12 - Different Builds

Trying to create a leaf on the branch of a spell is a completely different process to anything I've done so far.

So far, any kind of customization in the spells I've done has only been based on a ready-made template with an already defined amount of branches that I just rearranged in slightly different ways.

The branches always existed in the spell, I was just slightly changing the position, shape and thickness of these branches to achieve different goals in the treatment.

What I intended to do now was totally different from that.

In my perception of spells, adding leaves to the branches of the tree would be like adding more effects or conditions for the spell to work, increasing my control over it.

And it was exactly this increase in control that I wanted to focus on, making a small leaf appear on the [Levare Vitae] tree.

Seeing the suffering on the little boy's face, I stopped my internal monologue and focused 100% of my attention on casting [Levare Vitae].

The development of the spell tree's structure was done at an extremely high speed, something that was only possible because of the more than 100 attempts I'd had to try out this spell.

The position of each branch was in the best position to take care of a wound like the boy's, but the new surprise was when I tried to control my magic to produce a small leaf on the tree.

I'd never tried anything like this before, so I was at a bit of a loss as to how to start.

Controlling Mana was very difficult, so mages used magic words and hand movements to help conjure the spell with the mage's intention.

Magic was very much based on intention and control, with enough intention a person could cast a fire spell without knowing anything about the chemical reaction of fire, which is why the magic words in the spell's name helped the process so much, as it increased the intention of the spell and helped in the casting of it.

Since I could see the Mana with my eyes, I used my maximum Mana control and my intention to try to make the little leaf appear while watching it carefully.

When I made my intention clear to lower the Mana cost and offset it with the target's vitality to heal the wound, the leaf naturally appeared in the middle of the tree's vitality branch.

Without another command, I completed the spell and placed my glowing hand on the boy's wound.

His mother stood next to me, watching me heal the wound on her son's arm with concern.

Since I didn't say anything, no one knew that every patient I healed, I changed some part of the spell to learn the magic better, and since no one was a wizard, they didn't know that every spell I cast was different from the last.

But when the boy's mother saw the wound on his arm healing at a speed visible to the naked eye, her tense face softened again and a smile appeared on her lips.

At that moment my focus wasn't on the woman's smile, but on the Mana cost of the spell, which had actually gone down!

If before I spent 100 Mana to do the spell, after placing this leaf on the tree branch the Mana cost dropped to 99.5 Mana!

Thinking about the size of the spell's branch, the amount of leaves that would fit on that branch could make the cost of the spell drop to a much smaller number!

Sure, it would take longer to do the spell if I had to focus on making so many leaves for the same amount of time I focused on making a single one, but if I got used to it over time, it would get easier!

It would be like a university math teacher seeing a math account that high school students have difficulty with.

Having studied it for so many years, that professor would be able to solve that calculation for the students just by calculating it mentally in a few seconds, while the students would still struggle for several minutes to do the same calculation.

For the time being, I'm at the level of the students to learn how to do the spell with the leaves, but in time it could become as natural for me as mental calculation is for a university professor!

“Thank you very much young doctor, here's your payment.” The little boy's mother said gratefully to me after looking at her son and making sure his arm was okay.

Nodding my head, I replied to her in a calm, professional voice as I cracked a small smile. “Don't worry ma'am, if your family needs treatment, don't hesitate and come to me, as long as it's at my level of treatment I'll do my best.”

Seeing that she looked at me with curiosity and gratitude, rather than the fear and trepidation that all patients feel when they come for the first time, made me happy.

There was nothing I could do, those eyes were scary and there are no sunglasses in such a backward world for me to cover my eyes with.

After she left, I saw that there was no one in the queue waiting to be seen and I went back into my 'office' while I cleaned the bloodstains from the place.

Most of the injured people who came to me had external injuries, so after each appointment I had to clean the office.

I could use a [Daily Spell] to deal with it, but I didn't even have any Mana left, so it was better to let my Mana recover and clean it manually.

While I was cleaning, I thought again about the possibilities that the leaves on the spell trees represented...

For example, just as I used the leaves to lower the Mana cost and use part of the patient's vitality to cure the treatment, I could add leaves to increase the speed of the patient's skin recovery while the internet recovery would be slower, or add leaves to slow down the wound recovery to something that would last a few days but could be maintained using only the person's vitality, lowering my Mana cost.

Just thinking about the possibilities brought a big smile to my face.

It felt like I had just learned the basics of a programming language and now I was seeing the incredible possibilities of the games I could make with it.

When the next patient arrived, I decided to put 10 leaves on the vitality branch and this actually caused the cost of the spell to drop by 5%, reducing it to just 95 Mana!

If before I would have spent 90 minutes to recover, now I would have spent almost 5 minutes less!

Analyzing the patient, I noticed that he didn't even feel the difference in the spell, indicating that the vitality spent on these leaves was minimal for them.

For the next patient, I decided to increase the number of sheets from 10 to 40!

This decreased the Mana cost to 80 Mana, or 72 minutes of recovery!

But what I noticed was that during the treatment, the patient began to feel a little weak, slightly pale and a little hungry, which indicated that the vitality used in the spell was substantial to the point of his body asking for food to replenish that energy, but not harmful to the point of actually making him unwell.

That should be something I'll have to watch out for in the future...

Reducing the Mana cost of treating more patients only to leave them feeling sick afterwards was something that didn't make sense.

I would have to find the perfect balance in the amount of leaves in the spell and the influence it would have on the treatment, as well as on my recovery.

After testing with another patient, I realized that I can also use leaves on other branches!

If I reach the limit of leaves that this branch can support without affecting the patient, I can start putting leaves on other branches to avoid wasting Mana on useless areas!

For example, if I conditioned the magic to heal only the injury to the muscles, I wouldn't need to waste Mana on magic looking for defects in the skin and trying to heal something that doesn't exist!

'If I learn to truly control the spell leaves, I'll be able to optimize each of my spells to work in any kind of situation! ' I thought excitedly.

It was like I was in a game choosing a specific build to face a certain enemy.

Why worry about fire defense if I'm going to face a monster underwater?

Why bother increasing my damage based on maximum health if my enemy's total health is too low?

With the leaves of my spell it was as if I had almost infinite possibilities of how to configure the spell to act in the most efficient way possible for my patients, to the point that perhaps the complexity and usefulness of [Levare Vitae] which has only 5 branches could outweigh [Nutrire Vitae] which has more than 10 branches and has such a high Mana cost that I can't use it.

As long as I can heal the wounds, it doesn't matter which spell I use, right?

It might be more complicated to form a [Levare Vitae] so powerful that it would be more useful than the [Nutrire Vitae], but for someone with limited Mana like me, this could be a good alternative to my immediate problem...