Too Slow Gets the Whip

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"Hello, Miss Charlotte!" Sue piped up.

The Duke sighed. "Court Magician Charlotte… I know I also said for you to feel at home, but do you act like this in your own home?"

"Her house has some doors removed because it's too much of a hassle opening doors to move research materials!" the tired voice spoke up from behind her.

"Eek!" Suddenly Charlotte came back to her senses. The court magician began bowing and apologizing to the Duke for her rudeness. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

And then she looked up and her expression steeled again. "Sir von Chara! I have brought him as you requested!"

I blinked. "... you brought the who in the my what now?"

"Um… this is my cousin, Sir Alan. He has the [Null] ability of [Portal] for long-distance travel and transport."

Charlotte stepped aside to show off the person behind her. A walking pile of books. We couldn't see the person's face, but there was no mistaking the tired sarcastic git in his tone. "I'm so happy to meet /exactly none of you./"

"... you know what, I'm just not going to deal with this right now…" I sighed. "We're still in the middle of a delicate medical situation. Lady Ortlinde, we're going to have to turn off the [Blind Sight] spell for a while."

"Hurry up and wait, sure why not. It's like I never left the military. Awesome."

"Please put the books down on that table there, Alan. But be careful! They're very delicate."-

"These are books, woman! As long as they're not wet or on fire, they're the opposite of delicate," Alan grumbled. "Also, I can't even see where you're pointing. Can you use your damn brain for something useful?"

"H-how rude!" Sue gasped. "You can't talk to Miss Charlotte like that!" Her face puffed up in outrage.

Charlotte escorted her helper to a side table. "It's all right. My sister will make him pay for it once we're done here."

"I already regret everything, there's nothing more you could do to me except make my suffering any shorter." He paused. "Also I regret the most being away from my wife, so you should know there are more… pleasurable… forms of suffering."

By the confused look on Charlotte's face it was clear that no, she had no idea what that meant. She was separated from her family at the age of about eight years old, and spent most of her formative years in Mismede in the company of fairies with very low fertility rates and disproportionately female at that.

Of course that meant a whole lot of them were shameless perverts, but all that really ̷m̷̶̷e̷̶̷n̷̶̷t̷̶̷a̷̶̷l̷̶̷l̷̶̷y̷̶̷ ̷̶̷s̷̶̷c̷̶̷a̷̶̷r̷̶̷r̷̶̷e̷̶̷d̷̶̷ taught Charlotte in the end was that all pain was pain. While they couldn't do anything directly to Charlotte, her of-age guards were another matter entirely.

"N-no. Of course not. All pain is pain… it's a lesson, a reminder to do better next time. Those who do good don't get hit. P-pain is a lesson!" And yet a part of her, that was a child starved for attention and sent away by her family, was willing to suffer pain because it meant her teacher was looking at her and cared about what she was doing.

Alan groaned and put down the heavy load of books that he was forced to carry. Doing so exposed a thin, tired-looking face with long stringy hair. "I am learning nothing from this," he wheezed.

I ignored the overdramatic fool and addressed the Duchess again. "All right. I'll be turning off the spell. Please prepare yourself. In three… two… one."

/"Spell Slot cleared,"/ Monika noted.

The Duchess flinched.

"Did that hurt?" I asked. "How do you feel? Are you seeing anything?"

She shook her head. "No… it was just surprising. I'm seeing… this somewhat warm haze." Her eyes had turned a pale turquoise again.

I held up a little ball of [Light] and waved it in front of her eyes. "Pupils… are responding to the presence of light. Please follow if you can perceive where the light is coming from."

Her gaze followed the light ball left and right. I continued "Good. Can you perceive any shape or gradation in the light? I will now be varying the distance."

After a while Duchess Ellen said "I can see a little bit of a change, but it still becomes light or dark very quickly. I can tell when only one eye is shaded."

/"So it really is the vision equivalent of TV static,"/ Monika mused. /"Weird. Well, Player, I'm out of theories. We're not actual trained doctors after all." Fortunately she only whispered this to my ears. "How are you going to get us out of this hole? You don't really expect me to keep locked down one of my slots for her sight, right? Are you planning on somehow getting Sue to cast and maintain the spell?"/

I shook my head and stood up. I had a more eerie suspicion.

"By the way, what is your magical affinity, Lady Ellen?" I asked.

"Fire," she replied with a disappointed breath. The same as her father, but despite that he had the power of [Recovery] to uphold the family's reputation as great healers.

I went over to my backpack and brought out a soft sand-filled cloth ball. Then I addressed the Duchess "Lady Ellen! Catch!" Then I threw the ball at her face.

