A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 502 - Elemental Healing

"Fire?" Ceph tilted his head questioningly while pondering. "Maybe?"

"Let's try," Eldrian said, taking out a dagger and cutting along his arm. Freaking both Myropsis and Ceph out for a moment, but the pain really wasn't anything to mention to Eldrian.

"Don't do that again!" Ceph said sternly as he focused on the wound, focusing on wanting it to heal but only allowing the fire element to do so. A strange idea and something that simply felt wrong as Ceph's instincts told him this wasn't the correct way to heal the wound.

It took some time for Ceph to actually manage to get the mana to do what he wanted, without nature magic bugging in. When he finally managed, Eldrian could feel the wound burning as it slowly, excruciatingly slowly, healed.

Looking at the wound, it was healing at a rate visible to the eye, but nowhere as fast as Eldrian would like. The pain was actually also quite severe considering the system was limiting his. Eldrian didn't want to know what it would feel like to the NPCs.

Needless to say, it was nowhere as effective as the nature element at healing, and likely why no one used it.

"That's fine, seems it doesn't really work," Eldrian said, not healing it himself but instead asking Myropsis to do so with a water spell.

Opposite to how the fire had burned, water soothed the wound. However, the healing was still slower compared to a nature heal. Calling it less effective though wasn't a correct statement either.

Nature magic healed by speeding up the body's ability to heal drastically, to superhuman levels even. This meant that it would leave scars, though their visibility would be determined by many factors.

These factors were vaguely understood, the three most important ones being the person's constitution, the healing spell's Tier, and the damage severity.

As was well known, a simple Tier 1 heal couldn't heal deep cuts. At least not in normal circumstances.

The scars left behind worked in a similar fashion, in that they would not be left behind if the spell was far more effective than needed. Leaving the body with extra energy to completely remodify the wound area.

Divine healing spells worked completely differently, Eldrian had no idea how exactly. But they healed through a method that does not depend on the person's constitution. Only the spell's Tier and the severity of the damage were important in that case.

From what Eldrian had managed to learn, both through his interactions with Ayden and chats with Elizabeth, it felt to him like divine magic somehow reverted the body to what it was previously.

Almost in a similar manner to how players could resurrect with a completely repaired body. His current hypothesis was that it worked somewhat similarly. Only, there were some restrictions. The most likely being something to do with a perception of self.

Why? Because Eldrian had heard of some soldiers who had lost an arm, leg, or even eye. Naturally, the army would want to heal these soldiers who had fought valiantly, but in some rare cases, especially if a certain amount of time has passed, the healing would fail.

Leaving them disabled, no one knew why exactly.

Of course, this could be fixed by calling in a stronger healer. But that wasn't that easy, and it was unlikely to be done for someone below Tier 5.

Back to the water healing spells, it wasn't like nature or divine healing. A bubble of water formed before Myropsis, moving to Eldrian and the targeted heal point. Eldrian had learned that his moving caused her to need to recast, as the spell would simply miss and splash on the ground.

It was quite funny how frustrated Myropsis had been when Eldrian tested that.

When he didn't move, the water would morph around his arm and slowly seep into it. With mana sense, Eldrian could see some of the mana changing form as it did. Into a form similar to what nature healing spells were, and what Ceph's fire 'heal' had been.

In Ceph's defense, it was his first time trying something that didn't feel natural. So his failure should be more considered a success considering it did actually heal Eldrian, only in a very slow and painful manner.

Back to the heal, once the water turned back into mana and entered his body, the spell quickly started healing. Shockingly, some of the water was directly turned into cells. Or at least that was what Eldrian speculated as he saw patches of skin growing randomly in the wound.

When it was done, his arm was brand new. No scar, no damage, no odd or peculiar feeling. It was like the wound had never happened.

'Interesting, the method is very different. Which means all elements can indeed be used to heal, but not just randomly.' Looking at Ceph's apologetic puppy dog eyes, Eldrian quickly told him to not worry.

"I know it was something weird to ask. It did help, I think each element has a certain form of healing it is best at healing."

"What?" Myropsis exclaimed in shock, not understanding how Eldrian came to that conclusion after Ceph failed with the fire 'heal'.

"It's just my speculation, I feel like fire might be good for healing infections or diseases, maybe even..." Pausing, Eldrian wondered if cancer was even a thing on Gaia and if it was if normal healing could fix it or not.

"And, am I right in suspecting water healing is used to treat old wounds that have scarred?"

"You are, but why would fire be good at healing infections. Nature does that just fine."

"And nature also heals wounds just fine, scars included. But, water seems to have an area it is better at. Requiring a less advanced spell to acquire the same effect as a higher nature one. Correct?"

"Oh, I see. But, what would the other elements then do? I kind of get how fire can help the sick, but not how wind, earth, light, or dark would be of any special use."

"Who knows? We won't unless we test it." Eldrian said, though he already had some speculations.

Since light added energy to spells, if adding it to water caused the water to boil, maybe adding it to a heal would give the person more energy. And with dark being the opposite, it might be useful for knocking someone unconscious. Though, admittedly, that wasn't directly a heal, it could still be useful.

'Eh, I'll just send this to Erik. He can think on it a bit, I have enough to focus on already.' Eldrian noted to himself, quickly sending an abridged version of events to his friend to analyze.

"Right, now for why I actually came. Where can I find..." Eldrian faltered as he failed to recall the mage association's leader's names. "Where can I find the association's leader?"

"Leader? Oh, you mean Sofiera. Why are you looking for her?"

"Haven't you heard about what I did to my manor?"

"Nope, what happened?" Myropsis quickly perked up, already suspecting Eldrian wanted one of the experimentation rooms.

Normally these were booked weeks in advance, the only way to skip the waiting line was to meet Sofiera. It was also the only reason she could think of Eldrian wanting to meet with her.

"Let's just say I lost control while experimenting with auras and nearly killed everyone in the manor while also destroying all my arrays," Eldrian grumbled, happy he hadn't needed to pay for the repairs immediately, not happy that he had a 300 gold loan.

That was a loan worth 30 000 dollars! Give or take a few thousand depending on the current exchange rate of course.

"Really? Come on, don't leave me hanging. What were you trying to do?"

Eldrian sighed and explained a bit more, leaving Myropsis with her mouth hanging open as she stared at him in sheer shock and amazement.

"So... Let me get this straight... I am here, struggling to keep control of my simple Tier 0 spells... And you. You are trying to take control of your auras! A thing that no one even knows how to do! And you already figured it out?!"

"Yup, that's about right." Eldrian nodded, not wanting to argue on the fact that no one knew how. He knew at the very least that the undead knew very well how to control their auras. Especially the liches.

"Okay... Just wanted to clarify." Myropsis mumbled, sat down, and started practicing her spells again. When Eldrian asked where Sofiera was, she just told him to go ask reception.

AN: Please see the author's note below regarding updates.