Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 99: Confusing

Foggy morning time, and Valens was busy handling the mold gathered from the box of bread laid by the side. He had already distilled the alcohol and prepared the rest of the ingredients for penicillin, which would be ready in a few days' time.

The monotony of the work lifted the great weight settled across his mind. Working in the silence of the morning helped, as well.

That done, he went back to check on Selin, who sat calmly in the welcoming hall, tidying up her table and her chair, looking somewhere between excited and nervous. At the side, a silent Dain loomed as the guardian of their little clinic, covered in a thick coat that did a manageable job at hiding his sword.

At least he brought a smaller one this time. We don’t want to scare off our patients.

“Are we ready?” Valens asked as he rubbed his hands.

“Ready as we can, Mr. Kosthal,” Selin said.

“Uh,” Dain grunted.

“But are we…” Selin then muttered. “Just going to wait for people to find us? Perhaps we should consider putting that signboard over the building.”

“We’re trying to make it seem like this is an illegal operation, Selin,” Valens said. “This is the only way to get the attention of that unwanted crowd. Culprits and criminals, to my experience, like their business shady and out of sight. This will work. We just need Garran to do his thing.”

“He didn’t look too happy to wear those ragged clothes,” Selin said. “What if—”

“I’m telling you, ain’t no good gonna come from waiting in the line of those churches!” a voice boomed from beyond the doors of the clinic, followed by a set of thumping steps. “But this guy… The man’s a damned magician. He does this thing with his hands, and BAM! You’re fixed and good to go.”

“A Healer in Melton, you’re saying?” another voice questioned, this one belonging to a stranger.

“Not just a Healer, alright. I’m telling you, the bastard’s a magician!” Garran laughed and pushed the door open with a hand.

“We stay calm and do our job,” Valens whispered to Selin as the Templar brought the stranger inside. “If you feel like something is wrong, just be patient and Dain will handle it.”

“Understood,” Selin nodded, and rose from her chair. “I’ll send the patient to your room.”

“Good,” Valens smiled at her, and taking a glance at the pair of ragged men stumbling inside, he went back to his room.

It didn’t take long for his door to be opened by a reeking, stumbling Garran, who pushed the other man inside with a wide grin across his yellow teeth.

You should be an actor. You even did the teeth!

“Here, here,” Garran mumbled, pointing with his chin to Valens. “Show him your back. Let him take care o’ you.”

The stranger looked like a man in his mid-thirties, long hair disheveled and brown, a mean stubble masking most of his face. He had a few teeth missing in his mouth, likely tied to the giant scar that ran down the side of his face. He reeked a mixed stench of alcohol and smoke, something most of the Knuckle Alley residents shared in their misery.

“You’re the Healer?” he said, wincing as he eyed Valens with clear doubt. “My brother here told me you’re doing some serious work. Free, shady work, I’ve been told. That ain’t make much sense, though, is it?”

“Got pissed into this shit hole and trying to work a living here. With the Church hot on my tail, can’t blame me for picking this damn place, can you?” Valens answered, giving him a look. “And I’m thinking you’re not in the mood for much talking, are you? Open that back for me. I’ll take a look at that gash.”

The man paused, squinting down at him. “You know?”

“That’s the job,” Valens smiled. “Something caught you bad, eh?”

“Try a god damn beast,” the man said stiffly. “That ain’t a man, I tell you. Barrow’s a fucking menace.”

“Sit,” Valens gestured at the stretcher toward the side, giving a nod to Garran behind the man’s back. With that, the Templar excused himself out of the room, but Valens could still feel his presence in the corridor, waiting at the ready in case things went wrong.

“Uh,” the man grunted as he took off his leather coat, underneath the shirt bloody and torn, the giant gash across the back patched with clumsy bandage work. By the stench of the wound, it had already started rotting.

“This kind of wound can kill a man,” Valens said, tearing the bandages one by one. “If you leave it alone, that is.”

“Can’t go around searching for Priests, can I?” the man lamented. “They’d be asking questions, and once the questions start, there ain’t no stopping them. Then they’d get the police involved, and before I knew it I’d be staring at the bars of some prison. They don’t much care for us poor folk out there. Think we’re vermin to be rid of, they do.”

“I can understand that,” Valens nodded.

“You can?” the man narrowed his eyes at him.

Valens sighed. “I’m a bit of a vermin myself. The Church hated my guts when they saw what I could do. Tried to hang me by the Golden Cathedral to make an example out of me. You think having a gash is bad? I’ve been out running for my life from the day I stepped foot in this damned city.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Strange business you’ve got here—”

“Take a deep breath,” Valens said, scowling down at him. “This will sting a little.”

"Uh…” the man nodded heavily, and turned his back as Valens placed his hand on his skin.

A Lifeward showed him the state of the wound. He caught the infection right away, but frowned when he saw how the man’s body was fighting against it. Stats were at work here, and by the thickness of his muscle tissue and the strength under his frame, Valens thought the man was at least Level 80.

Nothing serious. I can stitch the gash and he could take care of the rest.

He managed a Lifesurge across the wound, washing the area with a wave of lifemana before starting his stitch. He didn’t use any sedatives since the man could easily take it. Carving the dead tissue from the wound took some time, but after a minute or two the skin looked soft, without any scars left to indicate the man had been cut by what seemed like a rather big knife.

But Valens wasn’t done.

After the wound, he sent a Hexsurge slithering up around the man’s chest, toward his chest cavity, staring at the man all the while to see if he would flinch.

