Author's note: This chapter has taken me longer to write than any other so far. Unfortunately, it does not mean it is good, or that I'm satisfied with the result. It is a bit longer than usual though, and there is some development at the end of the chapter as a reward for powering through the awkward dialogues before that.

Chapter 17: Companion Care

Paul wanted to get to know Kana better. Ever since they came to town, she seemed distanced and only responded when Paul initiated a conversation. Even then, she only said as much as necessary and spoke in a formal tone, while lowering her head. In the mine, she also had a polite way of speaking, but voiced her opinion a few times without being asked.

Paul told Kana to pick out some new clothes, but she only said that she did not really care about what she was wearing, as long as it is easy to move in. He just bought a few short sleeved shirts and some underpants for her.

On that note, he could not find a bra. Paul wondered if women used a different method before they were invented, but his knowledge on female underwear in medieval fantasy-worlds was lacking. Kana did not seem to care and her breasts were defying gravity anyway, but he would get her a comfortable custom chest armour before leaving town.

On several occasions, Paul looked at Kana and found her in thought and with a sad expression on her face. He had been delighted with the fact that he had gained an animal girl servant, but for Kana it must have been hard. She was abused by the bandits and then been seriously scolded by the head of the family she served. In the end she had been given away to some stranger for what Paul had to assume was meant as punishment. The baron had even encouraged Paul to not treat her too nicely. Kana must be deeply worried, on top of being traumatized.

Paul decided to take action to show Kana he cared for her. He asked around for the temple. Paul had heard from Marcus that there was someone here who could use healing magic, so he wanted to visit with Kana as soon as possible. He had been referred to a shopkeeper who was dealing with herbs, balms and potions, but the magic solution seemed more tempting.

Even though he had been wandering around town a lot, he had not come across any structure that struck him as a “temple”.

After following the directions he got from one of the food stall owners, Paul and Kana ended up in front of a building that looked more like a warehouse. While wondering if he got it wrong, Paul saw a small group of people including a young boy leaving the place, and an elderly woman entering. He decided to just follow, this was probably not a normal warehouse.

When they went inside, they were greeted by an unexpected sight.

The front outside of the building was plain looking, but interior walls were painted in white colour, giving a bright and nice flair. The far end had several large windows underneath the high ceiling, decorated with thin, yellow curtains, dying the place in a warm light.

Under the windows was a pedestal of about 2 square meters with a statue of a woman on top. She had long, wavy hair, and was smiling down on and embracing a few children with one arm, while extending her other arm to an adult person kneeling on the ground below her. Compared to the other people around her, she was a giant, easily 3 meters high, with enormous breasts. The statue itself was not that large though, perhaps a bit smaller than Paul, if it was standing on the floor and not the pedestal. In front of the pedestal was a line of different candles, all lit and several flowers and coins (mostly copper coins) mixed in between.

Looking around the place, Paul found it to be lacking the usual pomp and general impressiveness he was used to see in churches and religious places on Earth. Nothing was gilded, there was no delicate artwork or expensive looking materials. On closer inspection, even the statue was only bright white because it had been painted over.

There were a few benches to the sides of the room, where a handful of people were sitting and praying or quietly chatting among themselves.

The elderly woman had walked over to a middle-aged man standing next to the statue, who was wearing a simple white robe with the sash and hems dyed blue.

[Francis the Devout

Human

Level 9]

Paul decided to wait until the elderly woman had finished her business with the Francis guy. While waiting, he wondered what the conditions for gaining an additional title were, like “the Devout” were. Marcus the Hunter, Victor the Elder, Rosalie the Bandit-Witch and Francis the Devout seemed to be leaders or respected people of some sort, so perhaps that was the requirement.

He observed Kana for a bit, who was curiously looking around the place. He thought she was interested in this place, but when she focused at the white wall close to her, Paul found out that she was following a large fly that was flying around the room with her eyes. Paul was glad to see her not looking depressed.

The elderly woman walked away from the priest, and Paul took the chance and approached him.

“Hello, good sir. My name is Paul, and this is my friend Kana. We are wondering what kind of services your temple offers”

“Good day, child of the goddess. I am Francis, priest of the goddess Urnera. We offer spiritual guidance and spread the wisdom and blessings of Urnera at her temple. Do you know already know about the goddess?”

“I do not know much, please enlighten me” Paul was a bit afraid of getting to hear an elaborate back-story about some goddess Helena and her friends came up with for fun, but for the sake of Kana’s health, he was prepared.

“Urnera, who bestows the blessing of fertility, is a friend of all life, and wishes for it to prosper and procreate. Since the ancient times she has been responsible for keeping the population of all intelligent species stable. As the other gods seem to acknowledge her valuable contribution to the world, her followers are seldom the target of their scorn or pranks. She is said to be beautiful and wise…”

Paul was already bored, but tried to keep a friendly face and even nodded from time to time. The priest went on to explain how all people in the world are considered to be a children of her and that she does not favour war and destruction.

