By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 11 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7, Episode 27: Ryoma the Medical Intern

“Right, slimes are taken care of, research plans look good, the goblins are fed, and I’ve taken a bath. Now then...”

Late that night, I decided to use what time I had before bed to ponder my spellcasting with the slimes. Inspiration struck, and I called over a mud slime that was looking bored near the puddle in the corner. Then I cast Sensory Sharing, a Tamer spell mainly used for reconnaissance. Sharing another’s sight was the most common use case for this spell, but it also allowed for the sharing of the other senses. With slimes, however, the spell had no effect, since they lacked sensory organs, or so I’d heard at Reinhart’s when I learned about the spell.

Sure enough, I could feel nothing through my usual five senses, but I was counting on my sixth sense—magic detection, which was a prerequisite to learn and use this spell. Every magic user could detect magical energy, though accuracy varied. It was no mere placebo, but a tangible sensation. I had also noticed through my experience experimenting with slimes that magic played a large part in everything from hypothesizing to theorizing and testing. That’s why I decided to try sharing magic detection.

I felt a faint resistance, and then, BAM! The sudden glut of information that came flooding in almost knocked me off my feet. I couldn’t decipher what bits of information there were; I could only suck in the torrent of data. Suddenly, I started to feel feverish, dizzy, and nauseous all at once, topped off with a severe headache. I felt burned out, not unlike how I’d been accustomed to feeling at the job I worked in my previous life. Of course, back then, I still had to come in even when sick. But now, there was quite literally nothing which said I had to take all this, or feel guilty about not being able to take it. I cut off the spell, and the flood of information ceased. Relief washed over me, but there was still some lingering discomfort afterwards.

“I’ll have to be more careful...and figure out what’s happening.”

■ ■ ■

I felt better the next morning. I planned to work and study at the hospital that day, so I jumped to the city with space magic and walked the rest of the way to the hospital. After changing into my lab coat in the locker room, I reported to the hospital wing break room, where Maflal and his five apprentices from the duke’s were already congregating.

“Good morning!”

“Morning. Once more unto the breach, eh?”

After the morning meeting, we went over our work for the day. After going over each of our tasks, we were left with a little bit of time before work began. So, I decided to ask them about the symptoms I’d experienced the previous night, just to be safe during this important time. I asked them if they had any causes for similar symptoms in mind.

“Physically, you’re doing just fine. Your symptoms must have been caused by mental stress and exhaustion. You overworked your brain, not your body.”

“Yes. No need for any treatment, per se. Rest would be the only thing, but if you don’t have any issues now, you should be able to maintain your work schedule. Your circumstances are curious, though. A vast amount of data came flooding in when you Sensory Shared with a slime... I have heard that less experienced tamers may feel sick from the mixing of their own and the familiar’s senses,” Maflal said, alluding to the phenomenon where a shaky video could make you sick.

I had experienced that when I first started practicing Sensation Sharing, but... “It felt different from that. It was like being forced to read mountains of documents at high speed...”

“Then I’m not sure. I have fragments of knowledge on the topic from working for the Jamils, but Taming magic is outside of my expertise.”

“I have an appointment with Taylor, so I’ll ask him about it then.”

“Yes, that should be best.”

“Could it be...? No...” Clarissa muttered.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“It reminded me of the Magic Eyes story from my childhood.”

Boom. Some fantasy-sounding thing outta nowhere.

“The Magic Eyes?”

“You haven’t heard of it? It’s a legend of a famous adventurer and was even made into a fairytale... Oh! I have heard that different races and regions call it something different. Elves like Maflal, for example, should know it as Fairy Eyes.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with too many fairy tales or legends.”

“Oh, really?”

“You know more about medicine than me...”

“I always thought you knew about all sorts of things. I didn’t expect you not to know such a famous fairytale!”

I chuckled, since my knowledge of medicine was given to me by the gods. They’d been real lifesavers for me lately.

“Then let me give a quick summary... Magic Eyes allows its holder to see a world different from the one everyone else sees. In exchange, or when the holder is unable to utilize their eyes, the eyes are said to cause terrible migraines or consume the holder’s mind.”

“Interesting,” I said. I could see the resemblance between the story and my situation.

“The Magic Eyes are supposed to be a powerful weapon if used properly, but the migraines afterwards are brutal.”

“It’s often compared to having your skull bashed in or your brain being fried!”

“Most born with Magic Eyes are said to choose their own death, most of the time...”

“That’s scary.”

“Yes, and I was only reminded of it. If you had it Ryoma, I don’t think you would be talking to us right now.”

We shared a laugh at this.

“It’s about time, everyone,” said Maflal. “Let’s do some good work today.”

“Yes!”

We each moved to our stations. I first headed to the dispensary, accompanied by Ector, the quiet expert in pharmaceuticals and especially antivenom. At the hospital wing, he was usually the one in charge of dispensing medicine for its patients. My objective was to learn from him as I assisted his work. Plus, he seemed like the researcher type. I got along and talked the most with him out of the apprentices.

“Oh, that’s right, Ryoma. About the stock of medicinal herbs that we were talking about...”

