Tale Of A Berserk Healer

"Well the good news is, the mayor likes you and your 'spunk' as he put it. Bad news is that the herbalist guild in Maevair is gonna be a bit pissy with you until you do something that demands their respect." Benedict sighed as he stretched out his back.

"Argh, I'm getting too old for these meetings..."

"I could help work out those muscle kinks Sir." Jonathan politely said, a bit of warm sun essence already circling around his fingers momentarily.

"Huh?" Ryth said, giving him a look. "You can give massages using sun essence?"

"Well yeah. Warm and healing? It's a pretty good fit."

"Huh. Wanna trade info? You try and give me a lesson on muscle manipulation by massage with sun essence, and I'll try and give you a lesson about dealing with poisons?"

Jonathan thought through this idea. He'd had some journals thanks to his family, and had learned to massage people to help them relax for his grandmother, but after awakening he'd worked and experimented on how to conjoin the two ideas of magic and relaxation.

He'd also researched other applications and ways of using the Sun, following a path of understanding starkly different from Ryth's.

This would be why Ryth said "try to teach". There's no guarantee either can use the others techniques, but gaining inspiration to make their own version would definitely be possible.

(How hard would it be to teach myself to handle poison... patients if poisoning aren't exactly common, so I'd have to do what Ryth has been doing for his research...)

Jonathan felt a flash of genuine fear remembering the period of 6-11 days after they started their apprenticeship where Ryth kept poisoning and curing himself over and over.

(I'm not a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t, I don't want to bleed out of my eyes and watch my fingers turn blue!)

"Deal."

Master Benedict nodded to himself. "Good, always remember that you knowledge should never be given freely, only traded. Much like my knowledge is given to you in trade for your labor."

Benedict looked to Jonathan with a smile. "I would like your help very much, seeing as we are going to get much busier now."

"We are?" Ryth asked questioningly.

"Yes. I set up shop in a lesser-known or traveled area, so most of the adventurers and awakened haven't realized an apothecary is in town. Now that they will hear after this meeting with so many of the association watching..."

"Oh. All the adventurers who are in relapse will come."

"Well, most might still go to the actual hospital, but yes, I will be known as the higher-end choice. Plus the hospital might start referring difficult cases to us soon."

The two apprentices nodded their understanding.

~ ~ ~

Mika knelt on a roof, the building having 2 floors by the 2nd being small made it have 2 levels of roofing, so she knelt in the shadow of the higher one, looking out at her target.

3 boys in their early teens, scrawny and dirty, clearly starving slum-dwellers, but their shifty eyes, twitching fingers, and the brand across the back of their hands made their identity as thieves too obvious for them to gain any sympathy.

She waited, as they walked by, and listened.

"Hey, one of Mika's gang went missing apparently." The smaller of the three, who was clearly younger and was the only one without a brand...

Meaning he was either new to thieving, or cry good at it to not be caught. Mika was thinking new seemed more likely.

"Yeah, we know." The blonde(maybe? Hard to tell with so much dirt, but his eyelashes are lighter) one shared a look with the third, and Mika's attention focused more on those 2.

Apparently the little one noticed the look too, as he turned pale. "Scell, you didn't mess with Mika's gang did you? She's crazy protective of those kids man!"

"You don't think I don't know that, useless Bean? Why should I fear a girl younger than me?"

"Because she's smarter, has more people, and they will ambush you with bricks like they did to Thompson when he tried to get the streets addicted to his drugs?"

The third one raised an eyebrow while Scell grabbed "Bean" by the neckline of his shirt.

"You saying a girl is smarter than me, Bean?" A condescending tone stretched out the nickname cruelly, as he smiled while raising a fist.

"N-no of course you're smarter! You're smarter! She just isn't ...dumber?" Bean's voice squeaked on the last word.

"Leave the Bean be, we should move on."

The third finally spoke up with a dismissive tone, and Scell dropped Bean.

Scell growled, "I'm not scared of her... if I saw Mika right now I'd thrash her within an inch of her life and show her what I'm capable of. Then who would fear a girl."

(...ahahahaha... oh I'm going to f.u.c.k.i.n.g kill you, but only after I rip off that d.i.c.k of yours and shove it down your throat.)

"Scell, you can't just go around breaking girls, especially high profile ones."

"Hasn't stopped me till now, has it?"

Bean shivered at the conversation the other two had and it's implications... only to see a shadow fall from the sky.

(Huh...?)

The shadow landed on Scell's shoulders, and a wire whipped out of nowhere it seemed, looping around his neck before drawing tight.

In a sudden instant the alleyway froze as Scell tried to scream as a knife ripped up and out of his groin from under and behind, only for his scream to be trapped in his throat by the garrote wrapped around it!

"Break this you sick f.u.c.k."

And then a tearing sound echoed as the knife... twisted.

Sympathetic pain flinched through Bean and the third guy as they both jumped away in shock.

"What the F.U.C.K-"

Mika flipped over Scell as he crumpled to his knees, and she charged the third as he raised his arms to try and defend himself-

Suddenly she dropped into a slide pasts him, looping her garrote around his ankle and hooking his leg out from under him, her thin wire cutting a few centimeters into his flesh as she did so.

After winding the cord around the leg she tugged it up, digging deeper into the flesh around his ankle, and then pulled it TIGHT.

Mika felt the distinct tear as the Achilles' tendon split, and ripped the cord out of the flesh with a violent pull!

Leaving him screaming on the ground, she rushed back over to Scell, stepping on his head to crush it into the ground.

She looked at Bean, shivering on the ground, and then turned back to the third one with a now-cut Achilles' tendon, dismissing Bean as a threat.

She knelt over him, knife in hand still covered in Scell's blood and... flesh.

"So. I hear you know something about one of mine?"

"M-Mika..."

He gripped his leg as he hit his lip, pushing away the pain.

"Where. Is. He."

"I don't know-"

She stamped her foot on his bloody ankle.

"AAAAGH!"

"15 seconds. Where. Is. He."