Wade leaned over Jason's shoulder, squinting at the x-ray images pulled up on the monitor. While he had planned on just shoving the ring onto his hand and then going straight to the healing, Jason had a more nuanced approach after he learned more about how it functioned.

If healing was limited, then they'd need to get the best bang for buck they could get out of today's session. Which meant doing a little research on exactly where Wade needed to heal.

The titanium hardware looked like something out of a hardware store - screws, plates, and rods all holding Jason's spine together where the accident had shattered it. It looked slapdash, not super aligned with one another or even rotated right, but Wade knew it was because the human body wasn't built like a perfectly symmetrical robot. The accident had happened two years ago, but thankfully Jason was secretly a data hoarder nutcase, so of course he had a neat little folder with everything the hospital had shared with him.

"See these darker spots?" Jason pointed at the screen, tracing the metal components. "That's where they removed the bone fragments that were pressing against my spinal cord. They told me a lot of the nerve connections were either cut or damaged, but there were some that were more bruised and those might heal if I kept at it."

Wade studied the images, trying to map what he saw against where he'd need to do some healing. This might be something like his eyesight maybe, where the actual amount of healing really wasn't too much to fix?

Most of the damage was already healed completely by now, the only things left were things the body couldn't naturally heal. The problem was with what didn't come with the body naturally, and how that might affect magical healing.

But he did know someone who would have at least a better idea. Selena or Zin.

After a quick debated between the two, Wade sent a quick text to Zin, asking for advice. He got an answer back rather quickly.

You'll just be wasting a whole lot of mana and not much else. Body wants to regrow what's missing, but it can't exactly evict tenants that are literally screwed in place. Trust me, I would know all about racoon tenants that can't get evicted.

So, bullets would get pushed out easy. But something screwed into the bone like that? Nope, not gonna happen. It'd be like you pushing a wall. You're using up energy for something, but it ain't getting you anywhere. Do yourself a favor and find out if those metal bits are permanent or if the docs were planning on removing them post-healing.

"You worried about the titanium?" Jason asked, pulling up another browser tab. His fingers flew across the keyboard, searching medical journals. "Because according to this, titanium's basically biologically inert. The body doesn't reject it like other materials might. Had these rods in my back for two years without issue so far."

"That part isn't what I'm worried about." Wade picked up the healing ring, turning it over in his hands. "My… err, teacher, explained that the ring can heal even things that the body can't naturally heal, but a lot of the mana is going to get wasted trying to move the grafts out of the bone."

"They'll stay in place?"

Wade nodded. "This ring isn't strong enough to actually move metal that's screwed into place. Was there a surgery planned to have them removed after you heal?"

Jason shook his head. "Not a single mention about that. Either they never thought I could heal past a certain point and made the grafts to cover what's left, or…" He clicked through several more articles, scanning them with efficiency. "Yeah, it's what I thought, look at this - even if I heal completely up, grafts are almost always done in a way that will never be an impediment. If anything, looks like it would make the spine a little harder? They planned for potential success and not making me do another surgery."

Eri wandered over from the kitchen, carrying a colander he'd discovered. He held it up to his skull like a helmet, clicking his jaw in what Wade had come to recognize as skeletal laughter. He was in the process of debating if the fedora should go on top of the colander, or if the colander should be on top of the fedora. One thing about him, he seemed magnetically drawn to hats. Or anything he could wear on his head. Wade had no idea why, but it was harmless so no reason not to deny the skeleton his joys in life. Of which, Eri was rapidly finding more and more to stack on. Like his hats.

Jason glanced between the skeleton harassing his kitchen and his best friend. "This is still the weirdest day of my life."

Eri clicked his jaw, gave a Nathir hand sign, then held two fingers up. For him, these last one-and-a-half days had been the weirdest of his life, thank you.

"I still can't believe I can just understand what he's saying from that. Generally at least." Jason said, turning to Wade. "Dude. People would kill for this kind of thing. Maybe not literally, you know what I mean. Actually no, probably literally."

