8 Chapter 8: Analisys.

"Good, that's done; now, back to this..." I mumbled as I returned to my chair to analyze my sample.

But the princess didn't like it. "What was that?" She shouted.

"I drew a pattern, and it did the thing, like you explained." I replied, not even turning around as I concentrated on an unusual cell that I kept finding in the sample; it probably was the source of this change in coloration, but I couldn't be sure.

"What does that even mean?" This princess demands that you explain how you did that!" She raged, but I really couldn't understand what she was talking about.

It was pretty easy to me: "Since there is no way that whatever pattern those talisman makers use has any inherent meaning, I just thought of a pattern that made me think of the kind of cold that I wanted to replicate, then I used the energy in the air to condense it, and voilà! Don't ask me why it worked; it just did." I replied, but for some reason I thought that the reply wasn't to her liking.

I took my eyes off the microscope since any more observation with this useless thing was useless as well. I saw her expression, and I suddenly felt as if I had done something wrong.

"What's up?" I asked the girl who seemed to have had a heart attack.

She inhaled very deeply to calm herself down before very calmly asking, "And why wouldn't they have inherent meaning? What does that mean?"

"Well, you see, I shouldn't be the one explaining this, but the world doesn't work like that; no shape has real meaning, so I just figured that the meaning came from the creator of the pattern; thus, I thought really hard about what I wanted and it happened; it's probably some weird quantum mechanical magical mumbo jumbo, but what do I know about that?" I chuckled, but my explanation didn't seem to make sense to her, and she asked me to clarify again.

"I have no clue what you're talking about; it's easy to me. Just try it out; maybe it will work too." I replied dismissively as I tidied up my workstation, getting ready to open the clinic.

It didn't seem like a very important thing, but then I thought about it.

I could also make an oven, or maybe something else too.

Then a brief thought passed through my head. I had promised her that I would cultivate to get stronger, and it was something that interested me as well: "Hey Jasmine, are you around?"

"What do I want from this princess?" She replied, her expression one of uncertainty after my previous stunt.

"How do I do that cultivation thingy?"

She froze. "How was I stuck with such a useless person? Oh, the heavens must have abandoned me!" She said it in an obviously exaggerated tone.

"Stop being such a child and tell me, "Oh wait, you are a child!" I teased back with just as exaggerated a voice as hers.

She looked back at me with clear irritation in her eyes and asked, "Why didn't you ask yesterday then? I assumed you already knew!"

"How would I have known? I have never done this mystical cultivation thingy; I just wanted the day to be over and go to bed!" I protested in my righteous indignancy.

I wanted sleep, so I got sleep; that's a more than valid reason.

Her narrowed eyes eventually gave way to a sigh: "Oh, what will my useless disciple do without his great master, fine?" The obvious narcissism gained her an eye roll, but I still listened to her instructions: "To cultivate, you will have to breathe in the profound energy through your profound entrances. As the profound energy gets denser and more compressed, you will rise through the realms."

I noted down what she said in a neat list, making sure I had everything clear, and shockingly, nothing was clear.

Her words made sense individually, but overall I couldn't find the meaning. First things first, "What are profound entrances?"

"The profound entrances are, as the name implies, entrances through which the profound energy can enter. There are fifty-four entrances in the human body, and although the average person can only have around ten to fifteen open at any point, the more open entrances there are, the faster the cultivation." She explained clearly, without wasting a second, and clearly waited for more questions.

I had an infinity of questions, most of them reiterations of that same question, so I noted her answer as a few conjectures automatically floated in my mind.

Like, how could these openings be blocked, and what were they blocked by? Or, how could someone open more?

As far as I knew, there was a difference between the biology of the people of this world and that of my old one, and I had to know all about it.

What followed was a long and, frankly, disappointing session of questions and answers. Jasmine kept giving these weird half-answers that were more philosophical than the biology that I was looking for, but it was no problem for me.

This just meant that I had a broader subject to work on, and I was sure that I could get all the knowledge that I wanted as I studied these things.

But that would be for a different time; now it was time to work.

It was a busier day than usual, and Jasmine seemed intent on hiding herself from other people, but I didn't mind.

She only came out after I closed the clinic and asked, "Why do you bother helping them? What do you gain from it? It can't be the money, as even I know that what you take is very little." She asked, her eyes seemingly intent on burning a hole through me.

But I didn't mind; the people of this world were weird sometimes, most of the time.

Always.

Anyway, "Because it's my duty, I swore a very lengthy oath when I became a medic, and I still think that I'm charging a lot for my medicine, but I'm still setting up my laboratory, and I have to pay for all my expenses."

