A Doctor Without Borders [Healer | Slow-Burn | Medical Fantasy]

"You are kidding me, right? Didn't you just hear what I said?"

She scowled. "Are you disobeying your Master?" I didn't make a move for the blade, and her eyes narrowed. "Are you scared?"

I recoiled. "Fear has nothing—"

"Enough stalling." Her hand snaked out, grabbing my arm and pulling it straight. Before I could say a word, her other hand moved from her waist in a blur. A red line streaked in front of me just before fire erupted from the center of my forearm. My eyes went wide at the sight of her dagger sticking straight through my arm.

I looked back and forth between her knife and her face. Shock gave way to sharp pain. Still, I sat there trying to register what had just happened.

"You…You bi—"

The air pulsed. "Choose your next words carefully before I decide to give you another wound to heal." She held out her hand, now with a potion in her palm. "Now show me your skill."

She gripped my arm tightly when I tried to pull away. Around the dark wood of the blade, white turned dark red as blood seeped into the fabric of my white coat. With each drop of blood spilling from my arm, the fire burned hotter and spread upwards.

During my time in this world, pain had become a frequent and unwanted acquaintance. I had dealt with worse, but she was supposed to be…

A throb pulsed up my injured arm. I winced but kept my jaw clamped. I wouldn't give the satisfaction.

I swiped the vial from her hand. Lightning bolts shooting up my arm aborted my first attempt at trying to open the vial. Any movements of my left hand elicited pain, though interestingly, the movements didn't cause significant additional damage. Without Energy coating it, the blade's edge was rather dull.

Look at the groundbreaking discoveries you can learn when getting stabbed!

I gritted my teeth, as much to manage the pain as to contain the fury rising in its wake. "The top?"

She didn't move. "I am holding you to the same level my Master held me."

Cold comfort. A sadistic instructor is definitely the standard we should be striving for.

I activated [Quicken Thoughts], and the world slowed to a stop before my eyes. I ignored the magnification of the pain, opting to study my would-be teacher, the young woman who thought it made sense to perpetrate the same behavior she so despised. Since arriving in this cursed world, people stronger than me had pushed me around and disrespected me. Healing via magic may forever be beyond my reach, but I could heal wounds with the right tools. She needed to see how I earned this opportunity.

I didn't activate [Sense Injury]. It was my own body. The skill provided an instinctual awareness of what had gone wrong, not that there was any complexity to this injury. I had to give it to her. She knew her anatomy well enough to avoid any major arteries, and while the wound was deep, thanks to my time here, I had gained quite the familiarity with treating penetrating wounds.

I wouldn't need much potion to heal it. An eighth would be overkill. I could chug that amount and, in seconds, extract the knife and leave nothing more than an angry memory and a torn and soiled coat.

But would that achieve my goal? Unfortunately, no. I needed to show her something that bordered on the impossible.

I dropped [Quicken Thoughts] and focused on the hand holding the vial. Trying to ignore my racing heart, I brought the vial to my mouth. My hand shook as the intensity of the throbbing grew. However, I had dealt with worse tremors. Pushing my elbow against my torso, I braced my arm before flipping off the lid with my teeth. I didn't bother to track where it rolled off to when it hit the floor. My vision had started to swim.

I sucked in air through clenched teeth as I rotated my wounded arm inward until the blade became horizontal enough to catch the potion. I rested the vial's edge on the blade and let a minuscule amount flow out of the small container. The liquid—I'd call it about five drops—rolled down the smooth wood toward the wound. The shaking of my arms sent its path askew, but most made it to my target. The few drops that didn't end up in the wound fell on the white coat, not far from the growing, deep-red ring of blood.

As soon as the potion contacted my blood, I clamped down on its effect. A restlessness started to develop in the arm. A mild tingling, a subtle crawling joined the throbbing in my arm and grew stronger with each moment I held the potion in abeyance, but I hesitated lifting the potion vial.

I'm not showboating.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

I held the vial out in front of Esper. "Hold this."

"Are you sure? I will not give it back, and I see little happening."

Little? My head snapped. How about nothing?

She didn't have a smirk on her face, but she should. A [Healer] of her caliber should sense exactly what wasn't happening. The potion was healing, which didn't happen with these potions. They started regenerating tissue immediately on contact. However, inside my body, I had complete control of it. I had suppressed its function to such a degree that it might as well be saline. Ergo, I had to be manipulating it, and she had just chosen to misconstrue the facts of this situation just to needle me.

Every bit of me yearned to rip the dagger from my arm and drive it into her arm, which she'd deserve, but somehow, I managed to stay the consummate professional. "Take it."

She removed the vial from my hand, and I shifted my focus to the wound, and my eyes widened in surprise at what I had found. The bloody ring had extended from the injury, but not in a typical radial pattern. Small tendrils of the blood wormed their way along the coat's fabric with an unnatural directional preference. They all moved towards the iridescent red drops that had gone askew when I dribbled the potion on the wound.

