Chapter 28: Mastering Healing Magic

Three years. Three years of Sally making me that same cheese omelet. Three years of treating those absolute idiots. Three years of avoiding the prince. Following my little painting prank, three more years passed before I finally learned Tears of the Goddess. In terms of relative speed, that was nearly miraculous. Few saints ever acquired the spell, and those that did took decades, but I had done it in about five years total. No past saint could claim the same. Even if my environment was particularly exceptional, I was clearly far more gifted than I had ever imagined. Yet, that knowledge didn’t help.

I had started experiencing frequent headaches and often found myself struggling to pay attention. I’d occasionally lose entire hours of my day, just staring at nothing. There were also times when I would become irrationally angry at small things and lash out at my patients, Sally, or strangers in the hall. A few times, I’d even needed to stop myself from launching a Fireball at crowds of people. I was beginning to reach my limit. If the spell had taken me another two years, I don’t know if I would have lasted.

Still, my hard work had paid off. I now had the greatest healing spell in the world. I could finally treat my last patient and escape from this unending nightmare. I couldn’t wait. Immediately after waking up, I ran all the way to the infirmary and then to the last bed in the room. I gave his companion a confident smile and then began drawing in all the aether I would need to cast this behemoth of a spell.

“Good morning, Milady! Are you excited for the party tonight?”

Well, I messed up. I wasn’t exactly sure how I had messed up, but after a few moments, I realized my mistake. Restore was nowhere near as powerful as Tears of the Goddess. However, it had still sucked out so much aether from the room that the patients and I had nearly asphyxiated. Obviously, this new spell would’ve required even more aether, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that there wasn’t enough in the entire room for me to cast this spell. Yes, I had just made one of the most common and deadly mistakes in all of spellcasting. Oops.

That was certainly upsetting, but I wouldn’t let it stop me. I immediately ran back to the room and tried again, though this time I had the presence of mind to open every window in the room. Later on, I realized that this was likely the reason why the lovebirds didn’t leave when they were healed and why this patient had a companion with him. They were supposed to be the ones to open the windows for me, but I didn’t realize that, so I spent ten minutes opening every one myself before I was ready to begin.

Once again, I pictured the spell in my mind and began to cast it. I opened my mouth and drew in the aether needed to fuel the spell until it felt like my lungs would truly explode from the pressure. Then, I cast the spell. I shaped the aether into the effect I wished to make upon the world and released it. Ropes of green light shot from my hand and enveloped the bandaged man’s body before completely erasing it from existence. His companion shrieked in horror, but I simply responded with a reassuring smile. The spell was working exactly as intended.

Tears of the Goddess did not accelerate healing like Regenerate or create fake skin to replace what had been lost like Restore. Instead, the true nature of the spell was similar to how Logos had described divine magic, “the power of creation and destruction.” This spell destroyed the target’s body, leaving nothing but their soul behind. It then used that soul as a blueprint to create an entirely new body from scratch. Theoretically, a master of this spell could keep a person alive indefinitely by regularly replacing their body with a slightly younger version of themselves. However, perhaps because of that possibility, it was impossible to cast this spell on yourself. Those who had tried in the past had lost control after the destruction of their bodies and perished.

Still, despite that limitation, this spell was a miracle. A new body was already beginning to form around the glowing green ember that constituted the man’s soul. First came his bones and muscles, followed soon after by his organs. He was, unfortunately, naked, but thankfully, I had the presence of mind to cover him with a blanket before anything sensitive grew back. However, as his skin began to fill in over his muscles, his companion and I both gasped.

Her, likely because she finally realized what it was that I had just done, and me, because I realized that I knew this man. The bandaged man who had spent the last five years haunting me was the same man who my brother had left in charge of our faction. Brennan Los Minotaurus.

As I stared intently at his face, wondering what could have possibly happened to someone as well respected and well known as him without anyone telling me, he screamed. This then led to both his companion and me screaming. Of course, I think all of our reactions made sense. He had just died and come back, while we had both been screamed at. However, after a few moments, he calmed down enough to start asking questions.

“Milady?” he asked, as if unsure of my identity. “Why are you here? Where am I? Where are my pants?”

Those were all pretty logical questions to ask, given the circumstances. However, before I could explain anything, his companion leaped from her spot and threw her arms around him.

“You idiot. You idiot. You dumb dumb idiot.” She screamed those words as tears ran down her face. I still wasn’t sure what had happened, but this seemed to confirm my theory that only idiots got hurt at this school. “Why would you fight a duel over someone as worthless as Liliana?”

