“Hey, Del, wanna hear some facts about healing spell while I’m fixing his wound?” Cassandra asked.

“Sure, I will hear your story telling,” Del replied as he kept looking at the dagger that moved up and down on his chest. He felt rather ok, but he was nervous at the same time.

“C’mon, don’t keep looking at your chest, you’re fine, believe me,” Cassandra replied.

“Alright,” Del sighed as the pain on his chest started radiating.

“Healing spell works by accelerating the process of wound healing for most of the part. However, physicians like me oftentimes separate the acceleration into multiple different process. I will explain it in layman’s term so you are not confused. Wound healing can be separated into three different parts. The first is stopping the bleeding itself. The second is the wound healing process itself and the third is the fixing of the skin,” Cassandra said.

“Ok, I think I get what you meant,” Del nodded.

Cassandra pressed the gauze even harder, “You see, Cole would probably use the most generic healing spell which incorporates all of the three processes at once which is quite convenient for the most cases, but we aren’t dealing with most cases, right?”

“What do you mean?” Del asked.

Cassandra lifted her hands up the gauze for a while and leaving it on the wound. “Wait, alright?” Cassandra said as she wore gloves on her hands. She then grabbed an antiseptic swab and rub it on the area around Cole’s wound. She grabbed one of the reusable plastic syringe and filled the syringe with that Lidocaine.

Cassandra lifted up the gauze from Cole’s wound and blood had stopped flowing like a river. Instead it only dripped a little bit every time Cassandra moved her finger inside of the laceration. She injected the anesthetic on multiple spots in that laceration. Del didn’t know how much Cassandra put in Cole’s wound, but it was definitely a lot.

“Using a separate process for healing spell usually gives us much more control in how we are going to treat the wound itself. Maybe a cut won’t need separate process or even stitches, but something like Cole’s wound right here really requires advanced process,” Cassandra explained.

“Why?” Del asked.

“His wound is quite deep, you see. It almost gets to the Periosteum,” Cassandra said

“Perios— what?” Del asked.

“The bone. His wound is almost deep enough to touch his bone,” Cassandra said as she continued to inject Cole with local anasthetic.

“Is it that bad?” Del asked.

“Usually, yeah, it’s quite bad. I’m not saying that you can’t use regular healing spell to fix it and be done with it, but damn, this kind of wound will promote ugly scarring and infection if you improperly uses a healing spell,” Cassandra explained.

“How so?” Del asked.

“Well, first of all, although healing spell can heal any wound, it doesn’t exactly heal without any complications. Due to its reliance on accelerating wound closure by applying all the steps at once, the wound healing can be uneven resulting in a gap between the wound which will usually be filled with liquid, and liquid invites…?” Cassandra asked Del.

“Infection???” Del answered.

“Correct. That’s why some abroad students usually feel fever-ish. It’s because of the infection that they created on themselves for the most part. Still, oftentimes, due to the training that we got, we rarely got a serious infection,” Cassandra said.

Cole added, “So that’s why I get fever after I patch myself up, right? You guys never tell me this on the military training.”

“Well, Cole, suturing your wound isn’t enough to heal yourself. You need to keep it clean and sterile for the most part,” Cassandra said.

“I do it, but damn, I still get fever,” Cole said.

“Anyway, Cole, is it numb yet?” Cassandra asked as she really put her finger deep inside Cole’s wound.

“Yeah, I can’t feel anything,” Cole said.

“Good,” Cassandra said as he grabbed a bottle of saline from the trauma bag.

She mixed the saline with iodine, turning it brown and Cassandra started pouring it into the wound. She was disinfecting the wound because that kind of wound could easily promote an infection if treated in a wrong way.

After cleaning, Cassandra grabbed a package of absorbable suture and started suturing Cole’s wound. “You see, his wound isn’t exactly easy to fix, this thing both needs a deep and superficial suture.”

“Superficial?” Del asked.

