Published at 16th of February 2024 2:23 pm

Chapter 2.1 Triage Under Fire

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“The best physicians need not have healing magic. An intimate knowledge of human anatomy, treating wounds, diseases, and other ailments are necessary. It is necessary for all healers to train as surgeons and apothecaries first. After all, misused alchemical brews and regenerative spells can do more damage than good. Hasty spellcasting with insufficient knowledge can cause tumorous growths and incorrectly connected nerves and muscles or worse.” - Archmage Sylvan Stallone

Anyone with the talent to sense magic can walk the path of an aether practitioner. Individuals with an inclination for martial skills pursue an aether warrior's life, while anyone gifted with a scholarly mind can become an aether artisan or mage. A minute fraction of the latter category of people get far enough in life to earn titles like battle mage, war wizard, or combat sorcerer. Besides the dedication to ascending their star past journeyman rank, they require one essential quality: concentration during chaos.

Nox had a surplus of said quality. Anyone can swing a sword, fire an arrow, conjure destructive essences, or heal patients as long as they've had the essential training and ample practice. However, doing so while concentrating on multiple spellforms and defending against enemy attacks is a rare ability.

A score of occupied cots lay in neat rows and columns around Nox. Their occupants had missing limbs, deep lacerations, and fungal growths covering their skin or clogging their respiratory system. The last of the category was especially terrifying. There was no telling whether Nox and the healers would save them in time. Yet he didn't stop. He diagnosed patients, stitched wounds, removed the ugly grey-brown mushrooms, and then treated the wounds with a sterilizing brew of his design. It cleaned the wounds and ensured the fungus wouldn't regrow. It also kept the spores from spreading and taking hold elsewhere. If he judged the patients' blood toxicity levels were low enough—a litmus test provided a semi-accurate measurement—he also plied them with a hyper-concentrated healing pill. The initial burst of relief and energy helped those well enough to empty a cot sooner and make room for someone new.

Besides using mana sense to analyze patients and treat them, Nox's mind also kept its focus on the largest defensive spell he had ever conjured. An eight-sided cone hung over the entire tent. The outer layer had the power of Slow while the inner carried Crystallize Essence. Essence glass softly thumped against the tent's fabric before sliding down it and landing on the ground outside.

Nox had nowhere near enough arcane energy or a big enough mana zone to support magic on such a large scale. Fortunately, Kris, his mentor, excelled at wards and spell extension scripts. She placed essence glass pyramids at eight equidistant points around the tent and drew the necessary spellforms into the mud. The crystals connected the runes and lines to Nox, extending his defensive spell to its boundary. Meanwhile, the local lord supplied mana gems powered the triangular structure. Nox only had to hold the spell in his mind to keep everything functional. However, doing so while also executing other tasks left him with a pulsing headache. If that wasn't bad enough, whenever one side of the structure failed, he had to replace it with a new one.

"Think about all the essence glass you're accruing," Nox whispered to himself as he carefully removed a large fungal growth from a woman's inner thigh. It was much too close to her femoral artery, and the lightest nick would spell her demise. Individuals with healing spells surrounded Nox, but they were all low on mana and busy with more urgent patients of their own. He was the least experienced of them. As a result, everyone left the easiest cases to him.

A tremor shook Nox's hand whenever he got close to the delicate skin around the growth. It wasn't the battle raging outside. Instead, he struggled with fatigue and the weight of the defensive spell. Nox took a stamina pill and the cocktail of empowering concoctions he always carried. Sniper's Eye sharpened his vision and made him more sensitive to colors. Feline Grace relaxed the stiffness in his joints and eased muscle cramps while improving his dexterity. Finally, Sprinter's High significantly reduced the lactic acid build-up and eased the stress.

When he brought the scalpel to skin again, his hands didn't shake. For the sake of safety, Nox used Mage Hand to manipulate his favorite tool. Artisan’s Arm extended over his shoulder and held the fungus firmly. He needed it to stay still while detaching the stem from the woman’s flesh.

While improving his first Artisan’s Arm, Nox had told Mou dozens of times about his original design. He used to think she didn’t listen to his ramblings. The repetition probably drove her mad. Much to his surprise, his aunt had memorized every detail and had the tool built to his specification.

Unlike the old Artisan’s Arm, the new one only had a joint where the limb met the four-clawed hand. Instead of rigid bars, the creator used countless interlocking segments to create the arm. They retracted into each other when necessary and had ample range of movement, giving the tool snake-like flexibility. It could extend further from Nox’s back as well. Given the weight and strength, it wouldn’t surprise him if his mother, Queen Lydia Mercer, contributed to the tool. The metals and fibers probably came from a mountainous dungeon, and an Aether Smith assisted in the creation of the constituent parts.

