Reborn Healer Chapter 41

Oh, it’s this guy again.

“Congratulations on completing the examination,” Sebastian said. “Rest assured that I have heard your concerns with regards to Grancrest operatives present in our examinations. This is a grave matter, and I cannot extend sufficient enough apologies that our defenses were breached. They will be dealt with.”

“Sure,” I said, eyeing him. Sebastian was good enough with his emotions that I couldn’t immediately read what he was thinking, though I could glean some sense of apprehension, which would fit the scenario. “What do we do from here? Do we need to show you the box?”

“That will not be necessary,” he said. “I am only here for observation purposes. Proceed with your group back through the gates that you came from, and staff will process you.”

I couldn’t help but feel that something was off with how he was acting, but with Nightmare’s Call not fully working on someone significantly above my tier, all I had to rely on was my instinct.

I did catch sight of a number of Federation adventurers appearing out of the woodworks. I recognized Spike, the Master-tier stone mage who’d set up the initial phase of my individual mage combat exam.

He waved at me. I returned the gesture, wondering what horrific methods of killing someone like him would have.

Sebastian’s behavior was the latest of a number of little things that hadn’t quite added up about this entire situation, but to be honest, I could no longer be bothered to care. Somehow, Grancrest had learned where Mizuki was and had hit the examination to try to find her, but she would have guild protection soon and I would have the resources I needed to learn what I wanted. From there, I could just see if I cared for the guild life or not and adjust my plans.

If Grancrest kept on coming after us, then we would deal with that as it came. So far, their efforts hadn’t really panned out, though I really needed to get my leg looked at.

The processing part was pretty simple. We just presented the box to staff waiting back at Federation headquarters and designated who we wanted in our group. Since neither Mizuki nor I actually cared about who was able to enter the Federation so long as they weren’t actively trying to kill us, we just went with all the poor lost saps we’d found on our way out.

There was one problem, though. As we were trying to leave, a guild member informed us that we weren’t supposed to do that just yet.

“What do you mean, we can’t go?” Mizuki asked. “Is there something else we need to do?”

“You don’t have your badges yet,” the receptionist said. “And, um… I’ve been told that all applicants who passed are to stay within guild premises for the day. The entrance ceremony has been accelerated and will occur tonight. Until then, you are not permitted outside the premises.”

“The hell?” I did my best to control my irritation, willing my lifeline to calm down in my hands. No point in shooting the messenger. “Why? We passed, didn’t we?”

“I’ve been told that the guild is going on lockdown,” he replied, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “I don’t know more details. Sorry.”

I sighed. “Do you have a way to send messages, at least?”

“Oh, of course, sir,” he said. “We can have a bird out of here in minutes.”

“Fantastic. Can you send a letter to Vallis Kane’s Southside clinic?”

#

While I waited for my letter to make it through the guild system, I limped around their hallways in search of a library. For the time being, Mizuki and I had both received temporary red badges from the receptionist that indicated we’d passed the exams but hadn’t been formally inducted into the guild, which gave us access to some but not all facets of it.

My primary priority was finding information. As far as I was concerned, I could just leave the guild after I got sufficient information about Neferi Whitefall.

That said, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do after that. If my system had told me about her death, I was certain that she would be important to me in some ways, but I didn’t have any predictions as to what that could be and what I should do next.

It was still the most immediately concerning item on my list, just ahead of the actual details of the organizations my parents were regularly involving themselves with.

That said, I didn’t actually know where I could find said information. Mizuki had been given a limited map last time, but we didn’t even have that now, so we were pretty much just exploring. She helped me walk, one arm wrapped around my back while I had one slung over her shoulder.

We didn’t end up finding a library first, but we did find a location that both of us were interested in.

Both of us had pretty solid equipment, Mizuki more than me, but we were also sorely lacking in some ways. When she’d abandoned the elven kingdom, she had left a good chunk of her normal equipment behind, while I just didn’t have that much other than my lifeline.

The truesteel promised to change that, but we had no way to work it.

