Tyr woke up the next morning in the Cloud Recliner feeling incredibly refreshed. Not at all like he had spent his hours of sleep messing around in the Dream Realm and plotting the downfall of his sworn enemies.

  Though time had been elongated and distorted in that strange place, his one-hour visit with GranGran had ended all too soon. He’d promised to meet her again, same time and place next week. The terrifying apparition had done a merry little jig afterwards.

  Yawning, Tyr stretched his limbs, a content smile lighting up his face.

  Bingeing the dense first volume of the Compendium had sapped more of his energy than he had realized at the time. His hyperfocus had been so intense that he hadn’t paid any attention to his own physical state. Only now that he felt rested did he realize how exhausted he had been. Beating himself up over the situation with Caeden hadn’t helped matters either. Avoiding thinking too much of his cousin had been one of the reasons he had committed so deeply to his studying.

  I’ll have to be careful about that in the future. As [Focused Mind] levels up, the effect will probably become even more extreme.

  But at least he knew the cure. Nothing beat a good night of sleep for rejuvenation; even the light mental exhaustion from shaping mana within his dream was gone.

  Tyr’s stomach growled, more evidence of how he had neglected himself over the past couple days. He side-eyed the half-finished sandwich before thinking better of it. Most likely the griffin meat had spoiled and, regardless of his three points in Constitution and natural D-Grade physique, he didn’t want to tempt fate.

  Almost everyone on Savra may be superhuman, but we probably have superbacteria too.

  After returning the Endless Notebook into his spatial ring, Tyr headed over to the dining area. Leon sat at the kitchen table, shoveling scrambled eggs and crispy bacon into his face. Beside him, Garrett read the news on his crystal tablet, legs crossed. He spared Tyr a glance, nodding in acknowledgement before he returned to his reading.

  “Morning,” said Tyr.

  Father grunted between forkfuls of egg like an ill-mannered savage. Tyr wrinkled his nose and took the open seat next to him. Before he could even blink, one of the Grey Maids swooped in out of nowhere and slid a breakfast plate before him.

  Tyr picked up the fried-egg sandwich and took a huge bite. Hot, runny yolk coated his palate, contrasting with the crispy, earthy rye bread. He took his time enjoying it, waiting for his moment to strike.

  Father swallowed and reached for his steaming cup of tea.

  Perfect.

  “GranGran visited me in my dreams last night,” Tyr said before taking another bite.

  Tea sprayed from Father’s mouth and nose, speckling the full length of the table. Garrett glanced at Tyr, then did a double-take; a moment later he was gone, leaving behind a trail of wind and Sky Mana in his wake.

  Father pounded at his chest, coughing. Once he recovered, his bloodshot eyes glared as Tyr happily devoured his sandwich. “Alright, you got me with that one, kid. Why’re you in such good spirits all of a sudden?”

  Tyr finished chewing. “I’m serious. Apparently I must have sent out some mental distress call that she was able to pick up on. Gave me a little trial in the Dream Realm and some decent advice. Nice woman, even if she’s a bit dramatic. We agreed to keep in touch weekly.”

  And that was how he earned his first trip to the Holy Temple.

  ***

  After his time cooped up at home, Tyr was glad to once more walk the streets of the Undercity.

  Part of his mind longed to return to his studying, perhaps look into some optimal training methods to get Caeden up to par, but there would be plenty of time for that later. Especially since he doubted that he would discover some secret regimen that his cousin’s tutors weren’t already aware of.

  For now, Tyr planned on providing a different kind of support: a rival to compete with. The presence of a training partner could spur one to new heights. Tyr had mostly given up on his half-baked fixation with becoming a spellblade, but there were other ways for them to practice together.

  Back in his life as James Mclean, he had reached the level of National Master in chess mostly to spite one of his childhood friends, Nathan. Nathan had been trained by his dad when he was a little kid and used to mock James whenever he beat him. As a legendarily sore loser, that had been all the motivation James needed to more than surpass the little brat in due time. Without that dubious motivation, he probably wouldn’t have invested thousands and thousands of hours into studying a board game.