The ball slapped onto a waiting palm.

"Sir Zah!" Sue gasped. "Mother!"

The Duchess lowered her hand and stared at the ball with wide sightless eyes. "What… what was that?"

"Sir von Chara, if you do that again, we will not have words," Duke Ortlinde growled.

"Ahah… sorry. In my defense it would have missed anyway?"

Sue leapt over to her mother's side. "Mother, can you see now?!"

"No. I'm sorry, Sue. There's… nothing." She furrowed her brows a bit and looked up. Somehow she could tell where I was standing. "So how did I just do that?"

I shrugged. "My spells generally don't act like making something from nothing. It takes either something that exists, or a known quality like speed, pressure, or direction, and then builds off that. [Blind Sight] doesn't give you a new magical form of sight, but takes in and amplifies everything else you may perceive and builds the information you receive into something that seems like sight."

/"What, is this like the reason why Air Benders have shaved heads? So they can better feel changes in air pressure on their naked scalp?"/

I grimaced. "This means that even if we terminate [Blind Sight] it takes a while for your body to forget what it was doing. It's actually making new connections in your brain, because while the human body is actually surprisingly clever at healing around damage. It is accidentally teaching you some sort of [Blind Fighting] skill."

Everyone stared oddly at me. "Isn't… that a good thing?" asked the Duke.

"[Heal] spells repair damage. If doing this eventually trains Duchess Ellen to see without using her eyes, heal spells will no longer function because her brain has repaired itself. But the alternative is to keep her blinded for longer."

The Duchess responded with a light, dismissive little laugh. "I have endured five years. If it would mean being able to see my family again, please do not mind me."

I made some sort of frustrated guttural sound. "But this leaves us with another option! Which is to build upon [Blind Sight] and make it able to perceive shapes and colors. You would retain the improved reflexes and heightened perception with all other senses than sight, without it interfering with your vision.

"Speaking as a person who is mostly blind, sight is the most precious of our human senses and the one we depend on the most for our survival. Many would rather give up their ability to speak, to hear, or to feel, than give up sight. We overdepend on sight because without it we are starkly reminded that this fangless, hairless two-legs should be prey to larger animals.

"This is very tempting to me because the cure to your eyes would likely also be a cure to my own while permanently also improving my combat abilities. Also, um, yours."

/"Player, it is GROSSLY UNETHICAL to use your patients for UNSANCTIONED MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS."/

"I knoooowwww…." I wailed and flapped my hands around helplessly.

Duchess Ellen raised a hand to her lips and giggled delicately. "I think I would like to hear more about this before coming to a decision."

/"Lady Ellen, please do not indulge his foolishness. The first Oath of a Doctor is 'Do No Harm'. Patients are there to be healed as soon as possible, not to be upgraded."/

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Charlotte waved for attention.

"Yes?" I replied with a nod.

"Doesn't this mean that all you need is something that gives normal sight? She would then get used to seeing again until a time when such a spell is no longer necessary? If the body is so good at repairing around damage, how come vision only grows worse with age?"

"Obviously because what's damaged can never really be as good as the unbroken," Alan retorted. "You can only exercise so much before you're tearing open your own muscles and lose them. That's why we don't need bulky muscle-heads in the army."

Then he looked up and around, "Where is that other woman's voice coming from anyway?"

/"It is a mysssterrryyy….."/ Monika replied in a spectral whisper.

Then belatedly she answered Charlotte's question, /"Some parts of the body can only degrade after being fully formed, not improved by exercise. Aging is largely the body's eventual inability to cope with repairing itself after the small amounts of damage and new growths needed after everyday exertions."/

"Uh, Charlotte, does your friend actually have the security clearance for this?" I asked, belatedly realizing the sensitive nature of medical information regarding the Ducal house.

Duke Ortlinde sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Sir Alan Droz is a member of the Royal Guards."

"Nice." I brandished a thumbs-up. They should be hella suspicious about me and make sure that I intend no harm to the kingdom no matter my words or how much Duke Ortlinde gave his trust.

Alan copied the gesture. "I would really like NOT to have to deal with any of this noble scheming, if you don't mind."

"Fair enough. As a soldier yourself, would you mind sitting in with the medical lecture I'm presenting soon after this?"

"… that interests me a little bit, yeah."

"A lecture! Yes! That's good too! Medicine is important for everyone! Even the military can't ignore its importance! Alan, I need paper! Where did you put the paper?!" Charlotte sprang up and began to carelessly rifle through the books. Some of them were blank notebooks and journals.

"On top!" Alan yelled back. "I knew this would happen! Stop being in such a hurry, woman! You don't need to rush everything!"