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Modifying the spellform made it more intuitive and quicker to react to his mental prompts. Nox had no artificing qualifications but estimated his skillset was at the apprentice level. Once back at Woodson University, he hoped to befriend and consult an accomplished artificer to improve the runework. They’d likely steal the design and his rune ideas, but Nox wasn’t as attached to either as his alchemical recipes. Besides, the Trade Empire had refined his Artisan Arm idea and probably patented it.

Nox took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly before focusing on his patient. He carefully sliced around the base of the fungus where the stem met the woman's artery. Instead of blood, murky brick-red fluid leaked from the cut. He ignored it and sliced as close to the surface as possible, removing as much of the root structure as possible. His heart dropped when he removed the frilly mushroom. Its tendrils firmly held the blood vessel. Nox poured his sterilizing brew over the fungal remnants. They shriveled for half a heartbeat before inflating again.

The case was beyond Nox. He lacked the necessary skills to save his patient.

Fortunately, Michelle Beaufort worked two cots away. She saw the despair on Nox's face and rushed to his side after stabilizing her patient.

"That's a tough one." She sighed. "We'll need to work quickly. Be ready with the clamps and gauze."

"Understood," Nox said.

"The mycelium seeks the host body's arteries so it can steal oxygen and nutrients. Your brew works by suffocating the fungus before slowly killing it. Since this little monster doesn't need air to breathe, it can fight your concoction and heal itself.'

The talented healer and necromancer guided Nox's hand, helping him clamp the blood vessel on either side of the fungus. Before removing the afflicted tissue, they carefully secured the exposed flesh with gauze to protect it from the still-growing fungus. The woman twitched, and the Artisan’s Arm jumped into action. It held her leg down by the knee while Nox did the same on the other side of the wound. Then Michelle connected the two clamped ends and whispered a minor chant.

Nox wondered why her magic needed verbal guidance as emerald-green tendrils of light extended from her fingertips and knit the two halves of the artery together.

"Sorry for tearing you away from your patient," Nox said as she stepped back. He worked on cleaning the wound and then patching it. Michelle had the power to do more for the woman, but her case was no longer urgent, and her mana was better saved for someone more desperate. "It feels like I'm killing more people than I save."

"Wouldn't you rather be out there defending the tent?" Michelle asked.

Nox shook his head. "The beasts resist lightning and recover from ordinary damage much too fast. Only my fire essence does enough harm to them to matter. I've equipped everyone with projectiles to do the job—"

"Don’t deflect, Nox. You're in here because you want to learn how to treat people. You're powerful enough to do as much as everyone else."

"That's true, but my presence or absence isn't doing enough to make much of a difference. Everyone is doing what I can, just as well. Given the myconid's numbers and their speed of recovery, we can do little right now besides holding them back until the Ignis Blooms arrive. Meanwhile, you're genuinely shorthanded here." Michelle glared at Nox. She didn't appear convinced or in a rush to return to her patient. He sighed and continued. "You and Wilson won't always delve with us. I want to know enough to help the party if my pills aren't enough to save them. Rifts and dungeons will only get harder once I reach adept. It doesn’t feel like I’m doing much good, though."

"Triage under fire is an important skill for every healer," the Beaufort woman placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled. "You learn from your failures as much as your successes. The more you practice, the greater your chances of saving the next person. We haven't just been giving you the easiest cases but the most hopeless ones, too. Sometimes, we can't even be sure who has the greatest chance of survival, so we prioritize the quickest-to-treat cases first. During times like this, it's a numbers game."

"Shouldn't we get back to work?" Nox asked, looking around the tent. Every second they spent talking was a second he wasn't learning.

When the Sigil of Artisan last evolved, it came with the boon Artisan's Library. Initially, Nox thought it would only store recipes and spellforms. Much to his surprise, the arcane tattoo also memorized techniques he witnessed and tried. The sigil considered slicing and stitching patients an art. Nox didn't know whether to be pleased or concerned by the implications.

"I've already signaled the porters to remove the dead and stable. Let's check outside for more patients. I'm sure the injured have piled up while we were busy."

The air outside the tent stank of blood, burnt flesh, and fungus. Kris, Nox’s mentor, stood in the backlines, commanding the rest of the party and the local lord’s men. Three yellow luminous spheres as large as her head floated around the woman. Whenever the giant mushroom beasts attacking the camp launched their fungal projectiles, beams of light shot free of them and assaulted the missiles, and set them ablaze. They turned to ash before touching down, but the grey-green essence within still struck the tent’s shield or assaulted unshielded fighters within. If they didn’t wash their open wounds with Nox’s brew in time, fungus grew from them.

Two scores injured lay propped up against the tent. Essence glass shards littered the ground around them.

“I can’t leave the ward,” Nox told Michelle. “Let me triage the people inside. You deal with everyone else?”

Michelle nodded, and they got to work.

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