yemalu

It was the start of the new week and I was attending Iatromancy class today.

One of the reasons why I\'m attending today was because the basic close combat class was having practical lessons today so they were expecting there to be injuries amongst the students.

It would also serve as a small test for us to check our Proficiency with Iatromancy at the same time.

Naturally, they already knew that I was proficient in the magic itself so I already passed without needing to attend this lesson, but I wasn\'t going to pass up on the chance to increase my Proficiency in this magic.

I ain\'t gonna say no to free exp ok?

Besides, if I wasn\'t here, this class would only have four Iatromancy students to handle the fifty or so Swords class students which might take them a long while to heal up anyway. That\'s why I\'m actually doing them a favour by joining in.

It\'s been a while since I\'ve seen my classmates in this class and… Err… Well…

"Oh! The other day I found a dying bird on the ground so I healed it! Seeing its flesh knit up and restore itself was so interesting!"

"Ah! I know! I found a rabbit that had its throat sliced open and its head was dangling from its body! I tried to heal it but it didn\'t work though. I guess when it\'s dead the magic doesn\'t work?"

"Ehehe~ I tried it on a number of rats that I had my servant catch. It seems like as long as the target is alive and not completely dead, the magic would still take effect! Although if they were already on the verge of death, [Close Wounds] wouldn\'t be enough to heal them completely and they\'ll still die later though."

"Oh! You managed to catch some rats? Could you share some with me next time? I need some subjects to practise on and I don\'t think my brother is willing to be my test subject anymore~"

These were the four girls who were originally shunned by their peers and had no confidence in themselves by the way… Now they were talking about such morbid things like they were talking about what sweets they ate yesterday…

And just in case anyone was wondering, I had some fried ice cream on top of a honey creme brulee last night~ It was delish~

Emily, the first student amongst them to turn to the \'dark side\', directed her attention to me.

"Sister Aster! Did you do anything interesting during the holidays?"

It would have been an innocent question had the girl not have this crazed look in her eyes.

I decided to play it safe by just giving the barest amount of information, "Oh, I did. I went on a cruise trip with my family."

"Ah! I heard! On board the Floating Pussy, right? I\'ve never been on the ship before! Is it as big as they say?"

Great… Emilia, you really should consider changing the name of your ship, seriously…

I had no choice but to nod my head, "Yes… The Floating Pussy was indeed as big as they say it is."

"As expected of sister Aster! Did anything happen while you were there?"

Err… I got involved in an attempted hostile takeover and almost got stranded on an island. Then I went to become a pirate for a while and sold off some booty.

Yeah… Definitely not going to tell them any of that.

"It was quite uneventful. It was meant to be a vacation after all so we were just relaxing on the ship."

"That sounds like a wonderful time too, sister Aster!"

Right then, a cry came out from the training grounds and all of us turned to see a boy rolling on the ground and clutching his arm.

Anna, our Iatromancy teacher, closed the book she was reading and shot us a grin, "Alright! Looks like we got our first test-- Ahem… Our first patient! Who wants to go first?"

All four of the other girls immediately raised their hands.

I have never seen them this excited before…

Anna pointed to one of the girls with brown hair that was tied into twin braids, "Hylie! How about you?"

The girl who had tried to heal a dead rabbit immediately leapt to her feet and ran towards the still crying boy, looking a little too happy to be trying to heal someone.

"Ahhhh! It hurts! Owwww!"

His sparring partner was trying to console him but the boy continued to cry out loud. It wasn\'t even a grave injury by that way since they were using wooden practice swords, but the boy must not be used to pain and was making a big fuss over something minor.

Hylie took a look at the injury and looked at him in disappointment, "What? It\'s just a small bruise… There\'s not even any external bleeding, so why are you crying like that?"

"It hurts!! It huuuuurts!!"

Hylie smacked the boy across the cheek, instantly shutting him up and stunning the other boy.

"Shut up. You\'re really wasting my time here. Whatever… Flesh to flesh, knit and repair, heal and cleanse the wounds, return the flesh to its pristine form. [Close Wounds]."

She chanted the spell half heartedly and the boy\'s arm glowed, the bruise slowly disappearing and returning the skin back to its unblemished form.

Hylie then let out a sigh before returning back to where we were and sat back down amongst us.

"How lame… I thought he would actually have a broken bone or something…"

"Oh, [Close Wounds] isn\'t strong enough to heal bones, I\'m afraid," Teacher Anna reminded us. "You would need to be at least at Medic tier of Iatromancy to learn something that can somewhat do so~"

That\'s good to know, I just need to increase by a tier before I can do that then~

Not even a few seconds later, a few more cries of pain came from the sparring ground.

This time there was no need for Teacher Anna to ask who wanted to go as there were seven people who were hurt so everyone went to pick a patient each.

I got a young female Mahun who had received a blow on her shin which broke the skin and she was bleeding a little from it.

Her partner looked a little sheepish at having hurt his partner and was apologising to her while I casted my version of [Close Wounds] on the girl.

The wound quickly closed up and the girl took a moment to stare at her leg in wonder before thanking me.

"Tha… Thank you, sister Aster!"

"Umu, don\'t mention it. Be careful, ok?" I told her while giving her a pat on the head.

"Ye… Yes!!" She squeaked.

I moved on to the next person since the other four were still not yet done and this time it was a young boy who received a blow to the head, leaving a rather nasty bruise.

His partner did not seem that bothered and was simply waiting for me to heal him while leaning on his sword. He was probably used to such sights or he just didn\'t care.

A quick chant of [Close Wounds] later, the bruise was already disappearing.

"Thank you… Sis… Sister Aster…" The boy muttered shyly.

Hmm… Both of the people I healed seemed to be quite embarrassed that they got injured. I\'d say that you don\'t need to worry about such things though! Failure is also a step in learning! Now that you know the pain of such a failure, your body would learn not to make the same mistake again!

Well, that\'s how I learned how to fight from Mother and those monsters anyway…

No sooner had I stood up to return back to our waiting area, there was another cry of pain and I turned back to see the girl I just healed on the ground again, her partner looking completely stunned.

What the heck… I just healed you…

I rushed back to the girl and found out that she merely suffered a blow to her arm so it wasn\'t that big of a deal.

"I\'m… I\'m sorry, sister Aster…" She groaned.

"Mmm… It\'s ok, let me deal with this real quick."

The boy that was her sparring partner scratched his head, "She didn\'t even try though… Oh…"

I wasn\'t sure what he was talking about since I was concentrating on healing the girl.

The moment I was done, there was another cry from where I had just come from and the boy I healed was on the floor once again.

What the hell? Is his opponent too good or is he that bad?

Before I could even start running towards him, even more cries started ringing out across the training field and I looked around to see the students tumbling onto the ground while writhing in pain. Some of them even seem to have hit each other at the same time since both of them would be rolling on the ground opposite each other.

What the heck you guys?

Ughh… I guess I shouldn\'t complain since this was exactly what I wanted… Though I wonder why was this even happening?