Chapter 855: The Prostitutes’ Visit 4
Breakcore (and Hilda and Christie) seemed to be considering using a new method to treat Isabel’s arm. It was the one they’d briefly mentioned when treating Beatrice before.
“It’s possible to completely regrow the arm by diverting my regenerative power, but apparently the regeneration process is quite painful for ordinary sensibilities. For me, the sensation of 『Pain』 doesn’t surface at all unless I consciously try to feel it”
“That must be quite a hardship……”
“Fundamentally, I can’t die even if I wanted to. Lacking pain perception isn’t a problem at all. I’ve forgotten it now, but I probably tried hard to block it out when I was newly a holy beast”
“Holy beasts have a newly stage?”
“Of course. I shouldn’t have existed before the Ruined Civilization built this labyrinth. I don’t remember it, though”
I digress, Breakcore said, picking up Isabel’s severed right arm (its freshness somewhat restored by the hot spring, though it was already taking on the color and sheen of a corpse). She examined it intently……then suddenly sprouted a 「Horn」 from her left palm with a pop. Using it like a knife, she nonchalantly sliced off her own right arm.
“!?”
Isabel gasped in shock. ……And upon closer inspection, the severed arm had the same brown skin tone as Isabel’s. Its size also matched Isabel’s petite frame, considerably smaller than Breakcore’s current form.
“An old arm isn’t impossible to heal, but restoring function would require some effort. It’s already completely dead flesh. ……And this one is a slightly modified version of my own arm, but since I was using it just moments ago, the effort for rehabilitation and getting used to it will be minimal”
“E, Eh……!?”
“However, in either case, it won’t be exactly the same. Whether it’s your own flesh—an arm that lost its soul long ago—or my arm, which still holds life but belongs to a complete stranger……either way, after connecting one of these to your arm, you must borrow boundless energy from me, the holy beast, and reclaim it as your own flesh and bone. Compared to growing it back from scratch, this requires no pain management or control, making it significantly easier. But if you don’t focus firmly on the treatment with strong willpower, you’ll be in trouble”
“……D, Dangerous?”
“Even if the treatment succeeds, a persistent sense of foreignness will remain in the arm……an illusion that it isn’t truly yours will linger. The reason isn’t understood, but it seems this sensation tends to be particularly strong when transplanting a part of a holy beast’s body. Suppressing that with the power flowing from me, and retraining every inch of it to truly become your own—that is the magic intent”
“Emm……so if I use my own arm that I brought, the risk would be lower, right?”
“In that sense, it’s safer. But my opinion is that the effort required to achieve a full cure wouldn’t change much. As I said before, it’s already in a state akin to death. Forcibly infusing it with life force and restoring it to its former state requires considerable power. Well, it’s a difference that could be dismissed as a matter of preference”
Even as she spoke, Breakcore regenerated flesh from the wound, regrowing the arm in about ten seconds. ……She really is invincible. Dragons can do similar things, though.
“Alternatively, we’ve established a method to abandon reattaching the arm and instead grow it from scratch while suppressing the pain, just like I did now. Given the arrangement where excess qi flows to the dragon through Andy, the regeneration procedure involves having Andy’s cock inserted during the process”
“Insertion isn’t a problem at all, and I wouldn’t mind getting fucked right now with no context whatsoever, but it seems like a waste of a perfectly good arm……”
In many ways, this might be the first patient who remains so unfazed by such an erotic regeneration technique. ……Isabel gazed at her own arm lying nearby (and the Breakcore arm replicating it), then shifted her gaze back and forth to Breakcore herself. Hilda and Christie watched with bated breath. Given their involvement in magic development, it must be fascinating for them too. Eventually, Isabel nodded as if making a decision.
“……I’ll use the arm you made for me”
She picked up the Breakcore-made arm and held it out.
This procedure was simple. I didn’t need to get involved. Hilda would clean the wound and temporarily attach the new arm. Breakcore would then channel power into it, initiating infinite regeneration. After sealing the wound on the arm, the focus would shift to expelling the Breakcore components from the new limb and integrating it as part of Isabel’s flesh. When I did the leg, we supplemented the missing flesh with venison, then gradually replaced it with my muscle through Hilda’s healing engraving care and the power of the sacred spring. It seems similar to that. Probably could’ve done Beatrice the same way if we’d wanted.
