Jaune's Regen gives no shits

I sighed slightly, musing as I palmed a blue Dust crystal. I…might have been able to heal her, though I wasn’t certain of how Soulforge Restoration would interact with such extreme wounds, much less a robotic body. In fact…

“I suppose your Aura doesn’t heal you normally, does it Penny?” I asked, look over her status screen. She had a fair number of status effects I’d never seen before, like ‘Ex Machina,’ which I assumed had some effect of preventing natural healing. Though she still had some Aura left, even her smaller wounds, like her torn skin, had yet to close. I suppose that shouldn’t have been surprising given it was artificial skin—no, more than that, dismemberment wasn’t something many people could recover from regardless of their Aura. The fact that Penny could get new arms was itself amazing and I knew she wasn’t in pain. I could just leave her here and she’d most likely be fine.

On the other hand, it just felt wrong to tear off a girl’s arms and legs and abandon her in the middle of nowhere with no way of doing anything until someone came to get her.

Gee, I wonder why.

“No,” Penny replied. “Because I’m a machine.”

I sighed slightly, feeling bad but still thinking.

“Something like that…” I mused.

I might have been able to heal her with Crocea Mors, though I wasn’t completely confident in my Craft ability or knowledge of how she worked. I’d only caught glimpses after all, her Aura fighting my control and blurring my vision each time—but it was possible. Of course, then her limbs would be functional again, which was itself a potential problem—I didn’t want to leave her wounded but if I healed her…she probably wouldn’t continue the fight now, but even so…

However, that made me wonder. Even if it made sense for her to be unable to heal normally…no, rather, because of my power, even something like this…?

Yeah, after all, how many robotic teammates have I had in games? And healing spells always worked on them despite that, too. For me, whose powers worked off abstract things like HP rather than physical damage and biology, what did it matter if she was a robot? She had an HP bar, after all, and my skill didn’t say it couldn’t be used on robots. The issue of her getting up remained, but if it was me…

I looked at my Dust crystal. I’d devoured dozens of the crystals while fighting Penny, drawing life and power from them to sustain myself. I’d felt the power within, used it to fuel my Aura and color it to change myself, again and again and again. Because I’d experienced it so many times, perhaps it was possible? Certainly, I’d done far stranger things—and I’d considered the idea, as the fight wore on.

I closed my eyes for a moment, falling into a trance in a moment, my senses focused on myself, the patterns of light that shot through my Aura, and the crystal that blazed like fire in the palm of my hand. I knew how the process worked, had experienced it so many times during the fight, and I knew how it felt. When I used a Dust Crystal as part of Soulforge Restoration, I drew the energy out of it to replenish my Aura and colored myself with its light in the process. The buff I received was a side-effect, really, if a very useful and powerful one.

But did it have to be that way?

I focused and felt my Aura change and it felt almost familiar—both because of how I’d felt something similar recently and because of Xihai. I guided my Aura along its course and watched as it came together, an imitation of what I’d seen and felt.

A skill has been created through a special action! Through the manipulation of Aura’s form and nature, you have created the skill ‘Regeneration’!

Regeneration (Active) LV1 EXP: 0.00% MP: 100
A skill to manipulate the body through the alteration of Aura. By imposing the element of Water, swift healing can be granted.
+50 HP per minute.
+50 SP per minute.
Duration: 30 minutes.

I drew in a deep breath, smugly self-satisfied. As expected of my bullshit power—the effect wasn’t as quick as the status Soulforge granted which restore ten HP per second for twenty seconds, but as an effect with a much longer duration?

“Something like that,” I said more confidently. “Means nothing to me.”

I touched Penny’s forehead and felt my power flow over her. Her eyes widened slightly at whatever she felt and my tail uncoiled from its place at my waist, wrapping around the arm I’d placed beside her body and bringing it closer to her stump—and smiled slightly when I same her HP go up a point after a second, metal edges twitching unnaturally. I did the same with her other limbs, reaching over her body to bring her legs closer, and then stood.

“I have a few things to take care of first, but it’s about time I take my leave. It might take some time to heal, but you should be mostly healed in about half an hour,” I said, brushing dust off my pants. “Until then, try not to do anything to aggravate your injuries—and remembered what you learned today, Penny.”