After letting everything cool down, our group was being led into the middle of the camp. Besides the guards that heard us admitting that I was a dragonewt, the rest of the camp was more or less scared of us, actually, considering how intense they were shivering, maybe terror was a better word?

Isn't it a bit unreasonable for them to be this fearful despite how friendly we've been behaving since that whole situation in front of the camp's entrance was solved? I healed Caszcur’s pierced hand and his other injuries with no complaints and I didn’t even ask for any compensation; isn’t that a clear indication that I wasn’t looking for a fight anymore?

I only went as far as using a powerful spell, like [Scorching Sun] ‘cause they were trying to attack me as a mad mob. Seeing a miniature sun nearly slamming onto you might be scary, but what about me? If I were a normal girl then seeing large humanoid lizards wanting to tear me into pieces would turn me into a screaming little girl.

Well, they didn’t show the will to harm me anymore, so it was only mildly unpleasant. Even Caszcur turned meek, not even wanting to look me in the eyes.

Anyways, as we walked through the camp, I noticed that I was wrong when I thought everybody came to the front of the entrance. Although not all were set up, the few tents that were had lizardmen in them.

Once we were close enough, I took a glimpse through the opening. It was only for a moment, but it looked like it was filled with lizardmen, squirming on the ground, as a single female tried to take care of them.

It also couldn't be helped that all the moaning and groaning was audible from outside the tent, in addition to the fact that my nose was able to distinguish the reek of blood from the swamp's natural swampy smell.

[“That is why I said, ‘mostly everybody’,”] Saori, still carrying all the virigresses, told me as she walked beside me. ["The smell and the large number of individuals cramped in a single area made me curious, so I had to delay the extraction of the virigresses. You should have seen my face when I realized that it was a clinic."]

If that was the clinic then could the one the virigress mother have poisoned be in there?

[“…If you knew about this then why didn’t you mention this?”] I asked. [“Why didn’t you stop me? I actually was about to kill that giant group of lizardmen, and you said nothing? Why?”]

[“That is because if I had mentioned it then you would have immediately wanted to help them, am I not correct?”] Saori responded.

I wasn’t able to give an answer to her question, simply scratching my head and shrugging my shoulders to show my indecisiveness. It wasn’t like I was a saint or anything, but even I would turn mild if I heard that a whole tent full of wounded people were waiting for that angry mob.

However, would I have gone to their side and healed them? I don't know. I felt bad for them but besides a moral obligation to help, I had no reason or motivation to do so.

[“Hmmm, I see, fair enough. Sorry for assuming that,”] Saori said while looking away and scratching her cheek, embarrassed. [“A-Anyways, I would have stopped you if those lizardmen had not. When I arrived, I believed running away was the smarter choice, it was not our problem, after all. Would that angry mob have calmed down at that moment, even if you whole-heartedly asked them to stop?”]

Thinking from that angle, Saori had a point. What would it have done to the situation if I tried to talk to them? Wasn’t running away a better idea than to…wait a minute. If I had known about the clinic and offered them to heal everybody, then wouldn’t everything have gone smoother?

If there were family members or friends in there, then I could gain some favor if I helped heal them. That would have been the best way to solve everything without killing literally everybody in the camp.

OMG, we are a bunch of Dummköpfe!

[“Saori, you know…now that I think about it, if we had found the clinic during our initial reconnaissance, then we wouldn’t have had to scare everybody,”] I said meekly. [“I could have offered my healing abilities in exchange for the cubs.”]

[“…I am so sorry,”] Saori shook her head, shocked at my words. [“I-I think…I believe that I was influenced by the whole mood. It seems that I should have listened to my own advice and cool myself down. It really is not my day, today…”]

Our own hot-bloodedness prevented us from seeing the whole picture, causing unnecessary conflict between our party and the lizardmen’s. What was driving us to be that reckless today?

[“Uhm, I actually do not believe that would have worked exactly how you imagined it, Lady Hestia,”] suddenly, Tasianna chimed in. [“I thought about it, and I now know why the lizardmen are fearing us.”]

[“And that is?”] I asked.

