Chapter 599: Healing After the Hordes

Technically there were still monsters roaming through Irun, but Omilaena could finally stop pretending to care about them. What was the point of going to so much effort strengthening soldiers if they couldn't take out some tedious monsters for her? The last time she'd needed to fight had been a big blob that resisted sword blows but not poison - no monster core she could find, unfortunately.

With the dregs of the incursion being handled by others, Omilaena was free to switch to something more interesting: recovery. Now, in the aftermath there were a lot of annoyingly pleasant non-combat healers rushing out to help their loved ones, with all kinds of obnoxious reunions and protective instincts.

Omilaena lacked those, almost entirely. Because she was working in Irun, however, she got to do some much more interesting work with bodies.

For a while she'd been healing the average Irunians she'd been helping fight, which was relatively conventional. At least she got to see how well her various Physique models held up under practical terms. It wasn't as simple as raw Power, which should have been obvious but was still good to confirm. The Ironpath Physique was much more durable against certain kinds of injury, such as blades or claws, and weaker against spiritual or elemental attacks.

Most healers considered this just another stage of the incursion, a grim ordeal of triage trying to save as many as possible. As far as Omilaena was concerned, this part was just a game to figure out the best paths for the future. Sure, she didn't want random Irunians to die, but the best thing she could do for them was find new answers.

After some of that, Tusquo and Quinta showed up needing her attention, and Omilaena was happy to switch to more interesting bodies. They had apparently fought back some city-destroyers and needed her expertise, so they moved into a private room for her to examine them.

"We've had fewer casualties than usual," Tusquo was saying as she examined his bare back. "Some of that is our alliances with healers, but I think a large part of it is the Ironpath Physique becoming mainstream."

"What about loss of limbs?" Omilaena asked.

"You'll have to ask further after the incursion ends, because many are still in critical condition. But I'm worried about blunt impacts, which is why I wanted you to look at my organs."

Omilaena kept poking at his lower back, sending in tendrils of chakra to investigate. There was a nasty bruise where he'd taken a direct blow, and Tusquo sounded afraid that it had caused organ damage. Though she was no healing expert, Omilaena did know his Physique better than almost anyone, so she could investigate in a different way.

"It feels like your liver took a hit," she said, "but I think what you're feeling is actually your Physique healing it. You might be tougher once it heals up, as your body is turning a little more steel."

"Would that cause long term health problems?"

"I'm fairly confident it won't, but you can check in with me later."

Now that Tusquo had been checked, Omilaena turned toward his partner, who also stripped down to bare her back without any hesitation. Hmm, up close Omilaena could confirm that Quinta seemed to have naturally silver hair, which was an alluring thought. She glanced back to Tusquo's lean body and realized that Kai was right: they'd be very intense together, but it would work.

"So what did you need me to check?" Omilaena asked, as if she was a professional who wasn't imagining her patients banging.

"My breathing has sounded wrong since I took a blow to the chest," Quinta explained. "I'm concerned there may be fluid in my lungs, and that fluid..."

"Could have changed due to your Physique? It's worth checking. Take a deep breath for me."

Omilaena didn't use this model often, but she could create a simple disc that would magnify sounds. She placed one on Quinta's back over her lungs and listened to her breathing, which indeed sounded a little rattly. That was normally bad, but it didn't seem to be impeding her at all.

"And you feel fine?" Omilaena asked, and got a quick nod. "I want to test something else: I'll need to take a little more of your blood."

That proved to be about what she expected, not really useful. For her next experiment, Omilaena used a scalpel to cut across Quinta's arm, then watched the blood coagulate. Chakra began to flow into it and the blood turned more silvery - within a minute, the injury looked almost like someone had welded her skin together.

"This deserves closer study," Omilaena announced, "but in the short term I think you can ignore it. These changes are just you shifting closer to metal, which has been done frequently on Rosemount without long term harm. For now, there are more urgent patients, and I know you have things to do."

Tusquo nodded and pulled his shirt on again, moving away. Quinta, however, regarded her and frowned. "Would that lead to a loss of sensation?" she asked.

It was oh so tempting to tease her about that, since Omilaena could imagine all kinds of reasons why Quinta might be asking. Since it had taken so much to earn even this much trust, Omilaena restrained herself.

"That's typically considered a dead end," she explained. "You don't want your bodies to literally become metal, you want to be flesh that's spiritually akin to metal, actually stronger in some ways. I did my best with these Irunian Physiques, so I think you'll be fine. That said, some Physiques do have new weaknesses, so you're right to bring concerns to me."