The guild, however, did. The doors to an area marked Federation Crafting Services were open, heat emerging from within, and we made our way in. Inside was what I would probably have called a forge, though I wasn’t entirely sure. I hadn’t done anything relating to crafting growing up here, and I couldn’t explain what any of the assorted pools and anvils nor the smorgasbord of tools did.

I could tell that the weathered pair working at one of them probably knew what they were doing judging by the table stacked high with various weapons and armor behind them. As I watched, one of them dipped a a red-hot axe into one of the pools, sending up a hiss of steam. He put it back behind him once he was satisfied, then looked up.

“Newbies!” he bellowed genially, his voice loud even over the roar of furnaces and the sizzling water next to him. “You must be lost! Cafeteria’s the other way!”

“We have truesteel,” Mizuki said at a much more normal volume, opening her storage ring. “Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

The blacksmith or whatever his job title actually was paused in his tracks, then laughed uproariously. “Goes to show what I know! I’m Quill. My parents thought naming me after that would make me skilled at it. They weren’t much smarter than me! This ugly son of a bitch next to me is Jeremy.”

“Watch your tongue, Quill,” the other smith said, standing up with a sigh. He had a full face mask on, which he removed to reveal a young-looking face that belied how worn his clothing and equipment looked. “They’re kids.”

Quill froze again. “Wait. These the kids Arthur and Lena were talking about? No way.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve heard worse,” I said, inching closer to them with Mizuki. “And yeah, we’ve run into the two of them before.”

“They were singing your praises,” Quill said. “How can we help you today?”

“I was hoping to get this truesteel ingot made into a buckler,” Mizuki said, depositing the reward box we’d earned at her feet. “Ideally two items, if possible.”

“Two?” I asked.

“One for you,” she said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “You probably saved my life at least once in there.”

“This is a solid amount of truesteel, lass,” Quill said. “But it’s a solid amount for one weapon.”

“We could do an alloy if we wanted two,” Jeremy suggested.

“See, this is why you’re the apprentice,” Quill said. “You never make an alloy out of truesteel. It doesn’t play well with other metals, and why dilute perfection? We’re going to layer it. Use it as the primary defense layer and cushion it with bronze on either side. We can make two bucklers with that, easy.”

“Huh. Yeah, you’re right,” Jeremy admitted. “I’ve never worked with this limited truesteel.”

“Have to be ready for anything.”

“Bucklers are the little handheld shields, right?” I asked, just to confirm.

“Yes,” Mizuki said. “Sometimes also mounted on the arm. Very useful with the skills you and I have.”

“We can have it ready for you in a couple of days,” Quill said. “Don’t count on it being fast, though. Quick or good. Gotta pick one.”

“That’d be wonderful,” Mizuki said. “Thank you.”

“Oh, before you go,” Jeremy called out, standing up quickly. He wriggled his way through the mess of equipment and forges to grab a couple of rods the length of my hand as well as a bracelet. “Noticed you were missing some pretty standard gear there.”

He made his way to us, handing each of us a rod and me the bracelet.

“Basic storage band,” he said, indicating the bracelet. “You’ll need to get better resources to upgrade it, but this should be enough to hold a weapon or two for the time being. It’s not much better than a backpack, but it’s portable. The rods are assessment tools. If it’s an item we’ve seen in the forge before, you can touch them to it and get an idea of what it does.”

I did exactly that on the storage band. Sure enough, a description scrolled out across my system screen.

Item: Basic Storage Band

Tier: Initiate

A basic storage band. Can hold up to 3 cubic feet of items. 

“I didn’t even know guilds had these,” I said. “This is handy.”

“There’s a lot of handy parts about a guild,” Quill said. “Lots of pains in the ass, too. Be on your way, now. I’m sure there’s other things you have to get to.”

Mizuki and I gave them polite goodbyes before leaving and wandering around again. Before long, we ran into some familiar faces.

Arthur and Lena were also strolling through the hallways, chatting with each other about some mission they’d completed recently, when the archer saw us.

“Hey, Ren!” he called out. “You made it. Knew you would.”