[“It is because you used healing magic, or more specifically, holy elemental magic,”] Tasianna’s answer was so unsuspected that it caught me off-guard.

Saying “huh”, I bid her to continue, [“Do you still remember the history between beastmen and humans? Well, as you might have heard, this lizardmen group are followers of Marsven, the God of Darkness. Holy elemental magic belongs to the Goddess of Light, Aurena, who is the patron goddess of humans. There might be a possibility that they do not have a good impression of it.”]

Beastmen, due to their origin as monster and human hybrids, were badly treated by their relatives, the humans. Tasianna, being mostly a sheltered girl, had no knowledge of whether the humans and beastmen had reconciled with each other. All her knowledge came from books.

If their enemies, the humans, were being favored by Aurena then it’s no surprise that they didn’t like seeing holy magic, even when it’s only healing spells.

[“Is this not hindsight?”] Saori stated. [“We learned their religious following, only after we asked them about it. Working without more details, we should have tried reasoning with them using Hestia’s healing abilities. Whether they dislike it or not, they cannot possibly deny our help, especially when they have that many wounded.”]

Urgh, all this thinking is making me even more annoyed at myself. If we had only thought of all of this beforehand, then we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves in this sorta situation. We acted before asking any questions.

While reflecting on our actions, we finally arrived at the camp’s campfire. As we were about to sit down, the guards hurriedly stopped us as they wanted to bring us proper sitting accommodations. Scanning through the camp, I noticed that they lacked proper chairs and tables, instead, they improvised and used large rocks to sit on.

We told them that as Saori and I were wearing clothing made out of mana, we didn’t have to worry about them being soiled by the mud. Sitting on the ground wasn’t a foreign concept for us, seeing as it was normal to do so in a forest.

The guards insisted on it, telling us that they would shame themselves if we denied their hospitality. In the end, we were the only ones who weren’t sitting on the swampy mud, just like a bunch of VIPs, I guess.

Aksmias and the other guard truly wanted us to feel more comfortable. I had the feeling that if it weren’t for the tense situation, then they would probably prostrate themselves before us again.

Once everybody sat down, there was an obvious division between our two parties at the campfire. Rajah and his sibling were visibly showing their hostility, so we wanted to avoid further conflict, so we had to hide them behind one of us, preventing them from glaring the lizardmen to death.

His siblings weren’t very compliant at the beginning but after he talked with them, they started to warm up to us. As their mother was sleeping and Rajah was the oldest and currently the strongest among them, they were forced to listen to him due to the family hierarchy.

Coincidentally, just like Rajah, they didn’t like Saori very much and were more comfortable hiding behind me. Saori, being the one who freed them, showed obvious annoyance which further deteriorated their relationship. Rajah tried his best to resolve it but…unsuccessfully.

“Now, we would like to re-introduce ourselves,” Tasianna re-started the negotiations, once again translating everything. “I am Tasianna Marina Silverpond and this wolfkin is Saori Segawa. We both are loyal attendants of Lady Hestia Atsuko.”

“Aksmias…uhhh, builder," the new de facto leader of the lizardmen group said. "I am the representative for this lizardfolk group…please, we shall listen to your demands.”

“Thank you,” Tasianna bowed. “We demand the release of the virigress cubs that were captured by your party.”

It was redundant to say it at this point seeing as we already rescued them, but she said it for formality’s sake.

“…I understand…” Aksmias clenched his teeth, wanting to say something but he was unable to, as this whole negotiation was practically a formality.

“Plearsiz, itzanu,” I said with a nod. (Please, speak,)

After thanking me, Aksmias spoke his wishes, “We…we need food. I-If it was possible, then could you spare…”

Well, that was obvious to anticipate. They hunted and captured Rajah’s siblings ‘cause they wanted to eat them, just like any hungry animal would. I sympathized with them, truly, but sparing food was out of the options for us.

“We would like to apologize but due to winter, we aren’t able to part with anything that we have,” Tasianna said.

“I see…” Aksmias sighed dejectedly, frustration clear in his eyes. “I expected too much. You do not seem to be carrying anything…I…please forget it.”

