Reborn Healer Chapter 17

I had gotten much more accustomed to the world in the six years I’d spent working as my father’s apprentice. Most of the regulars at his clinic recognized me, and most people let me heal them now if it wasn’t a serious affair. I knew Matias the best by now—he was in the clinic almost every day thanks to his increasingly frequent dungeon dives.

With permission and Iryn as my accompaniment, I had also explored a fair bit of the rest of the city. I knew where the rich parts were and where it was best to avoid going after the sun went down, and I’d learned all the local shortcuts and little tricks.

Guild politics still were a bit opaque to me, and though I was much more aware of news than the average twelve-year old, I still didn’t have access to the same kind of knowledge that my parents and other adults could get. A lot of information trading happened in bars and guild halls, neither of which I could enter yet.

This, however, was completely out of my context window. I didn’t mention it while Vallis was sealing my soul back together, not wanting to disturb the process, but it was all I could think of.

The system, so to speak, was something that everyone had. It presented itself in slightly different ways from person to person, but it was reasonably consistent with what it did. Academics theorized that it was more of a way to track a soul’s progress than it was the actual mechanism by which we gained power, but either way, it rarely presented much more than spells, skills, and power levels. In rare cases, people who received blessings or found legendary items would gain additional sections in their system menus, but that was the stuff of myth.

Why, then, was mine telling me about the death of someone I’d never heard of?

From reading, Iryn’s tutoring, and just generally listening to people from around Liaren talk about their own magic or skills, I knew the system was sacred. Though nobody had anything but theories when it came to its origin, it was generally agreed upon to be created by beings of at least Divine-tier, if not higher—gods, in other words.

I needed more information. If I was interpreting this right, then I was being told of the death of someone I didn’t recognize by a deity. Had Neferi Whitefall been linked to me somehow? Was she just so important that the system had announced it to everyone?

Vallis had delayed attending to a noble patient in order to rebind my soul, so he was gone soon enough. Aria was once again out on some mission or another—as I’d grown up, the frequency of her excursions had only gotten higher.

That left me with only Iryn around the house. There were others here and in the city, sure, but I had grown to realize that Iryn was a capable fighter in her own right. She was at least Adept tier, if not higher, and she sometimes even went with my mother to fight battles I could only see in my dreams.

“Iryn,” I called out into the yard. “Do you have a moment?”

The red-haired woman peered out from behind a well-manicured rosebush that was still taller than I was. She waved with a pair of pruning shears in her hand.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Is something bothering you? Or are you off to hunt slimes again?”

I cringed. “When are you going to let me forget that?”

“When it’s not funny anymore,” Iryn replied. “You watch someone else lose a fight to something nearly inanimate and try to not poke fun at them about it.”

“Moving on,” I said hurriedly, “I was wondering if you got a system notification just now. A few minutes ago, really.”

As I spoke, I tried to pull the notification up on my own menu. It had its own separate display, but it was still there, bright as day.

Iryn frowned. “I leveled up one of my skills earlier today, but I saw nothing just now. Do you mean you saw a level-up notification?”

“No, definitely not. It was a notification about a death. Not mine.”

Her frown deepened. “What exactly did it say?”

I relayed the content word for word, then added, “Also, I have no clue who that is, so if you happen to know a Neferi Whitefall…”

Iryn shook her head. “The name isn’t familiar to me. What you’re describing sounds similar to a spell effect, but it’s not the same. You recall the Nightmare sect, correct?”

“Worshippers of the pseudo-divine entity by the name of the Nightmare,” I recited. “Believed to be wiped out to the last in the Daybreak purge twenty… four years ago. Primarily spellcaster-focused with a spell base that worked on their connection to the Nightmare itself. Shadow and soul magic, right? They were made up of humans, elves, and ken. When they were active south of Halcyon, they were one of the only modern political organizations to mix the mortal races with demonic ones.”

“Full marks,” Iryn said, clapping softly. “One of the spells used by the Masters of the sect was a type of soul bonding spell that hooked into the system, informing them when other Masters needed aid. It also had a kind of conversation interface, enabling them to communicate with each other across thousands of miles.”

“I remember the communication spell,” I said. “Wasn’t that one of the reasons they were so hard to wipe out before?”

“Indeed. What you’re describing sounds similar to that, but the mechanism in which the Nightmare sect’s worked was not the same. This isn’t soul magic, and your father would have realized if someone else had placed something on you.”

“Yeah, I would hope so,” I muttered. “So you don’t know what it is, then?”

