I was shocked to discover crescents originate from the kingdom of Thundertitan of all places. Even the commoner women of the kingdom look like they can strangle a spikeback with their bare hands, so knowing that someone with such a brawny physique had come up with such a delicate sweet is truly fascinating.

  — Excerpt from Around the Empire in Two Years

  Day 212, 4:20 PM

  “Close the door,” she said as she took her seat, and I obeyed.

  With the metallic click, the atmosphere changed, mana running through circuits ensuring our privacy.

  “How may I help you?” Jade adopted an impassive, professional face, choosing neutral words, which increased her value in the patient’s eyes.

  “I would like to learn the healing craft from you. I am already an established physician, but I would also like to learn how to use my mana for magical healing. Whatever tuition fees you demand, I would gladly pay for a twelve-day course.”

  If my request surprised her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she steepled her fingers and gazed at me. Her eyes moved, but not in the unnaturally disjointed manner of mages, whose bodies lagged behind their minds. No, there was grace, her movement same as that of regular humans, merely faster.

  “Your mana is strange. Strange enough that I should report you to the heresy hunters.”

  I smiled my winning smile. “Lady Tenson, I am a law-abiding citizen, and I’ve been to their office twice already. I think they would appreciate you not calling them over nothing. Now, regarding my request.”

  “Healing is in the domain of water, while your mana has hints of it, it’s far too polluted.”

  I didn’t say a word, just raised my hand, and summoned an orb of water using pure water mana.

  “Lady Tenson, if I didn’t have at least that much control over my mana, I wouldn’t be wasting my time here.” Her calm bearing wasn’t so calm as water mana reentered my body, her eyes widening in surprise for a second, but given her realm, that second was a long while. “As I have said, I have experience as a mundane physician, diagnosing and healing people with medicine, both magical and mundane. I would like to improve my skills and broaden my repertoire.”

  “I’m willing to teach you if you let me do a thorough investigation of your body.”

  I deadpanned at her. Letting someone probe your body for secrets was one of the biggest taboos in the world.

  “Patient confidentiality applies,” she said after realizing how absurd her request was. “I’ve never seen someone with as many elements as you. I count six of them.”

  The fact that she missed two was interesting. I wondered which. Thunder could fold into lightning or possibly air; as for the rest, wood or metal could be questionable.

  “Which six do you recognize?” I had nothing to lose by asking.

  Healer Tenson raised an eyebrow, correctly inferring she hadn’t caught them all.

  “The four basic elements, plus lightning and wood. How many do you really wield?”

  I almost told her outright, but stopped myself. Better keep an air of mystery.

  “You will find out when you do your examination.” I flashed a smile. “Since I’m looking for a twelve-day internship, I think making the payment on the seventh day, before my lessons start, would be fair?”

  She looked me in the eye, hers, bright blue and radiating intelligence, revealed her interest and intrigue.

  “I have never heard of anyone having more than three elements.” Her steepled fingers had relaxed, but she straightened them as she focused on them once more. “Very well, you have yourself a deal.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “No, I don’t. We need to establish how long your examination would take. If I just agree to this deal as it is, we will have an argument in seven days about it, to both parties’ dissatisfaction. Since your examinations are fifteen minutes—”

  “Absolutely not.” She didn’t even let me finish the sentence. “My examinations take as much as they need. But I will settle for two hours.”

  I looked at the woman and saw her greed. “I could haggle, but I won’t.”

  Ultimately, amicability was the purpose of my path and what I wanted to do with this life. “Since you are reasonable, I will also be reasonable. Should you need to perform any additional examinations, we can negotiate. All I seek from you is knowledge about the healing arts. Do we have a deal?”

  Healer Tenson smiled, revealing perfect teeth. “I believe we do. Let’s start with the basics. How’s your mana control?”

  “I believe it’s decent?” I had spent loops in the cave practicing various techniques I had read about in the imperial library. While I didn’t perfect any of them, the years of experimentation and study have honed my mana control. Besides, I also had Initial Mana Finesse.

