But while Greg was experiencing this storm of emotions, he still had enough presence of mind to keep it from showing on his face. Rather than go on focusing on questions he didn’t as yet have any answers to, Greg turned to his mother with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry for doubting you mother,” He spoke up in a genuinely apologetic tone.
“Defending your father’s honor is nothing to be sorry for or ashamed of!” The woman spoke up in a serious tone. Greg could see it in her eyes that she wasn’t just saying it to placate him, she meant what she had just said.
Without pause, the woman once again brought the bowl to Greg’s lips. Greg looked down at the bowl, a dark look fleeting across his face. He didn’t want anything to do with his uncle. A part of him even wanted to slap the bowl out of his mother’s hands. He, however, calmly leaned forward and sipped from the bowl. He wasn’t a child. Right now throwing a tantrum wouldn’t serve him in any way. What he needed the most at the moment was to keep a calm and level head. Besides, the meat had already been borrowed and the broth prepared. Spilling it across the floor wouldn’t undo that fact. Not to mention the fact Greg needed to regain his strength and the broth would do a lot to help to that end.
But while Greg wasn’t going to reject this bowl of broth, he didn’t plan on accepting anything else from his uncle’s household.
“You are no longer to borrow anything from the wife to father’s brother. Greg spoke up in a calm but firm tone of voice. “You are only to prepare for me something from what you can gather,” He instructed.
Back on earth, it would be odd to hear a son instructing their mother with as much authority as Greg currently was. The society that Greg had been born into, however, was very deeply patriarchal. While alive, the man is the head and absolute authority in the house. If he dies, but has a son that has already come of age, then that son becomes the de facto leader of the house. It’s only in the case where the man either has no sons or the son has not come of age yet that the widow can take over the household. Because of this, while his mother was confused by his instruction to not borrow anything from their uncle’s household, she didn’t raise any objections. She already knew that, until she was remarried, she’d be under her son’s authority.
Greg turned to look his mother in the eyes as he promised. “I’ll take care of this family,” He declared in a firm tone. “Father did not need to beg to take care of us and neither will I,” He stated. While this second part was true, it was also meant to serve as a misdirection. Greg knew that it would be odd to just suddenly ask his mother to have nothing to do with her brother-in-law. To keep her from asking questions that he didn’t have answers to, he made it a simple matter of pride. Telling her that he was doing this because he wanted to honor the memory of his father and to follow in his footsteps, would not only be reason enough for her but would also make her more willing to abide by what he said.
How Greg was going to hunt the game they needed? The answer was simple. He wasn’t.
Greg had a whole section of the magic shop filled with monster parts of all kinds. This fact in and of itself would have been enough to allow Greg to be comfortable. Monster parts, however, also happened to be among the cheapest items in the shop. For a monster weak enough to be killed by mortals like the three-tusk boar, just thirty magic points are enough to buy ten kilograms of its meat! Greg presently had over three hundred thousand magic points. Even if Greg and his family could eat all ten kilos of meat in a day, he’d still need ten thousand days to run out of magic points. As such, Greg had no worries as far as the sustenance of his family was concerned. Of course, Greg would still have to go on hunts to avoid raising suspicions from those around him, but regardless of his skill in hunting or lack thereof, his family would be provided for.
“You don’t have to push yourself too hard Roka,” His mother spoke up. “Take your time and make sure you recover well,” She advised. “I’d rather eat nothing but grain for a whole year than have you go hunting before you are ready,” She declared. “I’ve barely survived losing your father, I… I don’t think I can survive losing you too,” The woman said, the hands that were holding the bowl of broth shaking a little as she did. “Besides, if worst comes to worst, I can always become a second wife to…”
“Don’t you dare finish that statement!”
The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped a few degrees at Greg’s words, as he cut his mother off. The veneer of calm that Greg had been trying to maintain despite the turbulent emotions that he felt, was broken as Greg glared fiercely at his mother. Even without her saying it, Greg knew what she was about to say. This was the last option that widowed women had if no other man was willing to have them. If the husband had any siblings, then they would join that household. If it was a sister, then they’d become the second wife to that sister’s husband alongside the sister. If on the other hand, it was a brother, then they’d be the second wife to that brother. His mother was about to say that she could become his uncle’s second wife. A thought that sent magma-like rage coursing through Greg. Much as he wanted to stay calm and play his cards close to his chest, Greg found himself incapable of stomaching even the very notion that his mother could end up with his uncle.