Oh. Well, that was certainly awkward. I know I was a bit of a shut-in, but I was still engaged to the crown prince. My face was pretty well known across the entire campus. Heck, even if I wasn’t supposed to be the next queen, most parents ensured their children had the faces of high-ranking children memorized before they came to the academy to avoid situations exactly like this one. It was beyond awkward, and I wanted to escape as quickly and quietly as possible, but alas, Brennan wouldn’t let me.

“Iris, Lady Liliana is standing right behind you,” he explained with a hint of exasperation in his voice.

This led the girl, whose name was apparently Iris, to immediately scream and turn around to apologize. However, upon seeing only me, she became confused.

“Don’t joke like that,” she screamed, nearly on the verge of tears. “I really believed you for a second. There’s no way that lazy shut-in would have come here.”

I wanted to die. I am genuinely considered, calling out to Logos just to strike me down then and there, just to avoid the insane level of awkwardness that would be required to overcome this ridiculous misunderstanding. I looked to Brennan for help, but he avoided eye contact. Seriously, dude? I just saved your life, and you’re not looking me in the eye? Though that did raise a very serious question that I hadn’t had a chance to ask yet.

“What happened?” I asked sternly. It hadn’t slipped my attention that Iris had mentioned his injuries had been caused by a duel that I had somehow been the cause of. I hoped that I had misheard her, but Brennan’s inability to look me in the eyes told me that I was right on the money. Of course, getting him to spill the beans wasn’t going to be easy, but thankfully, his friend was an idiot and still didn’t realize who I was.

“One of the nobles from my faction made a big stink about us getting married because the Thorn Faction is being run by a selfish brat who doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”

Iris practically screamed those words, while Brennan and I shared a look of utter agony. He was silently trying to apologize for his apparent fiancée’s behavior, while I was suppressing the urge to throw myself out of a window. I’d always known I was a failure of a noble, who could barely manage a conversation, but I thought it was fine, so long as others picked up the slack for me. My older brother had run the faction perfectly when he was here and was confident that Brennan could handle things after he left, but was that just his way of coddling me? Just how much had Brennan suffered because of my unwillingness to help? Had it really reached a point where he couldn’t even marry the woman he loved?

“Then Brennan challenged him to a duel."

“Wait! You didn’t challenge him so you could marry Iris?” I asked, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Of course not,” Iris responded, like the answer was obvious. “He was just the son of a low-ranking count. It’s not like he could’ve done anything to stop the marriage.”

“Then why?”

“Because my best friend told me to look after her,” Brennan replied with a satisfied smile. “That’s all the reason I needed, though, admittedly, I may have hesitated a bit more if someone had told me that the guy knew advanced-class fire magic.”

“Didn’t I mention that?” Iris asked with a cock of her head.

“No. No, you didn’t, sweety.”

We all shared a strange and awkward laugh after that. I’m not sure why, but I think we were just all grateful that Brennan had survived, though that didn’t erase the guilt I felt. I wasn’t sure how, but I’d find a way to pay back his loyalty.

“I’m sorry,” I eventually said, once the laughing died down.

“Don’t be,” he tried to reassure me. “Just remember us after you get married.”

“Yeah,” I began, feeling guiltier than before. “That wedding isn’t gonna happen.”

“Oh. Want me to duel him next?”

I had expected disappointment or anger, but he had just responded in the most natural big brother way imaginable. I couldn’t help but laugh, and the two of them quickly joined in, though Iris probably had no idea why we were laughing. Still, after a very long time, it felt good to laugh. It felt refreshing, and I was now ready to move forward.

“I think you’ve done enough for me,” I assured him with a smile. “Tonight I’m going to fight my own battles.”

“Good for you,” he responded with a strangely confident smile, as if saying that he had not a shred of doubt that I’d win even against the prince himself. I’m not sure where exactly this confidence came from. Maybe he figured that I’d never head into a fight without complete confidence I’d win, or maybe he was just happy to hear I’d finally be fighting like a true noble. “Just know that the entire Thorn Faction and I are at your side.”

Those words struck a chord in me. In all the loops I’d experienced, nobody had ever been on my side. Even in the rare moments where I’d managed to turn the people against the prince, that didn’t mean they were my allies. It just meant that they weren’t all that fond of either of us. My own faction had always remained silent, and while that had seemed natural, given my lack of leadership, I never realized that Brennan wasn’t there. Now I knew why. He was always down here, waiting for me to come save him, just as he had been saving me for so long without me realizing it. Now I would make it up to him. I would survive the night, become saint, and ensure that my faction always received all the support I could provide it.

“Just be sure to cheer me.”

Before leaving to get ready for the party, I spent a few minutes healing the remaining patients, whom I’d skipped over when I first arrived. I didn’t think doing so was strictly necessary or even that most of their wounds were actually real (There’s no way people are this dumb, right?), but they had served me well as experience farms for the last several years. If I was finally going to escape, I owed them at least that much.