  Regardless of his plotting against Caeden, it was nice to be out and about, hand-in-hand with Mother. Though she hadn’t seemed concerned by the news of the Mad Witch’s visit, she still agreed to take Tyr to the Temple, more to ease Leon’s anxiety than anything. According to her, there were no signs of corruption or any compulsive geas implanted into their son’s subconscious.

  Father hadn’t seemed particularly convinced.

  Guy has some serious trauma, Tyr thought as he drank in the spectacle of the city. Though, based on how Garrett fled, maybe I’m the one being weird in this situation.

  As he walked, Tyr cast [Identify] on most objects within sight. Buildings, stalls, people.

  Most attempts fizzled out, likely due to wards or defensive enchantments, and those that worked offered minimal information. After he used the Skill on a few passersby and received annoyed looks, he caught on to the fact it must have been considered rude and invasive among polite society. Mother didn’t mention it, either not caring or assuming that he could figure such social insights out on his own through experimentation.

  Due to the sheer diversity of objects to test the Skill on, and perhaps in part because of his failed attempts to penetrate the scrying wards, he managed to snag a few more easy levels.

  Identify (Common) 13 > 16.

  Their route took them to an unfamiliar section of the Undercity, into the eastern quarter.

  The random variety of architecture and people began to subtly narrow down as they approached the Temple. Buildings took on more of a Gothic, looming aesthetic, adorned with motifs of sunbursts, trees, and human hands spread in invitation. The random merchant stalls vanished, and the chaotic crowds thinned to an orderly trickle. Most of the people wore white robes, though pink and orange raiments similar to Mother’s added splashes of color to the palette.

  Tyr expected some sort of solemn, isolated atmosphere, but the Temple District was rather warm and inviting. Crystal streetlights cast a soft glow throughout the region. Strangers smiled and nodded at Tyr and his Mother as they passed. What appeared to be a naga, with a serpentine lower body and a humanoid head and torso, slithered down the street, guiding a flock of excited human children like a mother duck leading her brood.

  Before he knew it, they had reached the Temple. Tyr had been keeping his eyes out for some imposing edifice of sharp lines and angles. Instead it was a squat, two-story building that stretched out in all directions farther than he could see. It must have looked like a sprawling plateau of white stone from an aerial perspective, but Tyr hadn’t even realized they were approaching until they entered the courtyard.

  A pathway of stained glass led the way to the entrance. Robed figures scurried about everywhere like ants, while supplicants in civilian clothing filed into the building in an orderly row.

  “Alana!” A young woman with vibrant pink hair that matched her robes hurried over and seized Mother by the hand. “It’s been far too long! And this is the Young Lord? How dashing! What brings you to the Temple?”

  Though Mother wore a friendly smile, Tyr knew her well enough to sense a bit of annoyance in her manner. She extracted her hand from the woman’s grasp gently. “Oh, Tyr has some talent when it comes to Dream magic, apparently. Leon’s mother visited him last night so we’re just being careful she didn’t implant any seeds of insanity.”

  The rosiness in the presumptuous healer’s cheeks disappeared as her face went white as a ghost. “O-oh, w-well…”

  “It’s no big deal.” Alana smiled, taking the healer’s hand in her own and patting the top of it reassuringly. “None of the wards so far have triggered and consumed him in Holy fire, and I didn’t detect anything myself. Mostly, I wanted to introduce him to the Sacred Arts. He also has quite some promise as a healer, so I wanted to see if he had any interest in learning here.”

  “Amazing. Quite the talented son, Saintess Alana! Well, I’ll be off then.” The woman scurried away at a pace slightly too fast to be considered a dignified retreat.

  Tyr raised an eyebrow. That was about as savage as I’ve ever seen Mother.