A look of shock crossed his mother’s face as she took in his sharp reaction and the glare that he was sending her way. Even the healer seemed taken aback by Greg’s reaction to his mother’s words. She had been in this town for the past six years and had seen many women be taken in by their spouse’s brother after their husbands died. As such, the words of Greg’s mother hadn’t really come as that much of a shock to her. It was simply how people survived in this little, remote corner of the world. To have the boy react so sharply to his mother’s proposal, however, was very unexpected.
Greg, however, was unbothered by their looks of consternation. “I will take care of you and my sister,” Though the words were heartfelt, they also allowed no room for argument. “If ever you remarry, it’ll be to a man that you love and who loves you. Do you understand?” Such was the force behind Greg’s words that the woman couldn’t muster up any objections, she could only nod in acquiescence. The room went silent for the rest of the time that Greg took to finish the bowl of broth. It wasn’t until he was done that he finally broke it. “Have Tayani bring me the next meal,” He instructed as the woman set the bowl back down on the tray. “I really miss my sister,” He added with a warm smile.
A warm smile crossed his mother’s expression at his words and she nodded in acknowledgment as she got up from the bed. “I will,” she said warmly. Greg wasn’t sure if it was just him, but the woman somehow seemed just a little bit happier than when she first walked in. It seems that while his firm objection may have caught her off guard, it also came as comfort and reassurance to her. To be so firmly told that she would only be allowed to marry someone that she was happy to marry was completely unexpected but at the same time very touching to hear from her son. Most young men his age didn’t want to be saddled with the care of their mothers, and part of her had been fearing that he’d be looking to marry her off as soon as the month was up. From the glare that he had directed at her, however, she was certain that nothing of the sort was going to happen.
As his mother started making her way out of the room, Greg turned to the healer. “C… can I talk to you?” Greg made sure to add the right amount of nervousness to the tone of his voice as he posed the question.
Greg had been watching the healer all this while. And from what he’d thus far observed, his initial assessment of her had been on the mark. She seemed to be on guard against something, what that was, he didn’t know. Part of him suspected that she’d sensed Olivia’s presence. His familiar, however, had assured him that while she was merged with him, there was no way anyone would be able to sense her presence. Besides, if Olivia was right, then the healer was a seventh-tier mage, there was no way a second-tier mage would cause her to be so on guard. So what was going on with her? Greg couldn’t help but wonder.
All through the time that Greg had been taking the broth brought to him by his mother, the healer’s eyes had been darting from one corner of the ceiling to the next, almost as if she was trying to investigate something there. Greg had looked to those same corners and hadn’t found anything there worth noting. Each of the four corners had a scorch mark and what looked like metal that had been melted and then quickly congealed, running down the walls. But other than that, there was nothing of note. Despite having been in the room for eleven days now, Greg hadn’t really paid that much attention to how it looked. Most of his days were spent resting and awaiting the healer’s next visit. As such, he didn’t know whether something had happened there recently or if this was how it had always looked. Still, he didn’t see anything that could cause the healer to be as on guard as she was.
A final possibility occurred to Greg. Perhaps what she feared weren’t all the things she was looking at, but the one she had most avoided looking at since she came in. Him. Was she regretting what they had done the previous night? Was she trying to reestablish some distance between the two of them? He, however, doubted it. The healer hadn’t struck him as the shy or wishy-washy type. A simple thing like a handjob wouldn’t faze her. Besides, even if he was right and she wanted to pull back, he had no intention of letting her go. Greg had to fight to keep a sly smile from curving his lips upward. He wasn’t the type to give up on the things he wanted that easily. And there was no question about it, he wanted her… badly.
***
After the scare that she’d got the previous day, Alena had been very tempted to just drop everything and leave this town. Even in her prime, Alena wouldn’t have been able to contend with whatever it was that had been inside this room the previous night. In the state that her core and mana pathways were currently in, the smartest thing for her to do would have been to make her get away from this town as fast as possible while she still had the chance.
