An awakened can consume manarium of all realms, regardless of their own. Consuming a lower realm manarium is a waste of time, since the energy gained is pitiful, and while consuming manarium of a higher realm reduces the time one needed to gather mana by nine tenths per realm difference, only the wealthiest can afford this approach.

  — Excerpt from Treatise on Realm Cores

  Day 108, 3:00 PM

  After reaching the fifth level of apothecary, I called it quits. The class was fine, but I simply didn’t have enough patience to run though loops upon loops of testing poisons on living subjects to find a potential medical use. While their deaths wouldn’t be permanent, going around like a mad scientist, spiking people’s food and drink with poison just because I wanted to level up seemed amoral. A machine might have done it, but I couldn’t.

  So, I shifted the new first day of my loops, left everything in Blackbush’s incapable hands, and went to study alchemy in Thunderbluff. In the final run, the one I decided to let stick, I reached the fourth level of alchemist in five days and joined the alchemists’ guild as an independent, with an expert’s badge waiting for me once I could manipulate mana outside my body.

  Thanks to the religious visits to the rumor-house, I saved a girl from getting violated in a dark alley — why do lone women keep going into those? And I paid thirty gold coins for a once prominent musician’s medical debts, which he would have hung himself over in three days’ time, leaving behind a wife and three-year-old daughter.

  There were other debts, other deaths and tragedies, grief I could have stopped, but didn’t. I limited myself to an arbitrary criteria of whom I felt sorry for and who was influential enough to impact my life in some, preferably positive, way.

  Not the best approach, not the worst either. Middling — kind of like me.

  There were no other tragedies I felt obliged to prevent, so I focused on alchemy, brewing the potions Newstar and myself would need for advancement. The effort would have been futile without the skill I got as a third level alchemist - Initial Infuse Admixture, which allowed me to infuse potions with my own mana, despite me not being able to manipulate it outside my body.

  The best I could do was push mana into the liquid. Still, a convenient cheat given my circumstances, as was Initial Infer Recipe, which allowed me to deduce the ingredients of concoctions after consuming them. Bumping my poison tolerance to advanced was also nice. I was fairly confident that between my physique, mana-infused body, and skill, I was as close to being immune to poison as someone my realm could be.

  As for Initial Quick Brewer, I took it because of emergencies, the horrid scenarios in which I would only have two weeks to find the ingredients and brew whatever potions I needed to handle the disaster. Shortsighted, paranoid, but I knew myself and the way life unfolded for me, so I deemed it necessary.

  I brewed all our potions in three days, and I was left with ten more before the tournament’s end. After several challenging matches and some strings I had pulled ages ago to help him grow stronger, Newstar would win, but he desperately needed proper weapons training.

  I would need about a month with him to make him passable, assuming I could have him abandon his absurd swords. Pretty sure he held a glaive in the vision, so steering him that way was a must. I could further improve it. With just a few dozen loops I could point out his flaws better, maybe shave off a few days, or a week, and—I froze.

  The same mistake. I was making the same mistake as I made with Manny. The boy had become a project, a thing to optimize. I ran my fingers through my short, prickly hair. I would have to grow it long once Newstar forgot his “nightmare”.

  “No, it’s not that bad,” I told myself aloud, pushing away the distracting thought. Mere two weeks had passed for Newt since we met. And even for me, only a smidgeon of time had passed, most of which I spent improving myself in his service. Things weren’t that bad.

  I repeated those words over and over again, realizing I was once more abusing Redo in a matter which would drive me mad. Only for reading and learning. If there are conversations to be repeated beyond wishing someone a good day, Redo is red, despite its color. I already know all this!

  My death in Everrain, and its final loops had made me complacent. I started believing my mind resilient enough to resist Redo’s taint. It’s not. I Am Weak. For all my stats, for all my knowledge, I am weak. I need to work on myself, for myself, and help others as I go along.

  With that in mind, what can I do with the ten days before I meet up with Newstar again? Hunter and healer stood high on my class list, and I chose the latter, since I was in a city.

  During the first healer loop, I found an infirmary in which I volunteered after passing a basic test on medicine. In the next loop, I passed it with flying colors, becoming a doctor straight away rather than a nurse. In the third loop, my knowledge of patients, what would work and what wouldn’t have painted me better than the institution’s greatest healer.

  The fourth loop started, and it would be the keeper. I was certain I could reach the sixth and final attainable level of healer in two days.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The infirmary was in the slums. While sewers existed, the slummers seemed to have trouble using them properly, or they let their home plumbing clog or malfunction, meaning the place reeked. The poor sanitation, plus the malnourishment, made for a breeding pool of infections, and all those people visited a rundown old building, which was once a shiny, brand-new infirmary. It still served the same purpose, but with several broken windows, dilapidated exterior, and doors from which the paint had peeled years ago.

  “Greetings,” I told Clear, the nurse, right from the door. “I have some medical knowledge and would like to donate several days of my time to your institution.”

