We returned to the manor later that day. After hearing the whole story Halcroft had a pretty extreme mixture of emotions. He was quite displeased that I nearly got myself killed, but also happy that I had actually ended up killing the basilisk. I was guessing that he was going to be bragging about this event when he went to the capital. I did my absolute best to ignore him while still playing to his over inflated ego. I had far more important things on my mind, and he was going to be out of my hair hopefully for the last time in my life in just a short two weeks.
I desperately wanted to kill the man, he and Isaac were really the only people I had ever wanted to kill. Yet I feared I would not have the chance, escape was far more important. Plus even with Penelope disabling our ongoing orders, I still couldn’t harm myself or anyone the crest was keyed to. So no murder for me. I feel like that’s probably actually a good thing, but I really can’t see it that way.
With the extra time killing the basilisk has bought me I now had time to dedicate to training my skills up as high as possible. I needed them to get much higher before I got to level 100 because when I advanced Radiant Redeemer the quality of the classes I would have access to will depend partially on my skill levels. It was common to get a class to a new class up then take the time to max out all your skills before classing up. However, I wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting when I got there since I was under duress. Still that was no reason to do my level 100 class up with skills under level 30 when I could easily get them all to over level 60.
I planned out a new training regime. I would dedicate 10 or so hours to nothing but magic and sword training everyday, using Sukeshi Chakra to keep refilling my mana. This would slow my leveling rate way down, you still got experience for training skills tied to class, but it was slow. A much better method to level my class would be to start sparring with the guards of the castle, the combat would make me level a lot more. If I could get them to take it seriously and actually try to hurt, but not kill, me it would be good experience. Especially because they were all higher level than me. That would be what I did after I got my skill levels up a bit.
I would also be sure to keep up with ‘family’ dinners to help train my Noble skill. They disgusted me, but that actually helped level the skill oddly enough. The entire situation was constantly a stressful dance of lies and truth, and that was a big portion of what the Noble skill did.
Finally two times a week I would go into town to watch Helen perform healing. I would also be helping her as what would effectively be an assistant and nurse, not that Halcroft would learn about that hopefully. He would be irate if I had ‘lowered’ myself to doing nurse work. However, nurse work was exactly what I needed right now, plus I could help Helen which I absolutely wanted to do after she healed me. I would help with things that Helen hated doing, like paperwork, payment, finding patients, helping facilitate care, and cleaning. In exchange she would let me use my healing magic on her patients first to help me train once I got my second class and let me sit in on any healing as long as the patient agreed.
Riza had been there when I made the deal. I asked her to keep it from Halcroft, because he wouldn’t allow it. She was reluctant, but I made a case that it was what would let me become a more powerful healer quicker. She had said; “I will not specifically inform my lord, but if he asks directly I will not lie.” I was fairly confident it was the best I was going to get.
A week came and went of me constantly working on nothing but my skills. With the constant hard work I had made some headway. It helped that the greater the difference from your class level and skill level the faster skills leveled. The bonus would fade as my skills caught up, but for now it was great.
My next trip to Grimstel came, and this time it was just Riza and I going. We didn’t even take the carriage since I could move much faster with my movement skill. Riza had no problem keeping up with me without any skills at all. It also saved us a ton of time, turning an hour-long trip into about 10 minutes.
After slaying the basilisk the acid hogs hadn’t even approached a traveler let alone the town itself. With the problem solved the town came back to life. Merchant street which had been almost entirely deserted the last time we were here was a mass of people. Merchants had their stalls set up, often with flashy signs created by skills. All the signs involved a picture of what they sold, but some had words that went with them. There was even one sign that shifted back and forth between words and a picture.
I wasn’t particularly interested in making any purchases this time. I wanted to get to Helen’s clinic. Although, getting a chance to look around and see the town reinvigorated made me feel some pride at my accomplishment. I turned back to head toward the clinic.
I was just about to purchase a necklace I had my eye on when I blinked. I glanced down at the necklace with a fairly long golden chain, it had a beautiful sapphire jewel embedded in an oval made of gold at the center. This was expensive jewelry, I didn’t even know how much it would be. Yet the item called to me, I really liked it.
I glanced up at the jeweler’s shop that was just off market street. I had brought more money with me just in case I found something useful to our escape. Plus Halcroft seemed to practically throw the stuff at me, without even asking for it he had given me a 5 gold stipend every time I would go into town. I planned to mostly save the money for after our escape, yet a small indulgence wouldn’t hurt.