“No. If I were in your position, I would try to find who this Neferi is.”

“Was,” I corrected. “I don’t think I can question a dead body.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” The chill in Iryn’s voice spoke to a horror I hadn’t even considered.

Not for the first time, I wondered how the three people closest to me in life had wound up here. Iryn and my parents clearly had some kind of history together, since Iryn also wasn’t from these parts, and she’d stuck with them for the entire duration of my life. None of them seemed to belong in the outskirts of Liaren, which was, as far as I understood it, a relatively quiet city thanks to its location near the southern frontier.

“…Do you have ways to?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t.” Iryn shrugged. “There are methods. Even without employing them, though, there is much information you could find from simply finding who she was. Friends, family, enemies, and situation will paint a more complete picture.”

I did like the sound of that. “And how would you recommend I try to find that? All I have is a name. Unless you have phone books or something?”

“Phone?” Iryn tilted her head. “Have you been reading too many adventure novels again? I don’t know what that is.”

“Never mind. Slip of my tongue.”

“Okay, then… as I was saying, if it’s current information you seek, the best resource in a place like this is a guild. Many of them are organizations with branches across the kingdom, if not the entire continent.”

“Guilds,” I muttered. “Haven’t had the best experience with those.”

“Neither have I, but they’re undeniably a good source of information,” Iryn commiserated. “Without access to a more extensive information network, the guilds are useful.”

That pinged a memory for me, sparking an idea. “What about my mother? Isn’t she part of an organization herself?”

“She is, but…” Iryn trailed off, fiddling with her braid in a way that I now knew meant she was trying to hide something. “There are some things that are better not spoken of, and some that cannot be. This is one of the latter.”

“So she swore you to secrecy to a point where you can’t even talk to her own son?” I asked. “That feels wrong, but sure. I’ll ask her myself. In that case, how do I join a guild?”

“There are two ways,” Iryn replied quickly, clearly happy to be on a different topic. “They run regular trials once per season, so thrice a year. They will also deliberately recruit people they find on missions if they are impressive enough.”

“Sure, that makes sense.” I thought it over. “I’ve heard of the trials. Aren’t they age-limited?”

“Depending on the guild. In Liaren, yes. Sixteen, I believe? Many guilds won’t accept younger for moral reasons or because the trials are potentially deadly.”

I cursed under my breath. “That’s three years. A lot can happen in three years.”

“Then your other option is to impress them,” Iryn said. “Most of the guilds here either join military action against hostile foreign groups or dive the World Dungeon. The latter is much more common and more accessible to you, since it’s actually predictable.”

Thanks to Iryn, I knew exactly why that was. The World Dungeon was packed full of monsters and ken, both of which threatened to bubble to the surface and invade mortal-inhabited areas if left unchecked. Dungeon diver activity was key to culling monster populations and providing enough of a presence to deter them from rising too close to human civilization. It went without saying that the mana crystals and treasures plundered from the World Dungeon were also extremely valuable to the economy.

“So I need to find when they’ll be in the dungeon and impress them there if I want an in,” I said. “Are you sure I can’t just ask my mom for info?”

“I’m quite sure. Especially when it comes to the fate of a single person.”

Who the hell was my mother? I had my suspicions about her—I had those strange vision-dreams, she had something locked up in our basement that my cores needed, and her own daggers had a strange compelling quality to them that reflected that.

“I haven’t been in the World Dungeon since I was five,” I said. “Wasn’t intentional that time.”

“At your skill level, I think it could do you some good. You could reach Adept tier in there. I would recommend bringing a party, though. You never want to be in a dungeon alone.”

I thought of Matias at that. It had been six years, and his situation hadn’t seem to have improved much. Soloing dungeons, risking permanent injury or death every day, having no backup… yeah, I didn’t envy that.

“Can I bring you?” I asked. “You’re definitely strong enough to tackle a good chunk of this area, right?”

Iryn stiffened. “No. I apologize. I cannot be seen by any of the guilds in this area.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

When I thought about it, it was true that Iryn very, very rarely actually came into Liaren proper. She spent most of her time in our small town in the offshoots, in the Ayasi forest, or gone elsewhere.

“It’s… hard to explain.”

Hot frustration rose in my throat, but I tamped down on it. “Iryn, I respect that you have your secrets and that your situation is complicated. I respect my mother in the same way. Still, there comes a point where it seems like everything important in my life is hard to explain or something I need to be older to hear or is just plain forbidden to talk about. I just want you to be honest with me.”