Charlotte stopped. And then had a full-body shiver. "No… no… can't be too slow. Speed is life. Too slow gets hit. Too slow gets the whip…"

Then after a few seconds of fugue, she went back to flipping open books for a blank journal.

Sue gave her a pitying look, then reached out to clasp her mother's hand.

-.

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"The human body, like all the world and life itself, is composed of interconnected systems. But as each organ has its own function, we can examine each system separately. Some organs are part of multiple systems. The human body, to my knowledge, has eleven main organ systems."

I paused in my presentation to gauge the audience. The Duke and Duchess had chosen to observe at least the presentation and the first lesson, sitting side by side in the couch and holding hands. Sue and Charlotte were sitting side by side too, but on separate chairs behind a desk placed in the center of the room. They had identical looks of rapt attention. I had to warn them to take notes after the presentation, it was too dim for that and it would just hurt their eyes to try and split their attention enough they wouldn't remember the lessons. The assistant and bodyguard, Alan, sat off to the left leaning on a coffee table. He looked bored but tried not to look disrespectful.

Linze already knew some of these, so perhaps it was just as well that she wasn't here to be bored going over what we had already discussed. As the healers of the party, we had to be as efficient with our magical power as possible.

I continued, and the screen projected onto a hanging silk curtain showed anatomy diagrams in succession.

"The CIRCULATORY SYSTEM circulates blood around the body, delivering oxygen and nutrients to other organs and carries away waste products. Blood is also hot and serves to equalize temperature in the body. It is composed of the heart, arteries, and veins.

"The RESPIRATORY SYSTEM involving the lungs, nose, and throat, brings in fresh air to be mixed with the blood and brings out stale air.

"The DIGESTIVE SYSTEM carries out the mechanical and chemical processes that provides nutrients via the ingestion of food and drink, and eliminates waste from the body. This is done via actions of the mouth, down the esophagus, into the stomach, and then the intestines. The liver is also part of this system by the excretion of bile that aids in the digestion of fats and sugars.

"The ENDOCRINE SYSTEM is the signaling system of the body between organs, and the chemicals released into the bloodstream govern states like rate of digestion and metabolism, breathing, lactation, sleep cycles, growth, and mood. It does so through several glands; pituitary here in the brain, the thyroid here in the neck, the pancreas, the adrenal glands, and testes for males and ovaries for females.

"The INTEGUMENTARY SYSTEM is basically the protective covering of the body. The skin, hair, nails. Also usually combined with the EXOCRINE SYSTEM, which produces substances outside of the bloodstream, like sweat, tears, mucous, and so on. Some of there are in linings of the tongue, nose, stomach, esophagus, and intestines. The Pancreas is part of both ENDO and EXOCRINE systems by being able to release hormones into the bloodstream and digestive juices into the small intestine.

"The LYMPHATIC SYSTEM, also known as the IMMUNE SYSTEM, is a network lympthatic vessels that carry a clear fluid called lymph. This fluid contains what you might call the 'soldiers of the body', mixing with the blood and attaching themselves to the small carriers of disease and polluted blood, carrying them to the lymph nodes to be destroyed. They attack tumors and fight off diseases.

"Part of why it is called the immune system is that if you contract a weaker strain of something like the pox and your body fights it off, it will remember how it did so and makes you immune to the stronger strain."

"Excuse me, what?!" Alan's chin fell off the hand he was leaning on. "That's what that does? That's why they make us drink pox milk?"

I blinked in confusion. What the hay is pox milk?

"So there is some truth to the saying 'what does not kill you makes you stronger'...," Charlotte murmured. Her right hand began to twitch again, almost appearing to float off the table.

"Ooookay then. Next up is the MUSCULAR SYSTEM, which moves the body. Muscles are attached to bones, the SKELETAL SYSTEM, and combined they are the LOCOMOTOR SYSTEM responsible for human movement. It should be easy enough to understand – muscles are meat. Creatures and monsters would be just as willing to eat to eat us if we're not smart about things, and man should not be too arrogant to forget that in the end he's just another animal.

"The SKELETAL SYSTEM apart from supporting the weight of the body and protecting the organs from damage also has marrow inside the hollow bones responsible for the creation of new blood.

"And then there's the NERVOUS SYSTEM, which contains the brain, the spinal column, and the nerves, eyes and ears, which collects and processes information from the senses and tells the muscles to contract to cause physical actions. Nerves are responsible for all feeling of pleasure and pain and your brain is where all thinking happens. Contrary to expectations, deadening nerves doesn't make for a better power that can fight through pain – it leads to an ignorant fighter not knowing that they're damaging their body beyond recovery and causing muscle tears in small everyday things.

