Chapter 111: Blood Replenishment

"How is Keith's condition, head healer Berk?" Lucius questioned.

~Sigh~

"I was just about to start. We have already administered the sleep inducing medicine, so that he will not suffer in pain as much. We now need to take care of the actual injuries themselves. We were waiting for the sleeping medicine to take effect fully." Head Healer Berk answered.

Lucius nodded his head and gestured for them to continue and not mind him. 

"Should we start, head healer Berk?" The senior healers asked.

"Go ahead." Head Healer permitted.

"The bleed arresting paste has been properly applied and has allowed him to keep his life, but it's in a delicate balance. If his blood is not replenished, he will not survive for long. Healer Toran managed to keep his heart pumping forcefully, but that is not a permanent solution." The senior healer assessed.

Head Healer Berk simply nodded his head and did not speak, letting his students do the work. He would only interfere if something bad happened. Usually, he would not even appear here and was here by chance.

Even if Keith had been brought here, Berk would not have necessarily been here to treat him. It would have been the senior healers who would take care of him. Berk usually spent his time in research and wandering around in the city's slums where he would treat the poor and downtrodden.

Lucius kept on watching and saw the senior healers, first cracking the paste that had hardened around the cut and then pulling out the long glass shard. 

~drip~

Once the glass shard was pulled out, blood started to pour out from the wound again. But this time there were many healers here to handle it. The second senior healer simply placed his hands over the wound and created a small circular bubble around it.

This bubble was transparent and seemed just like a soap bubble. Yet, no matter how much blood came out from the cut, it did not pop. 

"I'll hold it here, please begin the blood replenishment." The senior healer spoke.

"Yes!" The nurses spoke and got to work.

They took out a large trunk and put it on the table next to them. Opening the trunk, they took out large fleshy leaves from the truck. Lucius could see tens of different herbs that were kept in the trunk.

But that was not all that made the trunk special. He could also see a few crystals embedded into the trunk.

'The trunk is an artifact?' Lucius thought.

Closely observing it, Lucius could tell that there were various herbs in it that needed very specific conditions for storage. Yet they were all kept in different compartments of the same trunk. Looking at the Rune Crystals embedded on the sides of the trunk, one could tell that they corresponded to the different internal compartments of the trunk.

'So each rune crystal is for different types of herbs. Smart… though the cost for something like this must be quite high.' Lucius thought to himself.

He continued observing the nurses and saw that they were now crushing the large fleshy leaves in a mortar. The leaves themselves were as big as banana leaves but were thick, like a succulent plant.

But when the leaves were being crushed they let out a dark red juice. The green color of the leaves contrasted greatly with the red juice and looked quite strange. Once the leaves were fully crushed, the nurses transferred all of the juice into a large metal bucket.

Another nurse then brought hot water with her and poured it into the bucket into which the red juice had been poured into. Meanwhile, the junior healers started to grab some medicines from the shelves at the side. 

One of them was a white crystalline powder which Lucius recognized rather easily.

"Salt?" Lucius couldn't help but say.

The junior healers put some salt into the bucket that contained the diluted red juice of the thick leaves. But that was not the end as one by one, more ingredients were added to it. Some Lucius could recognize, while some were out of his understanding for now.

He could not tell what they were making at first, but as the process carried on, he got a hunch.

'They can't be making that, can they?' Lucius wondered.

"It is prepared, Head Helen Berk!" the Nurses said at the end.

Berk walked to the bucket and dipped his finger into the red liquid before rubbing it between his fingers.

"Hmm… can be improved but it's decent enough for now." Head Healer Berk stated. "Now, begin the blood replenishment process." He ordered.

"Yes!" The senior healers responded.

The healer who had created the bubble around Keith's neck turned around and created another bubble in the bucket full of red liquid. He then made the bubble float in the air, which carried the red liquid in it.

~shua~

The red bubble was brought to Keith's neck before being forced into the wound. 

"Rah…" Keith groaned, despite being sedated.

Head Healer nodded seeing this and sat down on one of the stools, gesturing his students to continue. The senior healer repeated the process while the other senior healer placed his hands on the back of Keith. His hands started to glow in a bluish light as it was transmitted into his back.

Over two hours passed, after which the blood replenishment process was finally completed and all of the red fluid was depleted. Lucius now fully confirmed that what these people had just made was artificial blood.

This made Lucius very interested, and he wondered how it worked. Blood had different blood groups, not all of which were inter-compatible between people. While Lucius did not know if blood groups even existed in this world or not, he was sure just mixing some herbs and ingredients like that must not be accurate enough to make blood.

'That first senior healer… it must be that gift which must be the secondary factor in this.' Lucius thought.