  “Who was that?” he said.

  Mother shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “What was that about Holy fire? You were joking, right?”

  “I would have healed you before it started to hurt too much. You’re a big boy, and it’s best to build up your pain tolerance to things like Purging while you’re young.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Tyr gave her the side-eye. “That’s another joke, yeah?”

  Mother didn’t deign to respond, instead returning a casual wave to the guards at the entrance as they stepped inside the Temple. The hair on the nape of Tyr’s neck stood up as a sensation like static electricity swept throughout his body. He winced, half-expecting to spontaneously combust like a vampire stepping into a church, but nothing else happened.

  Okay, she was joking. Then he noticed a subtle golden glow around her hands, as if she had been preparing to cast a Holy spell. Maybe not…

  ***

  What should have been a short stroll down sterile white corridors turned into a short meet-and-greet with seemingly every healer they passed. Mother’s reputation certainly preceded her, and while she remained calm and composed, after a while she stopped bothering to stop and chat.

  Thirty minutes later, Tyr found himself in what could only be considered an intensive care unit. Transparent Crystal walls partitioned each patient into their own separate area, row after row of identical rooms that seemed to stretch on to infinity.

  Each contained at least one healer, many of them interacting with ominous-looking bedside equipment or laying their hands upon their unconscious patient. The tell-tale radiance of Holy Mana flooded many of the rooms, either streaming from the healers or circulating throughout the life-support machines and into the patients through wires and tubes. No doubt Life and other types of energy were also utilized, but his affinities for them weren’t high enough to identify them without training.

  As they walked down the corridor, Tyr’s head whipped back and forth as he tried to peek into the rooms. In some of them, the healers merely sat around, meditating or perhaps simply taking a nap. Others were chaotic, with an entire team of staff running about attempting to stabilize a patient on the verge of death.

  He expected Mother to intervene in one of those situations, but she barely spared them a glance. Until, after a minute of walking, they came across a room with a little girl. A man and a woman in civilian clothing, presumably her parents, stood at the side of her Cloud Bed with hopeless expressions on their faces. The healer stood beside them, hands crossed behind his back, eyes downcast.

  Mother paused and knocked on the wall. A wide circular seam carved itself into the Crystal partition and dilated open, creating an entrance to the room.

  The male healer looked over his shoulder in confusion. A moment later, a complex expression flitted across his face: surprise, concern, sadness, and a touch of hope. The parents didn’t bother to look back.

  “Sorry to step on any toes,” Mother said, bowing her head slightly. “May I lend my assistance?”

  The patient’s father spun around, fury contorting his features. “Just leave her alone! She’s suffered enough. All you people are doing at this point is torturing her. Just…let her find peace, already.”

  Tyr almost spoke up in defense of Mother. He’d never heard anyone talk to her that way. But she patted him on the head and ruffled his hair.

  He relaxed and settled his eyes upon the little girl. From outside, he had noticed that something was obviously wrong with her, but up close, her condition was horrifying.

  At first, he had thought she wasn't that much older than him because of her tiny figure. Then he realized that all of her limbs had been amputated down to stubs, and were wrapped in blood-stained gauze. The contours of her face showed a maturity befitting a teenager, but it was hard to tell exactly; her exposed skin had sloughed off, revealing glistening red-and-white flesh speckled with patches of black necrosis, turning her face into a nightmarish mask. Bloody tears trailed down the striated muscles of her cheeks.

  Blossoms of blood and pus and straw-colored fluid stained her white gown. The stench of rot, of death, of hopelessness, permeated the entire room.

  What’s wrong—

  “What’s wrong with her?” Mother asked the healer, echoing Tyr’s sentiment. But while his internal voice was horrified, hers was stern, commanding.

  The patient’s father took a few steps toward her, fists clenched. “Who do you think you are?”