I wasn’t trying to be angry, but pent-up bitterness surfaced anyway, worming its way into my words. Iryn could tell, her own emotions flickering out enough for my Harmonic Empathy to catch wind of it.

She controlled herself quickly and became unreadable once more, but in the brief moments where I caught those impressions coming from her, I sensed some kind of sympathy. I wasn’t the only one who’d had to deal with this kind of secrecy before.

“You’re right,” she said, “but this is a conversation that your mother should be here for. I owe her my life, and it would be remiss of me to explain her secrets, even to those she trusts most.”

“I can accept that. Do you know when she’s coming back?”

The chagrined look on Iryn’s face was all I needed to know.

I sighed. “That’s fine. I’m going to go into Liaren, then. Vallis is treating a private patient today, so I’ll take over the clinic for the day.”

This was a practice I’d started a couple years ago, once I was old enough and confident enough in my training to handle most of the typical cases myself. Enough of the visitors to the clinics were regulars now that they trusted me to handle their care anyway.

“I’ll take you,” Iryn said. “I truly am sorry to hide so much from you.”

On a day like this, I would have normally accompanied Vallis into town and left him once we crossed the city walls, but he always let me have some time to rest after the painful process of core rebinding, so Iryn taking me was much appreciated, if a bit awkward.

See, the thing about going with her was that she had a warrior core, just like me and my mother. At her level of proficiency, that meant she could easily reach superhuman speeds, even while carrying someone.

She didn’t have a cart or anything to pull me with, so that meant that any time Iryn took me, I had to bundle my gear into a pack, give it to her, and get princess carried across maybe ten miles of countryside. I’d made the journey any number of times now, but I was never going to get used to being literally picked up like a sack of potatoes and moving at highway speeds.

Iryn took me as far as walking distance of the city walls, where she set me down on the dirt road, dusted herself off, and patted me down to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything or lost any body parts along the ride.

“You can make it from here?” she asked.

I nodded. “Thanks for the ride, Iryn. Do let me know if Aria comes back.”

She saluted, turned, and took off. I whistled at the sight, her sheer speed and acceleration rivaling that of a sports car. I had to step back to keep the cloud of dust she kicked up from dirtying my healer’s best.

The city guard usually recognized me and would let me in thanks to my frequent visits, but the vibe was different today. There were four instead of the usual two at the gate I entered, and their uniforms had new colors—a dark purple instead of the typical grey.

“Identification,” one of them said gruffly. “What’s a kid like you doing out here?”

“I haven’t been asked for credentials in a few years now,” I said. “New policy?”

“By decree of the Lord Prince Gerald Halcyon,” the same guard said. “Everyone going in and out has to be checked.”

“I’m coming to support my father in his healing endeavors,” I said, choosing my words carefully. His clinic, as far as I was aware, wasn’t officially certified, since that required kingdom or guild approval. “He left his identification with me, if that works?”

A wave of irritation streamed off of him, so intense that my passive Harmonic Empathy caught it.

“Look,” I said, stopping him before he could say something else. “I’m just going to be in here for the day. My family lives away from Liaren, so we never got me official ID. Can we work something out?”

I handed over the badge my father had left me, pressing a handful of silver into the guard’s hand as I did. Depending on who the guard was, the amount I was “accidentally” handing over was a solid day’s wages, which I thought was fair enough.

He looked at me, closing his fist around the silver, then looked over the badge.

“Imperial healer’s kid, hmm? You’ve got good manners…”

“Ren,” I said. “Ren Kane.”

“Ren. Go ahead. Don’t be too long.”

I saluted respectfully before taking the badge back, making my way in with a touch more trepidation than usual. I couldn’t help but feel that the system message I’d received had something to do with this. For six years now, I’d been coming to the city, and though there had been a stir during the first year, that had slowly died down as resources had been repurposed and set further south for the conflicts occurring there. Guards had gotten lax.

Coincidence existed, but I highly doubted this was one of them. I needed to find a way to get more information.

For the time being, I healed. With my increased healing expertise, broad range of Initiate-tier spells, and even a couple Adept-tier healing spells, I was more than capable of dealing with most everyday tasks.

Today, though, I was restless. I was waiting for one person in specific.

Matias, at least, stayed a constant. He arrived around ten in the morning like he usually did, grimy and a little beat up.

“Rough night?” I asked him, looking him over with a single Adept-tier Body Scan.

