Arcanist In Another World

Chapter 7: Healing Bones

“Everything?” the undead repeated.

“Yes,” Valens said, pointing at the burnt pile of corpses before the fog. “Start with these skeletons. They seemed hungry for my flesh, and you look disturbingly similar to them.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The undead smacked his armor with incredulity. “You really don’t know! And I thought you a racist. Can’t blame me though, now, can you? There are enough of you in Melton who hate our guts. It hurts being treated like that, but you learn to live with it.”

That oddly sounded familiar to Valens. The way the Inquisition acted around the Magi, their rootmetal manacles always at the ready, eyes

“Uh,” the undead grunted. “Glad that you’ve begun to see the truth. Undead are a living, breathing folk. We have nothing to do with those bastards animated by a man sick in mind.”

“You’re saying that a human controls those Skeletons?” Valens stared down at it. Made sense. This was likely that Void Magus’s doing. He then arched a contemptuous eyebrow. “By the way, you’re not breathing. It’s true that your Heartstone has a song with a touch of intelligence, but all I can feel inside your bones is a current of mana.”

“You… We breathe mana! How bad is that amnesia that you don’t even remember these things?”

“It’s quite bad,” Valens lied with his expression as blank as a sheet of paper. “I’m a helpless, helpless man.”

“Yeah, right.” The undead didn’t seem to believe him. “But for some reason you still remembered you’ve had a Fireball in there somewhere. What do you have to say about that?”

“A Magus without skills is no Magus at all. It seems however broken it was, my mind has refused to let go of those precious spells,” Valens said, and eyed him down. “I think you should be grateful.”

“A cynical, arrogant prick. Color me amused,” the undead muttered. “Can’t say I’m surprised, though. All through my life—“

“Stay. Still.” Valens gave him a look, which put the undead nicely back to the ground with its leg stretched out. He wouldn’t have the patient giving him a tirade about his life and or that how the injury happened. None of those things mattered. It had a crack in his leg, and that was a problem Valens would fix.

Simple as that.

When he focused on the crack around the left leg, he caught more than a few vibrations in the Resonance, coming from near the kneecap. The bone looked healthy from the outside, but inside it was filled with multiple micro-fractures.

“I think that’s enough,” Valens said. “Now, I want you to take a deep… breath.”

“Humorous,” the undead said sourly.

Valens sent a Lifesurge down the left leg, Lifeward still active and providing him with a constant song. His empty hands twanged for a second as he felt the need to reach for his tools, only to realize he didn’t need them anymore. Not as much as a Ward, for that matter, when he could feel the mana in his whole being.

It took him but a second to catch the vibrations, focusing the Lifesurge on that area. The fractures guided by invisible Lifesurge threads clicked silently back to their usual places.

“Try to move it,” Valens said when he was finished, taking his hands off the cadaver’s warm bones.

The undead glanced suspiciously at him. With a hesitant nod, it rose and stomped its left foot on the ground. Its emerald eyes widened slightly. “Huh?” The air shifted around them as the undead lifted its foot again.

“What are you doing?” Valens frowned at it.

“Making sure everything’s in place,” the undead answered, hardly paying him any heed as it brought its foot back to the ground, sending a shock wave across the cave. It snapped its head at Valens, jaw trembling.

“Nine Hells! You really fixed it!”

“What did you expect?” Valens raised his chin. “Just some minor fractures. I’ve dealt with worse.”

“I’m sure you have. This trick alone can make you a fortune in the Underworld,” the undead nodded knowingly. “Though I doubt those Bone Collectors would let you get away with it. So you have some talent to put weight into your words, then? Not a simple fellow, I see.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Yeah, right,” the undead cackled with twisted laughter. “Get your rest. We have a long way ahead of us.”

…..