“You can say that it’s the outer part of the skin while deep is deep,” Cassandra said.

“I see,” Del replied.

Cassandra continued suturing the wound until it closed tightly. After it, Cassandra applied an antibiotic ointment on top of the wound that she just treated and wrapped it tightly with bandages. “That should be all done,” Cassandra then applied her healing spell to apply the second stage of healing.

“Can I take off the bandage now?” Cole asked.

“Heck no, don’t do that, I only help your wound to reconnect its blood vessel, not fixing the wound itself. Relax, maybe tomorrow I will take off some of the sutures, but it’s just maybe,” Cassandra said as he looked at Del’s clothing.

The first thing that Cassandra did was taking off Del’s FLAK jacket and his shirt. As she previously had expected, Del’s wound wasn’t even big. Cassandra just cleaned it up with the previous saline and iodine mixture and stitched it with stitches. She then put a bandage around his torso to cover that wound.

“There, now it’s done,” Cassandra said.

“Thanks,” Del said.

“Should we stay here? Or should we get out of here as soon as possible?” Cole asked.

“Well, we should be getting out of here as soon as possible,” Del said as he moved to the driver seat of the car and restarted the engine of the car.

Del continued driving with the wound on his chest. Cole wasn’t in the turret anymore since he was too wounded to do that and Cassandra was applying healing spell on his shoulder. Del drove the car while keeping his machine gun between the steering wheel and his body.

Eventually, they got out of the forest in one piece and arrived at a grassland. Del parked his car in the middle of the grassland. He got out of the car and breathed in the fresh air of the grassland.

“Finally, fresh air, why the fuck SSU was there anyway?” Del asked.

The others got out of the car, including Wolfie. Cassandra stood right next to Del. She heard the rhetorical question and she replied, “Probably they were only securing the whole region from any intrusion. Or perhaps they were looking for us?”

“Looking for us???”

“It’s a possibility although highly unlikely,” Cassandra said.

“Who are those guys anyway? They’re elite. They use throwing daggers, move among the shadows, and use ambush strategy instead of charging us. They’re not even conventional by any mean,” Del explained.

“Well, Elbanian SSU usually consists of B-rank soldiers, usually. Still, they might not be the most elite of Elbanian special unit, but they’re quite deadly. If we weren’t careful, we could easily be killed, especially after the exhaustion from fighting with the goblins.”

“Can you explain more about this SSU? You’re with the Internal Security after all,” Del said.

“Hmm, SSU, they’re the unit that the Elbanian used when they needed to have something guarded. They were one step above your ordinary grunts. They’re deadly and able to use throwing daggers. I don’t know where the unit was originated,” Cassandra said.

“There are many branches?” Del asked.

“Well, for example, Eastern Region is under Elbanian 5th Army and Elbanian Navy. In one army, there were usually two divisions of SSU in one army. These people are tasked to guard a high-priority target,” Cassandra explained.

“Hmm, is there an even more elite unit?” Del asked.

“Well, I heard about this Golden Arrow Squadron that works in tandem with the air force of Elbanian empire, but I really never encountered them,” Cassandra said.

“Airforce? Like what? A plane?” Del asked.

“I don’t know what a plane is, but I know what an airship is. They’re basically a ship that flies. They usually rain heavy projectiles from afar and couldn’t be attacked by any conventional magic, and even a wyvern unit can’t make a dent on the airship,” Cassandra said.

“What? Really?” Del wasn’t sure about the capability of an airship. He knew that several ships on Alder harbor had cannons, but he never saw a ship fired a cannon.

“Yeah, they’re deadly. On battlefield, destroying an airship can only be done by using another airship for the most part. There’s also the fact that an ancient site is a no-fly zone,” Cassandra said.

Del hummed after listening all of the descriptions. He realized that the warfare on that world wasn’t as backward as he thought. He initially thought that the warfare on that world consisted of fighting some duded with sword, but it was much more complex but now he knew. He was dealing with something dangerous.