A direct upgrade to the Beginner-tier version of the same spell, this one could target either a specific area with a great deal more detail or do a cursory check of an entire body. Today’s issues were pretty apparent—fractured rib, heavily bruised leg, a smorgasbord of poorly healed cuts. If I had to guess based on my experience with him, he’d taken subpar potion healing already.

“You know it, doc,” Matias said, limping into the patient room.

I flicked my fingers, casting my Initiate-tier Create Water followed by a Heat Ray to flash boil a small pail of it. A little bit of soap in the mix created a cleaning solution good enough to disinfect the patient bed, which was sometimes necessary. I hadn’t properly cleaned up last night, so I did so now, wiping it down before he got on.

While I was healing him, I brought up the idea of joining a guild.

“A guild? Aye, it would be smart to,” Matias sighed, running a hand through his receding hair. “I myself’ve never been in one, but I’ve friends who know the process. You’re a bit young for the trials, aint’ ya?”

I nodded, using the bone-setting variant of Basic Heal to more efficiently knit his ribs together. “I was told the other way to join them is to impress them in the dungeon.”

“That it is. What’re you thinking about, doc?” Matias eyed me suspiciously.

“I was thinking about joining you,” I said, a little too casually. “Try going out into the dungeon once or twice. I assumed you know where the guilds are.”

The dungeon diver—not adventurer, I knew he hated that term—started, then abruptly tried to stand.

“Whoa there,” I said, using a gentle hand on his shoulder to push him back down. “I’m not done yet. You’re going to re-break that rib if you move too fast now.”

Matias scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry, doc. But… no. It’s not happening.”

I tilted my head. “Why not? You need healing out there, don’t you? It’s why you keep on showing up here. And you’ve told me about running into guilds before. Oh, if it’s because you don’t want to get involved with them, then that’s fine, but—“

“Ain’t about that, kid.” Matias shook his head, sighing. “You’re old enough now to know you want to go out there and be a hero, so I guess you’re old enough to hear ‘bout the reality of it.

“I used to be in a party once, y’know? Full four of us. Me n’ another brawler from downtown, a water mage from out of town, a healer on call. We only ever stuck to the higher levels of the dungeon. Less dangerous there. ‘Least, that’s what we thought.

“See, one day, we’re on a part we think’s been mapped out well, and we discover there’s this hidden passageway. We’re on our way back to report about it when the ground erupts under us and this monster half the size of this district swallowed Yelena—swallowed our healer right up. Took everything we had to make it out alive… not we. I. The other two, they gave their lives so I could live.”

Matias took in a shaky breath. I watched him carefully, not wanting to press too hard on what was clearly a traumatic event.

“That’s dungeon diving,” he said. “It’s dangerous. People die. Being in a guild is safer, but I got my own reasons they won’t take me in for. Y’see, I know where I’ll meet my end. M’wife had a son not half a year ago, and I know he might not grow up seein’ my face.

“But when I do die, I can do it with no regrets. I’ll go to m’grave with the knowledge that they’ll be provided for. If I go in there with you by my side, though, well—you’ve got a life ahead of you, kid. Can’t do that to you.”

I frowned, parsing his words. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry about. It’s the life.”

We went about in silence for a while before I spoke again, awkwardly forcing the subject back to what I’d originally started on.

“Then how would you suggest I join a guild?”

“Speaking the heavens’ honest truth? Wait. You still got more years ahead of you, kid, and I know you’ll do great things when you turn sixteen. I believe in you more than I do myself, you hear? You’re the kind of kid I hope mine grows up to be.”

The warm compliment was more than a little stunning. I didn’t push the conversation any further from there. It was clear what Matias’ position was, and I wasn’t going to argue him down now.

That said, I wasn’t going to follow his advice either. If I couldn’t find someone willing to go into the World Dungeon with me, I was going to go myself.

Afterwards, the day went on as it usually did. I was still charging twenty silvers, just like my father did, but money was getting tighter around these parts. I often found myself being paid in pastries and scarves more than coin. Today was no exception.

A few hours past noon, I was getting ready to take a break when the bell rang again. 

Accompanying that came an aura that weighed down on me like a heavy blanket, sending a chill up my spine.

This wasn’t the same as my mother’s presence. Hers had been actively hostile against everything in its presence except for me, while this one was just watching. My Sixth Sense tingled, feeling eyes on me even though nobody was in the room yet.

What got me was the sheer weight of it. Whoever this was, they were powerful.

She spoke, her voice high and clear.

“Doctor Kane?” 

Who the hell was this?