Zeke winced when his hand was cut off thanks to Mikella's slash. Her expertise with the sword was the reason why it was cut so clean and precise that barely any blood was let loose.

He still covered his new stump and the end of his hand with Ethereal Manifest. He didn't want to make a mess of his new friend's floor.

All of it happened in a heartbeat before his hand dropped to the floor, making a resounding thump that caused the room to quiet further. It was daunting considering it was his own hand, but even with his grimace he turned to Mikella with a wincing smile.

"Thanks Mikky. You're the best."

"Don't thank me for cutting your damn hand off."

Mikella huffed when she sheathed her sword and put it back into her storage bag. She didn't look all that happy to do it despite donning no hesitation in her eyes.

"Now hurry up and tell me how you're gonna preserve that hand there. It's not like it'll stay all clean like that for long when it's cut off, right?"

"Don't worry," Zeke shook his head. "I know it's weird, but I can just regrow a hand and leave that one out. In other words, I can basically farm hands if I feel like it, hehe…"

Zeke tried to laugh it off as a joke, but clearly it crashed and burned as it should. The idea of 'farming hands' was such a sick joke that it made Mikella shiver. For such a horrifying image, she jabbed Zeke on the hip, getting him to wince.

"Don't ever say it like that again."

"Okay," Zeke nodded in understanding. "Too far. I getcha."

Even if Zeke lost a hand, that was too much for anyone's imagination. He was just glad Clara wasn't around to hear it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you two?!"

Janet shouted in alarm, surprising Zeke. She looked mortified after staring at his stump and the hand on the ground. Lyle was kept silent, just staring in abject horror.

"How can you just cut off your own hand, just like that?!" Janet shouted again. "Don't you care about yourself at all?"

"Of course I do," Zeke said honestly. "Why do you think I cut off my hand to begin with?"

He understood why Janet was upset, but he really did think it was the better choice of the two. If the guild wants proof of his death, and those that wanted him killed wanted his hand for some morbid humiliation on his part, he'd be glad to cut off a hand or two if it meant gaining some peace.

Though this meant that he can't go around healing others in public anymore. Even if he wasn't paid for it, he didn't like having others suffer when he had the mana to heal them. He might have to make up some sort of disguise or something, but then again, he could just get outed out like before and have another assassin come after him again.

Either way, if he wants to keep his peace and leave his new friends out of trouble, the least he could do is pretend to have died off.

Zeke used his remaining hand to pick up his old one, once again sounding out in his head that he was picking up his literal hand off the ground and then placing it on the counter before them. He still didn't think Janet would like it if he shoved his disembodied hand to her face. Looking at her, she was still shocked at the sight of it all.

He figured the only way to reduce their worries is to heal his hand already. With his construct on the way, he didn't have to worry about bleeding out. Though that insistent debuff that showed on his vision was a little annoying.

You are afflicted with Amputation.

Your left hand was cut off, leaving you disabled. Your resource regeneration is reduced by 15% for the remainder of your amputation.

Zeke shook his head at the prompt and put it away. He really didn't want to see that. Though he was glad that it didn't affect his spell casting at the least. He knew some games where if you had lost a limb or anything else, your spell casting is reduced by half or by a moderate amount. If that had occurred, it would make healing a lot more difficult.

Still, this was a new sort of challenge. He healed badly damaged limbs before. But this time his hand was utterly cut off. Normally, losing a limb is paramount to suicide in this world and their old world if you rely on them consistently, but as long as you have an experienced healer on your side, you can reattach it.

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However, he has to literally lose his hand in order to make the lie work. This means he has to regrow a new hand. For normal healing, this might be considerably difficult or just impossible. But Zeke wasn't a normal healer.

His pens floated out from his pack, summoning magical constructs with Ethereal Manifest and drawing on them with those pens. That caught the others by surprise as Zeke continued to draw plenty of runes for 'regeneration', 'health', 'Vitality', and plenty of other meaningful runes to restore his hand.

With his quickly made array in order, Zeke focused his sight on his stump and flared Restoration. His eyes glowed a bright color that got the otherworlders to stand back from the power he exhibited. Only Mikella stood by, ready to act if he needed any help.

Thankfully, the process wasn't that draining on his Mana despite his reduced regeneration. He channeled the vital energy from the rest of his body to correlate with the runes on the construct. After connecting it to the stump, he forced his health to come alive with his mana and grow out of the stump through the array.

