Wu Yao grinned and plopped down on the edge of her bed, casting an Appraisal on her first.
【Physician Benita】
【Age: 28】
【Affection: 0/100】
【HP: 15/100】
【Skills: Medicine Lv.9, Herb Gathering Lv.9, Pharmacy Lv.8...】
These were exactly the skills players dreamed of!
Wu Yao's gaze lingered greedily on those skill bars, and she spoke bluntly, “I want to learn Herb Gathering and Pharmacy from you!”
Benita was visibly taken aback, clearly not expecting a grand sorceress to make such a request.
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Wu Yao quickly added, “Name your price. Whatever you want.”
Benita fell silent. She lowered her head, her hand resting on the edge of the bed slowly gripping the bedsheet. When she looked up again, the confusion in her eyes had been replaced by something much colder.
“My Lady, you don't seem to understand your own situation.”
It was a struggle for Benita to speak, her voice faint and airy, yet her words felt like a heavy wall rising between them.
“This is Fancao Village. We are less than half a day's journey from the Soligan Territory patrol line. If someone reports finding trace of a sorceress...”
She left the sentence unfinished, letting the unspoken threat carry more weight.
Wu Yao filtered out the warning entirely, her eyes sparkling as she stared at her. “And then?”
Benita fell silent again.
This wasn't the first time she had encountered a sorceress, but it was the first time she had met one so completely fearless.
She had wanted to gain the upper hand by making this sorceress wary, but the woman didn't show even a hint of fear. In other words, this was an uninvited guest strong enough to disregard all danger.
And those eyes reminded her, at a highly inappropriate moment, of someone who had been burned at the stake under the name of a sorceress.
They had grown up together. The streets of the capital once echoed with their laughter as they chased each other around, the moat's water always rising foul and muddy with every passing rainy season, the gray stones of the city walls worn smooth and shiny by time.
They were inseparable. They had entered an apothecary shop together as apprentices, enduring those tedious days and nights of identifying herbs and memorizing their medicinal properties.
Hilna's talent shone brighter than gold. She could always keenly perceive the subtlest changes in plants, writing all her observations and records in a thick notebook, which she then patiently taught to Benita.
Benita had always been clumsy, but Hilna never laughed at her. Instead, she would patiently hold her hand, using Benita's fingertips to trace the patterns of the leaf veins, pulling her close to smell how the scent changed at different times of the day.
In Hilna's eyes, every single plant was unique.
“You have to feel it with your heart,” Hilna would say, holding her hand and pressing her fingertips against the stem of a bellflower. “Feel its breath, feel what it needs.”
Benita couldn't feel any of those things. The only thing she truly felt was the warmth of Hilna's palm.
They both passed their exams to become Physicians. Using the savings they had scraped together over several years, they opened a tiny clinic in the East District of the Holy City, earning their very first coin through their own hard work.
Hilna could always formulate the most perfect prescriptions. Her reputation snowballed, to the point where even some noble ladies began sending carriages to fetch her for house calls.
They had earned enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
Even after Benita married and started a family, they still saw each other every day, tending to the herb field at Hilna's house together. When Benita went into labor, Hilna was the one who stayed by her bedside, and she was the very first to hold the newborn baby.
The year her husband died in an accident, Phelin was only one year old. Hilna rented a carriage and brought them both to her home.
The yard filled with herbs quickly became Phelin's playground. Hilna would always watch with a smile as Phelin rolled around in the herb fields, and then wash her soiled clothes afterward.
Sometimes, Benita would stand at the door watching the two of them, feeling as though she would never lose anything again in her life.
Until one ordinary afternoon, when everything shattered.
To this day, she still didn't know where the rumors had started.
Perhaps it was a jealous competitor envious of Hilna's medical skills, perhaps a rival eyeing their clinic, or perhaps a stranger who had witnessed Hilna compounding medicines.
When the Mage Association took Hilna away, Benita was at home putting Phelin to sleep. By the time she heard the news and rushed out the door, she saw only herbs scattered all over the ground and a scene of absolute chaos.
Benita stood in the middle of the mess, gasping for breath. She felt as though she couldn't breathe, while her neighbors averted their eyes from her.
An older woman whispered to her, “Physician Hilna... she was taken to the plaza... They say she's a sorceress who killed many people, and they're going to execute her...”
She ran toward the plaza like mad. The crowd was already packed three layers deep, and she fought with all her might to squeeze through.
Those squirming, crowding, sticky bodies felt like insurmountable mountains, blocking her path to Hilna in heavy, suffocating layers.
Her ears buzzed, and the noisy chatter around her sounded muffled, as if blocked by a thick barrier, impossible to hear clearly.
Only a single shriek tore through this barrier. It was Hilna's voice.
Benita's knees went weak instantly, and in the next second, she was pushed to the ground by the shoving crowd.
By the time she finally crawled to the very front, she saw only a pile of smoldering, charred charcoal, and a strange, brilliant silver flower growing atop the ashes.
The crowd dispersed like an ebbing tide, their faces still carrying the residual excitement of watching a spectacle.
People said, “She really was a sorceress. I saw her turn into a flower with my own eyes.”
People said, “She must have made a deal with a demon to have medical skills like that.”
People said, “Who knows if the patients she failed to cure before were actually murdered by her? She was a sorceress, after all!”
Hilna couldn't even bear to kill a rabbit. She tested every medicine she brewed on herself first. On stormy nights, she would bring stray cats and dogs inside to keep them warm. She did her absolute best to treat those who couldn't afford her fees...
Such a person, such a person!
Even if she were a sorceress, so what!
She wanted justice. She went to the Holy Knight Squad where her father served, only to be warned by her father to stay home and do nothing.
She refused to listen. Before her injuries had even healed, she forced herself to write a petition, compiling all of Hilna's clinical records since she had started practicing medicine.
She wanted to sue the Mage Association for framing an innocent citizen, and she wanted to sue the informants for slander and defamation.
The day after she submitted the petition, a squad of soldiers burst into her and Hilna's home. They ransacked the place, turning everything upside down, and dragged a “Sorceress's Evil Notebook” out from under her bed.
Inside it were all the herbal formulas Hilna had verified—the entire accumulation of Hilna's years of practicing medicine.
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