The walk to my brother’s, or I should say Kate’s, house took no longer than two minutes. The place looked like a small shop with a living floor built on top.

“Here we are, home” Tom said as he opened the door.

“We have to organize our supplies. They will have been delivered by the time we get there” Alana said.

“Yeah we’ll meet you here tonight” Judy followed as the two headed off.

“This is a pretty big place. You’ve got more room here than we do at the house in the village” I commented.

“Well the ground floor is for Kate’s healing business, she makes quite a bit on the side now that has has levelled up a bit and has some extra mana, it’s how we could afford this place” he followed me in.

“We are closed right now” I heard Kate as she was coming down the stairs. “Oh, Tom, who were you talking to?”

She entered the room as she finished speaking and looked at me surprised. “Ajax!”

“Yeah , he came with Judy and Alana on their trip to the city and I said he can stay with us in the spare room”

“Might as well, we’re not using it for anything yet” she grinned back at him.

“I have to go wash a bit from training then I have to go on patrol, you mind helping Ajax settle in?” He quickly got out while making for the stairs. “Oh, and Judy and Alana are coming over for dinner to catch us up on what’s happening in the village.”

“Yeah that will be no problem, come upstairs Ajax” she smiled at me “Boy, have you grown since I last saw you”

That was quite something seeing how I was now taller than my brother by two inches, as I followed Kate up the stairs. Their guest room was plain, having nothing more than a bed and and a small cupboard where I could put my clothes and weapons, not that I needed much else since I only brought my plants and those were with my sister’s merchandise as she offered to have them appraised along with everything else she planned to sell.

“Feel free to make yourself at home, I have a few supplies I need to make sure are stocked” Kate said after I got into the room and then left me to it.

It took about twenty minutes to put everything in the same order I had at home. As I was doing all that I heard my brother exit the bathroom and walk past my door in a different, cleaner uniform.

“I’ll be back in four hours and then you can bring me up to speed as to why you decided to join for this trip so close to the end of your child trait, that will happen in two days” he waited in front of the door, clearly offering me a chance to tell him if there was some sort of emergency happening in the village that caused me to get sent at this awkward timing.

“It can wait till tonight” I reassured him.

He went on down the stairs, said his goodbye to Kate and was out the door. As for me, after almost two weeks on the road I probably smelled worse than my brother so I grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, now that I was clean and changed I headed downstairs where I found Kate reading a book. She looked up as she heard me come down, closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

“So what is it that you do in this shop?” I asked the one question that had been eating at me, after all my brother told me that people in the guard weren’t hired by others while they still served to prevent corruption.

“I just offer faster wound healing with my excess mana” She responded. “Unlike how it was when I first started as a healer for the guards, with me growing in levels the past few years and having more flexibility when it comes to my shifts, I use my spare mana to speed up healing of people who want their wounds or illnesses to heal faster.”

“Why specifically offer to help speed up the healing process?” This didn’t make much sense to me as healing all wounds seemed to be a much better business model.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t know about this coming from a village but in pretty much every city in this kingdom the Healing Union handles all lethal cases. They also charge practically nothing for the healing, and can afford to since they are funded by the nobility the only thing left to offer is a service to help speed up the process. Since they heal anyone of anything lethal they don’t have the resources to completely remove all traces of the wound or affliction, they just do enough so that the body will recover by itself.”

This was a very interesting piece of information, it also explained why people who had mana were so hounded by specific nobles and not the crown, with this Healing Union caring for the masses all that was left was private personal healers.

“But then who will be willing to pay for it? Nobles have their own private healers and everybody else would just have to wait for a bit.” Something was still not adding up, the poor would have no reason to pay for a healer to speed things up if it cost more than they could make working that time.

“Yes but adventurers will usually lose a lot more money by waiting it out than I would charge to fix them up.”

“And this doesn’t get in the way of your duties as a guard healer at all?”

“Nope, since I have my shifts in such a way that I have three days in a row free I always finish on a day like today when I just recuperate my mana.”

With my curiosity satisfied I went and crashed for the rest of the time until dinner, the last two weeks of sleeping in a cart having caught up with me so I took a nap until dinner. Sleeping in a real bed felt a lot better than I remembered and I was out like a light.

“So, what is it that you all coming here this time?” my brother asked as the five of us sat down to eat.

“I’m sure you noticed the four platoons that left the city today” My sisters got out through bites of food. “They are all heading towards the village, apparently a group of kobolds have exited the mountain caves so mom and dad thought it best to not risk Ajax going hunting in the woods with them there before he got his stats unlocked”

“Kobolds near the village?” A bit of panic seeped into my brother's voice.

“They are a few months away from actually making it to the village, they move slowly outside their tunnels apparently, so the soldiers will reach the village and clear them out long before anything can happen.”

This seemed to relax my brother, so he turned to me “Well that’s ok then. I have tomorrow off, so while I suspect you and Alana will be in meetings, as you usually are the first day after you get here, is there anything you want to do Ajax?” My sister and Alana nodded at his statement.

“I’d like to try and go hunting here near the city, to see what that is like, I remember you saying guards sometimes went with a hunting party. Any chance you can show me where?” excitement filled my voice at the prospect of seeing a different hunting ground.

“I did get a letter saying that you actually managed to find something you were good at, so hunting, yeah I think I can manage that but aren’t you getting your stats in two days? Are you sure you don’t want to wait until my next day off in 6 days and go then?.” His question was quite an obvious one so I debated it a bit.

“I haven’t hunted here before so I want to have a go once before my stats change so drastically I can compare the difference, after all I’ll be here for a month at least, until the soldiers return.” I made my case while hoping I wasn’t a bother to my brother. “Especially after that run in with the bandits”

“What bandits?” Kate asked, Tom frowning at the first remark he heard all day about said bandits.

“Half an hour out from the city we had a run in with a group of bandits but they all got picked up by a regiment of guards before anything came of it” Judy waved off the questioning stares.

That rest of dinner was quiet, as we all finished our food and before Judy and Alana headed back to their accommodations. I went to bed so tired that I skipped out on my usual mana exercises before sleep.