Chapter 44 First spell and stump removal
“There’s more to healing than just pooling the mana in your hands while thinking happy thoughts. It takes willpower and the effort to expel the mana from your body to learn the basic healing spell.” My mother-in-law was guiding me as I attempted to learn the basic healing palm spell. Each magic had its method of casting, and I was learning the basic spells I thought were valuable.
I started with the healing palm because it seemed like the most useful out of them all. Sure, the cleaning spell would be helpful, but if the worst were to happen, having a neat room isn’t going to save my family if they’re bleeding to death. The bone mending spell was much more difficult, and something I was going to worry about after I learned everything else.
I could heal my wives just by having sex with them, but that wasn’t something I could do with my children. I wasn’t even going to give that choice to the men of the village, and only under life and death implications, like with Leaf, would I think about having sex with someone in order to heal them. I placed my hand on the purposely injured goblin.
It was possible to use animals, but the best way to know you’re doing everything right was with a human who could tell you it was working; the second option was to use a humanoid monster. The very worst option would be healing animals to learn. Healing anything more than superfluous flesh wounds would take in-depth knowledge to do so, which was also what I was learning.
I took in another breath as I practiced again. Happy memories were easy enough, but it was the expelling mana that felt wrong. The closest thing I could say it felt like was farting out of my hand, and that unnatural feeling would break my concentration, making it take far longer and more mana to heal than someone who could do it unflinchingly.
For some reason, this was only with healing magic. Conjuring magic tended to make the particular limb feel like that element. So water would cool the limb down, fire would heat it up, earth would make it sluggish, and wind would make it feel numb, as if you sat on it wrong. The other elemental types didn’t give any feedback, which was odd. You’d expect animation to give an out-of-body experience or necromancy to give a sense of dread, but they didn’t, and I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know why it was that way.
My magic fizzled out again as the goblin thrashed, breaking our physical connection. The thin layer of scar tissue on his chest split as his wound reopened from his flailing. I sighed as Berry chuckled. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I drank a ladle of water as I tried to correct my mind again, as the doors to the inn were flung open.
Two of the village guards carried in a man as he walked with only one leg. “Jeff managed to climb up onto the roof of his new house to test it, then took the quickest way down when he fell off.” Berry chuckled before slitting the goblin's throat. “Good news, you get to be the learning material for Danial here. Let me heal the bone, then you can work on healing the flesh.”
…
“You ever think something through, then you go to do it and it’s almost impossible, it’ll at least be far more difficult than you thought it would be, and you no longer want to do it?” I looked at the singular stump I managed to rip out of the ground. The frozen ground made it far more difficult than it had to be to get up. The trio of Sarah, Olivia, and Delilah were with me as none of them had any other work to do in the winter and were bored.
“Ye *ahem* You should burn them out, that’ll soften up the ground and make it easier to dig up. Plus, the wood’ll be lighter. We jus need a hand drill and some oil to get started.” Delilah said in a cheery voice as she drank out of her flask. I was curious, so I asked. “Why the drill?” Olivia took over. “I’m going to guess we're drilling into the tree so we can fit more oil?”
Delilah finished drinking from her flask with a loud ‘ahh’ before she answered her. “Got it in one.” We sat staring at the stump for a few seconds before I asked. “Are we going to go get those things or?” Sarah also chimed in. “We should probably let the village know we’re burning the stumps as well, so they don’t think the forest caught fire. Might want to break it up into batches so we don’t cause a dungeon shift.”
I heard that term before, but as a poor, barely literate boy growing up, I didn’t remember. I asked. “I’ve heard of dungeon shifting, but I don’t really remember why it’s important.” We walked back to the village as Sarah took over the explanation. “Dungeons aren’t really living per se, the way I always imagined it was something similar to a ghost controlling a certain area. If that area is changed enough, it can fundamentally alter the dungeon forever, changing what the dungeon will spawn.”
We waved at the guards as we let them know we were going to burn the stumps. “Let’s say a dungeon is comprised of a cave in a mountain, the cave has many metal nodes, so it becomes a hot spot for adventurers who overmine the area. It’s overmined to the point that the mountain collapses. The dungeon could end if the core is broken, or it could become a completely different dungeon because of the sudden shift in environment.”
She kept explaining as we knocked on the mayor’s door. “Now, imagine what sort of environment a forest would become if the entire forest were burned to the ground. What sort of monsters would spawn from that? What resources could we get? Far worse monsters and far fewer resources, so it makes almost no sense to force a dungeon shift in that direction.”
It had me curious again. “Is it possible to adjust the dungeon in a positive direction? Like, if I built a giant lake and the dungeon supplied the lake with fish, would it make fewer goblins?” She whispered as we heard someone walking toward the door. “I’m not sure, I haven’t heard anything about it, but it would make sense that it was possible, just… Not a very reliable method. You might make a lake, but what determines the dungeon will make fish rather than merpeople or other stronger monsters.”
The mayor answered the door as he wiped his hands down with a rag. It looked like he was oiling his weapon or something similar, as he was in his full adventurer outfit. “What do the four of you need?” He asked, an eyebrow raised at the odd sight of me working with others. Delilah asks a question first. “What’s up, looks like ye’re about to head to war.”
“You could say that. My village almost being burned to the ground and my wife almost being taken by a love rival really put some things into perspective. I’ve been too relaxed as of late, and need to get stronger in case something similar happens.” We sat as he finally cleaned his hands, Olivia barked out what we were doing. “Anyway… We’re going to burn the stumps out of the ground in front of the dungeon. Just wanted to let you know so you don’t think there is another attack… Okay, bye!”