Most of our belongings were stored in our [Storage Magic] so it does seem like we had nothing with us, even though we probably had more spices, water, and food than them.

[“Tasianna, tell them that I am willing to heal their wounded. That is the least that we can do after everything that happened,”] I told her.

[“Lady Hestia, I would like to suggest against it as it might not be as simple as you wish it to be,”] Tasianna worriedly said.

I knew what she meant with “not simple”, but being upfront with them would be better. I could just "accidentally" use [Sacred Field] to heal everybody as we say our goodbyes but that would be irresponsible.

They already had a bad image of my holy magic and I didn’t want to worsen it by doing it against their wishes, even if it’s less of a hassle for me. Besides, if I can make them like holy elemental magic then I can brag to Aurena that I did something good for her in our eventual meeting.

Giving in to my insistence, Tasianna agreed to do it with a sigh, "We saw the wounded in the tent. Lady Hestia would like to offer to heal them with her magic as a sign of goodwill."

Once Tasianna said that the whole crowd of lizardmen behind Aksmias began talking to themselves, quickly becoming noisy. As Tasianna was correctly worried about, the lizardmen weren't very thrilled about hearing this. She told me that they were saying stuff like, "S-She can use holy magic. She has to be a priestess of Aurena!" and "First those ogres, then the monster in this forest, and now a headhunter of that tail polisher?! This is the end!".

I’m beginning to believe that “tail polisher” might be a derogative term, whatever, it’s supposed to mean.

Aksmias was trying to calm everybody down but it seems the hysteria caused by our words was too much for this ragtag group of guards to handle. When the former leader was only a carpenter and the current one was a construction worker, then I have to wonder how they survived until now.

“Everybody, QUIET!” against my expectations, the one who calmed everybody down wasn’t Aksmias, nor a guard, but Caszcur.

With his frightening large mouth, he shouted and calmed people down as if he was used to it, “This girl is a dragonewt! Not some random lizardfolk who can use magic, you idiots. Why would our slavers try to hunt us down with somebody who can use holy magic, huh?!”

Once they heard that, the noise started to quieten down but it didn’t disappear. They might not think that I was here to harm them anymore, but it seems their suspicion wasn’t completely gone.

As I was curious about it, I had Tasianna ask him what he meant with “slavers” after he was finished.

“Huh, that is…for now, all you need to know is that we are former slaves and we escaped into this hellish forest three months ago,” Caszcur said before turning to Aksmias. “Aksmias, do you mind if take over now?”

Aksmias then turned his eyes to me which prompted Caszcur to ask me for my permission, “…Of course, if that is alright with you, little lady.”

Oooh, I upgraded from “lass,” to “skink”, then to “tail polisher”, and now I’m a “little lady”? Meh, good enough.

I nodded.

“Thank you…uhm, I’ll just say that I’m sorry for losing my temper and treating you badly. You all arrived at a time when everybody in camp was tensed from recent events,” Caszcur tucked his tail between his legs, sat on his knees, before bowing his head as an apology. “You can have those cubs back. No complaints. However, if you are still willing to help our brethren then I will accept it on behalf of our group. Just saying, but we have nothing to pay you back…”

“We have not asked for recompense,” Tasianna agreed on our behalf, although a bit aggressively.

Thanking us for accepting, he shouted to the rest of the lizardmen to “get back to work, you krill eaters!”, before leading us towards the clinic.

Saori insisted that she would stay at the campfire, so she could take care of the sleeping virigress mother and the cubs. Although Rajah and his sibling wanted to follow me, I told them to stay with Saori to guard their mother.

As we walked, my attention was drawn to the fact that a few curious lizardmen were following us. While the majority obeyed Caszcur and returned to whatever task they were doing, these few tried their best to stalk us by being as nonchalant as possible.

“Sigh, the few hatchlings we still have are too curious for their own good. We've been in this forest for so long that us old scales influenced the younger generation with our paranoia," Caszcur explained apologetically, realizing that I noticed. "They probably consider you 'interesting'."

“How old are they?” I responded in Common tongue to Caszcur.

