Demon's Virtue-Chapter 792: Treatment
A few of the humans had gathered together around Eiro. They were the ones that were either sick or were missing a part of their body. Generally, it was just something small like a finger or two or a toe, but sometimes it was a hand or a foot. Things that generally made their lives harder.
The first patient was the young man that had made the wooden cart. As Eiro was his father's son, he couldn't bear watching wood be mistreated, whether it was on purpose or not. Since the man's missing fingers seemed to be a large part of the reason why his work was rather shabby, the solution was simple.
"Just make sure to take it a bit easier when you're sick," Eiro said clearly, "You don't need to try and keep up with the monsters' pace. Rather, you can't. Monster's have extremely high vitality compared to people, especially humans. It's hard for them to get sick and they heal at a much faster rate. It won't help anyone if you break yourselves by trying to be like them."
Eiro opened up his travel workstation. It had a couple of seeds inside of it, but also some blocks of wood already prepared and ready to be used. Generally, the simple prosthetics that Eiro made came from this sort of pre-prepared wood. The only part that was always custom was the shape of the wood.
"Aight," the young man nodded, clearly nervous to sit on a stool in front of Eiro. The demon smiled lightly and shook his head.
"Relax, I don't bite," he said, as he grabbed the carving knife hanging on the doors of the box that acted as his workstation, "I'm here to help you guys out."
Since everyone still seemed to be more than just confused, Marius, stepped away from the class change stone and approached the crowd around Eiro, "I'm sorry, Lord Daemonherz, but... what are you trying to do?"
Figuring that it was easier to just show them the answer, Eiro held forward his hand. The wood that was made from his magic had evolved together with him, and now had the same colour as the blue skin on his other hands. You could still see that it was made of wood and its hinges and individual parts if you looked closely, but none of these people seemed comfortable staring at any part of Eiro too closely in fear of offending him, "I was raised by a prosthetist, and I learned his trade. After I lost my own hand, he gave me a new one, and I've been paying that forward ever since whenever I have the chance."
The humans looked at Eiro's hand, spotting the wooden joints and intricate craftsmanship. As they were all staring, Eiro unfolded his other arm into three and used it to carve the two wooden fingers for the young woodworker. By the time they realized, he already held the fingers onto the man's hand, who pulled back nervously, "Ey, already?"
"Mhm," Eiro nodded, "Do you not want it? As you can see, you'll be able to move them like normal. Maybe not as well as if they were the fingers you were born with, but they should make your life a bit easier."
Still hesitant, the man nodded, "Okay... so how does it work, then?"
"Just wait a moment," the demon smiled and snapped his finger. He summoned shadows to cover the man's hands, so that nobody could see the part that was about to happen. It could maybe be a little grotesque, after all. Eiro unfurled one of his tails and made it slither over toward the man's hands, injecting each with a numbing venom. He clearly didn't even feel this part.
When this was done, Eiro used a clean knife to cut off the frontmost section of the finger-nubs, before pressing the prosthetic fingers onto there. He made the flesh and wood fuse together with some healing magic, and then injected some of his life force into the man's body to force along his own flow of life force through the new wooden bodyparts.
When he was done, Eiro cleaned up any leftover blood and even injected the man with the counter-agent to get rid of the numbing of the anesthesia. He pulled away his own hands and quickly got rid of the shadow magic that was keeping this all hidden. The entire process took just ten seconds after the shadows appeared.
Startled to see the new digits attached to his hands, the man stared at them intensely. He couldn't believe his own eyes, especially not when he tried to stretch out his fingers and the wood twisted along the rest of them. His hands were still shaking, but right now part of that was clearly the adrenaline coursing through the man's veins. When he managed to calm down later, Eiro would have to come and talk to him to see what else he could help with to either stop the shaking or help him do proper work in spite of the shaking.
"Who would like to go next?" the demon asked, and the villagers looked at each other for a moment, before an older woman stepped up. She had been limping since Eiro first saw her. Pulling up her skirt lightly, Eiro could quickly see the issue.