Eri clanked off, to go examine more colorful things in the room that weren't bolted down. He'd gotten a second chance at life, and he was going to enjoy the heck out of it, competitively.

It wasn't long until the two friends were mostly ready to go. They'd done the research, figured out what was actually wrong with Jason's spine, and had him on a bed for the procedure.

It… did not go as planned.

Because they were nerds who had access to magic, so of course they got off track almost immediately.

For one, Wade couldn't resist doing a quick demonstration of magic by putting fire on his hands. Blue, of course, priorities.

Earlier he'd hit low thirties on the mana bar while healing his eyes, and later moved it up to the forties by dicking around with what else he could do until his mana ran out.

This time he was starting around ten mana when they finally got down to prepare for the work. Wade cut a slightly larger cube, made sure all his mithril jewelry was in the right place, and then began on the best spot.

The actual process was boring on Wade's end. Draw mana out of his core, focus on it, move it up to his arm and into the ring. The ring would glow red and gold, and Wade could see holy aligned mana sink into Jason's spine, roughly around where the injuries were supposed to be.

On his end, Jason explained he felt more tingles, and occasional itching. The worse had been sudden zaps of feeling, sensations bolting up from his leg that felt similar to hitting an elbow at exactly the wrong location. It wasn't pain exactly, but it was completely novel and weird. He hadn't felt much of anything from those regions.

That had been more a good sign that something was happening.

Wade ran out of mana around the 57/125 mark, since he'd cut a slightly larger mana cube of jello this time around. They hadn't managed to restore much of Jason's legs, he still couldn't move them.

But he felt a lot more sensations. Parts of his skin felt foreign to him all of a sudden.

He could take a smaller cube of mana, and try some more… He looked over to his mana potion. Still had roughly two thirds of it left.

Wade reached for it off the table, but Jason grabbed his wrist.

"Nope. We're done for today."

"But I could-"

"Wade, buddy, you just gave me more progress in thirty minutes than all the physical therapy I've ever taken up to the point I paused it all." Jason flexed his toes experimentally, grinning when they actually responded with tiny movements. He had been able to move them before, but they'd felt stiff, and half the muscles involved in moving anything down there just didn't respond anymore. But now? Some of them had inklings of feelings coming out. "Besides, you're irradiating me with magic juice, right? If it's as toxic as you told me it would be, my spine's probably glowing like a nightlight right now. It's fine to take our time with this. I've got nothing but time."

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Wade let go of the potion bottle. "It's holy-aligned mana, not radiation. So should be a little easier on the body according to my teacher. Nature aligned mana is supposed to be the most gentle on living tissue."

"Oh good, so I'm getting blasted with holy radiation. That makes it so much better." Jason shifted on the bed, testing the odd new feelings. "For all we know, I could wake up tomorrow with angel wings or start speaking in hymns."

"Eh, don't think it works like that." Wade said. "More like you might wake up tomorrow with some hairs around your spine fall off, and maybe feeling slightly puke-y. But I don't think that'll happen."

If Wade was at 57/125, then Jason was probably around 15. He hadn't been the one cycling raw mana around in his body, and that had been where most of Wade's buildup came from. Self healing had made his mana bar go up faster when he was healing his eyes, but not by that much of a difference.

So holy mana really didn't hurt the body all that bad. There were still a limit to how much healing a body could take before it became toxic, but it was probably seventy five percent slower if someone else was doing all the work being a healer compared to self-healing. Of course, all that was pulled out of his ass for the moment, Wade didn't know all the number breakdowns yet, but he did have access to enough information to make his ass mildly informed at least.

Eri wandered over, examining Jason's legs with interest before giving Wade a thumbs up.

"See? Even the skeleton thinks we should stop," Jason said. "And he's technically undead, so if anyone knows about not overdoing it with holy energy, I'd think he would."

"Funny thing, he's basically running on mana. But bones aren't alive, so flooding him with holy mana probably would do the same thing as flooding a rock with it."

