Land of Demons

6

“You’re right — urgent care!” Derek, who liked healers just a little bit more than he did Darnassians, shouted.

“Of course.” The old man smiled wryly. “Carry him inside. I’ll do whatever I can to help him.”

“You’ll ensure he’s all healed up by nightfall,” Derek growled. “I, Derek Le Bria, son of Baron Bria, the Lord of these lands, order you to do so!”

The old man’s eyes flashed with an evil gleam. This time, instead of nodding, he bowed low, not wishing to anger someone as powerful and influential as Derek.

The doctors, who were all young boys and girls, picked up the stretcher and carried it into the building. The trio followed after them. They breathed a sigh of relief as they stepped out of the midday heat and into the coolness of the interior. However, their relief was short-lived — they soon started coughing and wincing. The pungent smell of dried blood, medicine, pain, and despair filled their nostrils.

“This past week has been a stressful one,” the healer said as he opened the doors to the medical wing.

The trio froze. Their school’s Mentors and Masters had told them that the situation at the border was tense and that the two Empires hadn’t known such tension since time immemorial, but they could’ve never imagined it was this bad.

In the huge hall, the ceiling of which was about thirty feet high, bodies lay everywhere. Bunk beds with eight or more beds stacked atop one another were filled to the brim. One look at all the wounded was enough for them to realize that the war had already come to this region.

“Mommy…”

“My love, don’t die…”

“It hurts! It hurts so bad!”

“I want a drink before I die…”

“Damn it…”

“Aaaaaah! No more! Please…”

Shouts, groans, moans, pleas, curses, and the screams of the wounded that were being operated on without anesthesia flooded the room. The higher the bunks the wounded were on, the more likely it was that they’d already died. New patients were constantly being brought into the hall through four different entrances.

“Two squads have returned from battle,” the healer explained. With a wave of his hand, he cleared away numerous empty flasks and bottles from the nearest table. “Set him down here,” he said and looked at the bunks. “Sadly, just as many soldiers have been left behind in the lands of Darnassus.”

Derek clenched his fists.

“Bastards,” he hissed and turned away.

It was difficult for him to be here, not because he had a weak will or stomach, but because the sight brought back painful memories and filled him with rage.

Soon, he told himself. Very soon, they’ll pay for everything... Do you hear me, mom? They’ll pay!

Having laid the stranger down on the table, the doctors rushed to aid their colleagues. Some bandaged up the patients, some made medicine, some operated on the wounded, while others… painted dots on the foreheads of the new patients. Depending on the color of these dots, the healers and the doctors knew whether it was worth wasting their energy on the wounded or whether they should just give them painkillers and allow them to meet their forefathers peacefully. It was impossible to save them all.

“Well, let’s see what we have here.” The old man rolled up his sleeves. The rings in his hair rattled musically. “The physical shell was patched up properly.”

Alea breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been worried that she might’ve hurt the stranger. His injuries had simply been too severe. The treatment of the man’s energy injuries turned out to be a complex and time-consuming process.

Suddenly, the healer’s eyebrows rose, and his gaze became curious.

“It’s good that you didn’t try to restore his channels,” he said.

Alea didn’t understand how he knew that she was the one who had treated the man.

“They seemed unusual to me.”

“Unusual? That’s an understatement.”

Alea could barely create two energy needles, and could only use them to clumsily mend the simplest threads, but the old man, who, despite being a Spirit Knight, didn’t have any outstanding fighting abilities, created twenty needles. Each of them seemed to have a life of its own. They performed some sort of complex work, looking like the synchronized dance of twenty spiders.

By the gods, Alea thought, what a sharp mind he must have to be able to control so many needles at once!

“What’s so unusual about them?” Derek asked, ignoring his friends’ disapproving looks.

“Everything.” The old man shrugged. The only visible sign of his exhaustion were a few drops of sweat running down his wrinkled forehead. “His channels are unnaturally wide. I studied near our capital, and it was rumored that the best healers could help the children of the richest families expand their channels.”

The trio exchanged glances. They’d heard something similar as well. The wider their meridians, the more energy a cultivator could draw from their Core.

“But the oddities don’t stop there,” the old man continued. “Not only are his channels wider than normal, they’re also... longer. I haven’t even heard of such a thing being possible before.”

“Longer?” Alea asked.

Once, in a healing class, she had asked her Mentor about the possibility of expanding the channels. He’d replied that this was an incredibly complex procedure that required not only incredible skill and power from the healer, but the rarest ingredients as well. Naturally, the next question Alea had asked had been whether it was possible to extend the channels rather than simply expand them. Her Mentor had said that it wasn’t. And yet, right in front of her, lay living proof that such a thing was, indeed, possible.

“A spatial artifact, strange meridians and tattoos, and an Ancient Beast acting like a loyal pet,” Derek whispered. “Who, by all the demons and gods, did we pick up on the road?”

Indeed. The situation didn’t look promising. The stranger could truly be anyone, from a descendant of one of the strongest clans hidden from the world of martial arts, to the heir of some House from the capital. All of these options sounded like a whole lot of trouble for them.