First Encounter
The preparations had been thorough, so thankfully, I was able to treat every patient without incident. Since I’m only human and might have missed some injuries, I asked the other priests to double-check everything. Fortunately, nothing serious came up.
Before long, the priests who had finished their work began trailing after me like a line of ducklings following their mother.
“Why are you all doing this? Is there something wrong that you’re following me around like this?”
Now that the patients were mostly settled, I could finally turn my attention to the priests. The ones I had treated were each heading to their rooms to recover from both mental and physical exhaustion.
I wonder if they all have somewhere to go.
Setting aside my worries about the patients for now, I scanned the priests who were staring at me with sparkling eyes. To be honest, I wasn’t completely clueless about what they wanted.
“Are you already finished?”
I asked because I hadn’t expected the follow-up work I’d requested to be done so quickly. The priests looked at me in disbelief.
“Chief Healer Arthur took care of everything, so there wasn’t really anything left for us to do.”
“Still, we should have done a proper inspection.”
“Of course we inspected them. We checked thoroughly to make sure there weren’t any hidden injuries.”
Their intense gazes were starting to make the back of my head burn. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What exactly is this about?”
“You already know what we want to ask, don’t you?”
“I have no idea. None at all.”
“Then I’ll ask directly. How did you do it? That healing technique.”
Our little chick priests had grown quite a bit. No—when exactly had they grown this much?
This is way too big.
It seemed their interest had exploded after seeing my full-powered, one-hundred-percent-sincere healing for the first time.
“It wasn’t anything special.”
“You had critically injured patients jumping out of bed, and you’re calling that ‘nothing special’?”
“It wasn’t quite to that extent.”
“It was. It absolutely was.”
Although my skills had grown noticeably over time, I had never shown them this kind of healing before. No wonder they were all so shocked.
It did look a bit like a healer from a game.
The kind where you just click and everything is instantly healed. But if I told them that here, I’d probably get cursed out for spouting nonsense.
While it might look impressive on the surface, in a proper healing center where patients needed careful examination, this method wasn’t ideal at all.
“It looks flashy, so I understand why you’re all surprised, but this is definitely not a good approach. It’s only a temporary measure. If you treat people like this in a healing center, you’ll get slapped.”
People pay good money and wait a long time to visit a healing center. How would they feel if you spent only a few minutes with them, declared them healed, and sent them away?
This healing method was something you could only use inside the Labyrinth or in emergencies where there were far too many patients and speed was critical.
“It looked incredibly good to us.”
Well, I suppose it would. I had healed them in the blink of an eye and then vanished to see the next patient. From the priests’ perspective, it must have seemed like they were witnessing an entirely new world.
“It really isn’t a good method. This is a technique I forced into existence to handle a large number of patients in a short time. It lacks consideration for the patients. In a way, you could even call it crude.”
“It looked incredibly good to me, though…?”
“Especially in a place like our temple where people flood in all at once, it seems like it would be incredibly useful.”
“That’s right, exactly.”
Just as I had expected, they wanted to use this to deal with the flood of patients that would pour in whenever the Labyrinth opened. Since this wasn’t a one-time event but something that would continue steadily, they had been desperate for countermeasures. Seeing my healing method must have made their eyes roll back in excitement.
“Would it be difficult for us to learn? If we use it properly, it seems like it would have high utility.”
“It’s not that difficult, I suppose. If it’s something I already know, I’ve always shared everything with you.”
I was more than willing to teach them. My only concern was that they might become lazy about properly examining patients if they relied on this method. I didn’t think they would, but I couldn’t simply trust them blindly and risk being betrayed later.
“I’m worried whether it’s okay to learn something like this already.”
“Why would that be?”
“This is a healing technique to be used when it’s truly necessary, not when you’re simply feeling lazy.”
My healing method was fast and efficient. It excelled at fixing large, visible problems, but it had a weakness when it came to detecting hidden internal issues that required careful observation. What if they got into the habit of using it just because it was quick?
“We’re not trying to take the easy way out. We want to learn it for moments when it’s truly needed. We understand your concern, but please trust us.”
“If you’re still worried, we’ll just learn it and promise never to use it in the healing center.”