“Most of them are young enough to be my children,” Caszcur explained. “I thought a dragonewt like you would understand that instinctively, or does your race have a different understanding of scale-kin growth?”

Not knowing how to answer this as I don’t know any real dragonewts, I averted my eyes and stayed silent. Caszcur seems to have noticed my embarrassment and simply said “oh” before dropping the topic.

"Uhh, Lady Hestia is still quite young. She isn’t acquainted with others of her age yet," Tasianna tried to excuse my ignorance but that just made the flush on my face even worse.

"Hmm, that's why she smelled like a hatchling to me. Her scent made me believe that she was younger than our young scales but her appearance and strength kinda made that hard to believe, you know?" Caszcur admitted as he began smelling me.

Please, stop sniffing at me! Grrrugh, how am I supposed to say that in Common tongue?!

“I ask that you stop that,” without me saying anything, Tasianna came to my rescue. “You are annoying my mistress, lizardman.”

“Uhh, sorry…” Caszcur, clearly intimidated by Tasianna’s hostility, stopped speaking for the rest of the way.

With my reddened face, we arrived at the tent where the clinic was stationed and entered it. The first thing that greeted me was a fat cloud of nasty smells, composed of old blood, urine, feces, and rotting meat.

““Urk!”” not able to handle the revolting stench, Tasianna and I clamped our noses shut.

Now I know why Saori wanted to stay behind.

“Hoh, can’t handle the stink, little lady?” Caszcur asked while widening one eye.

I nodded and cast [Air Shield] around Tasianna with [Synergist’s Oath], then on myself. Pushing the foul odor away from us, we were finally able to breathe cleaner air again, although it was limited.

“…I knew there was wind magic, but this was my first time seeing it in action,” Caszcur said with genuine surprise. “Huh, magic sure is incredible. I can only imagine what I could have done if I only had the chance to learn it…”

A shadow hanged around his face as he berated himself for not being able to learn magic, something that was supposedly hard to do according to Tasianna. Honestly, hearing him say this is making me even more curious about his past and that stuff about his “slavers”.

Still, it wasn’t the moment to ask him about it as the nurse responsible for this place approached us, finally noticing that we entered.

"Caszcur? What are you doing here? And who is this…red hatchling?” the female lizardman asked us, easily towering Caszcur due to her long neck and thin body.

Compared to Aksmias and Caszcur, she didn’t share the same ferocious crocodile-like head as the two males. Hers looked more like a gecko, with bulging large eyes and a less intimidating mouth. Instead of a multitude of spikes, her body had colorful frills.

Besides these differences, the most notable must be her long neck and smooth looking scales. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean that she was only cute looking as she also had sharp claws, perfectly able to slice chunks of meat out of her enemies.

It seems that she also recognized me as one of her own. The lizardmen here have spikes but none of them had large horns like mine, so why was I being confused for one? Not to mention that instead of being covered in scales from head to tail, my skin was soft beside my legs, arms, and tail.

“They are our guests,” Caszcur answered. “The flying one is Tasianna, a fairy, and the young scale is called Hestia, a dragonewt.”

“Wa-Wait, did you just say a dragonewt?!” the female lizardmen dropped a small broken piece of metal as her expression changed to a mix between joy and surprise. "S-So, does that mean that we are finally outside that damnable forest?! Are you telling me that we are finally saved?!"

Throwing away the rag in her other hand, she kneeled down to me and clenched my right hand with both of hers, weeping lakes of tears as she talked, “Oh, beautiful young scale dragonkin, I thank you for coming! Praise Kargryxmor! Praise Kargryxmor! Our prayers have finally been heard by the God of Dragons. I thank you so very much for sending our savior to us, oh merciful King of Dragons.”

“Caszcur! Caszcur! Stop her from praying now!” Tasianna shouted a command at our guide.

“Huh? Oh, uh, sure,” Caszcur flinched back from her loud voice but nonetheless did what he was told. “Hey, Apsala! Get on your feet already! Hey, you still have patients waiting for you so get a grip already!”

[“Uhh, Tasianna?”] needing an answer for her outburst, I turned to my fairy friend.