“Nku……u, u……it feels weird……like when numbness fades……!”
Right now, Isabel has her forehead pressed against the Breakcore, drawing power from it to heal her right arm. The stump on her upper arm vanished in about a minute, but the real work starts now.
“Think of that tingling sensation as my physical factors. Erase every last trace of it, leaving not even a hint of numbness. While you’re at it, consciously adjust the arm’s size a bit”
“Uh……h, how do I do that?”
“Try extending both arms side by side. The right one is slightly thicker and longer, isn’t it? My initial assessment was off. ……Now, imagine shrinking it down, bone and all……yes, that’s the feeling”
“Uwaaa……I really didn’t want to know what this felt like……!!”
Isabel sounded genuinely confused, which was unusual for her. Well, manipulating your own body size using the power of a holy beast isn’t exactly an everyday experience.
“……Hey, Breakcore, could you apply that to make an adult shrink to a child’s size?”
“It’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you shrink the face along with the body, the brain shrinks too. That can cause personality changes. Since my brain is already much smaller than a human’s, it wouldn’t affect me much”
“……Ah, right, you are a unicorn”
“Besides, I can change back anytime, so it’s fine for me. But for someone who can’t change back, altering their physique would be terribly inconvenient. Suppressing actual physical aging should be sufficient with the spirit spring, so you shouldn’t pin your hopes on this method”
“Ah, no, it’s not like I was pinning hopes on it or anything”
Did it sound like I was trying to use it to live longer? I was just wondering if I could see a child version of the female slaves or an adult version of Irina……while I was thinking that, Isabel’s treatment seemed to be mostly finished.
“……Oh……once the numbness went away, I feel like my strength is overflowing”
“That’s also a bad sign, so let’s continue a little longer. Probably because my holy beast trait is still lingering, making you feel like you have this useless excess of power. The ideal is always 『Back to normal』”
“……I, I see. So it’s about expelling this strangely surging power?”
“That’s right. You’re getting it”
Correction. Looks like it’ll take a bit longer.
After continuing for a while, Isabel finally regained full use of her arm. And the old arm that remained.
“Fancy some grilled meat?”
“Absolutely not. You need to be more conscious that humans shouldn’t perceive human flesh as food”
“Oh……well, personally, I just think that if I cut off my own hand or foot, it’d only rot if no one ate it……it’d be such a waste”
“I respect that perspective as one way of thinking, but fundamentally, humans can’t regrow what they’ve lost, so you absolutely can’t treat it as something edible”
I can’t outright reject it completely—that would affect survivors like Nancy—so I’ll keep my rejection vague. But I still need to convey that it’s fundamentally a mindset humans shouldn’t adopt. However.
“But it is true that letting it rot is wasteful……”
“Isabel, snap out of it! Don’t let it influence you!”
Is it because she 「Absorbed」 the Breakcore’s flesh? Isabel was starting to strangely resonate with that mindset, and I desperately held her back. I totally get her values being shaken by this treatment and Breakcore’s behavior, but who the hell is supposed to eat it in the first place?
“But it might be delicious, you know?”
“What if you want to eat it again later……”
“……Thinking about it that way, yeah, that would be a problem”
Good. She calmed down somehow. Or so I thought.
“Then we’ll just feed it to the dogs”
She still hadn’t quite given up on finding a useful purpose for it.
“But if the dogs recognize a dark elf’s arm as tasty, they’ll start eating it!”
“……That wouldn’t do either”
Isabel grunted, mmm. Finally fed up, Laila picked up the old arm and burned it with a pop.
“Ho. If you need it, just have the holy beast make another. Don’t be so attached”
“Ah……”
Isabel looked a little disappointed. Well, it was a part of the body given by her parents. Even if she didn’t need it anymore, wanting it to be useful somehow……wasn’t necessarily an abnormal thought. Maybe she shouldn’t have denied it so vehemently.
“Right. It’s easy for me. I can prepare as many as you want”
Breakcore made a crunching sound. ……Crunch? It was right behind Laila, so she craned her neck to look. Isabel was pointlessly producing about three more arms. Grow them, cut them off. Grow them, cut them off.
“Wait, who said they needed them?! Stop making more! What the hell are they for!?”
“Well, just to prove how easily I can make them”
“Who would doubt that!?”
In the end, Laila turned all the extra new arms into charcoal. I’ll try to forget that they smelled a little delicious.