Reborn Healer Chapter 3

When I’d told myself that the books I was reading here wouldn’t have a full picture of what I should expect from this world, I hadn’t expected it to come true so soon. My situation clearly wasn’t normal enough to be described in an introductory book like this, and a quick scan of the other few books we had didn’t reveal anything helpful there either.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from a set of books with titles that looked ripped straight out of the secondhand romance section of a thrift store’s shelves.  There were a couple of texts that looked to be more useful in general, but I didn’t think that a herb guide or an advanced swordfighting theory book was going to be useful for this.

The second core was tangibly different from the first. Now that I had formed one, I could say that with some confidence at least. For one thing, I couldn’t actually draw the energy within me towards anywhere but the first core. No matter how much I tried, none of the mana cycling inside my body could go anywhere but there. The second one seemed to be disconnected from what the guide described to be my mana channels—blood vessels that served double purposes, I had assumed.

That assumption was looking a little shaky now. Since I had spent so much time focusing on my core, I had gained some level of familiarity with the sensation of the energy within me—mana, I supposed. The actual word had a substantially different spelling and pronunciation in the local language, but it was also two syllables and had roughly the same definition as the term so many Earth games used to denote “magical particle.”

The point was that this second core was noticeably different. Not only did it not want to receive the mana I tried to push inwards, it seemed to actively resist it. Rather than the greedy, absorbent mana core I’d formed, this one seemed to actively be trying to push mana outwards.

Maybe that was the key. According to the stat screen that I’d started unconsciously referring to as the “system”—a habit born out of reading way too many crappy light novels—the Beginner-tier core I’d created was a mage’s one. The primer to defensive magic said that cores could and would develop into affinities as they were ranked up, but this early they were unlikely to have anything special.

Mage obviously wasn’t an affinity of any kind, but I could easily conclude that it described the core. By process of elimination, I could thus guess that the other core was not a mage’s.

Then what was it? The books I had here only described how a defensive magician might go about forming a core intended for their purposes. They made no mention of other types of cores, and obviously they didn’t include any type of instruction when it came to that.

The meditation techniques I’d learned seemed to come in handy, though. When I tried them, the second nascent core seemed to calm down a little, though it still abjectly refused to accept mana.

No amount of poking or prodding could get it to start responding the same way my mage core did, though, so I decided to table it for the time being. I wasn’t planning on stopping my meditation sessions anytime soon, anyway. Even f I couldn’t get new progress on the second core, meditating was still a good resource to feel the energy in me and gather it in my core, further strengthening it.

Expanding it wasn’t all that I could do. The more I focused on the core, the more I realized that it was a lot more complicated than just a simple reservoir gto store the energy in. If I focused and spent a great deal of time visualizing it, I could start manipulating the core itself, slowly condensing it during my longer meditation sessions.

After a few weeks of this without much change in the state of my second core, I decided to give spellcasting a shot. There were a number of basic spells here with listed instructions.If my second core had any impact on my ability to cast these, I supposed I’d find out soon.

Casting was an altogether different process from forming and solidifying my magic core, but now that I had spent pretty much every waking hour practicing the current processes, I was pleasantly surprised to find that moving the magic in the way the book wanted me to do was relatively simple. All I had to do was visualize the result I wanted while casting, then urge my mana to follow in its path. More complicated spells required better, more perfect visualizations of the exact deals of the magic one wanted to impose on the world.

Once I had the form of the spell in my mind and body, the rest was simple. Physical hand motions helped create the pattern necessary for the final steps. Pressure built up in my hands and arms like the blood vessels there wer eworking double time, mana flowing through them freely and coalescing just under my fingertips.

I got to that point multiple times before letting the forming spell go. Part of the reason for that was practice, but the other was the sensation from the second core. It wasn’t as painful as it had been before, but casting a spell caused some kind of pulling feeling.

It didn’t get worse, though, and both cores felt exactly the same afterwards. With the lack of pain, I had to assume that this was something separate from the tearing, devouring process that had caused me so much pain on my first birthday.

There were only so many times I could almost get to forcing the mana out of my hands before I got tired of wondering if I would run into disaster.

I’d been terrified to take risks back on Earth, and it had cost me. I’d let so many opportunities slip past me because I hadn’t thought they were the right thing to do. After all, who in their right mind would go pro in a video game instead of finishing up a software engineering degree and getting a stable job? Who would drop everything to pursue a childhood dream instead of just staying in the same place in life?