Once the two of them had left, no doubt to lead Irun very seriously in the aftermath, Omilaena was kicked back out into the general healing rooms. That was disappointing by comparison, but she made herself keep working for Kai's sake. And, if she was honest, for her own: going out of her way to help Irun had given her opportunities for experiments that she never would have gotten alone.

The only bit of excitement was when an elite came in with Mariyay and Kifaela - Kai's students were heavily injured but triumphant, apparently having stood against part of the horde alongside the Irunian elites. Omilaena had never been as fond of the students, and their enthusiasm was too youthful for her taste, but as she inspected them, she reflected that they would be good opportunities for future work. Kai would eventually want them all to have unique Physiques, most likely, which could be fun for her.

As for their injuries, those were more problems for potions than Omilaena's specialties. Fortunately, she still had some flasks from her work with Juray, so she could bring the two of them back to health without any permanent injuries, maybe even with a little boost. They'd be out of commission for a little while, sleeping off the potions, but at least they'd be useful in the future.

"I could use you for something."

The quiet voice proved to be Fornil Andalion - Omilaena had a bizarre non-relationship with the elite healer, because he had tried to save her life, then mostly avoided her afterward. At the moment, however, he simply looked tired.

"What's the situation?" Omilaena asked as they stepped into a portal. The other side was deep inside the Frontier, in a fortress surrounded by a wasteland of monster corpses.

"One of us fought a serpent monster and it delivered a deadly venom," Fornil explained as he escorted her past rooms filled with various patients. "So far it has been resistant to my attempts. I think it may be a sort of phased poison, so I thought you might-"

"Create a phased antidote? Shouldn't be a problem."

As they walked, Omilaena tried to take inventory of the injured elites. They always pushed themselves hard during incursions, which meant that they frequently ended with lots of severe injuries. Their goal was to push up to that line without experiencing deaths or permanent injuries, which meant that the aftermath was a critical time for future incursions.

Fuck, were they going to pull her into that? Maybe the elites would have more interesting problems, but Omilaena could also see that becoming a draining obligation. Fornil was skilled, but he didn't seem like a man who had any fun, ever.

When it came to the poisoned elite, that was a simple enough job, just requiring intense power. Omilaena started with the Prana Jewels, hoping that they might solve the problem instantly, but they almost immediately felt stretched to a breaking point when she tried to absorb the monster venom. Maybe it really was phased.

She managed to absorb one drop for herself, then inspected another. The poison was deadly, but she'd worked a lot with Kai's manticore-derived poisons, so it was familiar. All she needed was time to generate an antidote and then concentrate it into a phased mode, which didn't require her full attention.

"Do monsters frequently make use of phased threats?" she asked.

"It's more ambiguous than with people." As he answered, Fornil slumped back against the wall, clearly needing a break from his work. "The stronger monsters definitely have the equivalent of phased strength and durability. When elites have tested the abyss, sometimes it has produced monsters with a full speed phase, which as you can imagine is devastating."

"But you're saying they tend to strengthen across the board, like cultivators."

Fornil grimaced. "Something like that."

"What was that face?"

"I have... studied a little of Cloudspire medicine, and I can't say I liked it. So much of their medicine seems to be based on models of how the body works that don't correlate to physical bodies."

"Don't be so sure." Omilaena pulled a hand away from her antidote work to wag a finger at him. "If a cultivator continues for long enough, their body really does start to change, and ideal cultivators tend to match what their medical theory suggests."

"And is this related to all your work with Physique?"

Omilaena was glad to talk to him about that, since Fornil had an intricate knowledge of anatomy. She was almost irritated to finish and administer her antidote, but thankfully it worked immediately. That put Fornil in her debt, which she intended to use to get more information from him. Natural anatomical knowledge wasn't strictly necessary for Physique, but it was essential for quality, so he could be useful.

Before they could really get into the conversation, however, they were interrupted by another elite teleporting in carrying three others, all heavily injured. Fornil leapt to his feet, rushing to help them. Omilaena was more concerned about what would have happened to injure so many elites this late in the incursion... especially as a second group came in, then a third.

And then someone arrived carrying an elite who had been cut in half, already long past healing.

Tedium evaporated as Omilaena shifted to her feet nervously, drawing needles without being sure quite why. Whatever this was, it wasn't the aftermath of the incursion.

(I promised bonus content every month, and it was delayed due to the launch, but November's bonus chapter went up on Wednesday.)