When he started to tell stories of her various deeds, Paul spoke up.

“Thank you for the valuable information. I understand that the goddess is friendly and wise. I also came to inquire about a method of healing my companion. She has recently been through a horrible experience, and it left her wounded and scarred.”

“Hmm… it is true that I have ways of bestowing various blessings in the name of god. Yet, bestowing a powerful blessing that comes close to a miracle, like rapidly closing wounds, leaves me very exhausted and often with a terrible headache, so afterwards I cannot provide guidance to other people.”

He was obviously about to ask for compensation.

“I see. I will compensate your temple in that case. How much would be a fair price? As you can see, her wounds on the outside are not critical, but many. Please know that I am only a poor traveller.”

“I will have to take a look at the wounds first. I cannot treat an injured body as a whole, and divine magic has to be applied to all affected areas individually.”

That sounded like a pain. Healing magic in this world was definitely underwhelming to Paul. Or this guy was just not skilled enough. Paul was also hoping that the priest was not just trying to see Kana naked. A follower of the goddess of fertility was bound to be interested in “procreation”.

“Please do so then. The sooner, the better. The wounds are all over her body, so I would feel uneasy to tell my friend to undress here.”

“Yes, follow me into the back of the temple” Paul, Kana and the priest went to a backroom. It was mostly empty, apart from a bench and the sunlight was falling into the room from a window leading to the backyard.

Paul told Kana to show her injuries to the priest. Francis had a painful expression on his face when he saw the many bruises and small scars crisscrossing over the various parts of her body, telling the story of her ordeal. He was not a complete pervert at the very least.

Paul saw the priest touch Kana’s fluffy tail, but it was just a quick stroke and he didn’t touch her anywhere inappropriately. Paul decided to ignore it, a healthy fascination with animal girls was more than understandable to him.

“I am afraid that treatment of these wounds, even while they are small in scale individually, will require a large amount of divine magic. My abilities are certainly too lacking to cure her in one session. And even then, I cannot promise there will be no scars remaining. And I cannot do anything about already healed scars.”

Those last words struck Paul as a bit odd. He took a step towards Kana, who was just standing there like it was normal to be on display and took a closer look. Paul had only seen her body in the dim light within the mines, but now in daylight he saw that there were some old scars underneath the fresh injuries. She must have received a severe whipping a while back, as there were several long, white marks on her back, starting from her shoulders running down to her upper thighs.

There was also a small scar on her left shoulder and her upper right arm, which looked like cuts.

“Well, I care a lot about Kana, so I ask you to give it your best effort. I am prepared to provide fair compensation”

“Very well, I will do so then. The treatment costs 30 silver coins per session.”

That was definitely a huge amount of money, compared to the expected result and the effort on the priest’s end. Paul gulped, but decided to at least give it a try.

“OK, please do so then. Please start the treatment as soon as possible.”

“I can do so right now. And you may come back in the evening again. Where should I begin with the process?”

Paul thought about it for a short while, but the answer came easily. “Please start with her face, she is a young woman after all. Below the neck, focus on injuries that may leave scars. We have the time to let bruises and scratches heal naturally.”

“Very well, but let me repeat that I cannot promise a perfect restoration.”

The priest went to work. He extended his hands towards her face until he lightly touched her, then whispered some words, too low for Paul to hear. When he removed his hands, the bruise around Kana’s eye and the split lip had disappeared, and the scar on her forehead had become skin coloured and very fine. It didn’t look too bad.

The priest then repeated this process on her shoulders. When he laid this hands on her left breast, Paul had mixed feelings about it, but the priest didn’t have a strange look on his face, so Paul just ignored those feelings.

After he had healed these areas, the priest looked exhausted and sat down on the bench.

“I am sorry, but this is as much as I can do for now. Please come back again in a few hours if you wish for further treatment.”

Paul thanked the priest and gave him the 30 silver coins he had asked for before he and Kana left the temple. The treatment wasn’t too effective, but Paul was prepared to spend some money on Kana’s recovery, although it felt like a rip off.

“That priest sure makes of lot of money, I wonder how it spends it. The place doesn’t look like it cost very much…” Paul muttered, more to himself, but Kana did hear it.

“Master, I do not think these small injuries will prevent me from my duties. Moving hurts a bit right now, but I can work.”

Kana said so while bowing her head. Paul patted her on her lowered head.

“What are you saying? I’m sure you are tough and all, but I have to take care of you as best as I can. And treating your injuries sure has a high priority, even if it is somewhat expensive.”