"It's not quite the same thing, but... do you think you can help?"
The demon looked a bit more closely, "Of course, please take a seat."
Eiro flicked his wrist and pulled up some rock from the ground that the woman could sit, or rather half-lay, down. The demon quickly looked around, "Everyone else, please be on your way for now... for some privacy, alright? I'll come to you all when I'm done."
Though they were a little hesitant about it all still, the other villagers quickly returned to their work for now, especially now that they have finally attained their first classes. Eiro used some magic to create some temporary privacy-walls while he inspected the villagers. He knew that people were a bit skittish about being seen in such vulnerable circumstances.
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He carefully removed the old woman's shoe. Her foot was dark and swollen, and was giving off an intense heat and a semi-rotten scent. It was necrotic, and the rot had gone all the way down to the bone. It definitely wasn't this bad when Eiro was here last time, "Why didn't you tell anyone about this before now?" he asked.
The woman hesitated to answer, though she didn't even need to anymore. Eiro could see it in her face. The answer was pride, as simple as that. She was one of the people that had come here to ensure a better life for her children and grandchildren, rather than trying to attain power for herself. It was a quite noble matter, throwing herself into such a situation. But in this new place, it seemed that the villagers' health had been neglected quite a bit.
Eiro looked down at the foot. He wasn't sure if he could properly heal this. If something went necrotic, it was filled with energies of 'death' completely, and would reject any life force that could flow through it. It was the same reason why Eiro couldn't use old, rotting wood to make a prosthetic. However, he should be able to save a large part of this foot.
"... I've got some options for you here," the demon started, "First, I could cut off your foot altogether and make you a complete prosthetic. It wouldn't hurt, you would be able to walk much better than before, and your health should recover quite a bit."
The old woman hesitated to agree, so Eiro continued, "Second, I could do some more complex surgery. Cut away the rotting parts, replace the parts that can't be saved at all, and then heal the rest. I should be able to save most of your foot, except your two outer toes. You will also also lose a large chunk out of the right side of your foot that I won't be able to fully heal. If you choose this, you will not be able to perfectly walk, but you will be able to keep most of your foot. It would also need to be checked on regularly to make sure the infection does not return."
Again, the woman was quiet, clearly thinking about her options. To Eiro, it made very little sense to even think about it; the first option was logically superior in every way. Especially with the life this woman lived as the local seamstress, she didn't even need the minute benefits that being able to sense things through your foot provided. In the first place, she would lose most sensations even with the second option. However...
"If you can... please the second..." she responded quietly.
Eiro nodded, and quickly started the preparations. People, humans in particular, were sentimental beings. Monsters didn't quite care much about their bodies, maybe because they were used to changing through evolution, but people were scared to lose even the slightest bits at times. Even their hair was extremely valuable to them, though it was nothing but dead cells with no actual benefit. But even if Eiro didn't understand, he could respect the decision. Luckily, the woman's position as seamstress also allowed him to be a bit more lenient. If he were dealing with a hunter, he wouldn't have even offered the second choice, but for an old woman like this, keeping her happy and allowing her sentimentality to blossom was more important than something as useless as 'not understanding her decision'.
The surgery itself was quite easy too. He blocked off the old woman's sight of the area and then numbed her whole leg. The fully dead parts were cut away, the two outer toes were replaced with prosthetics, and the rest was healed as much as Eiro could. He did have to replace part of the bone with wood as well, and then used flesh magic to fill in the wound as much as he could, while generally healing her as well as her body could handle. At her age, it wasn't much. People lost the ability to heal with age. It was like Charles, Solomon's son, who didn't have any healing capabilities at all. With age, everyone moved in that direction. It was why Eiro doubted that Charles would get to live a very long life... though, that was unimportant at this time.
He finished healing the old woman's foot and then helped her stand up. It was an ugly foot now, though much better than just twenty minutes ago. Eiro incinerated all the dead flesh and pus that had filled her foot until now, and helped her back home so that she could rest and get used to her new foot. And then, as promised, Eiro went around the village and began to treat the other humans.