He didn’t. He just sat there, obedient like a child.

Good. He can’t feel it.

Once the Hexsurge threads seeped into his chest cavity, Valens paired it with a Lifeward to see the Gate in that deep nothingness. When the frequencies painted the picture in his mind, he nodded.

The Gate looked simple.

Nothing too complicated.

The Void-tinged threads of Hexsurge oozed through the slits underneath the Gate, and slowly they pushed it open.

[You have arrived at the Spiritum.]

Once inside, Valens peered through the frequencies to see the man’s soul.

It wasn’t there.

This… Looks just like Jack’s gate. Shrouded soul, is it? Interesting. Then in that case I have to take a look at those memories, too.

“Hold still,” Valens urged the man, who stiffened under his touch. “This is the important part. I don’t want you to move even a finger.”

Then he managed a Lifeward over his mind.

He scowled when he saw the memory snaps.

They were intact.

In good condition.

For good measure, he checked some of them, and saw how the man got that giant gash over his back. It was during a heated argument that ended when the boss of their little gang, Barrow, flashed his knife and educated his men after they messed up a cargo delivery to an important client.

Strange. I can see every single one of his memories, but not his soul. What about his fate, then?

“Is it done?” the man squirmed impatiently just then, glancing over his shoulder to Valens. “I didn’t feel anything. You sure you fixed it?”

“One last thing,” Valens said, patting him on the back. He went over to his table and fetched the Sphere of Veiled Fates, frowning in thought.

He had only used this thing on himself, and couldn’t get a real result, which was why he didn’t know what sort of reaction he would get if he let the man place his hands on it.

But then, that was why he waited rather than having Selin and others try it, right? He couldn’t have asked for a better subject than a member of a little gang.

“I want you to place your hands over this sphere,” Valens said, keeping one hand on the sphere while looking straight into the man’s eyes.

“What? This?” the man scowled at the sphere as he turned, then paused as surprise flashed behind his eyes. He checked his back with a hand, turning and twisting, eyes widening in delight. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. You fixed it!”

“The job’s not done,” Valens said, then demanded, “Place your hands over this sphere.”

“Uh…” the man mumbled, but under Valens’s intent gaze, he obliged and did as he was told.

…..

By the time evening fell, and the fog thickened around Knuckle Alley, the number of patients Valens handled had reached a staggering number of thirty-five.

It spoke to the character of the place, as once the first guy went back and spread the word, people started streaming in.

Garran was relieved that his first stunt worked, and he didn’t have to wear those clothes anymore. Since the number of people exceeded their expectations, however, he decided to stay with Dain just in case, even if it proved unnecessary.

Criminal or not, to Valens’s experience, people who were in need of remedy tended to behave like obedient children in a Healer’s care. Sure, there had been a few rough ones who demanded immediate attention, but thanks to Valens’s speed, they got their remedy before they could make a fuss about it.

The results?

They were confusing.

Out of the thirty-five that Valens healed, only five of them had their souls visible in the Spiritum. The souls of the rest had been shrouded from Valens’s gaze by what Lenora presumed as an intricate work by the Wretched Mother’s court. Valens agreed with her, since when he used the Sphere of Veiled Fates he couldn’t see anything in the visions.

The other five who had their souls visible, though?

Now the Sphere showed all kinds of scenes to Valens when he tried it on them. It was like watching a movie that had been cut, and twisted in some scenes, changed genres in the middle, never quite settling on a reasonable pace. He had blurry vision through it all, which made it hard to pick the details.

Another odd thing about the ones whose souls were missing was that, unlike Jack, they all had their memories intact, which didn’t make sense as their fates had been veiled.

“Strange,” Lenora commented when they gathered in the company’s office after they were done with today’s work. She had been busy with Church work all day long, and had only arrived when they closed the clinic. “If their memories are intact, but their souls are not, then it’s hard to make a connection between them and Jack. You didn’t see anything else in their memories, did you?”

“I couldn’t go over millions of memories in such short time,” Valens said. “But the ones I glimpsed over were all normal. You have your gang members. You have your thieves. There was one who had murdered a man years ago. I think the police got him once Garran gave them a notice, right?”

“Caught the bastard like a fish out of sea,” Garran chuckled, glancing at him. “You know this mind business can solve much of Belgrave’s troubles, do you? The Captain already put in a word for you to the Bishop.”

“Thanks, but we still have nothing on that serial murder case,” Valens said. “Give me a day or two. I think once I make a name for myself in the poor ring of the city, I will start hearing about the real shady deals happening in the shadows.”

“It’ll take a week or two for the Sacred Artifact to arrive in Belgrave,” Lenora said. “Before it arrives, I want you to keep Knuckle Alley as silent as it can be. We don’t need another murder case.”

“What is it, anyway?” Valens asked, curious. “How is that thing going to help us?”

“You’ll see when it arrives,” Lenora said. “I can’t disclose the information right now.”

“Right…”

“Go, get a rest,” Lenora said to the rest of the team. Mas and Captain were out for another haunting case in the upper ring of Belgrave, so she had the reins of the team for now. “And Valens, I told Percival to prepare some documents for you. You’re a member of the team now, and it’s time you learn the things we’re dealing with in detail.”

“Oh?” Valens glanced at Percival, who nodded at him. “Documents?”

“Basic information about cults, secret orders, and the Church. Make yourself familiar with them. It’s important for you to make yourself familiar with them.” Lenora nodded.

“Understood,” Valens said.

More information about the cults and orders?

Yes please!

….