Back in our morning meeting, the doctors had shown concern that this winter was going to be particularly cold, so much so that it would affect the health of our patients. Ector mentioned that he wanted to stock up on as many medicinal herbs as we could in preparation.

“If you can make a list of what you need, I’ll gather as many of them as I can. Speaking of, I collected the herbs I’d left with the children yesterday.”

“The children...from the house you rebuilt.”

Considering how much medicine the hospital went through, we needed many ingredients and man-hours to process it. These ingredients could be just about anything; some were dangerous to handle without proper knowledge, while others could easily be processed by anybody. So, I had asked the children at the orphanage to take on the simple steps of processing the medicinal herbs for hospital use. They happily agreed. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad deal for them, since I was told that they were already working whatever jobs they could to make ends meet.

“Are they ready?” asked Ector.

“I gave them a once-over last night, and they look good. Do you want to see them now?”

“Yes, please. Everything you got. I’ll check them.”

I produced what I picked up the previous day from my Item Box.

Ector opened each box of processed herbs and a grin spread across his face. He seemed pleased with the children’s work.

“Looks good... I can tell they weren’t rushed.”

“Just because the work is simple, it doesn’t mean everyone who works them will put the time in to do them right. I think they did a great job and I’m thinking of offering them the same work again.”

“Let’s begin.”

“Yes.”

I was used to the sudden change of subject and extended silence. After putting away the herbs, we started our work. We seldom talked while we worked, as the wrong mixture or quantity of drugs could harm a patient. We each devoted our attention to the task at hand and only spoke when we had to, only focusing on mixing the requested medicine correctly. One after another...

“Ryoma.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Let’s take a break.” Ector was holding two steaming cups.

“What? Oh, crap... It’s been three hours already.”

He had prepared us drinks, seeing that I was about to reach a break in my work.

“I just noticed myself,” he said. “Usually, other people snap me out of my work... I’ve never met someone who got lost in this work more than I do. Does your drink look okay?”

“Well...”

“Right, it’s your usual... I watched how much water and leaves you put in, so it should be the same ratio... I’ve been meaning to ask, but this tea is herbal, right? Roasted dante root, dried mogwart, and if I’m not mistaken, gilkoda leaves.”

“Right on the money.” He identified three ingredients of my go-to herbal tea since my previous life, dandelion coffee, just by looking at it.

“What are the benefits?”

“Dietary supplement, improved blood flow, calming, detoxing, and strengthening the stomach lining.”

“The mogwart can treat all sorts of symptoms. It’s called the backyard cure-all.”

“Would you like to try it?” I offered.

“Well, if you’re offering...”

He was staring daggers at my cup... And I knew how he felt. I would have that same look if someone had a mysterious slime with them. We silently exchanged cups, and I sipped on his tea. I would have never said this out loud since Ector made the tea for me, but I couldn’t say that his cup of tea was enjoyable at all.

“Oh.” Ector suddenly turned his attention from the dandelion coffee to me. “I’m impressed you can gather so many herbs in the winter.”

“A few herbs became much easier to get after I started growing them. And the slimes help a lot.”

“I guessed as much. I thought it would have been more realistic to use the secretion of medicine slimes. You have slimes that can grow herbs?”

“I only realized it recently, but weed slimes make it possible.”

The key here was that there was technically no classification of weed in botany. For example, while mogwart was used medicinally, it was often found growing on empty plots in the city, and treated like a weed. In other words, “weeds” were just grasses that humans found inconvenient. The weed slimes fed on any grass on that extensive list. Instead of preferring medicinal or poisonous plants specifically, they ate anything that grew out of the ground, similar to how metal slimes ate anything metallic. Using the weed slimes’ tendency to grow weed for cover, I was able to farm medicinal herbs. They hadn’t grown naturally before because of my poor direction. They must have picked up on what I considered to be weeds and avoided growing any grass that I found useful. This was a good reminder for me to watch out for my preconceptions if I wanted to improve my research.

“The weed slimes only need water, sunlight, and scavenger slime fertilizer. With the trash plant, I can get lots of fertilizer every day. If we wanted to, I could mass-farm medicinal herbs as well. I guess I’ve already started.”

While I’d discovered that weed slimes could grow both medicinal and poisonous plants if I wanted them to, I still wanted to utilize my herb slimes and poisonous plant slimes. For the time being, I picked out candidates from the countless weed slimes that preferred wood magic and poison magic. All I had to do was wait for them to evolve.

“To tell you the truth, I was never very interested in slimes before you came... But there’s much to learn about them.”

“It makes me happy that you see the potential in them.”

There was another discovery I had made through studying slime secretion, but I had a feeling that I would greatly exceed our break time if I mentioned it, so I’d save that topic for another time.

We soon went back to work, and I kept my head down until I was finished with my quota.

“Ector, I’m done with the work here.”

“Thank you. I can take care of the rest.”

“I’ll get going to my next station, then.”

