SSS-Ranked Surgeon In Another World: The Healer Is Actually OP! - Chapter 207: Attacked?
Chapter 207: Attacked?
He finished bandaging, securing it firmly, then adjusted James’s position so he’d be more comfortable when he woke.
That was when Bruce sensed something.
Two presences.
They were outside.
Without mana, using Life Glance was impossible, but Bruce didn’t need it. He caught them through sound alone. The faint displacement of air. The subtle, deliberate pressure of footsteps against the ground.
They were moving carefully.
Too carefully.
A normal person wouldn’t have heard anything at all. Even trained guards might have missed it. But Bruce’s hearing was abnormal, honed, sharpened, attuned to irregularities most people filtered out as background noise.
The silence itself was suspicious.
They were trying to be quiet.
In the next instant.
The door burst open.
Moonlight spilled into the room as two figures shot forward, blades flashing cold silver as they lunged straight toward James.
Their speed was insane.
Faster than Bruce had expected.
For a brief moment, even he was surprised.
Then his body moved.
Bruce stepped in, swinging his leg downward in a brutal arc, clean, precise, like an axe falling corroborated by pure biomechanical certainty.
His target was the back of the first assailant’s knee.
He struck to end it immediately.
The impact landed.
There was a wet, crushing sound.
In the same instant, the assassin’s leg collapsed. His knee caved inward violently, the joint folding the wrong way as the force transferred straight through it. The man was driven to his knees, his kneecap slamming into the floor hard enough to crack the stone beneath him.
A grunt tore from his throat as blood immediately seeped through his trousers.
Bruce didn’t pause.
He caught the second assailant by the wrist mid-strike, fingers clamping down with crushing force. The blade froze inches from its arc, tendons screaming under the pressure.
Bruce’s gaze flicked briefly to the first man.
Blood.
Moist. Fresh. Flowing.
He sighed quietly.
He had aimed there on purpose.
This moment wasn’t just about stopping them.
It was proof.
Every being had weaknesses.
No matter how strong. No matter how fast. Nothing was perfect.
The human body, despite its incredible resilience, was no exception.
One of its most vulnerable points lay at the back of the knee.
A single, well-placed force applied correctly could render a person helpless in an instant.
Biologically, the knee joint was complex. A hinge joint connecting the femur to the tibia, stabilized by ligaments and tendons, with the patella offering frontal protection.
But complexity created exposure.
At the back of the knee lay the popliteal fossa, a shallow depression housing critical nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. There was no bone shielding it. No real structural defense.
A strike there disrupted balance, severed control, and collapsed the leg involuntarily.
Bruce had known this since Earth.
Back when he was still a college student, before Velmora, before titles, before power, before bloodshed.
Night after night, he’d pored over anatomical diagrams. Studied muscle groups. Analyzed the biomechanics of movement. Observed how force translated through joints.
That was when he found it.
A flaw.
He remembered presenting it during a lecture. The stunned silence. The looks of disbelief from his professors. Pride mixed with amazement.
He’d uncovered it in a week.
No internet. No external resources.
And even now, with limitless information available, it remained obscure. Overlooked. Dismissed.
Because most people didn’t understand its value.
But assassins did.
Soldiers did.
Martial artists did.
Anyone who lived by close combat knew what it meant to exploit a joint instead of brute-forcing muscle.
The back of the knee was a critical point. Miss it, and the fight continued. Hit it properly, and even the strongest warrior would fall.
It was often used to incapacitate rather than kill, but in real combat, exposing that weakness to someone who understood it was catastrophic.
That knowledge made Bruce dangerous.
Animals shared similar vulnerabilities, but their anatomy protected them better. Four-legged creatures carried their weight differently. Their knee structures were positioned in ways that made exploiting the same weakness inefficient or outright pointless.
Humans were different.
Their vulnerability was exposed.
In this world, the rules hadn’t changed.
Strength could reduce the effects. Armor could delay them.
But the weakness remained.
Leverage. Precision. Timing.
That was all it took.
And that understanding was what had allowed Bruce to drop the first assassin instantly, despite the man’s speed and momentum.
Had he misjudged even slightly, it wouldn’t have worked.
But Bruce never misjudged anatomy.
The second assassin struggled the moment he realized his strike had been caught.
Too late.
Bruce twisted the man’s wrist inward, rotating it just past its natural limit. There was a sharp snap as tendons shifted violently out of alignment, followed by a scream that tore from the man’s throat before he could stop it.
Pain exploded through his arm.
Bruce stepped in close, his other hand driving forward, two fingers pressing into a precise point beneath the collarbone.
The assassin’s scream cut off abruptly, collapsing into a strangled gasp as his body seized. His legs buckled, strength draining from him as if someone had unplugged him from himself.
Bruce guided him down instead of letting him fall.
Silent. Controlled.
Efficient.
That scream was enough.
James jerked awake.
“What!”
His eyes snapped open just in time to see one man kneeling on the floor, clutching a ruined leg, and another being held upright by Bruce like a broken puppet. The moonlight caught the blades on the ground, the blood seeping darkly into the cracks of the floor.
James froze.
His breath caught in his throat.
Bruce released his grip just long enough to reach up.
He pulled the first mask away.
Then the second.
The faces beneath were familiar.
Too familiar.
James stared.
His mind rejected what his eyes were seeing.
“No,” he whispered.
His jaw tightened as recognition set in, sharp and cruel.
“Code?”
The other man avoided his gaze, teeth clenched, sweat pouring down his face.
James’s hands trembled.
These were the same people who had dragged him here. The same people who had spoken to him while he was dying. The same hands that had touched his wound.
The same hands that had poisoned him.
James’s teeth ground together, his breath coming out ragged.
He pushed himself upright despite the lingering weakness, eyes burning as he looked at Bruce.
“Let me end it,” he said.
