My plan was simple. Resentment against Damilius might explode soon. Since that was the case, we needed to build up goodwill with the locals, in case something went wrong.
What was a good way to make people like us?
The answer was simple: healing. Dr. Trish was a medical expert with years of experience, and I was no slouch either. In addition, I had a healing 'ability' that allowed me to fix all but the most serious of problems. Not only was healing people obviously useful, it was also hard to replicate. The universities on this continent weren't very developed, due to colonial exploitation. Furthermore, ability potions were rare, since materials for them were exported to Damilius. Thus, medical experts and healing abilities were both very rare here. That meant my magic would have a strong competitive edge.
Of course, just healing people wasn't enough to establish the goodwill I wanted. So for the first week here, we would provide healing services for free. That way, everyone would think about how nice it was to have us around whenever they thought about us. Through this, Trish and I would build a protective halo for our group. It might not be the most stable protection against a disaster, but it should help a fair amount. Furthermore, this town was on the smaller side, and only had a population of 7,000 or so people. It was the perfect place for our group to fit in and still receive meaningful goodwill from the community. If we tried to move to a village, they would probably be too insular of a community for us to ever properly blend in. If we moved into a city, any goodwill we garnered would be meaningless, since we would still be strangers in an ocean of people. Here, as long as we were careful and diligent, we could fit into the community.
Of course, free healing wasn’t the only part of my plan. In the travelogues we had read about various towns and villages, one of the travelogues written two years ago had discussed this town’s ruling body. It stated that the town had a council of five elders, elected once every five years by the rest of the townsmen. The man who had greeted us outside the village was the son of Veldym, one of the five elders.
Veldym had a daughter who was plagued with a painful chronic illness. The author of the travelogue hadn't specified what illness she had, but had described its symptoms in some detail. Trish and I were pretty sure she had been born with the cushioning between her spine discs missing. I wasn't sure if I could replace the missing vertebral discs, but I could still help alleviate pain. As long as I kept healing her, one of the five village elders would be in our corner if anything went wrong.
It was a simple but effective plan.
The man who had met us near the entrance of the village, Veldym's son, started out by leading Trish and I to a few villagers. It looked like they had various minor injuries and illnesses. The first patient was a middle-aged woman with a deep gash in her arm. It looked like it was less than a day old, and it had been bandaged already.
The second patient looked to be about the same age as me - somewhere between fourteen and eighteen. He walked with a limp, and he winced every time he bent his leg. He had some sort of leg injury, although I didn't see any obvious wounds on him.
Finally, there was a woman who had gnarled, ruined hands. Her fingers were lumpy and misshapen, like the roots of a tree, and her skin was red and irritated. I wasn't sure if she had been born that way, or had been injured, but it looked like she was in a lot of pain. Even basic tasks like opening doors would be painful if her hands were this injured.
"I'll take the woman with the gash. Can you treat the other two?" asked Trish.
"Of course," I said, as I stepped towards the teenage boy. It took me a few minutes to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. The first thing I noticed after I investigated was an odd lump in his knee. At first, I thought it might be a bite of some sort. With the number of venomous creatures on this continent, having lingering pain from an irritated bite made perfect sense. However, after investigating further, I realized I was completely wrong. The lump wasn’t from some sort of venom at all - instead, it was a literal shard of his bones.
"What happened here?" I asked. The elder's son translated my question, and after some questioning I got the full story.
A few months ago, the boy had fallen from a tree while trying to pick fruit and impress a girl - and had shattered his knee upon the fall. The local doctor had pieced his knee back together, but hadn’t managed to fix all of the lingering problems left behind. Somehow, a shard of his bone got lodged inside his knee, and a lot of the other parts of the knee didn't work as needed. The boy was considering cutting off his leg and replacing it, but was hesitant to take that step. His essence reserves were on the lower side, and people here couldn't afford high quality prosthetics. Thus, a replacement leg would seriously limit his mobility. That was when our group had arrived at the village.
After hearing his problem, I got to work. First, I told the boy what I wanted to do and got his permission. Then, I used one of Dr. Trish's numbing agents to keep the boy from thrashing around while I worked. I used a scalpel to cut open his knee, then used Trish's pliers to remove the bone fragments still inside his kneecap. Less than fifteen minutes later, I finished removing everything, and then started using my healing magic. In seconds, the missing parts of his bone and his cut knee healed, until it looked like a normal knee. Then, I used a little more healing magic to remove the numbing agent from his system. The boy blinked in surprise when feeling returned to his knee, and he gave me a curious look.
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"Try it. It should work just fine now," I said.
“How @#$& @#$&@#, Bell?” Asked the elder's son.
Bell stretched out his leg. He blinked in surprise, and then started moving it a bit more vigorously. Finally, he tried putting some weight on his leg, and then grinned. Finally, he started laughing, before he jumped up and down a few times. Then, he stepped closer to me, and gave me a big hug.
