The surgery was hell.
To perform it, Mr. Han needed six nurses to help him and Minerva to eliminate any potential errors.
In addition, I needed to be awake the entire time because my brain activity highlighted my Mana Circuits. If I was drugged out of my mind, Mr. Han would've had trouble finding them.
In total, the surgery took ten hours to perform and at the end of each of those hours, immense pain electrified my entire body as the anesthetic would lose its effect.
Fortunately, because of Mr. Han's skillful hands, the surgery was successful.
I was bedridden for weeks though. This space was designed to give the illusion that my body worked just fine, but the operation took such a toll on my body that even such strong magic had no effect. If not for Christina and Maria visiting me constantly, I would've died from boredom.
Christina would tell me everything she learned from school. Apparently, she made a friend named Arthur who liked computers. That was quite the milestone! She would also read me all the books she collected. Her favorite was a Shr*k children's book for some odd reason.
Meanwhile, Maria painstakingly took care of me even after what happened between us. I thought for sure that it would be awkward but she acted like the caring person she usually was. She fed me, wiped me down, changed my position on the bed. She did everything that was needed to be done for a paralyzed person.
She did so much for me but for now, all I could give her was my heartfelt thanks. Thankfully, I had all the time in the world to think of a way to show it in a big way.
Time passed, maybe a month or so, I wasn't sure. This place didn't have a day/night cycle so my sense of time was messed up. The movements in my body slowly came back. My joints and muscles were noticeably stiffer than what I was used to, but I was grateful to be able to feed myself again.
And soon enough, the time came for me to finally stretch my limbs. After a quick checkup with Minerva and Mr. Han, they gave me the go signal to get out of bed and move about.
With Maria and a cane supporting me, I walked out of the cottage for the first time in a while. The fresh smell of the grassy meadow greeted me and the caress of the wind on my skin comforted me. The sun shone on my face and for the first time, I found a greater appreciation for life.
Afterwards, Minerva created a highly efficient physical rehabilitation program that when followed, should get me used to my new body in the shortest time possible. I expected it to be difficult. However, Minerva took my "humanness" into account when she created it and as a result, I had a speedy recovery.
My new body was stiff and heavy, but immense power coursed through me. Minerva said that I had a surprising compatibility with the Artificial Circuits which made me really curious of their original owner. But when I hounded Mr. Han for the name of the higher being that he stole the materials from, he just gave me a sly smile and kept his mouth shut.
Eventually, I reached 100% recovery. Well, as 100% as I could. I still needed to use a cane and as Minerva said, the fastest I could go was a brisk walk and I couldn't put my arms up fully in the air. A pain, yes, but I was way more excited about something else to be worrying about my range of motion.
It was time for me to cast magic again!
Gustave and my mom took the task of rehabilitating my Mana Circuits. The two best teachers I could ever ask for. Gustave was a master of mana manipulation while mom was a master of aerokinesis. With them at the helm, I should be able to use magic way better than I ever could.
"Hello, Mr. Roberts," Gustave said with his usual professional smile. "I'm glad to see that you recovered enough to use magic again."
"It's all thanks to you, Gustave," I replied. "Thanks for convincing the Elves to let us in Mount Olive."
My eyes then turned to my mother who wore a complicated expression. Anger, regret, relief, happiness, love, all jammed into one furrowed brow. I guess there was a part of her that blamed herself for what happened. Unfounded, yes, but if I saw Christina on a hospital bed with a bunch of tubes coming out of her, I'd certainly feel the same.
"Mom, you'll get wrinkles like that," I chuckled, an attempt to ease her mind even for just a bit.
That joke earned me an almighty push with her wind magic though. My body tumbled back into the grass as the air got knocked out of my lungs.
"You're the damn reason I'm like this, you stupid son," she said. "This time, I'm going to drill everything I know into your skull so you don't lose to second-rate crooks like Mikail."
I slowly struggled to prop myself up as I nursed my aching back. "Owww... I love you too mom," I said.
Gustave gave off a small chuckle and stretched his hand to pull me up with his thoughts. It was like being enveloped by a warm blanket. His control of mana was impressive as usual.
"Now, now, Audrey, go easy on the boy," he said. "We have to break him down and build him back up so he needs every ounce of strength he has."
Mom stretched out her hand and yanked me closer with the winds on my back. Unlike Gustave's gentle and warm magic, hers was forceful and dominating.
"You're right, Gustave," she replied. "I'll have more than enough opportunities to educate him."
Scary.
My mother never really liked talking about her past or work when she was at home. I admired her for that. Work was for the workplace and the past didn't always need to be revisited. But when I was starting to develop my inquisitive mind in the academy, I did investigate her background.
I found stories and articles about her during the integration period of Fantasia. It was a time of great unrest and uncertain futures. And with new races coming into the world, traffickers saw the new continent as a business opportunity. Then, during the height of this great crisis, "The Tempest" showed up: Audrey Notus. Spearheading an independent Anti-Trafficking taskforce, she sunk hundreds of ships into the ocean and rescued thousands of lives. She was such a terror that the underworld saw trafficking to be too unstable to continue and went on to pursue other business ventures.
"Yeah, you go honey!"
And then there was my dad: the journalist who wrote those stories.
He, along with Maria and Christina settled under a nearby tree for a picnic. Saige Normsworth, Maria's Dryad friend from the charity event, was also sitting with them. She was the one who provided us with the necessary drugs for my surgery and recovery. And surprisingly, Michael also came along. But with the way he was eyeing Saige, I've come to the conclusion that he didn't come here to check on his best friend.
"Did the peanut gallery really have to be here, mom?" I asked.
"They're here for moral support," she replied. "Except for your father. He's here to do an exposé on Mount Olive since no one really knows a lot about it."
I raised an eyebrow at Gustave.
"We'd like to get some tourism going," Gustave added. "Like Mount Everest, but safer."
I sighed. I guess times were changing, even for this particularly reclusive Elven tribe.
"So, where do we start?" I asked, eager to use my newly healed Mana Circuits.
Mom smirked and with a snap of his fingers, a table, chair, and a whiteboard apparated out of thin air.
"We'll start with theory," she said. "Magic and Science are two compatible systems. If you manage to learn the theories of both, your control and creativity on using your spells should multiply."
"That's right," Gustave chimed in. "Even we didn't know the extent of our powers until the Collision exposed us to the Science users of Earth. For that, we're eternally grateful."
School huh? My first instinct was to reject it. After all, I already learned the theories of Magic and Science in the police academy. Hell, even high school and college taught them repeatedly without fail.
However, when I kept on repeating that night at the charity event, when everyone was being threatened by a bomb, I did think to myself if there was something else I could've done. Maybe I could've created a vacuum to prevent the explosion. But my lack of control prevented that. Maybe there was something in the air that could've reacted with the mechanism of the bomb to diffuse it. But my lack of knowledge didn't even open up that question.
In the end, that night was one of my crowning failures. A failure that almost cost me my life.
I sat on the chair and honed my focus on my two teachers. If it was these two, they would certainly be able to teach me something that will revolutionize the way I used magic.
"Well, I'm eager to learn something new. Please don't go easy on me."