“Nice to see you too,” I said drily. “Your friend Yarrow stay in the guild?”

If I remembered right, that was the name of the guy he’d had a brief argument with before we’d started the exam.

“Unfortunately. The fuck happened to your leg?”

“It died,” I replied in the exact same tone I’d just used. “I called my dad over to fix it.”

“Actually, that was what we were looking for you for,” Lena said. “Looks like he’s here.”

“Is he? Thank fuck,” I said. “I’d really prefer it if my leg worked.”

“You have a nasty mouth for a kid your age,” Arthur joked. “What’s up with that?”

“You don’t spend much time Southside, do you?” I replied. “You’d know if you ever went there.”

His expression clouded. “Why would I want to spend time there?”

“Arthur,” Lena said softly. She looked at me apologetically. “His family has a poor history there.”

“First of all, I don’t need you apologizing for him, though I appreciate it,” I said. “Second, you know the people down there are as human as you or me, right?”

A small wave of discontent rippled through Mizuki. Something I said hadn’t sat right with her.

Oh. Right. With how human she presented herself as, I sometimes forgot to take her lineage into account when I was speaking. I should have been more mindful about that, especially when she’d just used those elven teeth of hers to tear a man’s throat out.

“Sure,” Arthur said, shaking his head like a dog trying to dry itself. “Sorry. Didn’t mean any offense.”

I looked at Lena questioningly.

“He’s the scion of a minor noble house,” she explained. “But he used to be second in line. Older brother died in a bar fight gone bad down Southside.”

Arthur’s expression tightened, but he said nothing.

“My bad for treading on a sensitive topic.” I didn’t actually care about Arthur’s feelings, but I was moderately curious and I wanted them to actually lead me to where I wanted to go. “You said Vallis is here?”

“Right!” Lena said with false cheer, glad to have a change in topic. “Follow me.”

“How’re the other members of your team holding up?” Mizuki asked. “Henry and… Marcie, was it?”

“Marcie’s walled up in her room like she always is,” Lena said. “Henry’s… we’re not supposed to say where he is.”

“He’s south past the city walls,” Arthur grumped. “All this secrecy bullshit can go kick rocks straight to the seven hells for all I care. There’s some kind of event going on down there. My family, as Lena mentioned so kindly, is high up enough that they talked a bit about it. Not sure on the details.”

“Which family are you from?” I asked. 

I shouldn’t have been pushing further, but I was actually curious. I knew a number of the Liaren families, but I didn’t know any who had lost a scion in a bar fight. Maybe it had been before my time?

“Iron,” he said.

“Wait. Like the one with the mage academy?”

“Yeah. I’m not involved in that. Why?”

“You know a Thaddeus?” No wonder that guy had also been stupidly overaggressive.

“Name rings a bell. Third or fourth cousin, maybe?” Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of us in the Federation.”

I decided to refrain from mentioning that I had now impaled two members of a noble family. Hopefully Thaddeus had been embarrassed enough about that incident that it wouldn’t make it to Arthur.

Eventually, we made it to a familiar wing.

Vallis was already waiting inside the hospital area, waving at me genially. The rest of the wing was largely empty.

“You’ve been busy,” I said, looking around.

“I had some spare time on my hands.”

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important at the clinic.”

“A guild healer has temporarily exchanged with me,” Vallis said. “Accompanied by a guard, of course, but the people need a healer they can trust.”

“Of course.” I nodded. “No wonder it took so long.”

“So, up on that bed,” Vallis said. “I think you can manage that under your own power if you’ve been able to walk. I see you’ve made some new friends.”

My father, of course, knew my condition already. After my mage core had reached Adept, I’d gotten a significant bit better at detecting my own mana as well as magic being actively used on my body. Years of getting scanned by Vallis told me that he’d already done a full physical and possibly a soul check on me already. He was chatting to make small talk to make the people around us more comfortable.

“You know Mizuki,” I said. “This is Arthur and Lena. Adepts, I’m pretty sure. Arthur is an archer and Lena is an offensive mage.”

