"There are countless things that can go wrong during a Body Sculpting procedure." Professor Vastor continued.
"I'm not going to lie to you. Despite our best efforts, I expect you to see a few people die before you graduate. Some may die under your hands. It's going to put you under a lot of pressure, testing your will.
"Too many times in this job I've seen old men live long enough to not even remember who they were, their bodies refusing to give up, while young people not even old enough to marry would die under my care for no apparent reason.
"Many healers refuse to practice Body Sculpting, either to not affect their reputation with repeated failures or because they cannot take it. Up to tier three, you can still blame bad luck. At tier four anything seems possible.
"Once you reach tier five, you can only blame yourself. People will die because you aren't good enough, aren't prepared enough, or simply because you have let your pride get the best of you. Never be afraid to tell a patient that it's better a long but limited life than gambling everything on a maybe.
"Never hide them the risks of any procedure or make them any promise. The final choice is theirs, but the final burden is yours." Vastor sighed deeply, before resuming his usual confident attitude.
"One last thing. Don't think that once you graduate you are set for life. What we are teaching you are the basics of the basics. The difference between a quack and a real healer is the number of personal spells they develop, how much of yourselves you put into your work.
That's why we'll also cover how to alter, improve, or create from scratch spells.
The fifth year will make the fourth one look like a walk in the park. Class dismissed."
After listening to Professor Vastor's introduction to the subjects of the Healer specialization for the fifth year, the students were gloomy rather than excited. Up to that point, they had always worked in teams comprised of Professors and medical staff.
They were a safety net, boosting the students' confidence that no matter what happened, things could still be salvaged. Now the rules of the game had changed. Only a few, like Lith and Quylla had lost a patient in the past, but no one had ever been responsible for a death.
The thought was scary and not because most of the students had such a good heart. The reason was that the majority of the patients admitted in the White Griffon hospital were powerful mages or influential figures in the political world.
Killing a commoner was one thing, explaining a powerful and well connected family why their loved one wasn't among them anymore could easily destroy lives. The Healer's life, to be precise.
Lith was insensible to such worries. Partly because killing was second nature to him, mostly because lots of people had already died indirectly by his hand. Back at Lutia or during the plague, he could have saved dozens of lives if he had given up his secret and used true magic.
'Seems I actually performed tier five light magic twice already. The first time with Tista, the second on mom.' Lith thought.
'Yeah, but you only succeeded because of true magic. Tista's treatment took months since we lacked tier four magic, while Elina's would have gone badly if you acted alone.
'I'm really curious to see how much our abilities will improve once we learn how to listen to the life force.' Solus considered all the fifth year subjects amazing. They had managed to mimic tier five spells despite missing so many pieces of the puzzle. She was eager to see how far they could get after mastering so much knowledge.
Being the first day, they received no homework. It allowed Lith to go straight to the library and borrow books about the other specializations to copy them. During the fourth year, he and Solus had stockpiled an impressive number of tomes.
Every time Lith had spent the night practicing a specific spell, Solus would use that time to make copies. The information amassed in Soluspedia gave Lith an edge while studying most of the magic related problems.
Even if his understanding of the basics of each specialization was shallow, he could analyze each situation from different angles to find the best possible approach.
Lith decided to keep up the pace, using the time before dinner to work together with Solus and complete the first batch of copies. They could only borrow three books at a time and needed to return them before getting new ones.
Since they used water magic to control the ink, each page took barely a few seconds to be reproduced. The problem was that each book was composed of hundreds of pages. They worked on a different book each to make things faster.
'Don't you think it would be better to spend this time with your friends? Or at least with Phloria? You two only saw each other twice in the last three months.' Solus liked to be alone with Lith, yet since having a full free afternoon was a rare event, she would have preferred for him to socialize.
During winter, at night or whenever his family was away and he wasn't busy with clients, Lith had already spent countless hours studying and researching magic inside the tower. After his speech in Phloria's room, she had hoped Lith would be more considerate, instead of having her making the first move as usual.
'No.' Lith replied. 'This is a perfect opportunity to get some job done. If we manage to finish the three books early, we can visit them before dinner or spend the evening together. If we don't, we'll have to pull an all nighter, even if I'd prefer to sleep.
'I want to be at my peak condition for the first practical lesson of the Healer specialization. Besides, we still have to receive this trimester's books. The clerk should be here any minute.'
He could feel Solus's disappointment, so he rushed to add.
'It's not like we are hiding. If they have nothing better to do, they'll come visit us.'
Lith had barely completed the thought when they heard someone knocking on their door.
'See? This must be the clerk. Good thing we are here, otherwise we would have missed them and be forced to go fetch our package from the secretariat.'
'I bet this is Phloria. I hope she gives you a good scolding before dragging you somewhere nice for a date.' Solus cheated, using her mana sense through the door. Their guest had a bright cyan core and was very tall.
It was unlikely for a clerk to be so powerful, while Phloria fitted the bill.
They were both wrong. When Lith opened the door, he found Wil Ironhelm, the Professor in charge of the Battle Mage specialization, staring at him with an impatient look.
"Good evening, Lith. Mind if I come in?"
Lith was quite surprised. It was the first time a Professor came to his room and Ironhelm was the last one he would have ever expected paying him a visit. After Lith let him in, Ironhelm handed him a piece of paper containing a list of jobs.
