Reborn Healer Chapter 14

Basic Heal lvl 7 -> lvl 8

Cure Minor Infection lvl 5 -> lvl 7

Identify Illness lvl 1 -> lvl 3

Body Scan lvl 7 -> lvl 8

I didn’t heal everyone that came in, naturally. Not even close. For the most part, I shadowed my father as he expertly assessed, diagnosed, and fixed whatever problem was ailing those who sought his help.

Listening to conversation between him and his patients gave me a fair amount of information as to how this clinic worked. Many of them were regulars, here because of a routine issue or recent injury. Some people came with mishealed injuries or ones that had gone untreated for a few days, others with illnesses they couldn’t explain.

Vallis wasn’t here every day of the week, which meant some of the patients had been waiting for a while or used stopgap measures.

“Why do they wait for you?” I asked during a lull in the late morning. “They’re getting infections.”

“Sudden costs are difficult for the working man,” Vallis said. “Twenty silver is a week’s wages in some parts around here. When a laborer is working all seven days to put food on the table, gathering the money for a single visit is a challenge. Nobody wants to pay for someone they don’t trust.”

“And they trust you.”

“Yes. I have been here thrice a week every week for years. They see me and they see safety. Whether that’s right of them to do or not is up in the air, but it is the truth. To them, their silver isn’t just money. It is the food on their plates, the clothes on their backs, the ale in their tankards. To be healed is to put all of that in the hands of another person. Healing means deserving that.”

By the end of the day, I’d healed or helped with the healing process for maybe one in five of the patients.

It had been a true learning experience. With no reference point for how healers worked, watching my father at work was enlightening. I didn’t know what his actual tier was in terms of power, but it was strong enough to perfectly do in seconds what took me several minutes to manage imperfectly.

Patients in the clinic came in all shapes, sizes, and ages. We dealt with old women complaining of pain after falling the day before, parents bringing in their sick children, a couple more dungeon divers, and a few young men and women who’d been practicing magic while drunk and blown up a barn.

Payment, too, was somewhat irregular. While most patients brought in sufficient silver, others came in with half the payment and baked goods or charms or spare trinkets they had. On a couple of occasions, people brought in family heirlooms. Vallis accepted some of them, but others he allowed to come without payment—he had a good eye for value, apparently, and he wouldn’t take something that exceeded the value of his appointment.

I wondered if all healers were like this, or if it was just my father. He was certainly doing a better job of this than the American health system had, but then again the American health system didn’t have magic healing powers.

Even if I didn’t help with all that many healings, it was good for my spell levels and good for practice. I did my best to memorize what kind of magic my dad used, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get it immediately.

By the time we went home, it was well after sundown. Across the course of the day, we—well, mostly Vallis—made some four hundred odd silver. Most of the stores were closed by then, but he promised I could get some tomorrow.

The markets were interesting to me in ways that my father didn’t expect. My wonder wasn’t that of a kid discovering the city for the first time but that of someone from another world. The experience was fresh, but not in the same way.

For the most part, the areas around the clinic were like an open-air market with a hint of magic. There were a lot of stalls selling “magical” items and a scant few selling actual magical items. While I had some kind of mental mana sense, it was nowhere near developed to tell apart fakes from real magical items. Vallis, on the other hand, had a good eye for them, and he gave me advice on common traits to tell them apart.

“Check the gems,” he told me. “In the cheaper places, the real ones will display them. Some of them will fake a mana crystal by using other natural ores. Those will shine in the light. A mana crystal will absorb light more than it reflects it.”

It wasn’t foolproof, but I was able to find a few nice items for myself. When it came to shopping for myself, neither of my parents gave me any regulations. I had half a mind to go for some weapons, but there weren’t any specialized stores here and we had plenty of them at home to train with anyway.

I found myself buying mostly utility items for the time being. Fifteen of Matias’ silver went towards getting me a light I could power with a small but steady mana stream, and earnings built up over a few weeks gave me enough to buy a mana battery that could hold a charge for a couple months, giving me an additional resource in case I overexerted myself.

Weeks turned into months.

Basic Heal lvl 8 -> lvl 10

Cure Minor Infection lvl 7 -> lvl 10

Body Scan lvl 7 -> lvl 10

Identify Illness lvl 3 -> lvl 7

My healing spells progressed much more quickly when I was healing others than when I was just training on myself. That tracked with what Vallis and the books said—magic was a lot more likely to grow when it came to novel, riskier situations like this.

In the meantime, I trained my skills back at home with Aria. Now more than ever, she disappeared for mysterious reasons, often coming back bloodied and tired. When she was at home, though, she worked me through hellish exercises that I could only recover from with actual healing spells.

