Chapter 1217 - Taming the Old World - Respite - 3

Chapter 1217: Chapter 1217 - Taming the Old World - Respite - 3

Ren let out a slow, measured sigh.

"It genuinely isn’t as catastrophic as it looks," he said softly.

And he wasn’t just offering empty comfort to pacify their terror.

While he had been evaluating the room, he had already turned his ethereal perception inward, running a diagnostic on his own system. He was meticulously reading exactly what the crystallization plague had successfully conquered and what it had miraculously left untouched.

And the internal data confirmed that his desperate gamble to forcefully shunt the volatile mana exclusively into his smaller outer veins had paid off.

The bone and marrow remained absolutely pristine. The massive, primary mana channels, the crucial arterial pathways that actually dictated his output, were also almost completely untouched. The crystalline mana had only managed to consume the superficial muscle tissue, the dermal layers, and the microscopic, secondary ethereal conduits.

It was repairable. It was going to be excruciatingly painful to fix, but it was repairable.

"I am going to have to forcefully push some of the crystalline structures to initiate the healing cycle since that’s easier than transforming all the Diamond crystals back," he explained, keeping his tone entirely clinical. "It is not going to be a pleasant process, not even to watch. But I am absolutely not going to lose my arms."

The heavy, suffocating tension in the room instantly fractured. Every single set of shoulders visibly dropped a fraction of an inch in relief.

"Ha!" Mayo cheered from the back row. "Do you see? You all had absolutely nothing to worry about! Player Patinder is going to fully recover the use of his hands so he can embrace you and utilize his fingers for all sorts of... intricate activities. The man clearly knows what his true priorities are."

Maria and Matilda mercilessly elbowed her simultaneously in the ribs, one striking from each flank.

"Ouch. That was meant to be a genuine compliment..."

The girls couldn’t help but sigh, and the lingering knot of pure dread in the infirmary finally began to loosen.

♢♢♢♢

"My parents?" Ren asked, his tone shifting back to business. "Were they briefed on the situation?"

"Yes and no." Larissa chose her words with meticulous care. "They are fully aware that a big siege took place. They know you are currently resting and that you are, technically speaking, still in one piece... They have become remarkably adept at reading the subtle lies in our mana signatures over the past year. However, they absolutely do not know... exactly how dire the medical prognosis genuinely was, nor did they know that the master healers were completely paralyzed by the crystallization. No one offered them a comprehensive explanation simply because, during those initial terrifying days, even we didn’t know if the damage was permanent, and there was zero value in deliberately inciting a panic in the southern territory."

Ren nodded slowly, half-relieved. Burdening his parents with the agonizing knowledge that their only son had turned his own arms to glass wouldn’t have accomplished anything constructive.

"How long have I been unconscious? Give me the exact number..."

"Ten days."

"Damn it. That is hovering right on the edge of the absolute worst-case scenario I calculated... And what about the dome? Has our Vanguard been running structural diagnostics?"

"Julius hasn’t taken his hand off there since you fell," Luna reported, her aristocratic composure firmly back in place. "According to his latest calculations, we have exactly three days remaining. Perhaps slightly less. The entity trapped inside actively adapted its tunneling efficiency, and the prince is deeply concerned it might be deliberately masking its true excavation speed."

Ren rapidly ran the grim arithmetic in his head. ’That timeline aligns almost perfectly with what...’

"With what Moosh calculated," Ren stated quietly.

Luna instantly raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow, fixing him with a direct, challenging stare, anticipating the correction before he even made it.

Ren swallowed hard.

"...Mooshito calculated," he quickly corrected himself under his breath.

"Mooshito," Luna conceded, the ghost of a fond smile touching her lips before it was rapidly eclipsed by genuine sorrow as she remembered their tiny, brilliant ally was currently comatose deep within Ren’s soul.

"Then we are officially out of time," Ren declared, instantly shifting the tone of the room, ruthlessly cutting off the encroaching melancholy before it could take root.

He slowly pushed himself upward against the thick pillows, his crystallized arms resting entirely useless atop the silk sheets.

"I am going to require your direct assistance... All three of you. We are going to prioritize recovering the right arm first."

"Our assistance?" Larissa blinked, her usual confidence faltering for a second.

"In my current compromised state, I cannot execute this recovery sequence alone. I possess absolutely zero fine motor control in my extremities, and every single phase of this delicate runic uncrystallizing surgery requires precision. However, if I can tell you how to utilize the highly controlled, external flow of your mana, I can successfully rebuild my hand and recover from there. We just need to recover enough baseline functionality for my right hand to move, and it’s fine if I bleed, the master healers can come later to safely handle the rest."

The three women instantly tensed. It was one thing to flawlessly execute an offensive spell on the battlefield; it was an entirely different, terrifying prospect to inject their raw ether directly into someone’s catastrophically damaged system, knowing a single microscopic miscalculation could permanently shatter the most important pathways in his body.

"I trust you," Ren said simply.

And a faint, undeniable blush crept across all three of their faces. It wasn’t the kind of unfiltered sentiment he casually offered very often.

They all nodded, clearly embarrassed but deeply resolved at that.

"WE SEE THE POWER OF PLAYER PATINDER IN ACTION!" Mayo loudly announced to the ceiling. "Making them blush at one simple sentence and then... Foursome cooperative multiplayer operation officially unlocked...!"

Maria and Matilda ruthlessly struck her again, their movements synchronized with the same practiced perfection.

♢♢♢♢

Ren immediately began outlining the blueprint.

He explained the runic arrays, meticulously telling them exactly how each specific rune would route their injected mana through his damaged pathways. The architectural plan was crystalline in his mind, even if the execution sounded impossible. The primary objective was to salvage the deep structural integrity first, avoiding the bone marrow and the arterial channels to ensure nothing collapsed during the change. Then, they would rebuild the muscle tissue utilizing Water and Light mana. Finally, they would reconstruct the dermal layers.

"This is going to hurt," he warned them, his tone dead serious. "A lot... But I am explicitly ordering you not to stop because of that. If you see my jaw lock or hear me grind my teeth, you must continue pushing the ether. The absolute worst error you can make is to pause halfway through the reconstruction cycle."