I placed the necklace onto the counter. “I will take this.” I said to the owner that was at the other end of the counter helping another customer.
He glanced over at me, then gave a smile to the woman he was helping. “I’ll be right back.” The woman waved a dismissing hand as she considered the various items displayed.
“Oh my, quite the discerning eye for one as young as you.” I had chosen to wear a fairly simple dress, still expensive looking, but something I could run in. He probably clocked me as the daughter of a wealthy traveling merchant rather than a noble.
“Well, it just… spoke to me.” I said with a slight smile.
He sized me up, and I could practically feel his skills discerning exactly what price would be best for someone like me. “How does 1 gold sound to you?” He took the necklace and placed it in a small box behind the counter, wrapping it as if it was sold already.
“Hmmm.” I felt my noble skill in the back of my mind, it wasn’t fully dedicated to haggling, but that was a small part of what it did. “I do like it…” I pretended to consider a moment longer. “Could I talk you into 50 silver?” I asked with a little pout on my face.
He turned and placed the wrapped box containing the necklace in front of me, he knew he had a sale, the price was the only factor now. “For a girl as sweet as you… I will accept-” He considered a moment, although I suspected it was feigned. “-80 silver, if I must.” He made the last part sound like a joke.
I smiled at him and produced one gold coin. Before it could even touch the table it had been scooped away and his other hand flashed leaving behind 20 silver. I suspected the true value of this necklace was actually around the 50 silver I had asked for, but I was never going to beat a person with a dedicated merchant class. So instead of arguing down to the price I allowed him to set a price that would net him a significant enough profit he wouldn’t press the matter. It only cost me 30 silver to avoid having to haggle for 10 minutes, a steal if you ask me.
*Noble has leveled up, level 11.*
I took the box and let it get pulled into my bag of holding. It was always odd seeing something larger than the opening of the bag get pulled in. It would shrink down and partially spaghettify like it was near a black hole. From a physics standpoint bags of holding were a constant unending monstrous violation of everything I thought I understood. From a magic standpoint it was business as usual.
“Nice doing business with you, I hope you come again.” The owner smiled with a little wave while he walked back over to his other customer.
I glanced around the shop considering if I would indeed come again. There were a lot of great items here, he had to be the best jeweler in town. I had probably gone after one of his most expensive items, so if I were to return I wouldn’t be spending nearly a gold, so it was a possibility I would return. Nonetheless I needed to get to the clinic.
We made our way over to Helen’s, and there was a man clutching his arm, his face burning with a red blush. He seemed to be hesitating whether to go in or not. “Did you need to see the healer?” I asked, and the man startled jumping away from me. When he saw Riza behind me he seemed even more frightened.
“I just… it's only a small cut.” I looked down and saw a drop of blood come from the arm he was holding. He tied a cloth around it to apply some pressure to the wound and was using his hand to apply more. He had done rather poorly or the wound was much worse than he was saying.
I walked up to him slowly, with a smile. “Would you let me see it at least? I wouldn’t want to send you away if you really need help.” I made my voice as calming as I could, really putting out the charm.
The man began to relax a bit then flinched. He slowly revealed his arm, there was a bloody piece of cloth that occasionally dripped blood onto the dirt road. I unwrapped the wound to see a gash, it wasn’t a clean wound caused by something extremely sharp. It was ragged, and deep, I could easily make out muscle tissue. If this was a hospital I would be cleaning and binding the wound and calling in for a minor surgery consultation. If this wound was allowed to heal normally the muscle could become permanently damaged, not to mention the enormous risk of infection. I just barely avoided rolling my eyes, this man needed treatment, this reminded me so much of obstinate patients.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
I replaced the cloth and bound it far tighter than he had had it. The man gasped in pain. “You’ll need to have a Dark or Water and an Earth or Light healer heal that. Worse case you could lose the arm, but even if that doesn’t happen the arm might be permanently damaged.” I said keeping my voice serious with just a bit of cajoling in it.
He gave me a dubious look before his eyes went up to Riza. “Don’t look at me.” She shrugged. “She’s been reading about this stuff for almost as long as she has been alive.” Riza gave her nonchalant reply to the man’s unasked question.
The man sighed as his shoulders slumped. He turned toward the entrance to the clinic. I placed my arm on his back and guided him forward. We walked in to see no one at the entrance. Her clinic doubled as her residence so she could be in the back or upstairs.