Flowing Harmony lvl 1 -> 4

Not to mention that she had upgraded from throwing from throwing pebbles at me to actual weapons. Aria wasn’t throwing knives, but the nunchuck-like blunt weapons she used instead still hurt if they hit.

Reactive Instinct has reached level 10 and is now evolving!

Reactive Instinct -> Sixth Sense [Initiate]

Tiering a skill up was a game changer in terms of how effective it was. Sixth Sense got to the point where even without focusing, I tensed once Aria pulled her arm back to throw.

So she started using her own skills. Just like with Vallis, the second she started drawing on her own abilities, I realized just how much room there still was for me to grow.

Not for the first time, I wondered how my family had ended up in this backwater. Liaren was a decently sized town, big enough that Vallis had restricted me to staying to his district so I didn’t get lost, but my books spoke of sprawling cities wider than the horizon. Liaren was not that.

Maybe when I got older. There was still so much to learn.

I passed my sixth birthday, Vallis casting Rebind Soul on me once again before the pain could get too bad.

My daily life began to settle into a routine. I recognized regulars and they knew me now—Matias the solo dungeon diver, Nicole the baker, Orin and Liam the farmer brothers. On days my father had his clinic open, I healed. On the others, I trained. Iryn’s tolerance of me slowly warmed towards something more like actual familial affection.

Every day, I got stronger. I had people who loved me.

I could get used to this.

#

Two cloaked figures stood at a certain intersection between two districts of Liaren. The side alleys branching off the main roads connecting said districts were frequented with them and their like. Vagrants begging for coin, thieves dumping their hauls, tiny establishments where deals were sealed with a whisper in a ear and a knife pressed in a hand. With the camouflage of streets where stopping to ask questions was like as not to get you a knife in your belly, they went largely unnoticed.

“This kid. See his face?” The taller of the two, a man affecting a rougher voice than he usually used, held a piece of paper under the dim light of the match his partner had lit his pipe with.

The paper sparkled with magic. One of the spells he’d learned before failing out of the mage academy allowed him to capture snapshots in time. This particular one was a colored, moving image of a brown-haired boy not more than five years old. The scene shifted, showing him entering a healer’s clinic, then casting spells.

“Seven hells,” said Erica, the shorter woman. “Those are Initiate-tier spells, surely. I’m not far above that myself.”

“That’s what I was thinking. You heard the orders, right? Straight from the top.”

“I still don’t know, Nathaniel. Finding recruits is one thing. Grabbing them, though? He’s a kid.”

“A kid who’s healing at one of the only clinics worth half a damn in this godsforsaken city. There’s something special about him, and the guild wants it. Unless you want to explain to the Masters leading the guild why we gave up the target when he’s in our territory, you shouldn’t ask questions. Heavens forbid you end up answering to the man behind the order. Do you know what happened to the last person who defied a Halcyon prince?”

Erica shuddered. Joining the Southern Star Guild had been necessary for her to get the safety and stability she needed to keep supporting her ailing father, but it had been the last of her options. She’d heard the warnings. A guild practically owned you. They were the hand that fed, and biting it wasn’t an option. Without Southern Star, she would likely have been on the streets, rotting in a dungeon, or worse by now.

But could she really target a child?

The guild leader’s words flashed through her mind, a threat wrapped in honeyed words. Remember your father.

After a moment’s consideration, she decided she could.

“We’re not going to hurt him, right?”

Nathaniel’s vicious smile was visible even through the dim light. He puffed the pipe, smoke obscuring his face.

“Not if he comes quietly.”

Erica didn’t like the sound of that answer.

“I don’t like this,” she repeated.

“I know. You’ve made that plenty clear.”

“You haven’t heard?” Erica leaned in unnecessarily. There were prying ears everywhere, but the guild’s weren’t here, nor were the Halcyon military. “I heard from my friend up north. There’s going to be a Revenant down here.”

Nathaniel’s eyes widened, his earlier bravado gone. “That means—“

“It could mean nothing. But a Revenant? Kids getting magic a decade early? The guild having us snatch them? Something smells off. Once I fulfill my contracts, I’m putting in a request to transfer.”

That gave her partner pause. They’d only been working together a year, but they’d built something of a rapport during that time.

“…I’ll think about it,” he said eventually. “Just get this job done first.”

“Right. What’s the game, then?”

“I got some recon in. Every day the clinic is open, he’s in. Every third clinic visit, he goes out to market. Same time, similar routes. The days are getting shorter. By next week, it’ll be dark when he returns.”

Erica grimaced. She knew what that meant.

“Let’s get this over with, then.”

