Chapter 122: Long Term Issues

Chapter 122: Long Term Issues

“As you can see here, Mr. Thoma, there’s significant damage to your muscles in your right arms and leg. You’re healing on your own, somehow, which is a very good thing, but it will take a while.” The [Doctor] explained, gesturing at a [Skill] generated image of Isaac’s body.

“The mere fact that your body is regenerating and the scar tissue is being broken down at all is nothing short of a miracle, but it also means there is nothing I can do that isn’t already happening on its own. That is the good news. Unfortunately, it will take a long while for everything to properly fix itself, and I’m not familiar enough with your abilities to know if this regeneration will allow you to regain use of your right arm. There is a massive amount of scar tissue formed inside the limb, with the muscle fibers woven between them. The only reason you can still use it is one of your [Skills], but with even that, I don’t ...”

“Then remove it.” Isaac interrupted her “Amputate the limb, remove any damaged portions of the socket, ligaments and nerves so I can grow a new one.”

“That sounds ... extreme. Are you even certain that regrowing limbs wholesale is within your capabilities?” the [Doctor] cautioned, though she hid her shock at the drastic suggestion masterfully.

“I regrew my right hand when my Level was less than half of what it is today, and I’ve since gained associated [Skills], as well as upgraded the associated Aspect. Also, my [Skills] explicitly state that they can regrow limbs.” Isaac said reassuringly.

“I see.” She frowned “While that does sound like a viable option, I’m not sure that is a procedure I or anyone else at this hospital can perform. It’s very extreme, like I said.”

Isaac could suddenly feel his temper flare. Not nearly enough to make him loose it or say something stupid, but still to a degree he was not used to. It wasn’t even his anger, not really. Ever since he’d gained his [Class], something had changed. A certain ... presence had made itself known in the back of his mind.

Now, he’d known that choosing an inheritor [Class] would give him a new set of memories, but it was an entirely different thing to experience it.

Mind you, Hildebrand wasn’t a historical figure, he was a figure of myth and legend belonging to the pages of old legends like the ‘Niebelungenlied’, but like Sherlock Holmes, Davy Jones and Aeneas, he still qualified as an inheritor. These people were no longer specific characters from a given story, they were closer to ideas. As such, Isaac didn’t actually have another set of memories rattling around his brain, he just ... felt the presence of the old weapons master.

He knew that whoever ‘Hildebrand’ had been, if he’d ever existed outside the pages of a storybook, he would have already told the doctor what would happen in no uncertain terms. He wouldn’t have gotten rude, he wouldn’t have raised his voice, he would have merely given the order in such a way that it would be followed. Isaac wasn’t that willing to throw his weight around, not when there were other options available.

“I realize that amputation is a very ... out there procedure, and something that goes against the very core of what your profession represents, but it is viable in this new world. Try and think about it like this: surgeons cut bits out of people to heal them, chemotherapy pumps poison into people’s veins to kill the dangerous parts before it can kill them, and live vaccines involve literally infecting people with incredibly dangerous diseases. Yet outside of an incredibly small percentage that has negative outcomes, those horrifically sounding procedures work hard to save lives, don’t they?” Isaac gave her a wry smile.

“This is a new world, with new rules. Scarred flesh that’s basically still charcoal in places should have been removed, but it wasn’t, because I might be able to salvage it with my own natural healing ability. But by those same rules, amputation will actually be what fixes me.

“I realize this is a massive departure from any and all standard ways of doing things, but please, consider this like you didn’t know anything about medicine. There is a procedure that looks scary as hell, but it will return a patient control of a limb in a matter of days, possibly in less than twenty-four hours. Does this procedure sound like a good idea?”

“Yes, but this is still something I’ll have to talk over with some people, the hospital board, if nothing else.” She said.

“Meanwhile, its magical power is rather odd. Producing those area of effect attacks has to take an insane amount of mana, and its [Aura] should be classified as being a short-range combat version, even though its range is greater than even that of a sensory [Aura]. But while it clearly has an insane amount mana and offensive power of the magical nature, it is not overwhelmingly damaging, at least not on the same scale as the mana pool that supports it. It can be blocked by second Evolution [Skills], some of them not even cooldown [Skills], at least for the most part. When it can’t be, the power takes long enough to gather for people to react. This thing might be able to launch a hell of a lot more spells than any human [Mage], and target far larger areas, but they can still be survived, they aren’t as overwhelmingly powerful as they should be on something with such high Stats.

“Lastly, it is absurdly durable. I’ve fought monsters with some bits that were tougher than the matching body parts on the Demon Lord, but nothing that compares in terms of sheer overall toughness. And that is ignoring how it’s able to seemingly disregard fatal injuries. It needed to lose most of its vital organs to truly die.

“Heck, I might have been able to kill it on my own, otherwise. I was able to blast straight through its skull and out the other side, but it kept going. I cut its throat, tore open many major blood vessels, any one of which should have killed it. But it didn’t die.

“Again, this makes sense. After all, what use is a [Raid Boss] in a world with unstoppable, inviolable force attacks if a single one can kill it by blasting straight through its brain? But this leads to a situation where what would be a fatal injury on any other creature gets reduced to a mere flesh wound. Coupled with its overall toughness, I was barely able to do more than scratch it.”

“That thing came out of your dimensional space looking like someone had accidentally plastered an entire horror movie cast’s worth of fake injuries onto a single unfortunate extra.” Someone commented, prompting a slight chuckle from Isaac.

“I suppose that’s an adequate way of describing it. However, are those injuries really that bad when compared to what it looked like dead?”

“I suppose that at the end of the day, a [Raid Boss] isn’t going to be a chump, is it?” Bailey asked, the question clearly rhetorical. It also had a neat effect of putting an end to the whole discussion on the subject when combined with him moving on to the next topic.

“Now that we have a rough overview as to what level of strength and what abilities a [Raid Boss] has, we can try to plan around it, we can create a SOP for dealing with its kind. So here’s what I propose we do ...”

***

The whole discussion had continued on for several more hours, with people getting into idiotic fights over the stupidest crap, arguments that Isaac could have cut short in seconds if he’d been able to reveal his knowledge from the other timeline. But he couldn’t, so he had to stare at people fighting over inconsequential crap.

... at least a few good ideas came out of it.

Also, when the whole affair had ended, a whole herd of doctors had entered the room to discuss the whole ‘limb removal’ thing. It had taken a bit for them to come around, but Isaac’s new status as a national hero gave him a degree of influence even in areas where such influence shouldn’t exist. After all, saving a city didn’t mean he knew anything about medicine, but that was how people worked. A famous person could get away with a lot.

From there, convincing them that he could stay awake and actually needed to be to empower the scalpels to be able to cut his flesh had been easy.

The procedure itself went off without a hitch, but while Isaac sat there in his bed, waiting for his arm to fully regrow, a visitor arrived. It was a visitor he’d expected, it was a visitor he’d planned on dealing with, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to this meeting.

It was Germany’s ambassador to South Korea, here to talk about how he wanted to enforce Isaac’s right to the loot from the Demon Lord, and how Isaac, as a German citizen, had earned his home nation some small claim on the loot. Ugh. At least Isaac knew what use he could get out of this.