“The answer still is no. You had a better chance yesterday when I was still checking on her.” Kat said to Shishen.
“Why!? You healed her! Actually healed her! What if something happens and you are not available?” Shishen angrily said back.
“Then she dies. Also, you are not someone who should learn how to heal what she went through. You already achieved the highest level of proficiency in healing there is. From now on it is just a question of you increasing your mana reserves and medical experience.”
“But I want to! I need to!” Shishen said as she smacked the desk in Kat's office, full of conviction.
Kat stopped for a moment, thinking about what to do, then she spoke.
“Me teaching you how to heal Mia means that you will abandon your family and possibly your friends in the future.” She said calmly.
“Why?” Shishen asked, extremely confused.
“It doesn’t matter. You are not a noble so it would be one less headache but if you want me to teach you, you will have to abandon your family name at least.”
“I can do that.” Shishen quickly said.
“Being able to and doing something are two completely different things. But let’s go with the assumption that you will cut your ties with your family. They need to do the same. They can’t, in any way, acknowledge you after you leave. Then there is also the part where I have to train you.”
“I will do it!”
“Would you bet your life on that?”
“Yes!” Shishen said without even flinching. Kat was visibly amused.
“Alright, alright. For now you just have to promise me to not speak a word about your training. One word and not only I will not train you but I will also stop healing Mia unless I receive direct orders to do so.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I can do a lot of stuff you can’t even imagine. Now let’s see if you have what it takes. Stay here, I will be back shortly.” Kat said before leaving the room.
About five minutes later she came back with a cat out of all things.
“Why the cat?” Shishen asked as the cat was given to her. The cat itself was a black cat, it seemed to be a domestic cat, well groomed and healthy.
“Kill it.”
“What!?”
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“I said to kill it.”
“Meow.”
“Why!?”
“You said you wanted to learn how to heal Mia and by the looks of it you would do anything, right? So either you kill this cat with your own hands or leave me alone and go bother a necromancer or something.”
Shishen looked at the cat, it looked back at her. It was an innocent creature and the fact that she had a level of similarity to it didn’t help. A million thoughts passed through her head but it boiled down to one. Was the life of a mere animal more important than Mia to her? The answer was a big no. She steeled herself and broke the animal's neck. It tried to fight back, managing to scratch her a little but in seconds it was dead.
Seeing its dead body, Shishen dropped the cat on the ground and began to try and calm herself. This was the first time she killed anything that wasn’t an insect or maybe a plant.
“Ok. You took the first step. Now kill this one in another way.” Cat said as she produced another cat from below her table.
“What?”
“Kill this one. You can’t choke this one.”
“...” Shishen took the white cat from Kat and looked at it. After a moment where the same things as before passed through her head she put her finger in the animal’s mouth and kept it there until it died from lack of hair. She didn’t choke it so it counted.
This continued with 5 more cats where on the last one Shishen simply smashed it into the ground as she was becoming distressed with finding ways to kill the animals. She had to beat up the last one. It didn’t help that all the corpses were just tossed into a pile near her.
“Well, I guess you are ready. I put this on you and you are to be guided by me. Take this thing off before I allow you to and you will have to deal with the consequences.” Kat said as she showed a blindfold to Shishen. She just nodded as she didn’t have the strength to say anything back.
After putting the thing on, Kat began to guide her towards somewhere. They passed through a portal, she could feel it, then grass, then they were inside somewhere cold and closed.
“You can remove it now.” Kat said. Once Shishen took the blindfold off she saw that she was inside a stone structure, completely closed from the outside, all the light was from magic lamps. The room was really tall, looked to be around 100 meters tall but the ground was a perfect square that didn’t look to have more than 6 meters to each side. In front of her, exactly in the middle of the room, there was a man chained down to the ground, with a blindfold on.
“Kill him. Do whatever you want.” Kat said to Shishen.
“But…” Shishen tried to say something. She didn’t know what to think anymore.
“He is a bandit and was condemned to death. Also, just in case you forgot, you either do what I tell you or Mia loses my healing.”
That seemed to have jolted Shishen. She herself didn’t notice her own mental state but she was already over the edge of whatever moral code she had. Any mention of Mia just made her ignore anything that might have been right to her before.
“I’m sorry.” Shishen said as she began to choke the man. He clearly didn’t like it but he couldn’t really fight back.
Shishen could have used magic or maybe a weapon if she took a moment to look around more and see that there were indeed weapons there but what she did with the cats before was the only thing in her mind.
“Yes, just a stupid animal. Mia is worth more than an animal.” Shishen said to herself, doing something to ease her mind off the act. Soon enough the man stopped fighting back and just fell to the ground, dead.
Shishen looked at what she did for a moment but instead of what she thought she was going to feel, she was feeling nothing.
“Good, good. You will be able to heal Mia in the future. You are a very good girl.” Kat said as she patted Shishen.
“Yes…This is for Mia.” Shishen said, somewhat out of herself. Kat could only smile as she felt the new aura emanating from the catgirl. She might have more potential than she thought.