Paul knew that objectively speaking, it was pretty much wasted money. Kana had not lost that much HP in the first place, and her wounds would recover by themselves. Paul just felt like he wanted to remove the visible signs of what had happened to her by the hands of the bandits as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

After a few minutes of walking, Paul noticed that Kana was looking sadly at the floor again, seemingly in thought. Seeing his wolf girl this depressed made Paul sad as well. Noticing that Paul was looking at her, Kana raised her head and put on a neutral expression.

Paul thought that she must have been affected by the whole ordeal. She was basically raped and tortured for several days at least. Paul felt anger welling up every time he thought about it.

He was also seriously worried about disappointing Kana’s expectations. He had some money now, so they would not starve and could stay at the inn, but living with the baron even as a servant must have been a more privileged life than what he could offer her right now.

He sat down on a low wall to the side of the street and told Kana to join him. “Hey Kana, we only met each other yesterday and I somehow ended up being your Master, are you OK with how it turned out for you? Aren’t you sad that you have to live with someone you don’t even know and who is not a noble or anything?”

Kana looked down at the floor again. Paul felt a bit bad for deliberately confronting her with it, but the sooner he made sure what was troubling her, the more likely it was that he could address it properly.

Kana did not speak for a long time. It looked like she was thinking about it though, so Paul decided to wait.

“That’s not it….” Kana finally said something.

“Hmm? Kana, I know that the baron made me your master, but you don’t have to hold in your thoughts or feelings. If you want to talk about anything, I will listen to it. I might be asking too much, considering you barely know me, but I will do everything I can so you can have a good life, even with me.”

“I don’t deserve that much” Kana said so without hesitating.

“Please don’t say that like you mean it.”

“I don’t know what Master wants me to do for him, but I know I will be a disappointment. I really can’t do anything” Kana seemed to be on the verge of crying now. “I feel bad that Master plans to spend so much effort me, without knowing how useless I am.”

“Kana…” Paul was a bit surprised. When he met Kana yesterday, she had made the impression of a proud but defeated warrior or something along those lines. He didn’t think she had an inferiority complex.

“I was never good at the things other servants do. I cannot clean well, I get easily distracted and I often break things. No matter how long I am trained or how often I am punished, I always fail at the tasks I am trusted with. I am afraid I will make master sad.” Now Kana actually had a tear running down her pretty face.

“Don’t cry over something like that. Even if you fail at things, I will be happy to just have you around. I will not get angry or sad if you break anything, I promise. I don’t know what you have been doing for the Rosenheims, but I am sure you will be very useful for me.” Paul was smiling at Kana. A clumsy maid has her own charm, for Paul this was a minor problem.

“The only real task I have been given by my former masters was to protect the young mistress, and I failed at the first opportunity.” Kana was legitimately crying now. A woman passing by looked at Paul with an angry expression.

Paul decided not to say any more. He had said what he wanted to say, so he would just show Kana that he meant it. He gently rubbed her head.

“It’s OK. Let’s just head back to the inn for now.” Kana wiped away her tears and nodded. She was still looking sad, but for Paul considered this a success. He had an idea of what troubled her and could try to fix it.

Back at the inn, Paul decided to read through the books he took from the mine. He still had not spent his stat points from the last level up, mostly because he wanted to figure out if he could learn and practise magic with the books. If he could, he would spend points on intelligence and wisdom, if not, he would strengthen his physical abilities.

He thought about a meaningful task he could entrust Kana with. “Kana, can you read?”

She looked dejectedly and shook her head. “I never managed to remember more than a few letters. I am sorry”

“It’s OK, I feel bad for carelessly asking. Is there anything you would like to do? You can just lay down and rest for a while if you want.”

“The only thing I can do is lifting heavy items. Master can punish me for being so useless.”

“Please, Kana…. How could I punish you for that?” Paul was fine with Kana just sleeping for a bit.

Kana was thinking for a while, then spoke “Master could not give me meat, make me sleep on the floor, take away my clothes, hit- “

“Kana” Paul interrupted.

“Yes, Master?”

“Stop giving me suggestions for punishments, please. Just rest for a while, I will check what these books are about.”

Paul then lay down on the bed with the books. He had taken 6 of them from the witch. One was labelled as “Royal Decrees issued in 3230 AK” and seemed to be exactly what it said on the label. Paul put that book to the side, together with the one he had already identified as dealing with magic items.

The next book he opened started with a description of herbs and plants, where to commonly find them and what effects they had. Paul recognized some of the herbs Marcus had shown him. The list was very extensive.

The latter half of the book dealt with the production of different potions, tinctures and salves. Apart from listing those with healing abilities, there were also some with the potential to temporarily increase or restore magical powers, or enhance strength, vision and different kinds of other buffs. For the more potent ones exotic ingredients were needed, like blood from a wyvern, scales from a black Lamia or elemental ashes. Some pages had annotations, perhaps written by the bandit-witch.

