Healing The Illness

After returning to the inn, Rebecca and I nervously walked deeper into the alley with few words about what was about to happen. Eventually we stopped in front of a rather old-looking apartment building.

“Our home is the corner room on the first floor here. I’ll go and leave my sister with the neighbor, so please wait a moment. I’ll come get you right away.”

“Alright. I’ll wait here, so don’t rush.”

A few minutes later Rebecca came to call me, and I quietly slipped into the house without making any noise. Just as she had said, her mother was asleep. In the bed at the back of the room lay a frail-looking woman.

“…I’ll try using Heal.”

I sat down on the chair Rebecca had placed beside the bed and activated Heal—something I had practiced before but was using on an ill person for the first time in my life. Rebecca’s mother’s body glowed faintly, and the light was absorbed into her body.

I repeated that again and again. Each Heal took about thirty seconds. That meant one hundred twenty times per hour. Since I needed to keep casting Heal for several hours, curing an illness required at least several hundred casts, and sometimes more than five hundred consecutive uses.

Even people with large amounts of magical power could apparently only use Heal about ten times per day… which showed just how difficult it was to cure illness without the power of a divine servant.

Only extremely wealthy high-ranking nobles or royalty could manage it. They would have to gather nearly every light magic user with large reserves of magic power in the entire country.

“Is it okay if I talk to you…?”

“If it’s not something complicated, it’s fine. But my replies might be vague.”

Heal required shaping the magical power produced inside the body—divine power in my case—and transforming it into a phenomenon through imagery. That process was somewhat difficult. Fire or water was easy to imagine, but healing was much harder.

If it were something like healing a broken bone, it was easy to imagine the bone reconnecting. But with an illness where you didn’t even know which part was wrong, it was extremely complicated. According to a book I had read, there were even mages who had large magical reserves but could not participate in curing illnesses because they could not properly form the necessary imagery.

“Alright. Then I won’t talk.”

“Yeah. This will probably take a long time, so just spend your time however you like.”

“No. I’ll stay here and watch the whole time.”

Hearing Rebecca’s serious voice, I said nothing more and continued casting Heal. I was glad I could activate Heal in a way that cured illness… If it was the result of studying even when people said I was useless, then I wanted to praise my past self.

After continuing to cast Heal for a while, I still had no sense that the illness was completely cured. When Heal had not fully healed something, there was a strange sensation as if it was being resisted somewhere. According to the book, once the illness was cured, that resistance would disappear completely and Heal would flow through smoothly.

There was still resistance whenever I cast Heal, and I could not feel it weakening at all.

“Rebecca, is there a clock in this house?”

“Sorry, we don’t have one. But the house three doors down has one. Should I go check? Sometimes they let me see it.”

“Could you?”

“Alright. Wait a moment.”

Rebecca returned after several dozen seconds and told me the time. Only two hours had passed since I started casting Heal. This might test my mental endurance quite a bit… My concentration was starting to slip.

“Alright… imagine returning the damaged parts to normal, imagine peeling away the bad parts little by little, imagine removing not only the surface but also the roots beneath it.”

I repeated the healing tips written in the book I had read, trying to keep my concentration going. Don’t think about anything unnecessary. Just focus on curing the illness.

“Rebecca, what symptoms were the worst for your mother?”

I remembered reading in one book that if you properly understood the patient’s symptoms and focused Heal on those areas, recovery would be faster.

“Recently her coughing has been really bad, and she coughs up a lot of phlegm. She also gets frequent fevers.”

“Thanks.”

If she was coughing… then I should focus Heal mainly around the chest area. As long as I didn’t mess up activating Heal, I gradually adjusted the imagery I used—

—And after another two hours, I was still casting Heal.

I had thought that since I could use divine power almost without limit, continuing to cast Heal would be easy. I wanted to punch the version of myself from earlier who had thought that.

It was unbelievably exhausting. Having to maintain constant concentration to activate Heal felt like studying through the night until my head felt like it would explode, while still forcing myself to stay focused and keep producing the correct solution over and over again.

“Ah… it might be cured.”

While I was casting Heal purely on willpower, I suddenly felt something clearly different from before. Nervously, I cast Heal once more… and this time there was unmistakably no resistance.

“R-Rebecca… I-I think it’s cured!!”

“R-really…?”

“Yeah. The book said that when the resistance disappears, it means the illness has been cured. So it should be healed now.”

Hearing my words, tears spilled from Rebecca’s eyes. She extended trembling hands toward her mother. When she gently touched her cheek and leaned close to listen to her breathing, her eyes widened.

“It feels different… usually her breathing sounds painful, and she coughs a lot even while sleeping.”

The moment I heard Rebecca say that, all the strength left my body and I collapsed where I was sitting.

“Haah… I’m seriously exhausted.”

I could not help muttering that. But I was glad it worked. I was glad Rebecca did not have to lose someone important to her.

“Rebecca, I’m going to head back to the inn. It might be troublesome if your mother wakes up. She’ll probably wonder why she suddenly feels better… so try to come up with some explanation.”

With my exhausted mind, I left the handling of everything from here to Rebecca. She nodded with a reliable expression.

“Luca, will you be at that inn tomorrow?”

“Yeah. But if it’s early, I might still be asleep.”

“Alright. Then can I come to the inn sometime after noon? There are a lot of things I want to talk about.”

“That’s fine. If I’m asleep, just wake me up.”

“Got it.”

Rebecca still had tears shining in her eyes, but she was smiling brightly. Seeing that expression, I left the house with a deep sense of accomplishment.