Alena, however, had never been one to act impulsively. Long years as a healer had taught her that it was exactly in the middle of a crisis that she needed to be the calmest. Decisions made out of panic rarely led to good outcomes. As such, despite the strong urge to run, she didn’t in the end. A sober decision because, after the fear had ebbed and she was able to think more clearly, a simple truth made her realize that escape was a pointless endeavor. This simple truth was that there was no way the entity that had been in this room hadn’t been aware of her presence in the same building. If it had any intention to cause her harm, then there was nothing stopping it from acting on this desire. Worse still, a being of that kind of power could easily mark her magical signature and track her down through it. Even if she moved to another continent, she would still be within its sights. If she was still unharmed, it was because whatever that entity had been, it had no interest in harming her.
But while the futility of trying to escape was part of the reason why she was still here, it wasn’t the entire reason. As a seventh-tier mage, back before she was betrayed and injured to the degree that she had been, she had on occasion gotten the chance to meet and interact with two of the currently living ninth-tier mages. Their overbearing aura and the way the world around them responded to their very existence, wasn’t something that she would forget any time soon. Alena’s heart couldn’t help but grow cold with dread every time she remembered that these ninth-tier powerhouses paled in comparison to whatever it was that she had sensed inside this room.
The question of whether the ninth tier was the end of the road for magic was one that had been debated endlessly in both the academies and circles of tier seven and above mages. While the camp of those that insisted that there was something beyond the ninth tier wasn’t small, the fact remained that no one had ever crossed this threshold. Whether among the humans or other races, no one, had ever even touched upon, however briefly, whatever it was that lay beyond the ninth tier. And yet, in some remote corner of the world, in a town without even a first-tier mage. A place where the people could barely even read, she had encountered an existence that was clearly above the ninth tier! To say that she was shocked and intensely curious was almost to say nothing. As someone who was not only gifted in magic but also fascinated by it to damn near obsession, Alena simply couldn’t pass up on the chance to come into contact with something that, perhaps not even the ninth-tier mages had.
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When she walked into the room this morning, she had been unsure how to interact with the boy now that she knew that he was somehow connected to such a powerful entity. But after observing him for a while, Alena couldn’t find any notable changes in his behavior. He had been a bit cross with his mother when she spoke of marrying his uncle. But from what she could gather, it was more out of care and pride than anything else. Other than that, nothing else seemed to have changed. At first, Alena had been tempted to think that the boy was just a good actor and was pretending that nothing had happened. But then, a shocking, almost unbelievable, possibility entered her mind.
Alena could remember clearly that, just before the entity appeared the night before, the boy had passed out. First, he had gone completely pale with a look of pure agony on his face. And soon thereafter, he had sunk into unconsciousness. The entity stayed in the boy’s room for at most two minutes before it once again vanished. The little round balls that she used to maintain surveillance on the room had been destroyed. As such, she had no way of knowing how long he had been passed out. There was, however, a very real possibility that the boy didn’t even know what had happened in his room.
In one way, this made sense. The boy had no magic, and no relation to any prominent magical families or clans. How would he even be able to know about such entities, let alone interact with them? Even at tier seven, a mage's aura can be very oppressive to a mundane person if they don’t very strongly rein it in. At tier eight it's even worse and at tier nine it's pointless. No amount of reining one’s aura in will allow a mundane person to last longer than a second in the presence of a ninth-tier entity. The boy before him was just such a person, with no ounce of magic within him, there’s simply no way they could summon let alone interact with such an entity. The appearance of that entity had to be of their own volition and not because of anything to do with the boy.
But again, in another way, it made absolutely no sense. Why would a being of such power be interested in a mundane no-name boy from a no-name town in the middle of nowhere? Having been in this town for the past six years, Alena would have known if there was anything magical going on in this town that would draw the attention of that kind of being., There, however, hadn’t been any signs, no build-up of events that could have led to something like this. Like a bolt from the blue, a being that was more powerful than a ninth-tier mage had just dropped in on an injured boy! And if that wasn’t enough of a mystery, from the nervous look that the boy had had before it happened, it seems like the boy had known that something was going to happen right before the entity appeared. Which then begs the question, how much does the boy really know? Even if he had been passed out while the entity was present, had he known before that the entity would be visiting?
All these questions and more had been swirling in Alena’s head all during the morning visit to the boy’s room with his mother. She’d been trying to figure out a way she could find out what the boy actually knew, so she was all too happy to comply when the boy asked her to stay behind.