“Helen?” I called. “You have a patient.” I followed up.
Helen stepped out from the back. “So I do.” she walked up to the man, looked at the cloth wrapping. “Did you tie this?”
“That was me, he was bleeding all over so I… corrected it.” Helen gave me an appraising look. Did I reveal too much knowledge and skill already? It was just a bandage, plenty of people had to know how to handle bleeding wounds. I doubt they knew what was happening scientifically when you applied pressure, but it was nearly instinct to hold a wound.
Then again… I was 12 and as far as Helen knew a sheltered noble. I mean that was absolutely true too. If I didn’t have my knowledge from my past life I doubted I would be capable of much of anything truly useful.
Helen undressed the wound. “I’ll need to clean the wound and at least enhance regeneration. I could use more powerful restorative magic but it will cost you.”
The man glanced between us. “Whatever is cheapest.” He said unhappily.
“Alright come back here, I’ll need to clean it first.” Helen motioned toward the clinic.
“Sir, mind if I watch?” I asked him before he moved.
His brows furrowed. “Why?” He asked skeptically.
“For my training.” I gave him a smile. He just shrugged and I took it as confirmation. So I followed them. Helen had an enchanted water basin, it teleported water from an underground reservoir below us, then teleported the waste back much further down stream. It was an expensive enchanted item, but it purified the water when it teleported it, so it was kind of required for a clinic. I had no doubt it was the most expensive thing Helen owned.
Helen placed his arm under the faucet and activated the enchanted faucet. Water began to pour out, cleaning away the blood. Since it was pure clean water it probably didn’t even hurt that much, although based on his little jump it was probably cold. I watched the wound closely. I reached out to his arm so I could steady his arm and get a better look. “May I?” I asked before actually touching him.
“Uhhh sure I guess.” The man gave a worried look to Helen. With the blood removed and my superhuman eyesight provided by my Vitality I could pick out things that would usually require magnification to see. Like a severed nerve. “Do you see that tiny nub right there?” I asked Helen.
She looked down. “This?” She asked, pointing at the nerve.
I nodded. “Yes, could you try to just regenerate that first? I want to see what happens.”
The man’s worried look became even more frantic. “I’m kind of in pain here, and is that even safe?”
I frowned. “It should be yes, how about this, I will pay for your treatment and I’ll even pay for the good stuff.” Money seemed to be the man’s biggest worry.
His face immediately relaxed. “Well if you’ll pay and it's safe… sure I guess.”
“So you want me to just heal that little nub?” Helen asked, quite intrigued now. I nodded at her. “Alright.” Soft white light came from her hands and the tiny little nerve glowed. It strung itself across the man’s arm attaching itself to the other end of his wound. It seemed to grow out from where Helen directed the effect of the spell.
This spell was her highest level Light spell, it was able to regenerate flesh near instantly, but she couldn’t regrow entirely detached or destroyed flesh. Based on what I just saw I couldn’t imagine why. Nerve tissue was notoriously hard to repair and effectively didn’t naturally regenerate. If she could fix a nerve then she should be able to fix anything. This felt like an artificial boundary of the spell than something that was actually required.
“How much mana did that cost you?” I asked.
Helen’s eyes became unfocused for a moment. “123 I believe.” I guess she didn’t have her mana constantly displayed like I did, odd choice, but whatever. Also that was expensive, a single Nerve cost her a good chunk of mana.
“Do you see how there are lines in this muscle here? Could you repair just one strand, and compare how much mana it cost?”
Now Helen was giving me a strange look as well, but she just shrugged. She pointed to one strand of muscle tissue and activated her spell once more. It extended then snapped taut when it reconnected. “Hmm only 15 mana.”
Nearly 10 times less mana. So my suspicion that different types of flesh required different amounts of mana to heal was right. Also nerve cells were probably among the most expensive. “Alright go ahead and heal him up the rest of the way.”
Helen cast the spell once more. The flesh rebuilt itself from higher on his arm to lower on his arm. Interesting, I had assumed that happened since the two previous times before Helen cast it on that portion of his arm. Yet now the spell seemed to affect the entire wound but still started on the highest portion of his arm. Not sure what that meant, but it was curious.
The flesh healed so quickly I couldn’t see much more. “How much did that cost you?” I asked once more.
