-Sigh.
"It seems you've become my number one patient, Arthur. In a month you've visited the infirmary six times since your first day." Catherine sighed with relief after recovering his minor injuries since Grey had done the most healing.
Much as she didn't want to show it, she had developed sympathy towards Arthur because he was pushing himself too far with all of this. She was now worried that he might die from this. As a person who once had a younger brother, Catherine was beginning to feel that maybe all this training was too much for him.
After the selection exam, she almost thought she couldn't heal him; he had burnt both his arms from wielding lightning and fire magic at the same time. Both spells were powerful, so wielding them was supposed to kill him. Yet, somehow, Arthur had survived--and his wounds were almost gone thanks to her healing magic.
Catherine belonged to a rare category of magic users known as emitters. They were different in a way that they had no affinity with any element in the magic realm—instead, emitters tapped into the divine components of the universe and acquired special powers. She was an emitter that could use powerful healing magic on a wide scale.
She was one of the strongest healers in the kingdom of Valron. Even from a young age, Catherine had always been different from normal mages--she had a strong connection to the realm even before awakening. She was born to the Cristis Noble family, granting her access to the best treatment her whole life. She attended the best magic academies in Valron and was trained to be the best in the healing department—so that when she graduated, she would join the magic bureau as the representative of the Cristis family. Her life had been planned from the start. She had one path…and that was it.
However, that changed twelve years ago when the city of Machette was attacked by humans who had made contracts with high-level demons; thousands of people died that day, including her younger brother who was a dark knight at the time. The trauma from that day affected her mentality, and she lost her ability to cast powerful healing magic.
After that, Catherine could no longer join the elite mages of this kingdom. Her family turned its back on her. She was technically disowned because she was useless to their name. The noble families of Valron only cared about prestige. Hence, she and her brother were nothing to them. She was living as a normal healer a few years back when Obsidian offered her something. Something that would only be possible if she worked as a healer in this academy.
"Miss Catherine, I messed up again. Didn't I?" Arthur finally woke up…
The sound of his voice shocked her back to reality. "Yes, but you didn't run out of mana this time. The boy who brought you here said you passed out from excitement after they welcomed you into the disciplinary committee. Congratulations, by the way," she said while taking the seat beside his bed.
"I did not know what to say." He replied with a faint tone.
"'Yes', would be the perfect answer. Linda and Theo have a good eye, so choosing you must mean they saw something." "Don't make me chuckle. Me?" Miss Catherine gave him a skeptical look, "Word has it that you took down and Class S magic beast."
"What is with this school and rumors?"
She shrugged, "Hey…my days are usually boring. It's fun listening to what kids talk about."
"It wasn't my magic that killed the beast. In fact, Elizabeth had used her control skill on my body right before I attacked it," he lifted himself and faced her properly. Catherine's recovery magic had healed him so well that he felt no pain.
"Oh really…? Did you know that a normal Mitheral sword can't absorb two special-grade spells at the same time? Mitheral can only absorb forty percent of a special grade spell and more than that can shatter the mitheral blade like glass," she said. She had discovered something when he was asleep. "I was also able to translate some of the runes on the blade."
Arthur's eyes squinted after hearing what she had said. 'I thought no one but Claudia could see the runes written on the sword.' "You saw the runes…how?" he had no words to explain this. "My skill lets me see what can't be seen by normal eyes."
"God eyes?" Arthur was familiar with that skill.
She nodded. "Yes," she picked up his sword from underneath the bed and gently rested it horizontally on her thighs. Then, she moved her hand on the blade's surface and revealed every rune that had been written on it. Arthur saw this and trembled from the thought that she was going to easily see through any lie he told her.
"What does it say?" he asked.
"These runes are older than the first dark knights, to be honest, translating them would take years even if we visited the best scholar in the Asterisk kingdom. The only word I could translate was probably destroyer," she said, studying the sword's runes with her fingers. "I never thought they made such swords anymore I need to know where you got this sword from, and why it only works for you."
Her eyes were like silver lightning as she waited for the first word that flew out of his mouth.
"I bought it a few weeks back from an elven blacksmith in the iron district." "An Elven blacksmith!" she was surprised. "There is no such thing, that's a dwarf's job!"
"I swear to you it was an elf that sold me the mitheral sword at eight hundred zeni. I only found out later that the sword is different in ways that he can't explain," he said, hoping that this half-baked truth was enough to win her over. "I see," Catherine sighed.
"Are you going tell Professor Obsidian about it?"
"Well, I am the only one who can see the runes. So, I can't. Here…"
She then pushed it back into its sheath and handed it to him.
Arthur accepted it.
"You remind me of my little brother, Cyrus. He wasn't special at all, he was an average water magic user who kept getting hurt every time, I had to heal him each of those times. I hadn't noticed it at first—but you and him share the same spirit of never giving up so easily. However, his greatest mistake was he thought that spirit could save him…" She paused for a moment as she looked into Arthur's light green eyes and said:
"Power comes with a price, Arthur. That sword you carry shares a bond with you, and through that bond you've gained power. Powerful magic comes with a cost, are you prepared to pay for it?"
He didn't answer her question.
Sigh. Catherine then rose from her seat seeing that he had no answer to her question—he was a child after all. It was coming close to his curfew, so she had to see him off since he was now in a better condition. "I want you to be careful, Arthur. One day you might come here with injuries I can't heal…I don't want this world to lose another kind soul."
'Kind? Is that what she sees in me? You almost sound like her.'
She reminded him of how his mother would always be worried about him. But she was right, there was a limit to how much healing magic could do. He had to be more careful with this second life because this might be his last.
Just for a second… His breath quivered and he clutched the blanket covering his lower half. 'I could die again, and not come back.' He turned back to Miss Catherine to apologize, but she was already gone and he was alone once again.