Speaking of skills and elements, I heard a bunch of new sounds when I fought the deer. I guessed that it was trying to notify me about the new skills I gained. I checked my status and I was right. There was a new screen that popped up. It listed a bunch of new skills that I got. I read through a few of them.

[Fire Bullet acquired! Added to Fire Element list.]

[Fire Chakram acquired! Added to Fire Element list.]

[Stone Wall acquired! Added to Earth Element list.]

.....

...

.

There were many more but I cleared the notification. I was dealing with something more important now.

The wound was getting worse. I could see through the hole made by that spear. My bones were also shattered, causing me unable to use my right hand. It was completely stiff. I couldn't feel anything below my right shoulder.

I began to wonder how to use Black Healing. I checked my status once again and clicked on the word "skill". It brought me to a different interface. I clicked on the Black Healing skill. Well, I didn't need to click on it, right? Just thinking of it was enough.

BLACK HEALING

The innate ability of the Demon King Kannech. Can only be used on monster-type species. Heals target of choice. Able to be Revised and Evolved.

Usage: Keep the focus on the wound and from there, healing is up to your ability to reconstruct.

Currently no special effects. Use more to unlock this feature.

Ability to reconstruct? I thought. That instruction was too vague. There were a lot of terms that I also didn't understand. For example, the "Evolved" and "Revised". I could guess the latter but the former was unknown to me. It sounded like some kind of Pokémon where you evolve your pets.

Nevertheless, I followed the instruction and stared at my wound. I imagined that I was using the skill Black Healing. Nothing happened. I was more or less becoming skeptical but then I continued to study the wound.

I stared at the black veins and the thick black blood oozing out of my holed-up arm. I focused on the numbing feel it had even though there was a hole where I could see out the back.

All of the sudden, I could see something. Blue-like veins were pulsating on my arm. In fact, it was all over my body where the main source came from my heart. It started there but then it stretched out, creating these veiny pathways inside my body. The blue neon liquid was flowing all over my body.

I stared at my wounded arm and saw something different. Instead of the color blue running there, there was a red blob that had blocked the path to the rest of my right arm. I looked at my right hand and saw nothing like my left arm.

If I guessed it right, this was my mana flow. The source of mana was said to be at the heart, similar to blood. The difference between blood and mana was that if the heart was struck, you'd die out of blood loss but your mana flow still worked. So, if there was a slight chance that you still managed to live a few seconds after being struck in the heart, you could still use magic to heal that heart. A more advanced mage could project an astral body to heal their own wounds.

I knew of this information because, in the novel, one of Erazor's close friends had done it before. During a fight with one of Kannech's underlings, Erazor's friend who was named Abraretha was struck in the heart by a serpent's scale. The underling was one of the 10 strongest demons working under Kannech that received the title of Lord in his name. Lord was the highest form of title and power right after the King.

He was the 8th strongest and was called Xertor, the Hydra. With his many heads that would keep growing back every time it was cut, it was near impossible to kill him. I was sitting at the edge of my seat when I read the arc. It took a total of eight chapters with each chapter ranging around 5000 words for the fight to reach its ending.

In the fight, Abraretha got her heart struck by the serpent's scale, causing her to collapse in the middle of the battlefield. She was a promising Archmage, almost gaining the title of High Archmage. She was able to use around 9 different elements and was considered vital during the fight with Xertor.

Each of the elements she possessed had to ability to permanently cut the Hydra's head without it growing back. With a total of 9 heads, it was the perfect counter. Unfortunately, she went into a state of comatose on the battlefield.

Erazor had to fight the Hydra by himself, believing that she would come back. He was right. That was when the novel mentioned how she used some sort of astral magic and separated her soul from her body. From there, she healed her heart while Erazor struggled to fend off Xertor.

Everyone knew of what Hydra was. The more heads that you chopped off, the more it grew. In mythology, it was said that the Hydra was able to be killed by using a sword and fire. Heracles was tasked to chop off the head while his nephew, Iolaus would use fire to burn the wound so the head wouldn't be able to regenerate.

That wasn't the case in the novel. If it were that easy, Erazor would've won the battle all by himself. Instead, they had to use types of elements to chop off each head.

In the end, Abraretha gained consciousness and was able to cut off each of the heads. Amongst the many heads that Xertor managed to regenerate, Abraretha had to choose the original ones. It was almost an impossible feat since Erazor went berserk and chopped off so many that it had around 256 heads at the time.

Anyway, back to my wound.

My right hand wasn't glowing as it was considered dead. My blood was affected by the poisoned spear.

The red blob that was blocking my mana path was trying to make sure my mana flow didn't get affected. It was quite amazing, to be honest. It didn't have much explanation about this stuff in the novel but I knew for a fact that the body wouldn't just block something that could potentially destroy your mana flow without training. Most people would have their mana flow corrupted but luckily, I didn't get affected.

I wondered whether this was something only I could do. Black Healing didn't have an intricate explanation and needed to be frequently used for me to have more access to its information.

I stopped thinking about it and began to imagine that my wound was slowly healing back to its original look. I was still using the imagination method. The author also said that Kannech was used to using this skill so all I had to do was activate it before it started to do everything by itself.

I was lucky again, fortunately. After a few seconds, my skin was regrowing and the bones were attaching themselves back together again. I forced the skill to be faster and it followed my command. Not long after, the mana flow was back once more and the red blob disappeared.

The moment that my mana reached the end of my fingertips, I could feel my right hand again. I made a fist a few times and confirmed that it was back to its original look.

I was still confused as to how Black Healing worked but I had all the time in the world to learn it. Everything I was doing right now was a new learning experience after all.

After letting out a sigh, I stood up again and stared at the deer.

"Now, how do I cut you apart?" I thought helplessly.