He didn’t see any alchemical components or tools in the mine and wondered if there was a hidden lab somewhere, but he would investigate that later. Perhaps the town guard would find it.

He put away the book and opened the next one, it was rather thin. It started with the history of the different schools of magic. Paul was intrigued. He skimmed over the part explaining which god was associated to which magic. Half of the book was dealing with this kind of lore, including anecdotes of how the gods had supposedly used magic against each other before they had decided that it would be better to only use it on mortals, and then ended up teaching it to their favourites amongst them.

The last part of the book was actually dealing with how to chant magic spells. Finally! Paul started to pay closer attention. Apparently magic spells were written in the ancient language of the gods, which consisted of very complicated and numerous letters. There were said to be over 2000 different letters, and those were only the known ones. Copying the letters was a hard job and prone to mistakes, which was one of the reasons why magic tomes were rare and valuable.

The other reason was that learning how to pronounce them was very difficult to say the least, and the meaning behind most of the words has been lost a long a time ago, if it had ever been known. Many of the students at the magic academy failed correctly chant a single spell consisting of only three or four letters after one year of studies. More than half of the students dropped out of the academy without learning how to chant.

Paul was starting to feel depressed. Studying had never been his strong point. Sure, he was quite smart, but if something was tedious, he was prone to just drop it and move on to the next thing. Studying for years without even a guarantee of success was definitely out of the question.

“How disappointing… Can’t it just be something like Latin? Why has it to be Chinese?” He was asking the book.

Kana sat up on the bed, rubbing her eyes. “Master, has something happened?”

“Ah… sorry, Kana. I was just talking to myself. I did not mean to wake you up.” Paul looked at Kana and smiled. Her short, grey hair was messed up on the side she had been sleeping on, and she was looking incredibly cute. Even more so than before, because the injuries on her face had been healed.

“Did Master read something good?”

“Actually no, quite the opposite. I found out that magic is very hard to learn and I will not be able to use it anytime soon, perhaps never. But I guess I will just have to work hard to become an amazing archer” Paul felt like he had lost a very important thing, but he didn’t want to show Kana how he felt and smiled at her again.

Paul then continued to read the book. There were said to be rare cases of gods bestowing the ability knowledge of certain spells to their followers, and centuries ago there were even people learning the meaning behind some of the words. There were no known cases in recent times though.

The book also said that spreading magic scriptures was prohibited and under the control of the magic association. It didn’t talk about teaching how to chant, but it seemed that it was too hard to even think about the possibility.

Paul wondered if he should ask the Earl of Prozor to let Paul study for a bit under the court wizard, as a reward for fighting the bandits. Paul could then decide if it was worth to give the magic academy a shot. He immediately dismissed the thought.

He already had been given Kana as compensation, so he couldn’t just ask for something unreasonable that was bound to fail anyway.

Paul then continued reading. The next page had an example spell on it. At the bottom of the page there were three large symbols, which reminded Paul of squared magic circles. They made up a fourth of the page in height, and easily needed that space because of the delicate symbols each of them was constructed of. They were not kidding when they were talking about complicated letters.

The first paragraph on the page explained the basic form and common themes those symbols had. It went on to say that the symbols underneath where the “Magic Candle” spell, a popular spell amongst beginning students that would conjure a small glowing ball flying above the caster, illuminating the surroundings.

The symbols actually meant Flying Starlight though and Paul wondered why they gave the spell such a bland name when the meaning was much more poetic.

Paul had already starting reading the next page when he discovered the major thing that had just happened.

How the heck did he know what the symbols meant? Paul went back to the page before. He was already so used to the fact that he just “naturally” spoke the regional language and could even read the letters that he hadn’t even thought about the possibility of knowing other languages as well.

Apparently the god’s language was among those he had just been gifted with when he came to the world. When looking at the symbols the meaning popped up in his head, similar to the common language. Paul lay down the book and stood up from the bed.

He struck a cool magician-like pose (at least he himself considered it to be cool) and then said the spell, “Flying Starlight!” Paul had just spoken normal words and nothing happened.

He then tried whispering the spell like the priest had done before, while imagining that he was talking to Helena. “flying starlight” Paul whispered, but it was just the common language again. He had talked to Helena in English for all he knew, so it was a somewhat expected result.

Paul picked up the book again. He looked at the letters, and then tried reading them out loud, without thinking about their meaning. Much trying to read a word backwards.

“●●●” he whispered strange, hissing sounds. The whisper reverberated unpleasantly in Paul’s head.

At that moment, Paul’s mana bar was drained by more than one third and a brightly glowing, small light formed in front of his forehead, then flew upwards. When Paul looked up, he saw the light slowly circling above him, about 50 cm above his head.

[Spell: Flying Starlight has been registered]