Chapter 84

  Necrotic Sporotrichosis

  I had my work cut out for me, as I was trying to do what hundreds of healers before me couldn’t. That said, I did have a cheat, namely my Trash Skill allowed me to remove things that were both dead and that I considered to be waste. This helped out instantly while trying to heal the pulsing purple arm of the giant warrior before me.

  A warrior that might have had more technical abilities than his opponent but was clearly fighting with his dominant arm tied behind his back. Thinking back, if he had actually tied the arm in question behind his back, then he might have fared better than he did. Instead, he got punched in the arm and then was all but forced into an easy submission due to crippling pain inflicted by his opponent trying to capitalize on a known weakness.

  While I couldn’t fault his opponent for taking advantage of the weakness, I did fault him for continuing to inflict undue injuries after a submission was recorded. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I see that the opponent is still unconscious, with referee Kam trying his best to bring the kid back to consciousness. I also feel better knowing that Mr. Yi and Markan have taken up positions to my right and left. With Mr. Yi purposefully placing his body directly between the knocked-out opponent and myself, should he wake up and be otherwise angered by my cheap shot. Again though, he wouldn’t have gotten that cheap shot had he himself not been trying to inflict undue pain on someone who was clearly in agony.

  This gave me the perfect opportunity to focus on the problem before me. What I saw was not good, as I noticed a layer of glowing purple puss seeming to settle just on top of the necrotized area of skin. I assume this is a mixture of blood, and some type of poisonous residue that has taken root just under the skin. The skin itself is dead, but a dry dead that seems to crack easily and force more of the infected puss upwards.

  It’s disgusting and for a moment I am glad that I have the mask of my healer’s costume on, as it helps keep the blatantly rancid smell from getting to my lungs quickly. The first thing I do, is use Trash to get rid of both the cracked outer layer of skin and the rancid puss that is on the surface of the skin. The result is that I get to see the horrors of this affliction at work in real time. What I see disgusts and confuses me at first. For the more healing that gets applied to the outer layer of skin thanks to my Trash Skill now being actioned via my healing attuned mana, the more the purple mass under the skin glows and worse the more it also grows.

  “Ahh!” The fighter hisses out, as he cries I stop my actions and look up at him. Then he speaks out, “don’t you know that’s demon rot, the more healing you apply the more it feeds and grows under the skin?”

  With his comments, my eyes go wide as I try to understand just how insidious this ailment is.

  “It feeds off of healing energy?” I ask, trying to confirm his fears.

  “Yes, the only thing that really works is coating the wound in holy water and immediately healing the wound while it is submerged,” he replies, a faint tone of I should already know this in his voice, though he fortunately doesn’t state that part of his thoughts, if he does have them. Still, my mind is open with thoughts, activating my Divine Sight I focus and see that the dark purple spots are in fact growing.

  This is an insidious disease, as the very act of living will slowly feed the rot. Then any standard treatments will result causing the rot to grow larger. The fact that the substance grew off of Life or Healing energy and couldn’t be removed directly by my Trash Skill implied to me that it was somehow living. More than mites were living, as I could get rid of animal ear grout, which was performed mostly by mites. Still hearing that it could be treated filled me with hope. Better still, I had all of the items required, at least my mind told me I had all of the conditions required. I had Holy energy, while not water, I felt I could project it in a dense enough coating to at least be worth a try. Then I had healing and my Trash Skill, all of which should be enough to work this problem. That said, I needed consent first, which is why I asked.

  “I’m going to try something,” I said. While this wasn’t necessarily a request, the patient just nodded while letting me hold his injured arm, rotting side up for me to look at. Seeing the arm, and having what I considered to be consent, I decided to start with applying a quick coat of Divine energy to see what that did to the injured area. There was just one problem.

  “Ohh,” I hum out, letting my voice harmonize with a crisp note as I try to infuse my voice with my newly evolved Divine Music Resonance Skill that utilizes Holy energy with my Skill. This time, I practice the same vocal awakening exercises that Madame Voyou taught me, but I try to focus on infusing my voice with the deep golden resonance that lines my throat and vocal cords.

  The result is both a success and failure simultaneously. I am pleased that I almost instantly succeed in infusing a golden mist into my voice that empowers my words and helps me add Holy energy directly to my voice. The failure comes in that the mask that prevented me from smelling rotten flesh now serves as a direct buffer, preventing my infused words from going out and reaching the intended area of skin without wasting the majority of my energy.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Gah,” I hiss out as I use my free right hand to raise my veil over my lips and begin trying to create musical notes once more.

  “Hmmm,” again the notes flow easily and I can see Holy energy infusing to each full note. Meaning that I am wasting a lot of sound waves that are not strong enough to carry the full weight of Holy energy. That said, the energy that does land on the exposed arm seems to have an immediate reaction from the demonic rot as it seems to come to the surface and immediately fight against the alternate energy source. Seeing the rot come up, I immediately target the foreign substance with Trash, removing it from the surface as if it was a scalpel. A scalpel that both cut away part of the dead skin, while simultaneously healing part, which drew up more of the rot, to only have the rot immediately lash out to strike at the residual Holy energy.

  Seeing the process, I realized “this might take a minute,” I state.

  The fighter seeing the progress just nods his head a look of confusion and wonder seeming to mix equally on his features. I hope I appear confident, because right now, this is all instinct. Instinct and past experiences on how to treat lingering sporotrichosis from my past life. While I can’t determine if this is a fungus like sporotrichosis is, I can see that the method that I would treat sporotrichosis is the same as I am attempting to use to treat this lingering issue.