Not me. Always others. Some had failed, yes, but others had succeeded, leaving me behind with nothing but regrets. I’d been told time and time again that that first step was the scariest, but it was the most necessary. I wouldn’t have known. I’d always stayed within the lines I had thought necessary.

Not this time. Not this life. I had chosen to make the most out of my second chance, and I was going to stick to that.

Taking that first step was a whole lot easier said than done, though. I tried multiple spells, working through practically every Beginner-tier spell in the book, but I never managed to complete that last step. Every time I got close, a sick feeling overtook me. It wasn’t a magical one—I knew what parts of me were emotion and what was from my core. This was my own mind whispering poisonous anxieties to me.

What if it didn’t work? What if I hurt myself worse than I had before? What if I died?

But I couldn’t let this stop me. My second core wasn’t hurting, and it was possible that this would even be the event I needed to figure out how to form it. There was no way to know if the result would be good or bad until I actually went ahead with it. Spending all day worrying about it would be no use.

Convincing myself logically and doing so emotionally were two different problems entirely, though. There was a reason stepping out of my comfort zone was anathema. Memories welled up every time I tried to take that steps.

There’s nobody here to laugh at you, I told myself. Nobody to hurt you for trying.

Even still. Even still, it took me nearly an entire year before I even made progress towards completing a spell.

Spells were broken down into three general categories, of which “defensive” was one of them. This covered healing, buff, and barrier spells, all of which had more proper names in the book but ultimately could be broken down into those rough categories.

Over the course of those months, I grew intimately familiar with the setups for each and every one of the Beginner-tier spells and not a few of the Initiate-tier ones. I had even almost driven them to completion with the chants, always cutting myself off right before the well of magic bubbled over.

The spell I ended up deciding I wanted to cast was called Inferior Body Scan. The description in the book was simple:

Spell: Body Scan (Inferior)

Tier: Beginner

Type: Healing

Scans a small portion of a body. With intense focus, a healer may identify injuries and non-injury maladies present within that portion.

It came with a diagram of some results that it might predict, and I liked the sound of it. Though the area it scanned wasn’t much larger than the size of a hand, I wanted to take a look at myself, especially where I felt my second core was.

And yet, somehow, day after day, I just couldn’t make myself do it. It should have been so easy, but I just… I couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself take that first step.

I should change tacks, I thought to myself one day. The pulling sensation in my second core was growing stronger by the day, and I didn’t want to make it all the way to that great pain again before I tried again.

I considered asking my parents to help me with it, but I didn’t know how they’d take to their kid fooling around with magic at an age a few years too young to even consider starting the basics, let alone doing full-on spellcasting. Vallis acted as the healer for not only this village but also the surrounding ones and was usually gone during the day, while Aria often disappeared without much explanation to even her husband. When they were both gone, they left me in the care of a young woman by the name of Iryn, but she did her best to avoid dealing with me when she could, preferring instead to quietly sip tea and knit in the living room.

Also, my parents were young. They were younger than I’d been before I’d died, and I hadn’t been particularly old, either. Early twenties at the absolute latest. I didn’t know how they would react to anything, really.

Basically, I didn’t want them to start paying more attention to me and potentially restricting what I was capable of trying out. I especially didn’t want them to start further child-proofing the locked basement door. Once I started being able to cast, I was sure I’d be able to find a lockpicking spell of some kind, and I wanted to see what was so important that my parents had locked it away behind that door.

That came back to the original problem again, though. Casting. I still hadn’t gotten to that point. Even though I’d accidentally turned all my endless attempts into practice, each of my new attempts coming more smoothly than ever before, I hadn’t finished a single skill.

At the end of the day, no matter what I told myself, I was the same person who’d retreated into his shell once things had started going wrong. The same person who’d missed his own parents’ funeral because he didn’t want to acknowledge that he was living in a world without them.

“No,” I said aloud, as if vocalizing the words would somehow make them more true. “I can’t let myself into that spiral again.”

Iryn, overhearing me from where she was chopping up vegetables for dinner tonight, turned a strange glance on to me before shaking her head and turning away.

Seeing that gave me an idea.

Inferior Body Scan was the spell I’d wanted to cast for some time, but the only person who could push myself to complete that. There was no consequence for me not doing it.

There were other spells I could try, though. Another Beginner-tier spell, Mend Wounds, could heal minor to moderate cuts and bruises when enough power was put into it.