***
“What is it?” The healer asked calmly once the door closed after his mother’s exit.
Greg didn’t speak directly. Instead, he looked down at his lap, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer the healer. Greg was nervous. To have grown to the heights that she had, the healer couldn’t have been an idiot. If he wasn’t careful, he ran the risk of losing all the goodwill he may have earned with her. After a whole night of thinking and talking with Olivia, however, this was the best plan that he could come up with. Greg needed the million magic points required to buy the awakening potion. He wouldn’t need it for at least two years. Greg, however, wasn’t willing to gamble. If nothing else, all that had so far happened had taught him just how unpredictable this world was. Who’s to say if he would still have the healer around by the time he was ready to buy the potion? And what excuse would he use then? Rather than simply hope that everything would work itself out, Greg would rather get the points he’d need now and not use them until the time was right.
But even more than that, he needed a way to get the healer to take him in as her student of magic. This small move was the first step in achieving those two objectives. If all went well, he’d be able to easily achieve his first goal with this move. The second goal, however, would require more patience and finesse in order to achieve. In the end, Greg spoke in a voice that bore slight trepidation and shame. “C… can I get a mirror,” He stated.
There was a look of surprise on the healer’s face. Almost as if this isn’t what she’d expected him to want from her. After the initial look of surprise, however, some pity appeared in the woman’s eyes as she quietly started to weave a new rune in the air that Greg hadn’t seen thus far. When she was done, she waved it forward. Greg had expected the rune to come to a stop before him and create a mirror. The rune, however, didn’t stop. Instead, it collided with Greg’s forehead and disappeared there. Before Greg could ask the healer what was going on, he found his vision changing. All of a sudden, he was no longer seated on the bed, instead, it was almost like he was standing a small distance away from the bed looking at himself. It took a bit of time before he realized that he was now looking at himself through the healer’s eyes.
A shocked gasp left his body on the bed even as Greg looked at himself through the healer’s eyes. Even though he hadn’t been in this body long enough to be attached to his looks, even he had to gasp in shock at the extensive damage that had been done to his face. Half of his face had its skin clinging to his skull as if the flesh on that side of the face had been burned away. The other side of his face had four deep scars running parallel to each other each about an inch apart. From the look of things, the snow bear that had attacked him must have swiped at his face with its claws. Two of the claws had shredded his right ear, leaving his right earlobe in three parts. The two topmost claw marks just barely missed his right eye, with the top one cutting just above his eye and the second one just below. If the bears in this world were anywhere near as strong as the ones in his former world, Greg didn’t know how the thing hand just slapped his head clean off. But then again, most of the things he’d encountered since coming into this world didn’t make sense. As such Greg didn’t dwell too much on why his head was still attached to his head. Instead, he moved on to the next part of his act.
“H… how?” Greg asked in a shaking voice when the spell linking their sight was dispelled. “How can you look at me like that?” Greg asked when he noted the confusion on the healer’s face.
His second question only further deepened the confusion on the healer’s face. “Like what?” She asked.
“Like there’s nothing wrong with me?” He asked. In the ten days that the healer had been interacting with him, never once had Greg seen even the slightest sign of horror or disgust on her face. If Greg had no way of seeing his face and only interacted with the healer, he’d never know that there was something wrong with his face. “How can you look at me so calmly? Like I don’t look like some monster?” Greg asked, his voice full of self-loathing.
Unexpectedly, a smile crossed the healer’s face. “I’ve been a healer for a very long time,” she stated. “I’ve had the chance to heal some of the most gruesome diseases and injuries you can imagine,” She continued. “I’ve healed people after magical fights. I’ve healed people after they took the wrong potion. I’ve healed people that had accidents in the practice of their magic. I’ve even healed people that were the victims of particularly nasty curses,” The healer listed. Greg couldn’t help but note the slight shiver that went through the healer at the mention of the curse victims. “Trust me when I tell you this, you may think that you have it bad, but things are nowhere near as bad as they could be,” She stated.
Greg hadn’t expected this answer from the healer. It, however, allowed him to direct the first part of his plan in the right direction. “Those people… did you manage to heal them?” Greg asked with a hopeful look in his eyes.