“No@#$@# anymore! She @#$#@$ (&%( !(@*#&@!(*#!” said Bell, before he gave me another hug. “@#*$(#@&$ you!”
The elder's son smiled at me, and then swapped out of speaking Zannan and back to Damilian. “It looks like you healed his leg. Bell wanted to say thank you, although we should still wait a few days to make sure no other problems crop up. But… it looks like your healing ability is even stronger than you said it was.” He turned towards Trish, who was bandaging the middle-aged woman's arm, and then raised his eyebrow. “Out of curiosity, is there a reason the doctor is healing that gash, instead of you? I had intended to get you to demonstrate your ability a bit more, so that I can learn what you’re capable of.”
“It’s because her injury isn’t serious,” I said. “I try to reserve my ability for issues that can’t heal without it. I have a limited amount of essence per day, so I try to save it for emergencies. If there’s a minor injury, Trish and I try to heal it using mundane healing methods. I know that this is a test to see how my ability works, but it’s also important to show how we manage mundane injuries. After all, we’re here to display our medical abilities, not just my healing ability.”
The elder's son nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense. How does @#*($&@# @#%%@ @#$, Red?” he asked.
“@#$*(%(* ^$(*)%&$ @#$.” said the woman Trish had been working on, before giving Trish a hand symbol I didn’t recognize.”
The elder's son grinned at Trish. “She says the bandage feels all right, and she’ll give it a day or two before reassessing.”
“Sounds good,” said Dr. Trish. “If she has any other problems, send her back to me or another doctor as soon as possible.”
The elder's son nodded. “We’ll call her healing completed for now, then. What about her?” He pointed towards the woman with gnarled hands.
As I was about to answer, I realized that the elder's son was paying very close attention to my actions. There was a mixture of hope and worry etched on his face, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why.
He’s worried about his sister, I thought. I smiled to myself. As long as things went well, his sister would be much better soon.
"I haven't tested how my ability works with chronic illnesses," I said. I saw his face fall, but I smiled. "No matter what, I can still treat symptoms, though." I stepped closer to the woman, and then splashed a cup of water on her. I sent a trickle of essence into her body. I could sense that I was healing… something afterwards. As my essence flowed away, the woman’s expression softened, as if a bit of longstanding pain was gone. Some of the gnarled, irritated appearance of her hands started to fade away. In a slow, unnatural-looking process, her warped hands started to straighten themselves out. After nearly ten minutes, her hands looked almost the same as a normal person's hands. She laughed, as she touched her palms and ran her fingers along her hands.
"@#*($) pain @#*$&$#," she said, before she also gave me a hug. This one was much tighter and fiercer than Red's hug, and I could feel her crying into my dress. I gave her a fierce hug back - after all, I was glad that she liked my healing so much.
The Elder's son's gaze sharpened, as he looked at me.
"@#*$ )!@(#*?" he asked the woman I had just healed.
"@#*()%," she said, nodding fiercely.
I saw the elder's son look at me again, and this time, the hope in his eyes blazed like a bonfire. Then, he hesitated for a moment, before he nodded. There was some measure of caution in his gaze, but there was still a much greater amount of hope.
“Well, it looks like you two have sufficient medical skills. Feel free to set up a clinic in the village. I’m glad that your group decided to settle here. We're always in need of good doctors.”
Then, the man grinned at us. “If things go well for a few days, I might also have a more personal request for you. But we'll wait a little longer to see how things go.” With that, the man left.
Trish, who was already aware of my ‘build goodwill through healing villagers and the elder’s daughter’ plan, smiled at me. Now that the elder's son had approved of our healing abilities, it would be easy to heal other villagers and build up some goodwill.
The two of us moved back towards the rest of our group, where we found the elder's son chatting with a few other villagers. After the conversation, a few of them approached us, with questions about how much we charged to heal, and what injuries we could or couldn’t treat. The two of us answered honestly. I also snuck in a few mentions of how we would heal people for free at first, in order to be 'neighborly.' Some of the villager’s eyes lit up after hearing that, and they left shortly afterwards.
Most of them returned within an hour, bringing along their sick and injured friends and family members. Trish and I cured them free of charge, and they thanked us as they left. Over the next few hours, more and more villagers came to get help with various illnesses and injuries. Their problems ranged from poisonous bites, to broken bones, to more odd injuries and lacerations. Trish and I healed them all.
After hearing that we weren’t charging, more people came. After a while, it reached a point where it was hard to manage everything. My essence and Trish's energy were limited. But we still managed to heal several dozen people, and promised to keep healing people for free for the next few days. The villagers who got treated seemed grateful for our free healing. At the end of the day, I felt exhausted, but satisfied. Based on all of the villager’s responses, the first step of building goodwill was complete. The villagers might not stick their necks out for us yet, but they seemed more at ease with us. As long as we worked hard for a few weeks, I was confident that we could build a proper new home here.