Slowly, and ever so carefully, he reconstructed his hand with the help of his array and his many months of practice with healing. To everyone else, his hand was slowly growing back in a flash of bright turquoise color, constructing the base, then the palm of the hand, and then up to the fingers and finally to the tips.

It kept occurring for the next minute or so, with another minute of Zeke carefully putting the details back in order.

Eventually, the glowing stopped and his hand soon returned back to normal. Throughout the process, the construct was used up as a sort of base for the hand. As it showed itself in its usual skin color but just slightly pinker than usual, he flexed his fingers into a fist.

It was hard to do. It made sense, considering that his nerves were still adjusting to the sudden connection of his new hand. Still, if he had to guess, it would take at least a few hours before he could manage to fully use his hand again like normal.

Nodding to himself with pride, he looked over at the absolutely stunned Janet and Lyle who watched the entire process in silence. Mikella just stood by with a cocky smile on her face.

"Well…" Zeke eventually said. "That was something. I still prefer not doing that again if I have to."

"Holy shit…" Lyle stepped up, clear astonishment in his eyes as he stared at his newly made hand. "You mind if I observe it closer?"

"Sure," Zeke nodded. He wasn't really against having someone check out his hand. It's nice to have some feedback, after all.

Lyle then unhesitatingly grabbed his hand with both of his, and marveled at it. He felt the back and palm of his hand, then felt each of the digits. Each time, he asked whether he felt any sense of pain for every pressure he applied. Zeke only responded that he only felt numb.

But the way Lyle observed his hand felt like having an actual doctor take a look at him. It made him feel more relieved than disturbed, especially since he came from the same world as his own.

Finally, Lyle let go with an amazed smile. "Incredible. You really regenerated an entire hand on your own. You gotta teach me how you pulled that off. I've been trying so hard to make a potion that can do at least that much since forever."

"I'm guessing you can't just recover a whole hand with just a Health Potion?" Mikella asked. The two weren't savvy about potions since they don't usually use them. Zeke mostly healed the two after all.

"That's literally just applying a band-aid to a broken arm," Lyle genuinely chuckled. "No amount of potions can help recover the body as fast as his spell did. Only the most expensive potions can help someone regrow a limb like this. That requires a lot of study, preparation, and a shit ton of expensive ingredients and reagents. But I'm hoping that with this, I can learn how to do it with the stuff I have on hand."

"I'd be glad to help," Zeke offered, then eventually took his former disembodied hand and held it aloft. Lyle and Janet looked at it with mild contemplation as Zeke turned to Janet with the hand–uhh, in hand.

"You think this might be enough?"

Janet looked over at the appendage, clearly hesitating on just looking at it. After looking up to him, Janet took his body part and placed it into her own storage bag.

"Are you really okay with this?" Janet asked, looking at his still pinkish hand. "I mean, doing all this for us. Even after everything I've done to you?"

"I know we got off on the wrong foot," Zeke said. "But I understand what you went through. You were just trying to make a living."

Janet looked like she wanted to say more, but after everything they discussed, there wasn't any worth anymore. She smiled, showing an appreciative glance to him.

Just when the mood was pretty good, Lyle looked up at the store and put on a pretty disturbed expression. Noticing that, the otherworlders took notice of what he was taking in.

The store was an utter mess. Ruined shelves from the impact of the two warriors fighting, and of course the absolutely ruined entrance of the store. Bits of wood and stone were everywhere, making it an absolute mockery of the homely kind of store Lyle once had.

Every otherworlder there grimaced at the sight.

"I am so sorry for this," Zeke immediately said. "We'll help pay for the damages…"

Mikella looked abhorrent of the idea, but she refused to say anything of the sort. After all, she was responsible for half of the damage here. Janet looked just as responsible for it, her fingers laced with one another in anxiety.

"Eh… it's fine," Lyle said. Though he clearly had a defeatist tone in his voice. "What's a little bit of damage here and there? Heh…"

Clearly, Lyle was just trying to make everyone feel better after the little mishap. Still, it just wasn't right for them to ruin someone's livelyhood and just leave it at that. Then a lightbulb turned up in his head, a memory of long ago re-surfacing of the same thing back in Eve Glade.

"Wait, I think I might be able to fix this."

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