  Clear was haggard, dark bags beneath her eyes. She wasn’t a medical professional, but an honorable woman with a mission, whose teen son had survived thanks to the clinic, and she was paying them back with labor whenever she had a spare hour. I liked her quite a bit and planned to give her a modest amount of gold, which she would use to pay for the infirmary’s grace.

  Being the poor place it was, most clients paid in non-monetary ways. Washing sheets and clothes for the healers free of charge, premium prices on goods and services, and things like that. Had the empire ran the establishment, my respect for the faction would have soared. But it was an old family tradition. The family itself was gone, but the infirmary continued to operate for centuries, since the establishment’s benefactors had paid all the imperial taxes several thousand years in advance.

  I approved of their foresight, and I would contribute to the fund before leaving Thunderbluff. Hundreds of thousands of gold coins had already become loose change for me, with a single piece of first realm manarium being worth a million gold coins, assuming anyone was dumb enough to sell it for gold.

  Clear looked me over, I was well dressed, my back straight, and a bright, friendly smile on my lips.

  “I’ll go call the manager.”

  Five minutes later, I was sitting in the manager’s office, which the staff also used for their meals, planning, and everything else, since patients populated the other chambers and some of the hallways.

  “So, you’re not a guild member, sir Dandelion?”

  “Thunderbluff lacks a healer’s guild. I would have to travel quite far and back just to get a pin. And you, sir Fivesnake? Are you registered?”

  The balding elderly man shook his head. He was non-awakened. For me the journey was a wasted week. For him, it would take months, and for no real benefit.

  “It’s impractical.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, no less exhausted than Clear. No wonder, considering his institution only had three physicians. “Can you tell me of the common ways of curing the yellow rot?”

  His interest in me picked up as I answered question after question. In the first loop, I had made mistakes with the questions because the imperial library offered little in terms of common diseases. Its tomes mostly focused on ailments awakened suffered from, such as poisons and wounds.

  Still, knowing the questions, the patients in the building, and which would recover from which treatment made things a breeze, especially since Fivesnake was asking questions regarding the illnesses patients were suffering.

  “How much time are you willing to donate for us?” The tired man smiled, sitting straighter in his chair, since he realized he was in the presence of someone more skilled than he was.

  The strangest thing was that Advanced Healing made treating patients an instinctive action, but I lacked the theoretical knowledge to answer interview questions. The way BSD divides skills into theoretical and practical seemed absurd.

  Finally, the conversation ended, and Fivesnake stood, offering his hand. “Thank you kindly for volunteering in a place like this one. I’m certain you could earn good money practicing our craft in areas considerably better off. I really appreciate it.”

  “It is a pleasure,” I assured him, then he gave me the least stained white apron he could find, and I went to handle my first patient, without Fivesnake’s supervision.

  The boy suffered from a heavy cough. He had survived a pneumonia, but had lingering water in his lungs, which I solved by draining the lungs of water with a simple bloodletting needle.

  I checked my screen, and I was a level zero healer, out to treat ten patients so I could earn my next level.

  [Name - Dandelion Blackfist

  Class - healer level 0

  Health 25/25, Strength - 25, Agility - 25, Physique - 25, Wisdom - 25, Intellect - 25, Willpower - 25, Presence - 25, Charisma - 25, Composure - 25

  Abilities - See Abilities for more information.

  Attribute points remaining - 23

  To level up, treat ten patients.

  Statuses - none]

  [Abilities - Expert Appraisal, Initial Forest Ambush, Advanced Looting, Literate, Flawless Heartcore, Initial Mana Gathering, Initial Mana Circulation, Initial Black Fist Arts, Advanced Body Reinforcement, Master Rider, Initial Fast Reader, Initial Reference Checker, Master Calligraphy, Initial Arithmetics, Initial Persuasion, Initial Photographic Memory, Initial Time Optimization, Initial Logical Deduction, Advanced Steady Hand, Initial Eye For Detail, Initial Seal Deconstruction, Initial Seal Prototyping, Expert Staffmanship, Expert Swordsmanship, Expert Spearmanship, Initial Clubmanship, Initial Flailmanship, Advanced Knifemanship, Initial Axmanship, Initial Macemanship, Initial Slingmanship, Advanced Bowmanship, Piercing Weapons Master, Battlefield Mastery, Always Ready, Initial Sense of Danger, Initial Hammer Proficiency, Initial Find Structural Weakness, Initial Rhythm, Initial Endurance, Advanced Herbalism, Advanced Healing, Initial Focus, Initial Woodland Sense, Initial Poison Lore, Initial Precise Hand, Advanced Poison Tolerance, Initial Infer Recipe, Initial Infuse Admixture, Initial Quick Brewer]

  [Anarchist Level 7

  Abilities - Rage, Redo, Blunt, Heavy Handed, Direct, Insightful, Precise, Amicable, Visionary, Godly ??, Gate Sealer ??, Vengeful ?, Grandmaster Rider ?

  To level up, force the authorities to impose justice upon a party they had previously ignored.]