After a brief silence, she continued, "You haven't answered completely; what do you gain from it?"

I pondered, "Why did I keep doing it?

Even in a different world with different cultures, it's not as if I knew everything about how to make medicines. I know how and when to use them, but I had to find out how to make them from scratch. The first ones are easy; everyone should know how to make the most basic ones, but I was quickly approaching the limit of my drug-making knowledge.

I could do anything else; I studied this for years, yes, but I knew, deep down, that it was not the only reason that I didn't just follow any other pursuit.

"Satisfaction, I guess," I finally replied. "Seeing all those people, knowing that many would have died if not for me, is what keeps me going and prevents me from just finding a cliff to jump off of."

The words came out of my mouth faster than I could think of them, my deepest emotions that I kept repressing flowing out unstoppably.

This world was not my own; these people were not my people; I had no body to rely on, and nobody I considered a friend; hell, not even the body I inhabited was my own. Maybe that was the reason I didn't want to refer to myself by my old name, trying to make this all seem like a bad dream from which I would eventually awaken.

The subconscious was a weird thing.

The smile still on my face as I calmly talked about ending it all seemed to unsettle her, but she seemingly had no idea what to reply, and she didn't need to reply as the door that I had just closed for the day was suddenly violently knocked on.

I got on my feet and got out, worried that it might be an emergency, and an emergency it absolutely was.

In front of me there were four men, all of them older than me; the first man was the person who had knocked on the door, his expression one of apprehension; meanwhile, the second and third person were carrying the fourth, who was bleeding profusely from his amputated hand, even as they had tried stopping the wound with a cloth, but evidently it wasn't enough to do anything.

I wasted no time and ordered, "Bring him in; do you still have his hand?"

"Yes?" I replied to the first person as I finally noticed the bleeding missing hand that had been resting in his own. My attention was too taken by the dying man, apparently.

"Good," I replied as I helped them lay the patient down on my operation table. I might as well try to reattach it." Thankfully, the cut was so smooth and perfect that I was tempted to ask if the cause was a jet of pressurized water, but it was not the time for that.

I used the weird energy, which I refused to call profound energy as the name annoyed me for some reason, to instantly grab all the utensils that I needed, which I had kept in sterilized conditions for situations like these.

Trying to reattach the appendage was incredibly risky, but I had nothing if not the will to try and a room with tools sterilized enough. In the worst-case scenario, I had to amputate a bit more and be content with not killing him.

I didn't want to think about the actual worst-case scenario.

It would be a pity if I reattached the hand only to end up doing bad work and killing my patient because of the risk that I had taken.

I was already tired from the day's work, but this was a chance to test the limits of this weird energy's powers.

I used it to energize my brain and get rid of unnecessary substances that caused my tiredness, making me feel as if I had just woken up, and right after, I was ready to go.

It took fifteen hours, a little less than it normally takes for such an operation, and I had done it alone.

It was a complicated affair, even more so since I had never even thought about actually doing one such operation; I only knew the theory behind it, but the actual procedure was only knowledge in my head instead of experience.

I was entirely sure that if not for the incredibly small threads of energy that I kept commanding to help me, I would have failed completely. They were indispensable for every single part of the operation, working as the glue that kept everything together, promoting the reattachment of every single blood vessel, bone fragment, nerve, and ligament that I had worked on, turning a sure failure into a success.

The man wouldn't be able to use the hand in the same ways as before, definitely losing some nimbleness in his fingers, but at least it was there instead of somewhere separated from him.

The vital signs of the person were good; the heart was beating and the breathing was regular. I had no idea how I had done it, but I did.

I looked at the arm, and it was there; the nerves in the hand had been the most difficult part to reattach, but somehow I managed.

"If he wakes up, don't let him move; wait for me." I ordered the three men as I put a cast on the reattached arm, blocking any movement the patient could do. The three men seemed rested enough, but I didn't care about it in the least; maybe they had left while I was operating; good for them.

I went to my room and crashed into the bed, the exhaustion finally taking hold of me. By the side of my bed, the young girl who called herself my master was still watching me, something that I was too tired to notice; the expression on her face was a mixture of horror and unbridled curiosity.

The next thing that my mind registered was myself groaning awake, my hand grasping for the water on my nightstand. Saying I was thirsty was being reductive.

It was too far, but suddenly it wasn't. I set my barely open eyes on Jasmine, who had neared the small bottle to me, and I mumbled my appreciation, "Thanks."

But she didn't acknowledge it, instead saying, "We need to talk."

It was never a good thing to hear that from a woman, young or old.