He was going to have to unlearn some basic tropes here, as he considered it more. Would skeletons actually take damage from a holy healing spell like they might in video games? Wade had a feeling necromancy spells were more about controlling and chaining a spirit than actually raising the dead unnaturally, at least from how Selena had kept demanding he have the proper backups in case Eri went feral.

He looked over to the skeleton. He was now wearing the colander first, with the fedora on top in what he'd clearly decided was peak fashion.

Maybe he had gone feral, but not in the way Selena feared.

Wade checked his stats screen. His mana remained at the same level and probably would tick back downwards at a rate of five per hour or so. The temptation to keep going gnawed at him, but Jason had a point. He knew what would happen to himself if he kept going, so he had a lot more control over that. The issue is that they had zero data on what prolonged exposure to magical healing might do to someone without any mana resistance. And after his own limp and eyes, Jason was the second and last chance he'd get to practice healing magic before he went for Ann. And he couldn't afford to mess that one up.

"Fine," Wade said. "We can keep doing this tomorrow."

"Great." Jason grabbed his laptop, pulling up a fresh spreadsheet. "I should start a sheet to keep track of all this. We need baseline measurements, daily progress notes, maybe some before-and-after mobility tests. We can pair that with your mana numbers you get from that System thing."

"You're making a spreadsheet for your magical healing?"

"I make spreadsheets for my grocery shopping. Why are you suprised?" Jason's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Column A for date, Column B for mana used, Column C for duration..."

Wade watched his friend work, noting the color had returned to Jason's face. Even without moving his legs much, he looked healthier, more vibrant. Like someone had turned up the saturation on his whole existence.

"Also," Jason added without looking up, "Mom's making lasagna tonight, interested?"

"Uh, I think I'll be busy with something else, I don't want to weigh Cathrine down too much. Have a dealer to visit who may or may not have gotten his hands on explosives that I'm planning on using. Responsibly."

He had planned to start winding down and heading back home, get in touch with Zin and go pickup his gear before Leon got there. The day was quickly winding to an end, clock showed 5pm, and Wade knew Leon was already driving down. Depending on if LA traffic had mercy on his soul or not, that would add or remove an hour.

But fate took a quick sideturn. Eri stepped up to the desk, and took the ring of healing in his hand. Because he was the embodiment of three magpies in a trenchcoat and the ring looked shiny.

Even just held in his fingertips, it began to glow bright red, active.

Eri immediately put it down as if it were hot to the touch. Then gave a disapproving jaw click, as if upset the ring dared jumpscare him like that.

Wade looked at the ring, and then back to Eri.

Eri looked over to Wade, then to the ring, and then signed the Nathir gesture of 'attempt' and mixed that with an exaggerated head tilt and shoulder shrug of 'who knows?'

Want me to give it a shot?

He was basically a bunch of bones filled with mana, with zero need for mithril or any fear of toxic poisoning. There wasn't anything alive in there to poison. He could technically go on for days, right?

"Holy shit." Wade took out his phone and sent a quick text to Zin just to ask. It seemed like some huge loophole to mana usage.

Zin's profile picture showed a few dots moving as the man texted back. Then the dots stopped, and Wade got an outright call.

"Who's calling?" Jason asked.

Wade was about to answer, nothing came out of his mouth, so instead he went with the safe choice. "My magic teacher, basically." That was allowed by the contract apparently. He turned to the phone and put it on speaker. "Uh, hello?"

"Congratulations Mr. Wade!" Zin said first thing. "You've just rediscovered what a lich is. And yes, your little minion of doom and destruction here could do that. And, wait, let me take a quick wild guess here - you're going to ask me why nobody's thought of doing that all this time, right?"

Wade frowned. "Okay, fine, lay it on me, what's the catch to this, why isn't it a thing?"

"Tiny little detail you might have missed during your time in that charming undead paradise you ran around in. Guess what happened to every single skeleton you met over there?"

"They're all feral and insane."

"Bingo baby. That's what happens to liches, they all eventually start attacking everything in a three mile radius. No exceptions. Best people have done is delay it, but none of them made it more than a month or three. Mana can control and manipulate souls, that's how you chain people up. But there isn't a mage in history that's managed to chain down their identity, just their souls. Which, again, isn't a particularly special thing to do. That's like, basic necromancy 101."