That night, after Iryn had left and my father was snoring, I crept out of the crib my parents still had me sleep in and snuck my way into the kitchen.

This is a stupid idea, I thought, scrabbling my way up onto a stool and maneuvering onto the cutting table. The worst.

Knives were stunningly heavy when you had to carry them with two-year-old hands, but I got one of the smaller paring knives out of the block without much problem.

Was I actually going to do this?

For some reason, breaching this boundary was a lot easier than trying something actually new.

Maybe experience, I thought grimly, sliding the blade over the back of my forearm.

These weren’t the hands I’d spent twenty-seven years growing used to, though, and the blade slipped. I winced in pain, a line of piercing heat opening across flesh I’d cut a touch too deep. Blood welled up fast. Too fast.

“Shit,” I muttered, dropping the now-wet knife. Shit, shit, shit.

I had to stay calm. Losing presence of mind meant losing stability in a spell pattern, and that meant not being able to complete a spell.

Breathe. You’ve done this a thousand times.

Hot blood spilled over my arms onto the counter. My blood.

Somewhere deep inside, survival instincts must have kicked in. Suddenly, both of my cores stabilized, crystalline clarity shooting through my veins.

I formed the mana pattern the same way I’d grown used to doing, the grooves I’d worn into my mind allowing for the process to be near-instant.

Incantation, incantation… what was it? It was a couple of lines long, but the exact wording slipped my mind.

Even so, I pushed my mana to follow the same pattern I had grown used to it forming when I had come close to finally incanting the spell, quickly reaching the same point I had reached so many times without needing to speak a word.

It was here that I’d reached time and time again. This exact point, the final words on the tip of my tongue, where I’d frozen up. If I acted, I risked this falling apart. With one failure, I’d wake up from the dream.

But if I didn’t, I was going to keep bleeding until I passed out.

Survival took priority.

“Mend Wound,” I hissed.

To my surprise, text flickered across the corner of my vision, once again accompanied by the strange yet familiar voice.

Spell learned: Mend Wound [Beginner]

So I need to actually cast the spell for it to count as learned. Good information, but I couldn’t get distracted right now.

The incantation brought the bubbling mana to the surface of my right hand, which I’d placed over the injury. Electricity seemed to dance across my fingers as the spell emerged, a different kind of warmth spitting forth from my hand to my bleeding arm.

The pain lessened, gradually replaced by an intense itching that itself faded.

Keeping a spell active was yet another unique sensation when compared to setting it up, but it was intuitive enough that I could keep it going without much trouble.

Eventually, the mana I could feed into the spell tapered out, and it ended. I didn’t even need to look at my arm to tell it had worked. The pain was entirely gone, and though I could still feel blood under my fingers, the wound had vanished.

I couldn’t stop myself from a disbelieving laugh. Magic. After practicing for so long, I had thought that being able to cast would be less of a surprise, but there was still enough Earth in me that I was still shocked. With nothing more than two words and a lot of internal reflection, I had made a very real knife wound vanish. Not even my second core’s turmoil could stop my my elation.

I had stepped past my boundaries, and it had been fine. None of my fears had been realized. Slowly, I breathed a sigh of relief.

And then my second core roiled again, and I flinched. It was still unformed, and I still didn’t know why it was doing what it did.

Before I could lose my nerve again, I cast the spell I’d been wanting to try all this time. Once again, I skipped the formal incantation. I’d practiced it enough that the words and the mana movements associated with them were both firmly impressed in my mind.

“Body Scan,” I incanted, following the book’s archaic spelling for it.

Spell learned: Body Scan [Beginner]

I targeted the part of me directly under my heart, right where I felt my cores to be. Whether or not my cores were physically present or not remained to be seen, but it was worth a shot.

The sensations associated with this spell were a little stranger. It did, however, work to illuminate part of my body.

I looked down and saw straight through my skin. The scan was more a representation of what was within than an actual X-ray—presumably, higher level versions would be a bit different.

Two intersecting spheres of light spun around in circles right where I was looking. My cores.

The one I assumed was the mage core was substantially brighter than the other, which was… it was hard to describe. The surface was roiling like boiling water, and I got the impression it was trying to break free.

But to where?

I made my way down from the counter, keeping the scan spell active as I walked around. If my core was reacting to something physical in the house, it might change based on where I was.

It didn’t even take me five minutes to confirm that theory. There was one certain area of the house where my second core reacted much more violently.

Whatever my parents were hiding in the basement, my second core wanted it.