"Then we have the EXCRETORY SYSTEM, which filters the blood and takes away the chemicals it does not need into urine to be removed from the body.

"And then finally we have the male and female REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS responsible for making new humans."

Sue eek'ed and covered her eyes. Charlotte smiled and put a comforting arm over the little girl's shoulders.

"It's all right," Duchess Ortlinde said from the couch. "I was learning this at a younger age from my tutors. The children of farmers know even sooner how babies are made. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the miracle of motherhoood."

I didn't want to ruin Sue's innocence, but at her age she should have been learning it in science class. A doctor has no room for prudery. I waved and dismissed the opaque [Dark Wall] covering the windows. "Those are the systems of the human body to my knowledge. I will now be taking questions."

Charlotte raised her hand. "You didn't show the energy veins. In the Far East, they also speak of a separate spirit vein and points of power."

"Stabbing people can heal people, that's what they believe over there," Alan said with an arrogant yawn.

I shrugged. "You mean like chakra points?" I actually respected acupuncture as a treatment for the nervous and endocrine systems, but its therapeutic properties had a more direct effect on the body's hormonal balance than just realigning chi. "Well, as a healer I choose to deal with systems that are /physically present/ in the human body. While you could say that magic power varies with the individual, these systems are the very basis for human existence. Everyone has these organs. Even animals have these organs, if just differently shaped.

"There is no morality or philosophy in biological systems. Rather than diagnose for an imbalance in energies or humors or fluids or whatnot, diagnose exactly which parts of the body are failing and correct how the system is supposed to work for the sake of the whole. Failure in one part will soon lead to damage in the others."

Needless to say, don't look for me when it comes to more... abstract conditions, like mental health. Seriously, what sort of idiot tries to go to the recovering manic depressive about these things? Individuals are unique and have different means of coping and therapy. I can fix your body all day, don't ask me to heal your mind.

Or your heart, because all you need to know is to have only one waifu. Having too many waifu will ruin your laifu.

And then it was time for the lecture and study portion. The Duke and the Duchess, having already indulged their curiosity, left us be in privacy. Even Alan had to leave, mostly because he would be bored to death by it all.

But before they could go, Monika asked to lend the Duke one of the projector cubes. I handed one over, much to their surprise. They were already trusting me with their precious daughter, trusting them with a light emitting device (despite how irreplaceable it would be) did not compare. Monika's not IN the thing after all, she would hardly suffer from having it damaged.

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And so as I brought out the study books (made via literally laser-printing using controlled pulses of the Monika Beam), the Duke and Duchess took to another salon in the mansion. While I focused on the tutoring, meanwhile Monika gave back Duchess Ellen her [Blind Sight].

"Didn't Sir von Chara say this could lead to a permanent blindness?" Duke Alfred asked.

/"It would take a few months, a couple more weeks wouldn't hurt,"/ Monika nonchalantly replied.

The Duke looked up sharply, and then his eyes narrowed. "You… you could heal Ellen's eyes at any time, couldn't you?! You're both just holding back so that Sue might do it instead."

Duchess Ellen blinked. "Why? Although I understand, it would make Sue VERY happy and I would be happy to endure blindness for longer just to allow her that… why indulge her so?"

She tapped at her chin and theorized "Is it that if she could understand systems, she would be able to heal anything? Could it be that Sue would be able to heal Sir Zah's own eyes, for some reason you are not allowed to do so?"

Monika smiled. /"That could be it, certainly."/

Duchess Ellen smiled back. "But that's not it either, isn't it so?"

The Duke looked at the identical smiles on the face of the two women and wisely decided to keep silent.

"You like Sue, and I feel that is true," the Duchess continued, "but I think it would be a bother if she grew too attached to you. You don't want to make Sue dependent on you, so that it won't hurt your conscience to just leave when it feels like being in this kingdom is chaining you down."

Monika crossed her ams and tapped at her chin, copying the Duchess' thoughtful gesture from earlier. /"How are you doing in finding out who is responsible for the attacks on your family? How well are you prepared to repel another attack, as obvious as another ambush or subtler by poisoning or magic? There's nothing like incompetence to make us leave in a hurry."/

"I should feel insulted by that," the Duke had to interrupt "But I'm not saying anything unless you are asking to be part of the investigation."

"But doing so will be asking to get even more involved. To be chained down," the Duchess noticed. "So I wonder, what are you after, oh esteemed spirit?"

/"What do YOU think I'm after?"/

Duchess Ellen's lips thinned into a line. "I am reminded that some spirits can /possess people/. And this makes me suspicious about your obvious attentions towards Sue."

Monika laughed. Long and loud. It was a creepy laugh.

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