Book 1, Verse 40

“C-careful!” Elisa said as I helped her pick up Niels.

“I’m being as careful as I can!” I said quickly.

“No, I mean–” she grit her teeth in pain, “the pain reducer I g-gave you this morning. It’s going to wear off soon.”

I’d completely forgotten about the scar on my chest; but right now I didn’t care.

Niels had a gash in his leg that was being covered by some tied-up rags and his arms looked like they’d been impaled with needles.

Elisa’s left ear had a nick in it, and her tail wasn’t moving anymore. She was also missing one of her prominent front fangs.

“We’ll worry about that after you and Niels aren’t bleeding anymore. Honestly, you guys should have stayed where you were until you recovered!” I said, sounding a little harsher than I needed to. I quickly corrected myself. “S-sorry; I’m just concerned that you guys may have made things worse by dragging yourselves this far.”

Elisa shook her head and winced again.

Once I took them the rest of the way to Albert, he motioned for them to sit down and immediately began treating every wound on them that he could find. His hands didn’t stop moving for nearly an hour as he ground up plants, mixed them together with the gray fluid from the bottle, and applied bandages to all their wounds.

For my part, I mostly stood by and watched as they were treated.

It struck me that this was the priest’s lot in life.

All a priest could do was pray for people, hoping that a miracle would come.

They could stand by and offer pithy verses too.

As I watched Albert finish treating my friends’ wounds, I was struck by–

“Why aren’t you praying?” Albert asked me as he tied another bandage around Niels’ leg.

When he said that, both Niels and Elisa turned to look at me with strange expressions.

“W-what?” I replied.

“Praying. You know; asking God that he helps your friends here recover from their wounds.”

I opened my mouth to make the same rejection I’d made a while ago; that if prayer didn’t do anything, why bother?

I clenched my fist.

He’d already explained why.

“F-fine.” I turned away from Albert as he went to check on Niels’ arm.

Without turning to look at them, I knelt down and looked up at the starry night sky.

I didn’t love God; how could I love a God who only used people because he needed them to achieve his own ends?

I was no saint; at least not according to the standards set in the holy writ.

And up until now, I’d regarded prayer as something I was doing to get magical results.

I snorted derisively and mumbled.

“Well if it’s worked so far…” I closed my eyes and prayed that Vivian, Elisa, and Niels would all make swift recoveries; and heck, while we were at it, I prayed that the scar that the axebane gave me a few days ago would stop bothering me as well.

Once I finished the quick prayer, I turned back around. Albert was still tending to Niels, but Elisa was sitting up straight and looking at me, worried.

“Shinko, are you okay?” She said with a slight whistle to her voice due to the gap in her teeth.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I’m fine.” I looked at her bandaged ear and tail, as well as all the other small scratches on her body. “I’m just happy that you both survived.”

“No you moron.” She said quickly. “I mean your scar! It should be bothering you right now; how bad is the pain?”

I tilted my head and looked down my tunic at the scar on my chest. It was still plainly visible, but it seemed to have healed like any other scar.

“I… I don’t feel anything in particular.”

Elisa tilted her head and her undamaged ear flicked curiously.

“That’s strange. You’re strange.” She shook her head. “Look, you react a lot more strongly to my alchemical mixes than anyone else I’ve ever seen.” She glanced over her shoulder at Niels’, then looked back at me and whispered. “I think you may be extremely susceptible to magic.”

“What do you mea–!” I remembered something crucial and laughed. “Elisa, I don’t have any innate resistance to mirra or its effects.”

Elisa looked at me, shocked.

“You don’t?!” She was stunned, but rolled her head over her shoulders and bit her lip. It looked weird to see her do that while missing a tooth. “Wait, that actually explains why everything I’ve done to you has worked so flawlessly.” She sighed. “Putting aside the ‘how’ of how you have no innate resistance to mirra; it makes sense that you don’t feel any pain right now.” She shrugged. “If you actually do have no resistance at all to mirra, then you probably didn’t need me to keep giving you pain reducers every day.”

“Wait, really?” I listened intently.

“Yes; see, all pain reducers have a little bit of healing magic in them, but that usually gets nullified by people’s innate resistance to mirra; furthermore, the ingredients used that actually cause the pain to disappear only wear off and weaken because people are resistant to its effects. Since you have no resistance at all, that first healing elixir I administered to you when we met probably fixed nearly every bit of damage, leaving you with just a painful scar; then the pain reducers finished healing you and never wore off because your innate resistance never made it do that.”

What she was saying made a lot of sense; I smiled as I thought of something interesting.

“Does that mean that I can’t feel pain at all anymore?”

Elisa laughed.

“What? No. It just means that the alchemical effects are going to wear off much slower. Probably when you use the restroom or within the next couple days. I’m not sure.”

Hmm.

“Could I just… keep taking alchemical mixes and become invulnerable, then?”

Elisa looked at me like I was the biggest idiot she’d ever seen. It was a familiar look, coming from her.

“Not unless you have a death wish. Certain alchemical ingredients are slightly poisonous; you’re lucky I tend to avoid them when I create stuff. The poison doesn’t harm most people, since it’s magical and people tend to have an innate resistance to that. But you, on the other hand…”

I shivered at the memory of what had happened when Niels gave me an alchemical mix in his tavern and I nearly choked to death on a flower growing inside my throat.

“Forget I asked.” I stuck out my tongue. “Thanks again for saving my life back then, and for doing it again this time.”

“Thank Niels; he did most of the work.”

Niels’ ears perked up.

“That’s not true at all; if it hadn’t been for Elisa blinding the thing, we never would’ve been able to finish it off.” He said quickly.

“I was only able to blind it because he tied it down with a ton of vines!” She replied sharply.

“Well, I was only able to tie it down with vines because she forced it off the path into a grove by shattering glass at its feet.” He said back smugly.

“Only because he was distracting it by conjuring a gust of wind to bother it!” She snapped.

From there, they started arguing loudly about which one of them had done more to deter the monster. Albert stopped patching them up, put his supplies back into the box, then strolled over to me casually.

“I’m not a professional physician or anything like that, but I think it’s safe to say your friends will be fine.”

“Agreed.” I turned to Albert and shook his hand. “Thank you so much for helping us. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

Albert smiled in the moonlight and his rabbit ears twitched.

“Actually, I have something in mind.” He said politely.