Chapter 417: His First Patient

After his morning class, he headed off to Freya, where he was met with a surprise.

“Okay, I think you are ready to start healing people,” she said to him as he walked in.

He smiled brightly. “Finally! So you don’t think I am a danger to patients?”

She shut down his enthusiasm straight away. “Not a chance. However, you have sufficient control that waiting would only waste both our time. If you end up messing someone up, either Galten or I will help you.”

“Thanks for your confidence,” he said in a deadpan voice.

“No worries, just try not to kill anyone and mutate them into a chimera, alright?”

He didn’t even bother to deign her a response. Instead, he acted as if he hadn’t heard and went over to pick one of the training tools she had him practicing for the last few days.

The tool was quite a fascinating item. It was a simple rod about the size of his arm. However, unlike its plain appearance, there was quite a complex array of enchantments inscribed into its base.

It would only react to his life mana, and the goal was to take apart the rod in one continuous motion. While the rod appeared to be a single piece of solid metal, it was actually composed of ten smaller cylinders, all of which were attached to form the rod.

There were no seams on the surface that might indicate such a thing, but she had shown him firsthand how to do it. Freya had taken less than a couple of seconds to finish the puzzle. In contrast, he hadn’t managed to remove more than two cylinders in the same attempt.

The trick was knowing how to adapt his life mana to sudden and complicated changes. The first layer was simple enough. The rod required him to inject a perfectly balanced amount of life mana and let it flow throughout the appropriate channels. Much like a keyhole, it would unlock once all of the channels were full.

The second layer was twice as difficult. It introduced a counteractive force to his life mana. It was almost like someone was constantly attempting to disrupt his mana the entire time. It was more annoying than one would expect, and what made it more difficult was that he wasn’t able to use any of his willpower to fight against it. Since it was a specially created tool, there wasn’t an opposing willpower to resist. It was simply the design of the puzzle itself and required mana control to withstand it.

“You don’t seem that excited,” Freya stated curiously as she stood next to him, inspecting his ongoing attempt with careful eyes.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I knew it would happen eventually. I just hope I don’t actually hurt anyone.” He was being honest as well. He was more than okay with hurting himself all in the name of improving, but the thought of hurting others in that pursuit did not sit well with him. He had standards and rules for himself.

Freya must have sensed his unease and patted him reassuringly on the back. “Don’t worry, Galten will make sure that nothing happens. If it does, then either he or I will handle it.”

He messed up the second layer of the puzzle when she touched him and turned his attention toward her. “I appreciate it. Although I am a little shocked you are taking responsibility. I have been getting the impression that you are a very sloppy person,” he said, the last part very quietly under his breath, but that didn’t stop her from overhearing.

A sheet of ice suddenly slapped him on the back of his head. Once she had realized his penchant for withstanding pain and his healing ability, she wasn’t shy about scolding him in more physical ways. “If that’s how you truly feel, then I don’t mind keeping you on a leash for another couple of weeks,” she said flatly.

He chuckled and rubbed his sore head. “Sorry, sorry,” he said to her.

“Good, now if you are done fooling around, be sure to make your mana fluid but not fragile. The puzzle will fall apart if there isn’t enough structure. You are too worried about following the channels that your mana isn’t condensed enough,” she instructed him.

“But if I condense it, then it becomes too stiff to move,” he pointed out.

She stared at him blankly. “Use more force then.”

He was going to say something, but right before he could, he realized that she had a point. The resistance he got wasn’t so great that he wasn’t able to bend the ropes of mana he controlled. It was like the condensed mana had become a very heavy-duty rubber gasket. In comparison, he was used to a regular one.

He needed to use a bit more power to form it to his wishes.

Interestingly, it worked immediately. He had condensed a new rope of mana to travel through the channels, making sure that it was appropriately condensed. Only this time, instead of softening the parts he needed to bend, he just enforced his own will to make it do what he wanted.

It was pretty challenging because he wasn’t accustomed to the newfound pressure, and it was fighting him the entire time; however, there was an immediate difference. It didn’t feel like the connection was being interrupted anymore. The only issue was that he could feel the dangerous buildup of power.

If he lost control, he knew right away that it would be quite explosive. Thankfully, it was a simple solution to avoid that issue. He just needed to stay in control.

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And so he did. With a tight grinding of his teeth, he held on as he navigated his way through the channels, keeping a firm control over the condensed mana. Each new bend and addition stressed his focus, but he relied on his skills and Will Concept to aid him.

Before he knew it, he had already passed the third layer and was working on the fourth. However, that was where he ran into some problems. The disruptions of the item were more potent than ever, forcing him to maintain absolute focus.

Despite that, the bigger issue was that the structure of the channels suddenly changed during his attempt. They had never changed before, and this new feature caught him off guard. His control slipped for a moment, and he felt the carefully created rope of mana fall apart.

He did his best to keep it together and not let it get out of hand. But there was only so much he could do to mitigate the damage. He grunted as the rest of the mana blew up.