Time skip.
Keitaro and Shoko could be inside of what seemed to be a makeshift lab.
There in fact in Keitaro's house basement, strangely enough down there, they were a lot of stuff that could be used to brew and make pills.
He never truly noticed how much stuff his grandma's house had that could have helped him.
He turned his eyes to meet Shoko who was seen putting on her glove, she already had her medical coat on.
Keitaro wasted no time ordering everything that they would need, they were some cheap herbs they were also a shit ton of expensive ones.
He wanted a middle ground so he hoped that some of the average price one would last.
They spent countless hours experimenting with the pills, Keitaro was currently on attempt #999, in his notes.
He watched as the mouse's body healed weirdly, he then watched as the mouse's internal organs started to grow into external organs.....Why did the mouse heart have teeth?
He quickly put the mouse out of its misery, he did not want the beast to suffer.
One attempt later, and what came out of the cauldron was a perfectly crafted golden pill.
He strangely enough noticed the image of a dragon on the pill.
He could also feel the amount of power inside the pill, it felt....way too potent.
Shoko smiled as she held up a single glowing pill, its soft light reflecting the long ass time they spent making this pill. It was already 8:00 pm.
That was a lot.
"This should do it. It's a refined version of your original. It promotes natural healing without overloading the body. Much more efficient."
Keitaro was quite ecstatic, overjoyed even. He looked over at the pile of failed pills, shaking his head. "Man, I blew through about 500,000 yen just trying to get this right."
He wondered what he could do with the failed pills, he couldn't just throw them away, they had to be useful somehow, and he had to find a way to make the pills useful.
He could use them as something else.
That thought was for his future self.
He looked at his upgraded list of ingredients and sighed heavily.
Welp, this new pill could heal around 90% of the damage.....so it was a league above the previous versions.
He wondered how much this pill would go for.
Unlike when being healed with the reverse curse technique, there was no chance that the person's curse energy would deny the effect of the pills as natural energy is pretty/extremely compatible with the human body.
Not curse energy, a lack of natural energy means, your body would be weak but your curse energy amount will be huge.
A lot of natural energy and that means you basically have zero curse energy but in exchange, you will be incredibly strong and all of your senses would be boosted to the max.
As for Keitaro, he stood in the middle, exactly at the 50/50 point, he could use natural energy to strengthen himself in a fight and use curse energy for healing and stuff along those lines.
Nature energy isn't something any could learn, even if exposed to it for a bit, he felt as if the fact that his previous incarnation was a sage mode user, it was easier for him to get it.
Shoko fell asleep, he caught her before she could hit the floor, he held her as if she were gentle flour, and he did not any damage to be done to her body.
He noticed a small part of her hand looking a bit more stony than the others.
'Nature energy'
Upon realizing that she had subconsciously absorbed nature's energy in its rawest form, he slowly started to infuse his curse energy into her body.
He made sure to be as careful as possible as if he was holding the most precious thing on the planet.
He guided the natural energy away from her hand, he could tell he could exactly get the energy out of her body and thus he decided to instead use that natural energy to just strengthen her body.
Slowly for the next hour or so, he slowly made sure that she was fine.
That excess amount of nature in her body had all but fused with her by this point, it was surprisingly easier than he thought.
It almost felt as if she had built up some slight resistance to it due to being exposed to a more potent form of natural energy.
Little did he know, that the more potent form of nature energy was him, their close contact had slowly started to give her some slight resistance to his nature energy, not nature energy as a whole.
His in particular, and because the pill they were working with were all imbued with his natural energy, once they entered her body, they did not do much damage as they had been there before.
It was like a part of him was in her..{DO NOT TAKE THAT OUT OF CONTEXT}
A/N...Welp, the fight next chapter.
Place your bets.
Who do we have winning?
Keitaro.
Satoru.
Do keep in mind Satoru makes as much progress as Keitaro does in a year so they are pretty relative.