Illuminaria [LitRPG Fantasy Healer Adventure]

45 - Aches and Pains

As he strolled through the streets of the city, Joe activated his [Assess Wounds]. Sure enough, the further east he walked, the more aches and pains showed up in the people of Fort Coral. None needed serious healing yet, but the number of those struggling through their days in pain was growing. By the time he and Mojo reached Rosaline's Ring, almost everyone had some red in their health-auras.

"Ah, it's Joe!. Our newfound hero returns," called out a server who recognized him from the previous night. He remembered the tigerman as well, but he was blanking on the waiter's name. If he ever identified him and got his name during the post-Tarz celebration, it was lost on Joe now.

Joe waved as he looked around. He was surprised by how the tavern looked in the daylight. His last visit had been a blur of bodies, lively music, and dim lantern-light. Today, he stood in a spacious room that was open on two sides to include outdoor seating. On a sunny day, the room would have been brightly lit. Even with the cloudy sky, these open arches let in plenty of light, dispelling the intimate shadows that the room held once the sun had set.

"Hey, Oskar. I said I'd come back and do some healing. Do you care where I set up?" he asked, looking for a good spot in the big room.

"Nah. Anywhere you like, Joe. Wanna use the deck?" the feline man replied, pointing to one of the outdoor eating areas.

Joe tossed a thumbs-up and headed for the front deck. He picked the ocean-side porch instead of the back patio for a couple of reasons. This large outdoor area was situated right up against the street, which would attract more people seeking healing. It also had a large tree which the deck surrounded, ringed by benches. Joe could feel the sea breeze cooling the air. He remembered the back deck was better for dancing, but the front one suited his purposes today much better.

He picked a spot on the bench around the thick trunk and pulled his ward-testing shield from his dimbag. He had spent half an hour etching and painting it into a sign. It now read:

Healing by Joe
Primal Accelerated Healer
Pay what you wish
Est: Mersday, Endweek of Greensweep, 2271

As he rigged up the shield onto one of the hooks already embedded in the tree's bark, he realized he should have grabbed a drink first. As if reading his mind, Oskar placed a tall, sweating pitcher filled with lemonade-yellow liquid on the seat next to where Joe was parked.

"On the house, hero-man," he mocked cheerfully, producing a mug out of thin air.

Joe threw a smirk at the wise-acre musician while dropping a [Halefire] into the unlit brazier in the middle of the patio. "Hey? Can I get a treat for this guy here? He was a very good boy this afternoon." Joe remarked, ruffling Mojo's back. "You were perfect at Doc Reevadah's, Mo."

The changeling beamed a big, toothy smile at Joe before switching his focus to Oskar. The pup's eyes grew large, beseeching the feline server to hustle up some snacks.

"Sure thing, Joe," Oskar replied. "And I'll send folks out if they get to me first."

By the time the dinner crowd was arriving, Joe had been at it for a few hours and had healed dozens of people. This would have wiped out his mana back during his first clinic in Crowfield, but he had grown a great deal since then. He had a thousand times more resources, as well as skills to shuffle around those pools if he needed to. Additionally, he had a far better understanding of how his healing worked.

There was a tip bowl on the table that was nearly full of small coins. Mojo had thought it fun to hold the bowl for people, but Joe felt that it gave the wrong message. Joe really didn't care if he got paid or not. He wasn't rolling in coin, but he wasn't hurting for it either at this point. He planned to give a cut to the staff at the Ring, who kept bringing him more of the delicious, sunny-colored juice, as well as stuffing the shug-munkey full of tasty bar snacks.

After Joe got him to stop panhandling with the tip bowl, the shaggy broodling just parked himself by the dish and received pats from appreciative patients.

The folks he had fought the manticore with had shown up over the afternoon, except the machete-wielding Brayrrem. He was working the sugar cane fields to bring in one more quick harvest before Founder's Day. Joe discovered that you can brew a cheap rum in around a week. With the city holiday fast approaching, the town was stocking up on everything it could.

The rest of his fellow hunters were sitting on the benches with him, swapping stories. In one of the lulls between tall tales, Joe asked the question that had been hounding him all day.