“Hmmm 1032 mana.” Helen said after a moment. That pretty much solidified my theory that nerve tissue was more expensive to heal. The only question now was, was there more expensive parts of a person to heal than nerve cells.
“That’s it you are good to go.” Helen gave the man a warm smile.
The man gave us both a curious look. “Well thank you… both of you.” He said a bit unsure sounding.
“What do I owe you?” I asked after the man left.
“Hmmm, you can tell me what you learned.” Helen gave me a mischievous grin.
I shook my head. “I can’t tell you much, I was just confirming some theories I’ve had for a while. I don’t think it would be worth all the mana you poured into that guy instead of going the cheaper Earth route.”
“It did cost a lot… I can only do that a few times a day.” That meant she only had 4,000 to 6,000 mana she could use in a day between her regeneration and mana pool. I almost had a third that much and she had probably 200 levels on me total. That only made sense if all her classes started out as low or medium grade. It really put into perspective just how powerful my starting class was.
“I would usually charge about 1 gold for that specific service. Although for someone as poor as that man I’d go lower and for a noble I’d charge ten times that or more.” Helen shrugged seemingly undisturbed about letting me see behind the scenes.
I went to my pouch and fished out a gold coin, dropping it into her hand. “I learned that different types of tissue require different amounts of mana to heal.” I also supplied the most vague version of the information I could. I was not in a position to reveal my past knowledge to anyone yet. There may come a time when I can, but not while I’m under Halcroft’s thumb.
Helen pocketed the coin since she didn’t have anything else to do with it. “Is that actually all that helpful? It all needs to be healed anyways.”
“Just trying to learn everything I can.” I lied then shrugged. It did matter, for Fire healers. My healing was going to be slow and inefficient but I’ll likely be able to do pretty much anything. At the same time it will require detailed knowledge of the human body I doubt I could convey easily. I had to heal just what needed magical healing and allow enhanced regenerative abilities like Earth healing to deal with what could be repaired on its own.
Another piece of the puzzle is learning if Earth healing can even heal parts of the body that can’t usually heal naturally. Unlike with taking an extra minute to do a Light healing I can’t ethically ask someone to keep their wound open while Earth healing slowly heals a nerve. Plus if Earth healing doesn’t work that way I’d be needlessly leaving a patient with nerve damage.
“Helen… when you use Earth healing on someone with a really deep wound like our last patient do they sometimes lose some feeling or movement in the limb?” I desperately tried not to use any jargon. Firstly it didn’t exist in Haka, but also because it would out my knowledge.
Helen ponders the question for a bit before slowly nodding. “Yeah, I’ve seen that a few times before, why?”
I shake my head. “Just a crazy theory of mine, I need to get a healing class myself so I can actually test it though.”
We continued throughout the day. The vast majority of Helen’s patients were pregnant women, or couples looking not to become pregnant. Her original practice was for childbirth and sexual wellness. Helen had a spell that could temporarily make people, both sexes, infertile. It lasted about a month, but there were also potions you could take that would last for just a day. It was cheaper to use the spell if you had regular potentially reproductive sex.
I don’t think people entirely understood STIs in this world, the germ theory wasn’t even a thing. However many sex workers seemed to have determined they needed to come see a healer every once in a while. Helen welcomed them despite the fact the profession was considered quite unsavory in Hakan. My opinion of the woman massively increased when she welcomed the sex workers.
Since she wasn’t a Dark aligned healer she gave them alchemical tinctures. They would keep potential infections at bay, removing new ones entirely, and reducing the symptoms of more advanced cases. If a case was too advanced they would need to go to a Dark healer then have an Earth or Light repair the damage caused by the infection.
Unfortunately there wasn’t a Dark healer in town that was willing to work with sex workers. The one that was called in to remove the venom from Riza was actually the only one with the class in town.
I kept wanting to tell everyone that came in how to avoid some of their health problems with other less expensive methods, but I couldn’t. In time, when I wasn’t a 12 year old and had my own clinic I could start extolling the virtues of sexual education, but for now it… wasn’t going to go over well.
While Helen was working I began to sort through her paperwork… and it was a massive mess. She had some kind of crazy IOU system for people that couldn’t afford her healing. Yet it was scattered on about a million different sheets of paper. She had client lists and pregnancies to keep an eye on. I doubted this woman had ever organized all this. I finished out my day doing what I could, but it was going to take time.