Chapter 19: Healing Magic Part 1

So as I mentioned before, learning magic in this world requires studying, and healing magic is no different. Well, I guess it is a little bit different since I was born already knowing everything I’d need to cast basic, beginner, intermediate, and advanced-class healing spells. I can’t even begin to tell you how useful that knowledge is because human biology in this world is also really freaking weird.

I already told you about how humans breathe in aether. Well, that aether fills the lungs and then goes directly to the person’s first heart. Yes, you heard that right. I said first heart. People in this world have two of them. The first circles aether throughout the body, and the second circles blood. Oh, and if you’re wondering what humans exhale. Nobody knows. Some speculate it’s spent aether, but if it is, none of our magic or science can actually detect it. This substance seems to have volume, but that’s about all people actually know about it.

Also, humans in this world are shockingly resilient, so much so that healing magic probably wouldn’t even be necessary if it weren’t for monsters and elemental magic. Compared to people on Earth, their skin is thicker, they can continue to function at nearly peak efficiency even after a significant loss of blood, and perhaps most surprisingly, they can even regrow lost chunks of their skeleton. This apparently involved the skeleton remembering its natural form and taking steps to return to it after part of it was lost, allowing entire limbs to be regrown over time. However, this was an incredibly slow and unpleasant process, with a single finger taking up to a year to grow back. Limbs, meanwhile, could take closer to a decade, meaning that high-ranked healers were still considered incredibly useful.

As such, the church put a great deal of time and energy into recruiting every girl with healing magic and dispersing them across the kingdom in as many churches as possible. Meanwhile, the girl with the greatest affinity for healing magic was made saint. Well, kinda. Officially, that is the church’s official stance, but because the saint traditionally marries the crown prince, there is an unspoken role that higher-ranked nobles are prioritized as they’re often the ones most qualified to be queen. While rare, I wasn’t the only candidate born with advanced class healing magic, but my father’s position as duke meant that, even with my anxieties, I was still the obvious choice.

Holly, for example, had an aptitude for healing magic that was practically equivalent to my own, but her commoner upbringing and low noble title meant she was utterly unqualified for the role. She lacked both the refined manners and connections needed for one to serve as queen. Accordingly, there should have been no circumstances under which she would have been selected as saint over me. Heck, even if I were executed, she still probably wasn’t as qualified for the position as some other candidates. However, by casting me as the villainess who had tried to destroy her, Roman was attempting to craft a story that would allow people to accept her as both saint and queen.

Unfortunately for him and Holly, that was always going to be a hard sell, and it was even harder now that I knew she was pregnant. Maybe the nobles could be tricked into accepting her with the right narrative, but I decided how the story would be told. By spilling the beans, the story shifted from a prince protecting his beloved to a cheater trying to hide his mistress’s pregnancy by killing his fiancée. It wasn’t a great look, especially when every noble wanted someone from their family or from the family they served to be the next queen, and he was now giving that role to someone utterly unqualified.

His story would collapse, and the nobles would be justifiably enraged. While outright rebellion would be unlikely, Holly’s life would be at risk the moment she gave birth, and her attackers no longer needed to worry about the goddess’s curse. The prince knew this, and that was exactly what I was counting on. While this country might be an absolute monarchy, the nobles could still do a lot to hurt him, meaning that he needed to do everything in his power to keep them from getting any more upset than they already were. That was what I was counting on. If I could convince the nobles that I should stay the saint, instead of Holly, not even the prince would have the authority to oppose them.

Then, as saint, I would essentially be above the law, and so long as I remained popular among the nobles, the prince wouldn’t be able to touch me. Roman would, of course, remain an issue, but I trusted Sally to keep me safe from him. However, all of this depended on me actually winning over the nobles, and while I was certain their anger at the prince would help, my reputation likely wasn’t all that great. Thus, if I wanted to avoid my death, I needed to start studying.