Once Lucius got back to the camp, he went straight for the training grounds, expecting at least Alpha to still be there. But to his surprise, the entire place was crowded.
The arena had been divided into 3 sections. One part had a whole range of different-sized rocks, one of which Hannibal was currently carrying.
In another section, Pagan and Alpha were currently sparring, though they really ought to have built a wall since stray beams threatened to hit a few of the kid shrooms who were currently running laps around one of the other sections.
"Hannibal!" Lucius called out, setting the baby arachnid on the ground. Two kid shrooms immediately approached Lucius once they heard him shout, both of them bowing before saying their greetings.
"Enough of that, get food!" he shouted towards them, and the two set off towards the kitchen.
"What's going on?" Hannibal asked once he arrived.
"I need you to heal this," Lucius replied, looking up at him. At this point, the other kid shrooms began to gather around Lucius, along with the insectoid and the first beast, both of whom looked very exhausted.
"I-I can't heal that... radiant healing requires me to know its internal structure... I've never dealt wi-"
"Just try," Lucius insisted, gesturing for the kid shrooms surrounding them to space out.
"Is it alive?" the insectoid asked, as the baby arachnid slowly approached its sibling, a sad look on its face.
"I don't know," Lucius replied, looking towards the insectoid, to which Hannibal gave him a strange look.
"It's the encyclopedia... but I'll explain that later. For now, I need you to start running radiant energy through it, to map its internals," Lucius ordered.
Though he knew the task he was asking was difficult. It took him a day to map out his own internals, though he was the pioneer, he still had to factor in the fact that he had known something about medicine from his old world.
"There should be a heart... something that pumps fluid around the body. You know what I'm talking about right?" Lucius asked, looking toward Hannibal as he touched the arachnid baby.
"The second crux? Yeah," Hannibal replied. The heart did act like a sort of crux, so the descriptions fit, after all, there was no way he would know what a heart was.
"Okay, find that first. It should have vessels that lead to all its other organs, any trails where radiant energy moves faster, map those out as well," Lucius ordered, and Hannibal's eyes lit up.
"Genius," Hannibal whispered before getting to work.
"When you find something, tell me. I'll try to explain what it is,"
"Got it," Hannibal replied as both his and the baby arachnid's body began glowing in a faint blue hue.
"What's going on here? Did I say you guys can stop running?" It was Alpha.
"Lighted One," Pagan said, before even getting a glimpse of Lucius. "You will all do well to keep your distance from His Radiance," Pagan shouted, and the kid shrooms all fell into neat little lines and stood behind Lucius and the others in wait.
"Has the Lighted One brought in another beast?" Pagan asked, to which Lucius only nodded in response. Whilst Hannibal was running radiant energy through the baby, he was also attempting radiant healing in the areas he had already mapped out, so to prevent him from burning out, Lucius was constantly casting solar cleanse on him.
"Let me help," Pagan said, taking over from Lucius.
"I found something in its abdomen.... a lot of somethings," Hannibal said out loud, his voice strained as he kept his eyes closed.
~Fuck, the last time I saw an insect's insides was back in high school biology... its brain was in its butt, right? Or something like that?~
"Just heal everything," Lucius said finally. He had hoped to save a bit of radiant energy by only healing what he needed to, but it seemed there was no helping it.
~We really should map out every single creature in the camp and draw the figures somewhere. There's no telling when we might need to save someone from a different species,~ Lucius thought to himself.
"We have brought what you asked for Lighted One," a kid shroom said, holding out a piece of meat.
~The creature probably can't chew right now... much less properly digest this itself,~ Lucius thought to himself.
"I'm going to try something," he whispered, an idea flashing through his mind.
He had his tail move towards the meat, and ordered it to eat it. Ever since he had evolved he no longer required his tail to use catalyst absorption, but had its working changed?
His tail zipped toward the food and quickly devoured it. He then instructed it to digest the food but not consume it. The catalyst absorption message popped up, but right as it came, Lucius ordered the tail to feed the liquid to the baby.
"If you feel radiant energy being obstructed through any vessels, follow them and heal the structure they end up in. The food should cause resistance, and the trail it's going to pass through is its stomach," Lucius explained.
"That probably sustained a bit of damage due to starvation," he added.
The healing went on for 5 minutes before the arachnid was out of danger. Though it was still noticeably weak as Lucius could hardly sense its presence.
"I think that's it," Hannibal said, falling to the ground in exhaustion.
"Well done, Hannibal... you too Pagan," Lucius said. "Can you guys take it to rest under the tree, I'm not sure if the tree's healing will help non-linked members, but it's worth a shot," he added, and a kid shroom took it away.
"The rest of you can get back to training," Lucius ordered, to which the insectoid seemingly groaned.
"Take the baby arachnid to its sibling, it might be confused when it wakes up," he added, and another shroom led the arachnid baby towards its sibling.
"Hannibal, Alpha, Pagan, with me. We're going to discuss a mission briefing, it's your chance to increase in rank," he said as he was about to leave, and the three followed close behind him.