  Sporotrichosis is a fungal infection that typically occurs on the hands, I know as I constantly got these type of fungal infections as a kid while playing in my mother’s rose garden. The trick with sporotrichosis is to first treat the outer layer, which will cause spores to come up, spores that you then scrape off. Then rinse and repeat, continuing to treat the outer layer of skin with antifungal creams, while removing any spores that emerge, eventually making it so you can remove the infection entirely. In my mind, I see this as that exact process. Or at least, that is the method that I want to try.

  In this case, the antifungal ointment will be my Divine Musical Resonance, then the scraping away of the spores will be performed by my Trash Skill, then rinse and repeat until gone. Simple, right?

  The only problem was that I wasn’t able to apply a consistent layer of Divine energy with just humming. That was when I resorted to singing, knowing that with each hard consonant I could get a full dose of energy out, while each light consonant allowed for half a dose to be delivered. A half dose was the equivalent of what I was able to get by just humming out sounds, showing that Bards and Skalds in particular were really onto something with infusing magic into their songs.

  I began with a spark of an idea. One that focused on what I was doing, versus anything major. The song I ended up singing began organically, starting off with just a mocking thought of a song from my past world.

  “Take this light of mine, watch me make it shine,” but that wasn’t enough. I knew from experience that the magical effects only got bigger the more emotion you could pour into the song. That’s when I reached deep and sang the words that just came to me.

  "Take this light of mine, watch me make it shine

  Shine like a fire in the dark, shine with just a spark

  A spark of hope in the night

  A spark that will create the light

  A light to shine on until this world is big and bright."

  With this, a wave of shining divine energy poured out and gently coated the arm of the contestant. As more energy coated the arm, more glowing purple light came up, hissing violently and seeming to cause burns to appear. Seeing the reaction, I could understand why people tried to use water, as that would instantly cure the fire. But in this case, the burnt skin was fine, as it was just like the other dead skin and easily able to be peeled away with my Trash Skill.

  Each time I used my Trash Skill, I found that I had to pause with the application of Divine energy. The easiest way to do this was to just gently hum notes that added to the rhythm and pace of the song, but didn’t distribute massive amounts of Divine energy. Then when I was ready to continue, I went back to the chorus, those same basic five lines. Occasionally throwing a few others to speed up or slow down as needed. Then humming to use Trash to clear the area.

  Continuing in this way, I worked slowly. Or it felt like I was going slowly, only pausing towards the end. Even then I would have been able to continue without any issues, had I not felt the entire ring rumble beneath me. Pausing for a second, I looked up and heard hundreds of voices singing along with my simple tune. A tune that had been but an echo of a memory from my past life.

  Not wanting to waste any momentum, as I could feel it somehow easier to generate Divine energy with everyone singing along with me. Only now did I realize that I had skipped a step, as I never went to my Golden Life Ratio Mana Regeneration*, instead I found that I was able to easily generate the Divine energy. Not by myself, but by the way everyone seemed to sing along with me. Was this a benefit of the Bard and Skald classes? Able to do more with less, from getting others to help generate energy to help? I didn’t know. All I knew was that with everyone singing and stomping along, the process became easy, and most importantly, it became enjoyable.

  Then before I even realized what I had done, it was over. The wound was healed, but there was a problem. I could tell that the music and energy needed to end. That’s when I quickly felt an ending and stuck it, or at least I tried to stick it, using the first words that came to mind.

  “Shine, shine, shine for all to see

  Shine on for you and me.”

  Once I was done removing the last of the rot, there was just one problem. Namely the fact that there was now a gaping hole where the rot had manifested and eroded away muscle and bone. Still, that wasn’t terrible as I just used the moment to heal as much of the wound I could, using my Streamline Healing* Skill. While it was clear that there was still a divot, it was not as pronounced as it was before. Also, the skin now looked healthy, no signs of purple rot or inflamed infection. Just skin that had been atrophied away.

  “It’s healed!” The fighter shouted excitedly, ripping his arm free and all but causing me to fall in the process. Only once he was gone did I realize just how tired I was now. Fortunately, Markan was there to grab me and help me up, placing one hand under my right elbow, while Mr. Yi grabbed my left elbow and both lifted me.

  Trembling, I rose to my feet, as a wave of exhaustion I had never experienced in this life hit me. It was as if I ran a marathon in three minutes and was now trying to have my body catch up to using so much energy so quickly.

  “She did it, the miracle healer works again!” The fighter exclaimed excitedly, happily showing off his arm with an obvious indention in it, to the crowd.

  The crowd cheered wildly, stomping their feet and reacting as excitedly as the fighter was about his arm being healed. Then the fighter said what had to be one of the oddest comments I ever heard, “I’m going to do it, I’m going to reenlist right now!”

  EXCESSIVE CHEERING!

  At his proclamation, the audience erupted. I was trying to get over the idea of why someone who just got healed of a potentially deadly rot, would decide to go back to the front lines, when I see someone that causes my heart to flutter for a moment.

  Looking out, I lock gazes with Luna who stares at me, her large doe eyes staring back with a look of hope and something else. Seeing her near open jaw expression, I can’t help but smile and wink at her before I reach up to pull my veil down masking my face once again.

  I feel completely stupid after doing so, as I can’t help but blush slightly, only to see that Luna is still there staring at me, and that’s when I know.