That’s what I did. My next post was examining and treating patients. The front lines. For the most part, the patients were my employees working in other sectors of the business. Most of them were laborers who had traveled far to Gimul only to struggle in the city until they started working for me. Some of the workers had gotten sick from the difference in work environment or schedule, and exhaustion caught up with others now that they could catch a breath. All of them were entitled to free treatment at the hospital wing as a form of community service and practice for me and the doctors.

“Hello.”

“There you are. Perfect timing,” said Maflal. The other three apprentices had already begun seeing patients in their examination rooms.

Seeing that the nurses I’d hired were frantically going in and out of the exam rooms, we had a lot of patients today.

“The security team just arrived.”

“That’s for me,” I said. “I’ll get ready now.”

By the way, Maflal’s training had been tailored to each apprentice’s goals. For example, mine was to maintain good health so I could keep working as an adventurer, and to improve my chances of surviving worst-case scenarios. As a result, I didn’t need the knowledge and technique to diagnose any symptom. That would be ideal, of course, if I could learn all of the knowledge and practice all of the techniques needed to do so. That, however, would take far too much time. A master doctor who devoted their life to medicine might achieve this by the end of their life, which I had no interest in doing. All I wanted to learn was how to maintain the health of myself and my party, how to administer first aid when needed to make sure I could keep myself and my team alive long enough to bring them to a real doctor. The most important part of accomplishing this was...

“Thank you for seeing me!”

“Ammos? I remember you came in last week too. I appreciate that you are out there protecting the people and that I get to practice my treatment on you, but aren’t you pushing it a bit far?”

“Heh, my captain said the same thing. But I had to protect this kid...”

“Now you have your arm in a sling.”

“I got hit by a piece of lumber.”

“Any other injuries? Did you get hit in the head?”

“I kept my head guarded, sir. Got hit in the back, but no problems there.”

“I’ll take a look at that, just in case. Turn around, please.”

My field of choice here was treating battle wounds like these. The people of the security teams who protect the people of the city with their lives were the perfect subjects for me to practice my craft on so I can learn the best spells, medicine, and equipment to use in treating these injuries. Not to mention that they were also great practice for the other apprentices. While the hospital wing did give priority to treating the members of the security team, I was grateful that they trusted a rookie like me to treat them, especially since their livelihoods depended on their health. I had to give every examination and treatment my all if I wanted to reciprocate that respect.

After examining Ammos’s wounds, I determined that I could heal his back with Heal and his broken arm with High Heal.

“Your back is bruised, but it didn’t affect your spine, so I can treat it with healing magic. Is that all right?”

“Yes, please, Little Doc.”

The patients had somehow started calling me Little Doc. I would have preferred something like “the young doctor,” but they say all of the doctors here were young. All four of the apprentices were in their twenties, and even Maflal looked the same age as them. “Little Doc” was the best nickname to designate me, I supposed.

With a green light from Maflal, I cast the Heal spell. He had given me tips on how to effectively cast healing magic as well. Before, I had simply cast the spell with a vague visualization of the trauma healing. Professional healers, however, had a few things to keep in mind. One of them was the image of the magical skeleton. Living beings had a skeleton composed of magical energy overlapping their physical skeleton. This also accounted for the source of magical energy for spellcasters, and it was a particularly important concept for casting healing spells.

According to Maflal, the magical skeleton holds information about that person’s physicality. When using healing spells, one was supposed to sense the patient’s magical skeleton to scan the information of their physical skeleton and visualize healing their wounds to match how their body should be...which was easier said than done. I was able to sense my patient’s magical skeleton when concentrating, but only as a vaguely humanoid lump of magical energy. I was getting no information from it at all.

But, for some reason, I felt like I was making progress today. While I still couldn’t extract any information, I could sense his magical skeleton much more clearly. When I focused on the bruise on his back, I felt a slight discrepancy there... Could this be what Maflal was talking about? After visualizing how the bruise would heal, I cast my spell.

“Heal.”

The bruise faded away immediately, his skin restored to its original color. I had guessed that I would need to cast the spell at least twice... But my spell seemed more effective. I double-checked his back, and all seemed well.

Next, I cast High Heal on his broken arm. This time, the arm was completely healed after two instances when I had expected to need three.

“You fixed me up, all right! Thanks, Little Doc!”

“Take care.”

After our patient left, Maflal smiled at me. “I see you’re getting the hang of sensing magical skeletons.”

“Is that what I felt?”

“I don’t know what you felt, but it certainly seemed like you did. The effectiveness of healing spells changes drastically by whether or not you can obtain information from your patient’s magical skeleton. The spells you cast today were much more effective than when you last showed me. But this is just the beginning. If you study the reading of magical skeletons further, you can cast a spell to mend severed limbs. If you master it, I hear you can immediately tell every ailment and injury the person has.”

That would make me a human CAT scan machine.

“Of course, achieving that requires enormous effort and time. I have all the life experience of an average human, but still have not reached that stage.”

“What’s important is not losing what clicked for you just now. Let’s bring our next patient in. Oh, preferably a patient on whom you can cast a healing spell. I’ll go pick one out.”

Maflal left the exam room and began sending me patient after patient who required healing spells. He was usually a very calm and intellectual mentor, but I learned today that he also had a more drill sergeant side to his teaching style.