I Can Use Healing Magic? ...Slow Down, I Haven't Removed the Stitches Yet! Aaah!

I Can Use Healing Magic? ...Slow Down, I Haven't Removed the Stitches Yet! Aaah!

Could he survive?

Gret froze. Then, more memories belonging to the original owner of this body flooded into his mind like a tide:

"Gret" knelt before a man's corpse and wept bitterly. Uncle Karen knelt beside him, gripping his shoulders tightly. "Little Grete, don't be afraid! Uncle will take care of you. I won't let anyone bully you!"

"Gret" swung a short wooden sword with all his strength. Uncle Karen stood opposite him with a sword in hand, his voice stern. "Your stance is wrong! Again!"

"Gret" huddled in the little house, chewing black bread that was hard to swallow. Uncle Karen pushed open the door, grabbed him, and dragged him away. "Little Grete! Come to Uncle's house! Your Auntie Irene stewed some meat soup!"

...That was Uncle Karen, who had been taking care of me ever since Father died in battle...

Gret looked at Uncle Karen's pale face, unable to speak for a moment. Instinctively, he clasped his hands before his chest, assuming a posture that looked both like prayer and like the position he used before surgery to avoid contaminating his hands again.

"...I don't know," he said softly. "I don't know..."

The operation was indeed over. The patient, Uncle Karen, had temporarily escaped immediate danger. But that absolutely did not mean he could rest easy. There were still far too many problems that could arise afterward.

The wound had only been crudely stitched with hemp thread. There were no antibiotics, no blood transfusions. Not to mention that he had not even washed his hands before reaching in and pinching the patient's hepatic hilum...

Other than the already-healed liver, Wu Zhou would have considered the entire operation a minor case. At his hospital, aside from the emergency treatment for the most dangerous liver rupture, he would not even have needed to intervene personally. A single attending physician could have handled the rest smoothly.

The postoperative risks would not have been great either. A few days of observation in the hospital, antibiotics to keep things under control, and there would be no need for the ICU to clean up the mess.

But here, infection and blood loss alone could leave the patient teetering on the edge of death.

Even if he made it through those two hurdles, there were still intestinal adhesions, volvulus, nausea, vomiting, hiccups, abdominal distension, urinary retention... all kinds of complications...

Any one of them, with bad luck, could take the patient's life.

And he... could do nothing.

No antibiotics, no drainage strips, no X-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, or lab tests, and no targeted medications of any kind. If Uncle Karen truly developed complications, then as a doctor, he would be utterly helpless.

When he failed to answer for a long time, everyone present looked grim. Brother Raymond, Uncle Karen's nephew, was especially anxious. He stepped forward and reached for Wu Zhou's shoulder.

"You don't know? Little Grete, is there really nothing you can do?"

That pleading, frantic tone was exactly like the families of patients Wu Zhou had seen so often in the emergency room. Gret slowly shook his head.

"If I could, I'd want him to get better quickly too—"

Before he could finish, a pure white light shot from Gret's clasped palms and landed directly on the patient's abdomen.

Under the white light, the wound that had just been stitched with hemp thread—one that would normally need at least ten days to heal—began to wriggle closed at a rapid pace.

"Waaah—"

A chorus of startled cries rang out. John, the freckled young priest, shouted the loudest. "Healing magic! It's healing magic! Gret, you can use healing magic now?!"

Gret:!!!

No!

Grow slower! Please, just slow down a little!

I haven't removed the stitches yet! Aaah!

He had no time to be surprised, nor time to rejoice that the patient could be saved. He had already lunged into the white light of healing magic. His short dagger flashed in his right hand, picking apart the hemp threads exposed outside the skin one by one, while his left hand tugged and tugged and tugged—

Remove the stitches! Remove the stitches! Before the wound completely healed, while the white light had not yet faded, hurry and remove them!

If he left them in, the sutures would occupy space there and make the wound more prone to infection!

Remove them, quickly! Remove them before the wound fully set! Not only would the patient suffer less, but perhaps he could even catch a bit of the healing magic before it disappeared...

Gret held his breath and focused, pushing his hand speed to the greatest limit of his life. The blade in his right hand flicked rapidly, while his left thumb and forefinger deftly pinched and pulled. Together, his hands practically left afterimages above the patient's abdomen—

The emergency department was a place where people raced death for lives. Stitching spleens, livers, blood vessels—every one of them required needles flying and threads racing, with his APM practically soaring to 764. But he had never imagined that one day, even removing stitches would demand this kind of speed.

The tenth thread end! Incision on the right side of the rectus abdominis, stitches removed!

The eighteenth thread end! Right upper abdomen, stitches removed!

The twenty-seventh!—Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!

Done!

The white light slowly faded. One vertical and one diagonal wound vanished completely, as if they had never existed. More than that, the patient even slowly opened his eyes and began trying to prop himself up—

"Captain!"

"Captain, you're better!"

Several warriors cheered and rushed forward. Gret nearly lost his soul. He immediately pounced forward, spread his arms, and blocked them with all his might.

"Don't touch him!—Lie down! Lie down!"

Damn it! The surface had healed, but who knew whether the inside was actually healed!

I stitched the abdominal wall in three layers! The inner superficial fascia and the peritoneum beneath that—who knew whether they had closed up? What if pushing himself up tore the wound open again—

Not to mention that the rectus abdominis had been cut too. He had not stitched the ruptured greater omentum at all. There were wounds everywhere. Had they healed or not? Wu Zhou did not know in the slightest, and out here in the wilderness, he could not exactly send him for an MRI—

Even if they were not in the wilderness, there would be nowhere to get one. He had transmigrated! He had transmigrated!

Pressed down by Gret, Captain Karen had no strength to resist and fell back with a thud. His body lay down, but he strained to raise his head, staring straight at Gret with shock filling his eyes.

"Little Grete, you... you?"

Gret's heartbeat abruptly stumbled. Putting himself in the other man's shoes, anyone who saw a child they had watched grow up suddenly able to cut open someone's belly and stitch flesh together with needle and thread would be utterly shocked. But how was he supposed to explain it?!

Ignore him?

Play dumb?

This was Uncle Karen, who had cared for the original owner of this body ever since his father died in battle. No matter what, Gret had to give him an explanation and put his mind at ease!

Gret's head buzzed as though it contained a hard drive spinning at 7,200 revolutions per minute. Information retrieval, data consolidation—amid his frantic thoughts, one unusual piece of information was bolded, highlighted, and decisively pinned to the top:

Right, that white light that had shot out from his palm just now and accelerated the wound's healing...

It was exactly the same as the one the Young Priest had used before. It was healing magic!

Healing magic = Divine Arts = a god had his back = a god had told him to do this!

The logic was flawless. Perfect!

Gret blurted out:

"Uncle Karen, don't worry, I—I received divine revelation!"