  Mother sniffed, ignoring him. “Kick the parents from the Temple. They aren’t helping, and attempting to intimidate staff is completely unacceptable. They can return later tonight, after I’ve healed their daughter.”

  “How dare you!”

  However, the patient’s own mother grabbed the man by the arm. He stopped and glanced back at her. “Let’s go, Gerald. Don’t you recognize her?” She sniffed, tears trickling down her face. “Please, Lady Alana, save her. Our baby has suffered enough.”

  Alana’s face looked carved out of stone. “I will.”

  Both of them departed through the circular opening in the wall, led away by the healer.

  Mother looked down at Tyr and ruffled his hair again. “Sorry you had to see me like that. Well, I’m not really sorry. The duty of a healer is to their patient first and foremost. Any distraction or interruption from their healing is unacceptable. You must have empathy, but never allow others to push you around.”

  Tyr nodded slowly. He had entertained the idea of attending medical school after he graduated, but none of the hospital dramas he had watched or stories he had read had prepared him for the harsh reality. Just looking at the patient filled him with a feeling he had never experienced before. A sense of helplessness, pity, and a selfish gratitude for his own state of good health.

  Mother nodded in approval, perhaps sensing his mood. “Most people never understand. The healthy and the sick live in completely separate worlds. We never appreciate how good we have it. Even when we do have some illness, or a headache, or whatever, the second it goes away we completely forget what it was like to suffer. It is the sacred duty of a healer to bridge that gap, and turn a patient’s lowest moment into nothing more than a painful memory.”

  Mother clasped her hands together, then her fingers contorted into a series of complex handsigns. Some interface in an adjacent Crystal wall activated. Words and runes flickered across the surface, too quick to see, along with a diagram of the patient covered in esoteric markings.

  “This patient is a fifteen-year-old girl that appears to have been the target of some sort of malicious Hex or Curse that converts her skin into a toxin. While the effect is quite insidious, the worst part is that her Constitution is attempting to destroy what it has identified as the root cause—her own skin. It’s a complex case that the Temple has wrongly determined is not worth the required resources for a Panacea-Type Heal. Meaning a very expensive, catch-all restoration of her body to its base template.”

  Tyr bit his lip. “But…you can help her, right?”

  “And you will be able to as well one day.” Mother’s smile was like the sun breaking through the clouds. “Did your grandmother teach you how to manipulate mana?”

  “Uh, kind of. I received the option for the [Mana Manipulation] General Skill and was able to use some Dream Mana.”

  “Good. Select that Skill. You can drop it in the future without much of a consequence, but it and its evolutionary paths will be beneficial for your entire life. Also, don’t rely on anything you learn in the Dream Realm to work the same in reality. Natural laws function differently in that place. It can be a valuable training ground, but be aware that it is ultimately a land of imagination.”

  Tyr pulled up his Skill Archive and filled in his fourth slot.

  [ General Skill Mana Manipulation (Uncommon) Level 1 has been learned. ]

  Mother nodded. “Now, take out your Whitewood Wand. I don’t want you to participate in this, since it would interfere with my own working, but I want you to sense your own Mana Core and attempt to follow along with what I’m doing as much as you can.”

  With a flick of his wrist, Tyr summoned the wand from his spatial ring. He sent a tendril of his willpower into it, and immediately sensed swirls of golden, yellow, and crimson Mana within his chest. Mother took one of his hands in her own and squeezed it. The swirls began to rotate at a frenzied speed, delineating the circumference of his marble-sized Core. Radiant warmth flared within his chest.

  In the back of his mind, Tyr noted that the patient’s primary healer had returned to the room. He stood respectfully at the back, observing.

  Mother reached out with her other hand and laid it on top of the suffering girl’s chest.

  Thin, anemic lips twitched. Her eyelids fluttered weakly.

  Mother’s voice was soft and soothing, suffused with her own evolved [Singing] skill. “Hold on for just a while. You’ve been so brave. It’s almost over.”