The priests answered my concerns with serious expressions. Hearing them speak so earnestly made me feel reassured enough to want to tell them everything.
“If you want to learn it that badly, how could I possibly refuse? I’ll trust you.”
“Wow!”
“Thank you!”
When they put it like that, I couldn’t help but believe them. Besides, after witnessing such a flashy and overwhelming healing technique, their eyes were already sparkling with the desire to learn it. Knowing that it was better to know something than to remain ignorant, refusing to teach them felt wrong. Especially since I was certain it would prove helpful inside the Labyrinth.
“As I said, please make sure to use it only after carefully assessing the situation.”
“Yes!”
I began teaching the genuinely curious priests the healing technique I had used.
“After healing quickly, please make sure to examine the body again once the battle is over. You must add this extra step. What I did is essentially just stitching up the wounds temporarily. It might be more accurate to say I stopped the bleeding to prevent further blood loss.”
“But the way you healed them didn’t look like simple stitching at all?”
One of the priests said, recalling the patients I had treated. It was embarrassing, but she was right.
“……”
Her innocent question had a surprisingly strong impact. Even I had to admit that calling those perfectly regenerated treatment areas “just stopping the bleeding” sounded strange.
When I froze, unable to say anything in my embarrassment, the priest who had spoken also became flustered.
“You said it that way because we can’t do that kind of healing. Why would you say something so embarrassing?”
The priest who had been poked in the side by her colleague finally realized her rudeness.
“Oh my! I’m so sorry. It just slipped out. Please forget I said that!”
“Haha, it’s not like that. There’s a proper order to teaching, that’s all. Besides, if you tried to heal the way I do, you would waste far too much divine power.”
This was a method only someone like me—who had begun overflowing with divine power at some point—could use. I needed to modify it appropriately before teaching it to others.
“Right now, these patients have suffered terrible things and are under severe mental shock. That’s why it was necessary to treat their wounds as quickly as possible.”
“Then, in similar situations, would it be acceptable for us to use this healing method too?”
Thanks to the priests’ passionate thirst for knowledge, I decided to rekindle my own teaching spirit for the first time in a while.
“Ughhh…”
After taking care of some work, my mind felt lighter. It seemed like I would actually be able to sleep comfortably with both legs stretched out tonight.
We had captured the people who had been tormenting the others, but according to the news from the knight order, they still hadn’t managed to get a confession. Still, we had already identified the culprit, hadn’t we?
“No evidence of heresy, huh…”
And inside the hideout where they had been kidnapping and torturing people, unfortunately, not a single piece of evidence related to heretics had been found.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.
If there had been, we could have revealed their connection to Prince Loras and gotten rid of both at once. But it seemed Prince Loras wasn’t the type to leave behind easy evidence.
“I wonder what Bishop Saul is doing right now.”
He had gone to investigate Prince Loras, so there should be some results, but knowing how vicious the crimes he committed were, I couldn’t help feeling anxious.
Knock, knock, knock—!
“??”
What could it be at this hour? I had just lain down to sleep when someone knocked on the door late at night. As I got up to open it, I heard the door open from nearby, followed by voices.
“Who is it?”
The owner of the voice was Sister Melody. She must have heard someone knocking on my door and come out before I did. Since she was my bodyguard, it seemed she stayed alert for my protection day and night, never resting.
She could take it a little easier…
Having someone protecting me so thoroughly made me feel incredibly reassured.
“I’m that guy’s master inside. But who are you supposed to be…?”
“His master? Then, are you perhaps Bishop Saul?”
The conversation between Bishop Saul—my master—and Sister Melody continued.
“You are… ah, right! I remember now. Melody, wasn’t it?”
“How do you know my name?”
“Hehe, my disciple brags about you so much that there’s no way I could forget. I’m not that old yet.”
“Please speak comfortably, Bishop.”
Having heard Sister Melody’s voice so often until now, I immediately noticed the change in her tone.
She really does seem to respect Bishop Saul a lot.
I wondered how many people in the world could fluster Sister Melody this much. It was fascinating, and for some reason, I felt the urge to step in between them, so I opened the door and stepped out.