Wade glanced over at Eri, who was now carefully examining his reflection in the laptop screen while adjusting his fedora-colander combo one last time. "He doesn't seem feral."

"I got no idea what he is, System did something that's completely impossible for one. What I can tell you is that limitless mana manipulation without toxic backlash is the Holy Grail. We're talking important enough all five of the ancient civilizations were trying to discover it first before the others did. Guess how they all ended up?"

"They're all extinct after making questionable long term choices?"

"Another bingo for the kiddo! Well… technically. It's complicated. More like Grandpa Moneybags died and now the estate's in a free-for-all. Grandpa being the old civilizations and the estate is Azdrial. Every third cousin twice-removed is crawling out of the woodwork with a lawyer and a sob story about how they were 'totally his favorite.' Others are already trying to squat in the house, and the methheads are doing methhead things like tearing the copper out of the walls."

"And Eri here?"

"Your skeleton literally can't be affected by mana necrosis. Bones are dead. You don't have to worry about that part. But it'll probably cut down on his actual life directly, since he's, you know, eating his own life to power those spells." There was a pause. "Actually, you know what? Screw it. The skeleton's already dead, and if he wants to spend whatever time he has left helping people before he goes insane, who am I to stop him? Go wild, live a little, do a crime."

Wade looked at Eri, who was waiting patiently for an answer. Then over to Jason who seemed deeply unsure of everything.

The decision shouldn't be his. It should be Eri's. "Do you want to give it a shot?"

Eri looked over to Jason. Someone he'd never met before up until an hour ago, and to try and heal this man would come at Eri's own personal lifeforce. The very thing he'd only recently gotten a second chance at.

The jaw clicked once. Yeah, let's ball.

"Okay, but how about we go easy on it for now? Just test if it's possible first, we can do more after. And uh, do you know how to heal?" Wade asked. Maybe the Nathir Slaves had to figure that out themselves, or they also discovered their own variation of healing by trial and error.

Eri stared at Wade, then tapped the ring a few times.

Ah. Right. He didn't need to know how to heal, all he needed to do was power the ring and let it do its thing.

Eri clicked his jaw a few more times, laughing, then carefully slipped the ring onto his finger bone. The red-gold glow intensified on the index finger. The skeleton turned to Jason, and wiggled his finger. He knelt by the sitting man, one hand on the shoulder to steady Jason, while the other skeletal hand reached behind to the spine.

And then slapped the ring directly onto the injury site, and held it there.

Eri's health went down from one hundred to ninety nine. And then down to ninety eight.

Wade's healing had been in short two to three second bursts. Eri's healing was one giant continuous stream. His health was very slowly going down, just now passing ninety five percent. Jason was taking deep breaths, twitching in place.

"Everything good?" Wade asked.

Jason gave a shaky thumbs up. "I'm getting healed with holy magic by a undead skeleton. I feel like we're breaking some fundamental law of fantasy physics here."

"Is it working though?"

"Don't let him heal for too long though kiddo." Zin said over the speakerphone. "A minute should be the max for today."

"We're at thirty seconds so far, I'll tell him to end early when we hit a minute." Wade said, and Eri clicked his jaw affirmative at that.

"Feels like-" Jason's words cut off as his leg suddenly jerked. His eyes went wide. "Holy shit, I felt that. I actually felt my leg move." His voice cracked. "It's like thousands of ants crawling under my skin, but they're my ants, you know-"

The spasm hit without warning. His entire body convulsed and he reached for Eri's trenchcoat, overbalanced, and tumbled from the bed.

Wade dove out, hand reaching to help him back up, then stopped short.

Jason wasn't falling. He was instead, slowly rising back up.

Barely able to support his weight, shaking like he was deadlifting far above his skill, muscles completely atrophied, half the work being done by a heavy hand holding onto Eri's shoulder.

But for the first time in two years, Jason began to stand up.

On his own two feet.

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