  Then, her voice changed, becoming that of a commanding angel. Words of Power flowed from her lips, flowing one into another. Unlike the time she had blessed his Trial of Myriad Affinities, a few syllables latched onto Tyr’s mind. Only the barest fragments, not nearly enough for even the most minimal comprehension, but it was something.

  Is it because of [Singing]?

  He quickly dismissed his thoughts, devoting all of his attention to Mother’s actions.

  Her chanting seemed to stretch on for hours, days, though Tyr intellectually understood it must have only been minutes. The temperature increased until sweat began to trickle down his neck and back. Solar, Holy, and Life Mana began to fill the room, a mist of yellow and crimson particles.

  The scent of death slowly faded, replaced by a clean, warm aroma. Tyr looked down at his arms, noticed the thick black ooze prickling his skin as the mist purged the impurities from his body. As soon as he shed the foul liquid, the refreshing mist swept it all away.

  Then, Mother seized control of the dense accumulation of mana. Interestingly, the Crystal walls seemed to act as a focus, helping her manipulate the energies flooding the room like some sort of lens. Tyr observed as she compressed it into a levitating orb the size of a fist above the patient. Like a miniature sun it burned gold and red, emitting small flares and arcs as it fought against her control. In the end, the orb lost, stabilizing into a perfect sphere.

  Though she made it look relatively easy, Tyr could feel Mother’s hand trembling in his grip. Her face was twisted in concentration and even a hint of pain. The sight broke Tyr’s heart.

  Then, she shouted—a primal, defiant yell. The levitating orb plummeted into the patient’s chest.

  Immediately, the young girl began to seize, her amputated limbs flexing like the legs of a dying spider. Her body convulsed against the bed, smearing it with her blood.

  Tyr fought down a wave of nausea, resisting the urge to look away. He watched, watched as the orb of compressed Mana sank into her chest. As it began to spread, tendrils of bloody gold flowed and disseminated across her body like a new set of blood vessels. The thickest streams headed toward her amputated limbs. Slowly, impossibly, bone and flesh sprouted from her stubs, knitting itself together, unraveling her saturated bandages as it pushed through. Like some twisted, organic tree sped up a million times, she regrew her limbs. A disturbing fusillade of cracks and pops drowned out Mother’s chanting, though couldn't quite mask the patient’s increasingly loud screams.

  As horrifying as she sounded, Tyr reassured himself it must be a good sign. She was regaining the strength to actually make noise again, until her agony was almost deafening.

  I see why she kicked the parents out…

  The whole time, Tyr focused on memorizing what he was seeing. The flow of mana, the process of her body restoring itself, every excruciating detail was imprinted into his memory. He would probably have a few nightmares about this, but it was also, in a gruesome way, utterly fascinating.

  Finally, the patient’s screams began to taper off. Her limbs glistened, striated muscles and fat and veins and arteries all on display like some anatomical model. Then, fresh, pale skin began to grow in patches like fungal blooms across a lake. Scattered at first, then they began to fuse, to stretch tight and snug over her exposed flesh. The gruesome mask of her face became beautiful once more.

  And, eventually, in the end, a teenage girl with silky black hair lay there in place of the twisted horror she had been. Body fluids trickled off the sides of the bed, pooling onto the crystal floor.

  The patient’s eyelids fluttered, opened. A pair of green eyes stared at Mother in shock, in relief. There was a haunted expression on her face, but it soon smoothed away into contentment. Tears—normal, clear tears—trickled down the girl’s face.

  “Thank you…” she whispered to Mother, reaching out and holding her hand.

  That was insane. Disgusting. Terrible. Beautiful.

  Singing (Uncommon) 23 > 26.

  Mana Manipulation (Uncommon) 1 > 8.

  Focused Mind (Common) 24 > 27.

  Tyr swallowed and squeezed his mom’s hand. I think I wouldn’t mind learning how to be a healer…