[“I apologized for the outburst, but everything is alright now. She didn’t pray, so everything should be alright,”] Tasianna said nervously, as she tried to reassure me,

[“Uhm, ok? What’s so bad about her praying to Kargryxmor? Didn’t you say that people being pious is important in this world?”] I asked with an eyebrow raised, confused at what was causing my friend to act this weird.

[“Nothing that you must worry about, Lady Hestia. Everything is solved now, so there is no need to worry,”] Tasianna said, adamant about not telling me about the reason.

If you tell me that I shouldn’t worry, then I’m gonna worry anyways!

Before I could continue interrogating Tasianna, Caszcur came over with the female lizardman, Apsala, “Alright, fairy lass, I did what you wanted. Hey, Apsala, calm down, she might be a dragonewt but we aren’t anywhere close to the exit…that’s correct, right, you two?”

“We aren’t close to the entrance between the Belzac forest and the elven territory yet, but we can confirm that we are on the correct path,” Tasianna answered Caszcur’s question.

“So…we aren’t saved yet?” turning limp, Apsala fell unto her knees, her eyes still wet from crying before, as she looked at us hopelessly. “Caszcur…we…we can’t take this anymore. I…I can’t take this anymore. We lost so many, hic, scale-kins in this forest and we keep losing more…this is, hic, too much. We should have all stayed there and prayed for freedom. Marsven and Kargryxmor would have listened to us…”

Apsala’s joyful tears were being drowned away as she continued crying helplessly, seemingly broken from hearing the truth.

“Apsala, the young scale came here to offer her abilities to help us. She can cast healing spells so she can hel…,” Caszcur tried to soothe her but was quickly interrupted.

“Healing magic! No! S-She’s a follower of that tail polisher?! No, l-leave me alone…I-I don’t want to die yet!” screaming, Apsala began crawling backward after hearing us mention healing magic.

“Hey, Apsala, stop!” Caszcur, trying to calm down the fleeing lizard woman, pinned her on the ground.

…

[“…Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said that these people might not like Aurena,”] I said astonished.

["…This is honestly the first time that I've seen anybody be so fearful of a god. I had the feeling…I truly did but…this is a first experience for me as well,"] Tasianna admitted.

It seems like she will continue like this for a while…guess I should do something.

Acknowledging that it would be futile to do anything about this situation, I instead went to one of the wounded patients. Looking over him, his body was riddled with small and large wounds; the large ones had the luxury of being bandaged by leaves while the smaller ones were left to fate. It was obvious that none of the wounds were correctly sanitized, but I couldn’t detect necrosis.

Looking at what was sitting beside him, I saw a bark with a weird white cream on it.

Identify.

Herbal Disinfection Cream

An alchemical cream composed out of materials from the Belzac forest. Has slight disinfection and healing features that aids in the recovery of open wounds

Interesting…

Scanning the tent’s insides, I also noticed an open fire heating up a cauldron. There were also a few thatch baskets filled with herbs and other plants in them, sitting neatly beside tree barks and leaf bandages.

[“It seems that Apsala is an alchemist,”] I told Tasianna.

[“Are you sure? There are no potions in the tent,”] Tasianna said. [“These ointments do seem to be effective, but does that make somebody an alchemist?”]

[“You’ve never seen one?”] I asked.

[“…No, I’ve only heard about them from the elves. Fairies usually don’t need the aid of an alchemist…,”] Tasianna said meekly.

Well, I can ask her or identify her later. First, we should heal this person.

Using [Identify] on him, I learned that he had [Poisoned (Minor)] and [Diseased (Bacteria Infection) (Moderate)]. The herbal cream must have worked but it seems it either wasn’t strong enough or it wasn’t applied early enough, seeing as the infection seems to have invaded his body.

Considering that he was the only one poisoned among the injured, I can only say that the virigress mother really did him in. Even with Apsala’s treatment, he would still die from natural causes at this rate, if I don’t give a hand.

[“Tasianna, tell him that I will be healing him now, so he shouldn’t be surprised when I start touching his body,”] I told Tasianna.

