient without permission. Understood?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good. And one more thing." Lamaral lowered her voice slightly.

"Do not advertise how easily you can analyze injuries."

"Why, Master?"

"Because possessing the Aspect of Life is already enough to attract envy among aspiring Healers. Possessing a Specialization that grants you a sophisticated diagnostic ability at eight years old will attract considerably more." Arien grimaced.

"That bad?"

"Most will only be curious. A few may resent you, especially students who have spent years trying to achieve the same thing." Arien could believe that easily enough.

"Your work here will also replace most of our formal mentor meetings," Lamaral continued.

"Whatever free time remains after your duties is yours." Arien hesitated.

"How much free time usually remains, Master?" Lamaral smiled.

"We'll see."

"Now," she said, turning back toward the patient, "Let me show you how you could have achieved the same result in a fraction of the time and with considerably less mana." She extended one hand toward the injured arm and sent a narrow stream of Life mana into it. He immediately placed his own hand against the patient and closed his eyes, threading a tiny strand of mana inside so he could follow what she was doing. Within moments, Lamaral began dismantling the bubbles Arien had spent nearly half an hour constructing.

She did not simply erase them. Her mana slipped between the individual structures, unraveling each one with such precision that Arien barely registered what she was doing before the first had already disappeared. Lamaral rebuilt the treatment as a single branching network that stretched through most of the arm. Threads of Life mana spread through the injured arm, branching and reconnecting until something resembling an intricate spider's web began taking shape. Every knot supported several others.

Every strand appeared to serve more than one purpose. A thread reinforcing damaged muscle also connected to one surrounding a torn nerve, while both fed into a larger structure that stretched through most of the arm. Arien struggled to follow it. The entire construct contained far less mana than his own collection of bubbles, yet its complexity was on a completely different level. Nothing seemed wasted. There were no isolated pockets working independently from one another.

The whole thing functioned as a single system. And Lamaral had created it in less than a minute. Arien pushed his Mana Sense harder, trying to understand the finer strands before they disappeared beyond what he could reliably perceive. He recognized some of their functions, including accelerating regeneration, guiding damaged tissue, and stabilizing areas around the nerves, but others remained completely beyond him. One detail, however, became increasingly clear.

The construct was not relying entirely on the patient's own reserves. Several delicate branches extended beyond the damaged tissue and seemed to draw Life mana from the environment itself before feeding it back into the web. Arien remembered the plants scattered throughout the Infirmary and the extraordinary density of Life mana hanging in the air. So that's what they're for. Maintaining his own tiny thread inside the patient had become increasingly difficult as Lamaral's construct expanded.

Her control over the surrounding mana was so complete that his own felt like a loose piece of string caught inside an enormous machine.

"Any conclusions?" Lamaral asked. Arien reluctantly withdrew his mana and opened his eyes. She was still standing on the opposite side of the bed, watching him rather than the patient. He had heard Lamaral was powerful. He had watched her treat the woman in the previous ward and sensed the enormous amount of mana she could control. Raw power was easy enough to understand in terms of mana, Attributes, and levels. What Lamaral had just shown him was harder to quantify.

He had spent years practicing Life magic, experimenting with it whenever he found the opportunity, and had been quietly proud of how far he had come without proper instruction. Lamaral had just taken everything he considered sophisticated about his healing, dismantled it in seconds, and replaced it with something he could barely comprehend.

"I have a lot to learn, Master," he admitted. Lamaral waited. Arien glanced toward the patient's arm again, still trying to hold the shape of the web in his memory.

"That was… beautiful." He should have stopped there.

"Even more beautiful than you, Master." You idiot. Only moments earlier, he had been contemplating the terrifying gulf between their abilities. Now, apparently, his response to meeting one of the finest Healers in the kingdom was to compare her appearance to a healing construct. She smiled.

"I can't decide whether that was meant to compliment me or the spell."

"Both, Master?" Her laughter grew slightly louder. Arien felt heat creeping into his face. Lamaral spared him further humiliation and turned back toward the patient." I have a feeling teaching you will rarely be boring." The remainder of the afternoon was considerably less dramatic. Lamaral handed him over to a sixth-year student named Ferien, who apparently served as one of her regular assistants within the Infirmary.

Within twenty minutes, Arien had learned that Ferien idolized Lamaral and considered almost any activity unrelated to Healing a waste of time. She treated him with noticeable reserve, but there was nothing careless about the way she taught.

Over the next several hours, Ferien led him through the Infirmary, introduced him to the staff, explained how patients were admitted and assigned, showed him where supplies were stored, and outlined exactly what a student at his level was allowed to do and, just as importantly, what he was not. There were more rules and considerably more chores than Arien had expected. His optimism began to fade somewhere around the explanation of how used bandages were sorted.

When he finally asked how late students usually stayed, Ferien stopped walking. One of her eyebrows rose.

"Until the work is finished." Arien looked around at the crowded ward. That did not sound promising. By the time Arien left the Infirmary, he was mentally exhausted and far less optimistic about how much free time he would have. Even so, his thoughts kept returning to Lamaral's construct. He had spent years improving his Life magic without knowing how his work compared to that of an experienced Healer. Now, for the first time, he had seen what mastery actually looked like.

It gave him something he had been missing for a long time: a point of reference and something worth striving toward. Arien found that encouraging.