  “We’ll see.” She stood up from her seat and headed for the door. “Follow me.”

  She led the way into the massive building’s interior, and we took the stairs heading for the basement. I was certain we were heading for the morgue. Back on Earth, medical students practiced on corpses, so going down to the cellar to work on cadavers wasn’t unexpected.

  Healer Tenson opened the door, and the light turned on automatically. Instead of a freezing morgue, we entered a common storage room. Healer Tenson went over to a cabinet, opened a large drawer, and took out what looked like a ballistic dummy, if that’s what the things were called.

  The mannequin had transparent skin and flesh containing clearly visible blood vessels, bones, and organs.

  “My apprentices use this to teach their students.” She carried the life-size human doll out the door and into another chamber. Unlike the storage chamber, the new room was clean, with only a table at the center. She placed the doll on the metal table and stepped back.

  “I want you to infuse your water mana into the puppet and make it flow from one hand to the other.”

  Her requirement would’ve gone over my head if not for the training I received by taking the entrance exam at the scribes’ guild.

  “All right.” I took the doll’s hand and directed a strand of mana into the “flesh”. The flesh offered much greater resistance than the scribes’ guild’s testing device, but with some effort, my mana pierced into the doll. Like a tendril, it wriggled, searching for a path, and I could see it clearly with my own eyes, not just with my mindcore.

  My mana materialized as a faintly glowing blue line wiggling inside.

  “Your mana should go straight. Random wandering can damage the patient’s flesh. Follow the muscle fibers up the arm. Yes, just like that.”

  Her suggestion made things easier by at least thirty percent, and the majority of the resistance was gone.

  “Interesting,” I said. “This is a pure exercise in control, but has little practical use, since I would inject my mana where I wish to heal a patient.”

  “Your mana control is beyond decent if you can talk while you’re guiding it through the artificial man. But you are wrong. Sometimes, the patient is crushed underneath a landslide or trapped behind bars. In that case, you need to know how to scan the entirety of their body and register injuries and then heal them through minimal contact. So, while in a hospital setting this exercise is overly elaborate, it may see use in the real world.”

  My mana reached the shoulder, where things got complicated. I followed the trapezius and reached the spine, where my control wobbled. I tried to drill through it, and I managed, but the line was far from straight. Still, I plowed through the obstacle, hit the other trapezius and followed it into the shoulder, then down the arm without difficulty.

  “Very good first attempt.” Healer Tenson gave me an encouraging nod. “You have fine control of your mana, and have the makings of a good healer. I would like to point out that the artificial man has a middling mana conductivity, meaning some patients will offer less resistance, some more. A great way to make your life easier is to ask your patients for cooperation or at least not to contest your mana while you’re working. Wait here.”

  She left the room, taking the dummy with her, and I waited patiently. With a few moments alone, I assessed Healer Jade Tenson. She seemed an earnest, honest person. That she was curious about my body rather than my manarium was a good sign too.

  In theory, she was one of the richest individuals in the city, but the bitch citylord was richer, and yet all that interested her was my wealth. Former wealth. Still, I shouldn’t be too negative about losing those crystals. It’s not like I really earned them, Brand put in much more work than I did, dying in terror and agony a handful of times.

  Healer Jade Tenson returned to the room with a human-sized skeleton filled with organs. At first I thought it was a dummy, and luckily, the organs were fake, but the skeleton was real.

  “These are the remains of a fifth realm knight, who died owing payment for years of treatment. Her family donated the bones in exchange for erasing the debt, which would have ruined their household. Even after death, a knight’s skeleton remains reinforced with mana, which slowly dissipates into the environment, which makes them great resources for crafting, or great teaching aids for those in my profession.”

  Healer Tenson grabbed a rib and broke it. “Look at what I’m doing; I’ll demonstrate this only once.”

  Then she started welding the bone back together with her mana.