The wounded lizardman groaned, feebly nodding at us, “P-Please…it hurts…please, stop the pain…”

‘Ok, girls, time to get to work. Game face on, let’s do this,’ I hyped up my parallel minds as we had to go through all the wounded and sick today.

Taking out a wooden bowl, I had Tasianna fill it up with magic using [Create Water] and I heated it up to a boiling point with a [Fire] spell. I then dropped in a couple of drops of shampoo and then used it to clean my hands.

Doctor and medical dramas are plentiful on streaming platforms, so I’m merely using that knowledge to my advantage. Disinfecting and cleaning one’s hands and claws before treating people should be top priority even if all I will be doing is casting spells.

Now ready, I took off his bandages and inspected my first patient.

Ok, multiple open wounds that haven't closed up yet. Despite how fresh it looks, there are already some nasty looking spots, probably necrosis, so maybe scraping and cutting them from his body would be best, leaving the regeneration to [Major Heal]? Ok, guess that should be it.

Following my thought process, I used my sickle-like claws like scalpels to deftly cut off anything that looked rotten to me. The wounds opened up again, so I immediately disinfected it with [Cure] and [Purify]. After having Tasianna cast [Cleanse] on their bodies to clean away all the blood and dirt on his body, I only needed to use one simple [Major Heal].

Light began basking him as the white magic circle activated. The spell's effect slowly seeped into his body, the mana granting him temporarily improved regeneration as his flesh reformed and joined together again, closing all the wounds. In addition, broken or missing scales regrew back to normal, leaving no evidence for his injury behind.

“Wah! This light! You!” once the hardest part was done, I overheard somebody screaming at me. “No, what are you doing with my patients! My scale-kins, you little skink-huh! Let go of me Caszcur!”

“Hey, stop trying to bite me, woman! The girl is merely helping and healing them, so calm down!” Caszcur shouted as he continued to hold on to Apsala, who was using her long neck to bite his arm off.

Unrelenting, she continued struggling, defiantly calling me out, "Healing?! These are my patients and I know what's best for them! As if I will let some followers of the Light Goddess treat them under my super…wha?”

As the light dispersed, my first patient started to bring his body up with my help. Once he was sitting, I began checking his body in the case that I missed anything, although, I was quite confident that my spell would have healed it up even without my awareness.

It was just important to make sure that I did a good job. Whether it’s Idol training or healing people with my spells, I should take it seriously and do my best now that I committed myself to it.

“Do you feel any pain, or have we missed anything?” Tasianna asked my patient for me.

The lizardman slowly looked through his body, moving his body to make sure that he could still feel and move them, "No…the only aching that I can feel is from being sleeping on the ground…I feel like I could go back to fishing. Thank you…thank you very much for saving my life. I thought I was going to die.”

Silently weeping, he clenched his massive hands around mine as he continued to thank me. Noticing that the other patients were looking at me, Tasianna asked him to release me as I still had a full tent of patients to deal with.

As I was about to walk to my next patient, Apsala stopped me, “Wait…how…how did you do that?”

“Uhm, Lady Hestia used her magic to heal them, as you could see,” Tasianna explained o Apsala as I had no idea how to say it in Common tongue.

Well, I did more than just cast spells, but I guess the gist is that healed them with magic.

"I could see that, fairy. However, I wanted to hear it from the lass. Why did you not speak, young scale?" Apsala asked me as she continued glaring me with her large eyes.

As I panicked internally from being glared at by the giant lizard lady, I couldn’t help but look at Tasianna, calling her to bail me out of the situation.

"I would like to apologize but there are some…uhm, circumstances that Lady Hestia can't speak too much. Please excuse us, we still need to handle the rest of the people here," Tasianna explained, doing her best not to expose my inability to fully understand their language.

“…I see,” Apsala looked into my eyes for a couple more seconds before releasing me. “I’ll trust you with my scale-kins, Lady Dragonewt. I'll clean and take care of the ones you healed, and afterward, we must speak.”

As she said, she took my first patient off me and began testing his physical abilities, all while I began my inspection on the next wounded.