"So how is it that in a city with plenty of healers, there are so many who need healing?"

"Healing ain't cheap," Neknox replied. "It costs as much to get healed as it does to get an item inscribed. Just the way of the world."

"What you are giving away, Joe," Michnul, the male spear wielder, added, "would cost many folks in Rockpoint several months' wages. For an accident, maybe you'd scrounge up the coins, but for something that is gonna come back again and again, who can afford that?"

"Yer a fluke, Joe," added Sorura. "The only other healer that gives healing away is Mercy Suku. The rest of them set up nice shops or try to get a private gig with one of the rich folks in High Park."

"I'd like to meet her someday," Joe mused to the group. He had already heard so much about the woman that his curiosity was piqued.

"Well then, you should go gamble later tonight 'cause you just called a winning hand," Neknox noted. "Rumors of you being here must have reached her ears. Pretty sure that's her turning the corner," he added, pointing down the street. "While she comes to Rockpoint occasionally, I don't think she has come to Rosline's Ring before. She must be here to see you."

Joe looked and saw a tiny woman in the familiar tan robes of a Murrcian lightly stepping down the side of the road. A group of people surrounded her. Joe couldn't tell if they were looking out for her or following in religious reverence.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When she got a little closer, he was able to discern she was one of the lizardfolk races. Light green scales covered her face and body, with yellow tones starting under her chin and running down her neck. She also had patterns of yellow around her eyes and along her cheekbones.

Everything about this small priestess radiated wisdom, age, and a gentle but deep pool of power.

Joe was floored. So far, the highest level he had ever assessed had been the Lord Barrister, Theodanis, who had been in his mid-seventies. Joe had assumed that the levels must cap somewhere in that area, considering how revered the Cardinal of Ekwiti had been. Yet here was someone who had forty more levels than the person Joe thought was at the top of the power scale.

He was no longer surprised by everyone's veneration for the small saurian priestess. It explained why everyone moved aside for her or offered her a hand as she climbed the steps to the patio. Every man, woman, and child around the saint automatically deferred to her, even though she expressed nothing but a modest compassion toward everyone she passed. Joe had to assume that individuals of her level must be truly rare. It could be why Mairree was willing to make an exception for her, allowing her to have her own small shrine.

As the little saurian stepped onto the deck, he noted her back was as bent as Madina Spooner's had been, though it was nowhere nearly as twisted as Runkbadok's spine. Joe looked with his woundsight and, surprisingly, saw no red in her stoop. Instead, he read that it was simply her great age that had taken its toll on the muscle and bone. It was a poignant lesson for Joe. Like the Mercy, he might live a long, healthy life, but he wouldn't be able to fully escape time's degeneration indefinitely.

"So this is our newcomer," she hissed in a serpentine voice, though one far less ominous than the one Madam Zanthiss had used. "I have heard good things about you, young man."

"Thank you, Ma'am."

"Mercy or Suku, please. Ma'am is so formal." As she sat beside him, Joe noticed she had an aura about her that was similar to his [Halefire], restorative and comforting at the same time. Granted, the Mercy's passive aura was several degrees more potent than Joe's phoenix spell. Joe understood how she alone could tend to a whole district by herself, as just being in her presence soothed away most small wounds in no time at all.

From the bench beside him, Mercy Suku gestured for the next patients in Joe's line to come to her. She glanced his way to see his reaction, to which Joe just smiled and gave her a sincere 'all yours' gesture. While Joe kept working on a damaged knee, the saurian saint tended to a teenager with a finger that had clearly healed poorly.

While her curative power flowed into the boy's hand, there was a presence to it that Joe's spells completely lacked. Mercy Suku's spells radiated a sense of benevolence and caring. Just being near the casting made one feel loved by the goddess of mercy. Joe had felt this presence in the great church in Peregrine Harbor, but he was a bit surprised by just how potent that divine wake was from a simple healing spell.

"Have you not worked with a cleric before, Joe?" the Mercy asked.

"I have. I spent an evening healing with a Murrcian priest named J'kadoo in Perigrine Bay. Yet his spells were a shadow of what you just cast. Your spells are beautiful. Mine seem to just be practical."