“Force and fire affinities,” Lena said, bowing slightly. “Vallis Kane? I’ve heard a lot about you, Lord Healer.”

“All bad things, I hope,” Vallis said, smiling genially. “And Arthur.”

He looked to the archer, then to me. A brief emotional pulse from him was enough for me to confirm what he was thinking.

This is the guy you beat up?

“Pretty good archer,” I said. “I hope to see him in real action sometime.”

Arthur nodded, naked relief radiating from him. Did he really think I was going to shame him in front of my dad?”

“Young master Iron and miss Yellowtail,” Vallis said. “Mizuki as well. Would you mind giving me and my son a little privacy? The next stage of this may be slightly gruesome.”

“Of course, Lord Healer,” Lena agreed immediately, taken off guard by the fact that he knew who she was.

They backed away, giving Vallis and I the room alone.

“First things first,” Vallis said briskly. “The leg has to go. If you had immediately treated the necrotization and eliminated it, it could have remained, but it is entirely dead biomass now.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “Okay. Do you… have ways to regrow limbs?”

I definitely didn’t. Healing magic couldn’t even regrow lost organs until Master-tier, let alone entire chunks of a body.

“Yes, but it requires a large amount of biological matter to work with if you want one that works. Fortunately, you have a fairly large biomass right here.”

“Hold on, are you gonna cut off my leg?“

“No, I am not. You are going to cut off your leg.”

“Oh.”

As I got to work on that, Vallis continued speaking. “I see that part of you has reached Adept. The other part of your soul… hasn’t.”

“Nope,” I said. “Speaking of which, do you know why I have that? All I know is that the Rebind spell you use on me every year isn’t designed for use on humans, but it works on me.”

“So you did find that,” he said. “I’d always wondered… no matter. ‘Human’ is a loose label, Ren. To the elves and the demons, there is no difference between you or Arthur or me or Mizuki.”

“Mizuki is—“

“Precisely. You are not the same kind of human I am, but rest assured: you are very much still my son, and I wouldn’t prefer it any other way.”

The words should have been trite. Even if I couldn’t accurately call my mind that of an adult, I still had memories from another life and more cynicism than was appropriate for anyone of my age. Still, somehow, Vallis’ words touched my core, releasing a silent burden I’d been carrying around for years.

“Thank you,” I croaked out.

“It’s only natural,” my father said. “I’m afraid that I have to be the bearer of a fair amount of news, not all of it good.”

“Anything go wrong?” I asked, recentering myself as I tried to find a good angle to slice my leg off with my spear. “You didn’t open the conversation with it, so I assume Iryn and mom are okay.”

“They’re fine,” he confirmed. “Both of them are in a dangerous situation, but it’s well within their control. The concern I hold comes from where they are.”

“Is it maybe just a little bit south of the city?” I asked.

“How did you know?”

“Intuition,” I said with a grin. “Nah. Some of the guild adventurers know people who know people.”

“It shouldn’t be an immediate concern, but with what I hear about the Federation and Grancrest, there is a real possibility that the city takes a strike when it cannot afford to.”

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind, but there’s not much I can do for that other than be ready, right?”

“Yes. The issue I wanted to speak with you about was much more immediate and directly related to you. One second.”

As I watched, Vallis stilled the bleeding from where I’d accidentally cut off a chunk of healthy flesh and started transmuting the dead flesh into something else. I briefly wondered why he couldn’t have just done this to the leg while it was one me, but duh, it was a specific spell that didn’t work with living bodies. Magic, I had learned, was quite often weird like that.

Within a minute, he fused a steadily-transmuting chunk of flesh with my stump. Soon after, sensation returned. The entire process took less time than it would have for me to patch up a complex fracture.

“It’s going to be weak for a few days,” Vallis warned. “Don’t put all your weight on it too quickly.”

I shook my head in awe. “I need to learn this some day. But you were saying something about a problem relating to me?”

“Yes,” Vallis said, inhaling deeply. “With your soul in its current state, you will be dead by your next birthday.”