And it wasn't just the blood. The iridescent drops had hints of manipulation. Instead of an irregular circle, they had lengthened to thin red wisps. I had planned for the unpleasant experience of massaging my sleeve to get the potion in contact with my blood, but now I waited, as the two liquids streamed closer. When they met, I braced for strain, minute as it would be, from having to control more potions, but only the quietest of hums came. As it faded, the iridescent liquid constricted to a thin band at the previous interface of the two liquids, as if waiting for my command.

Twice now, something had supported my skill. And what did these episodes have in common? My coat.

However, I couldn't dwell on the mystery. I had lost enough blood. With a mental command and a trickle of Energy, I started the healing process. Even the minute amount of Energy I had released exceeded my needs. Just as my control over the potion had improved, so had my efficiency. It made the next steps trivial.

The glittering red on the coat vanished, seeping into my blood and merging with the potion in my body. My body now infused with the full dose, I dropped the blockade I had erected to prevent the potion's action. I didn't need to corral the potion; it had no other wounds to work on. I prepared myself for the worst part of this whole ordeal. My arm trembled as I gripped the dagger and slowly pulled it up. I gritted my teeth at the sharp jolts the maneuver sent up my arm. Still, I didn't lose focus. I couldn't. I had something to prove.

Working on my body made things trivial. Every sheared strand of muscle and fascia, every torn vessel, I could pick them out. I could partially go down to the cellular level, detecting even the subtle bacterial contamination from the non-sterile blade.

The edges of the gash on the other side of my arm closest to the tip of the knife raced inward as if chasing the receding blade. When the blade's tip no longer jutted out past the backside of my arm, I paused.

She eyed the wound and the blood-coated blade that stood upright, held tight by the healing tissue. "I told you I wouldn't give you back your potion."

I needed to make a statement, even if that meant doing something medically ill-advised. After all, what did they say? Go big or go home?

I flashed her a wicked smile and yanked the blade out with a jerk. I couldn't stop the grunt at the flash of pain, but I managed to keep my fake smile plastered on my face and, more importantly, my control over the potion. I thrust my arm forward, displaying the bloody arm.

Let her witness my skill.

I had been wrong about needing the equivalent of five drops of potion. Half would have sufficed.

I pushed the skill to its limit, enhancing the potion and knitting the wound together as fast as I could without making a mistake. The embedded bacteria tried to bloom in concert with the regenerating tissue, but almost as an afterthought, I trickled a bit of Energy into [Suppress Growth], tamping that down. With the rate of healing, my immune system probably didn't need assistance, but why risk it?

In seconds, it was over.

"You happy?" She'd better be, because her little demonstration would require visiting [Tailor] to get my white coat mended. When she didn't look up, I followed her gaze to my coat. "What…?"

Only then did I notice the pull on my Energy. I allowed it to flow from me, and it moved into my white coat. The results manifested before our wide eyes.

Sheared fibers reconnected, starting at the ends of the tear and zippering inward, and the deep red of the blood faded, not to the brown of oxidized blood but rather a pale pink. I diverted all my attention to the phenomenon, almost missing the vague intrusion in my thoughts. Not words, but…worry? Hunger? I couldn't put my finger on it. Even the faintest of bitterness at the back of my tongue that accompanied it may have been nothing more than my imagination.

I opened myself up, doing the opposite of the shielding I used to withstand the crush of information when entering mines. Information flooded me. Width. Depth. Length. The wound's—tear's—shape and size came to me with the same ease as examining my own body.

[Sense Injury] had activated. For. My. Coat.

As if opening a floodgate, Energy surged in the coat. The Energy fluctuated but then smoothed out, coalescing along the tear as if it knew exactly where it was needed. Some came from me, but most came from the coat itself. I didn't dare intervene, and within less than a minute, the coat had reknit itself, leaving pristine white fabric.

My eyes flickered to the floor. Damp patches of dirt.

My gaze returned to my coat. Still white. I blinked. Still unblemished.

It couldn't have…

I checked again, this time performing a more thorough investigation. I picked up nothing in those fibers. No traces of blood. No healing potion.

My coat had consumed my blood.

What other explanation was there? The blood was gone; the coat healed.

Had it also used the potion?

I hadn't paid close enough attention, but it could have. I hadn't used it all. However, whatever had happened had left my coat brimming with Energy. It had mostly faded, but some remained.

I glanced at Esper, and she sat, slack-jawed. Her eyes jumped between my coat and my face.

"Did you…?"

"I'm not sure…"

She looked once more at the mended sleeve. "What are you?"

Despite the hint of violence in the question, I couldn't resist a bit of payback. I gave a loose shrug, palms up, and the slightest of smirks on my face. "Just a Human."