#

Augment Perception lvl 4 -> 5

It was a little annoying how slowly my buff spells leveled up. It had to do with how I was using them, for sure. I didn’t get enough raw time with them, since I usually only practiced using them while I was out for the night after I was done healing, which meant I was almost out of mana by the time I got some practice in.

I also wasn’t using them practically. While healing spells could level up relatively quickly when applied to people with real injuries, I wasn’t using my augmented perception for much other than trying to eavesdrop on conversations. Most of the time, my “training” with the buff spells, which neither my father nor mother used or could help me with, largely amounted to me trying to isolate sounds and senses.

Today’s practice was sound again, which I considered my most important sense after sight. Getting into a state of intense focus Boots clicking against dust and brick. A passionate conversation between two lovers thinking the alleyway they were in was hidden enough. The grating sound of a net being gently coiled in a hand.

Wait. That last one—

My instincts flared, Sixth Sense screaming to life with white-hot adrenaline and a sense of wrongness flowing through my veins.

DODGE.

I hit the ground and rolled, narrowly avoiding a massive net half again my size as it spread itself across the alleyway I’d been walking through.

As I got to my feet again, I felt my harmony skill align, my awareness expanding to accompany every cell in my body and beyond.

My mind shifted into overdrive, neurons firing on all cylinders. I became aware of my strange mental state. Despite all the sudden thrill running through me, I was entirely calm.

Two attackers, I thought, catching eye of the cloaked pair who had sprung their trap on me.

This was a bad location. I hadn’t thought much of running through these back alleys to get to the market district faster. After exhausting most of what I wanted to see in the nearby area, I’d found that there were larger, more vibrant sections of the city not too far away. Getting there in any reasonable amount of time had required taking some shortcuts, and up until now, it hadn’t been a problem.

I cursed myself for that now. Nobody was going to come now if I called for help. I needed to get out of here.

Flowing Harmony gave me the coordination I needed to pivot on my heel without even a moment’s hesitation, immediately sprinting the other way.

Unfortunately for me, these two ambushers were a lot faster than me. Even with all the training I’d gone through, I was still in a six-year-old body. My legs just weren’t long enough to outpace them.

The shorter one was going to catch up to me first, judging by my glance back. Theoretically, I could get them to get away from me if I just got back into a public street, but I wasn’t going to be able to outrun them for long enough to do that.

A fight it was, then.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” the shorter one cried out. A woman.

I stopped short, pivoting again as my Sixth Sense warned me. Hundreds of hours spent practicing dodging thrown objects using nothing but instinct paid off now. I listened to the warning my warrior core sent, throwing myself to one side as metal glinted and something sharp and small flew past my ear.

“I find that hard to believe,” I said.

The second cloaked ambusher had the net in his hands again. Seeing it head on, I could tell that I had avoided a great deal of trouble. It was visibly glowing, mana crystals set into it at regular intervals.

Given that it was what they had led with, I had to assume the net was dangerous. The man in the back had no weapons other than the net. A mage, maybe?

The woman drew a pair of what I now realized were needles from within her own cloak. That must have been what I’d dodged just now.

Mentally, I classified her as less of a threat than the other one. Just looking at the net gave me a deep kind of shiver that I trusted by now meant it was bad news.

“Please just come with us,” the woman said, her voice wavering. “It’ll be so much easier if you just—“

I sprinted forward before she could finish her sentence. Did they not teach children about stranger danger in this world, or was this lady just the worst kidnapper alive?

By now, I was intimately familiar with casting multiple spells at once. I got Enhance Strength and Swift Step up alongside Augment Perception, all of them working in concert with my sharply increased awareness.

I still wasn’t as fast as I would have liked to be, but it was enough of a step up for me to move.

Even in a young child’s body, magic and skills made me faster than most people would be able to manage on Earth. The woman met my unbridled aggression with an attack of her own, flicking her wrist and sending another needle at me.

My sudden movement had caught her off guard. The attack was easily predictable. To my eyes, it even looked slow. I ducked under it.

Since I didn’t carry a weapon myself and my physical abilities were still subpar, I resorted to the only offensive spell I had.

“Firebolt,” I hissed out in the arcane tongue, diving past the woman’s arms.

The man with the net thrust his hand out as flame spiraled into existence at the tips of my fingers. At the distance I was at now, even with my weak Firebolt, there was no way I could miss.

An arcane word reached my ears, which popped as a strange pressure washed over. My spell lost form, blown away like a birthday candle. 

With no spell to force her to disengage or actually injure her, the woman was free to bring her second needle down into my neck.

I hit the ground in a tumble, vision already fading as I collapsed into a heap. My consciousness began slipping from me like water through a sieve, pinpricks dancing through my brain.

Poison.