"They have their own beauty, young healer. Mine are prayers to the Gentle Lady. They are answered by her and so have her touch upon them."

Joe realized that the boy's finger bones were straight and healed. They had not moved to be straight or merged to be mended. They were simply fixed. From twisted to perfect in the blink of an eye.

The wounds that Joe healed did not just erase. They healed at a super-accelerated rate, but they did go through the process of healing. The arcane healing Joe had witnessed so far seemed more like stop-motion photography with injuries resetting themselves. J'kadoo's cures had made cuts fade away. The Mercy seemed to straight-up vanish them.

"Are you healing or are you erasing the damage, Mercy?" Joe asked. "I can't tell."

"That is a question for the philosophers, Joe. The wound is healed, is it not?" the old cleric chuckled. She wore an expression that made it obvious she enjoyed the debate.

"Yes, but it seemed to me more like you are wishing for the wounds to go away. Not healing them away."

"Oh, that is clever. That may just be one of the best distinctions I have heard for the difference between the divine healing I offer and your accelerated healing."

"Does all divine healing function like yours?"

"For most of the benevolent one-hundred, yes. There are some wicked gods like Torr'ment who make the healing processes as painful as possible. Throass and Kallus, the deities of sensations and stoicism, also make their cures hurt, though for opposite reasons." She scowled at this thought and then shook her head to dispel it. "Then there is Slumbur, the god of sleep. All of his healing only manifests after the patient wakes from the spell."

"I've seen arcane, divine, and accelerated healing. Are there other variations?"

"Of course there are. There is temporal healing. Those spells move the injuries through time to either a point before they occurred or to after they have already been healed. It takes a very fine touch to work temporal healing.

"On the other side is the horrid practice of sacrificial healing. Taking injuries from one person and moving them to a victim. This process is very effective but fraught with corruption for the caster.

"On a similar vein, no pun intended, is transfusive healing, often called 'vampiric healing.' This is the act of draining health from another. It is less corruptive since it is typically a combat skill.

"Morphic healing is common among druids and other shapechangers. It involves transformation. The spells transform the harmed body into a form that no longer has the injuries.

"Let's see what else is there," the old priestess mused. "There is replacement healing where you replace the damaged part with something new, but that is more of a facet of alchemy and artifice than the art of healers. I'm sure there are more, but my old brain is coming up blank at the moment."

"Can I pick that brain for another question? I am trying to heal a patient. He has a hunchback growth, but no matter what I try, I can't seem to affect the hump. I can see the mass is just made of muscle and fat, and yet it resists all my attempts to heal it."

"Hmm. How old?"

"Ahhh. I don't know for sure how long nus live for, but he seems pretty old."

"Oh. There is your answer right there, Joe. Nus are notoriously hard to heal because their bodies accept deformities as part of their natural state of being. You are trying to fix something that his body believes is supposed to be there."

"Oh crap…" Joe moaned. As he thought through his healings on Runkbadok, Suku's explanation made perfect sense. "Then how can I …"

"Let me. While your magic can only follow what the body wants, mine is directed by my goddess. If Murrcee is willing to remove the hump, then the hump has very little to say about it."

"That would be amazing, Suku. The place is called the Abaaka House on Serra Lane."

"I know of it. It would be my pleasure. Now let's get back to work and see to these fine folks here."

Joe looked up and realized there was quite a line waiting for them. There were a few grumpy, grumbling faces in the crowd, but they were a tiny minority. Most folks were not so entitled to begrudge the healers who were offering their gifts for free a few minutes of conversation.

Joe recast his [Halefire] even though it paled compared to Mercy's aura. Still, it made him feel good to have it burning and easing the crowd. Realizing he had a better range than the Mercy did, he [Dual Cast] a second one on the street for the line of people waiting to reach the deck.

As the waves of healing and comfort overlapped the occupants on the patio and on the lane, Joe went back to work. His next patient presented the less-than-fun task of a rotten tooth and the truly foul breath it was creating, but Joe wasn't about to shirk in front of the Divine Servant of Murrcee. Soldiering on, he held his breath and got to work.