The only reason Greg had been willing to act out this small deception was because it was logical. In truth, Greg didn’t at all care about his disfigured face. He had already talked to Olivia about it and indeed there was a tier three potion that he could buy for a hundred and thirty magic points. This potion could completely restore him to how he was before the hunting incident. But while he didn’t care, it wouldn’t raise any red flags with the healer if he acted like he was desperate to regain his former looks. Of course, someone who’d had their face disfigured to the degree that his had would want to be healed. He wouldn’t be trying to test the limits of the healer’s intelligence by trying to get her to believe this.
A look of understanding crossed the healer’s face as she understood why the boy had asked her to stay behind. “In some cases, I did succeed, in others, I didn’t,” she answered honestly. The look of understanding morphed into one of pity as she regarded him. “However, circumstances have changed,” She said. “I am not the same person I was back then,” She stated cryptically. “What I could do back then, I can’t do now,” She stated. Greg almost fell out of character as he heard the pain in the healer’s voice. Her words were cryptic but Greg couldn’t help the suspicion that they hinted at the secret that Olivia had been unwilling to divulge.
Greg was tempted to try and ask her about it. He, however, doubted that she would tell him anything. Just because she had given him a handjob didn’t mean that he’d earned enough of her trust to pry into her secrets. Suppressing his desire to know more, Greg remained focused on his current goal. “You are a powerful mage,” Greg spoke up. “I… isn’t there something you can do?” He posed.
The healer’s gaze suddenly went from a pained one to a sharp one trained on Greg. “Who told you that I’m a powerful mage?” She asked. The healer’s tone was calm. Greg, however, couldn’t help but feel like a blade was being held to his neck as she keenly watched his face looking for the slightest hint that he was hiding something.
Greg had noted the fact that the healer had been on guard since she walked into the room. His last words had caused her guard to ratchet up several notches higher. Greg, however, wasn’t rattled by the question. He already had an answer. “I was hanging in the balance between life and death for ten days,” He said. “I don’t think just any mage could have saved my life,” He continued without missing a beat. “Am… am I wrong,” He went on to pose almost as if he was suddenly not sure of his conclusion.
The healer wordlessly looked at him for a while longer. But from the slight look of disappointment that he could see in her eyes, Greg knew that she had bought it. It might not have been the answer that she expected or even wanted, but it made sense to her, and so she believed it. “No, you’re not wrong,” She conceded.
“So… can’t you heal me?” Greg pressed.
“I’ve been healing you for the past ten days,” She answered. “It hasn’t done anything to restore your face and it won’t now,” She stated. “Scars are not wounds. No amount of healing can undo them,” She explained. “There are special potions that can help you, but none of those potions nor their ingredients are available in this town or anywhere near it,” She informed him apologetically.
“You said it yourself,” Greg spoke up in a desperate tone of voice. “The beyond was calling to me and interfering with your healing,” He argued. “Besides, you were trying to heal my whole body and not just focused on my face,” He stated. The healer looked like she was about to raise another objection, Greg, however, cut in before she could. “Please! C… can’t you just try,” He implored.
A sigh left the healer as her hands rose and she began to weave together the all-too-familiar healing rune. “Don’t get your hopes up,” The healer warned even as she came to a stop beside his bed.
Greg had to suppress his excitement even as he opened the system interface and readjusted the distribution of incoming magic between healing and conversion into magic points. The previous night, Greg had made it so that it was fifty-fifty between the two. Now, however, Greg moved the pointer to one end of the bar such that none of the magic the healer would be pouring into him would go to healing. Everything that the healer poured out would be going towards magical points.
After his soul stabilized, just a minute and a half of healing from the healer had netted Greg a whopping two hundred thousand magic points. And that was with fifty percent of her magic going towards healing. With a hundred percent now going to magic points, that would be four hundred thousand magic points in one and a half minutes! The healer could usually maintain her healing for about three minutes before she began to falter. That would translate to eight hundred thousand magic points, even without considering the two minutes she usually continued to force herself to maintain the healing. With the three hundred thousand magic points he already had, Greg would easily cross the million magic points amount that he would need for the awakening potion.
The first part of his plan, obtaining the awakening potion, was done. Now, all that remained was for him to build on this. If things went the way he was hoping they would, Greg would end up as the healer’s student…