Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 19 - Labor (Patreon)

Dragon anatomy was strikingly similar to that of a human.  Even in their dragonic forms, most of the organs and physical mechanics of muscles, joints, tendons, and other fleshy bits remained similar enough that Eli’s training still applied.

He didn’t particularly need to know how a ball joint worked.  His healing would function regardless of his knowledge. However, if his grandfather found out he’d tried to shortcut the process, there would be hell to pay.

Ever since he’d been old enough to read, Eli had received anatomy lessons from his grandfather.  Not because the old Healer wanted him to follow in his footsteps.  He very much did not, and when he’d discovered that Eli had taken the archetype, his resigned facial expression said as much.

But for all that he wanted Eli to pick a different archetype, he also believed that everyone needed to know how the body worked.  He’d even hunted down a lot of his old medical school textbooks, which took a place in the bedtime story rotation, right alongside fairy tales and Lord of the Rings. 

Even now, almost two decades later, Eli remembered the lessons he’d learned. 

And more importantly, he maintained his grandfather’s standard of excellence.  While other Healers relied on their spells and abilities to see them through, Eli worked from a foundational premise of knowledge.  Did it make his spells more effective?  Probably not.  But there was something incredibly comforting about knowing exactly what those spells were doing when they mended bones or knit flesh back together. 

So it was that his time in the clinic served as a means of destressing, especially after the high-stakes training he’d undergone ever since he’d come to the Empire of Scale to study under Birk.

And Tura, though she claimed that her role wasn’t that of a teacher.  Rather, she continuously said that she was just looking after him.  Still, he’d learned as much during their visits as he had under Birk’s tutelage.

The subjects were different, but Eli didn’t believe for a second that they were unrelated.  While Birk taught him about battle, ranging from personal fighting to large-scale tactics, Tura’s lessons focused on the fundamentals of magic, cultivation, and potion-making. 

In the case of the latter, Eli still didn’t understand most of what she’d tried to teach.  Instead of focusing on the process of alchemy, he instead concentrated on the uses of various potions and their ingredients.  Imbibing the raw materials wasn’t advisable, but doing so could help in certain situations.

Of course, it could also be deadly, especially if one lacked the constitution to process them. 

But that was the whole point of her lessons.  Eli still hadn’t been allowed to level.  Not the same way others did, at least.  Instead of heading off into towers or fighting monsters in the wilderness, he was only permitted to earn experience while healing in the lowest-level clinic in Esik. 

If he tried to work in the higher-tier facilities, he’d be completely overwhelmed.  After all, he still didn’t have a class.  And as such, his healing spells were comparatively weak.  Still, his advanced cultivation for his level gave him some advantages others lacked.

On top of that, Eli enjoyed helping people that most others ignored.

Because no one came into that low-level clinic if they had a choice.  No – they were only there because they couldn’t afford the fees at the other clinics. 

Most of the work was provided by mortal-tier Healers, like Eli.  As such, they were all serpentors.  By the time dragons or drakes overcame the Culling, they were all ascendent.  And they certainly wouldn’t have descended into what amounted to slums, just to heal a bunch of people they would assuredly see as beneath them.

All except Gah’ri. 

He’d never given a clan name, but the dragon was a deity-tier powerhouse.  Yet, he worked right alongside the mortal-tier Healers.  Usually, he didn’t use his own spells.  Instead, he took the role of a teacher, guiding them forward as they overcame injuries and illness in their own right.

Eli expected that he was a lot like Birk or Tura.  Elites even among deities. 

But there was no way for him to tell.  Even the weakest deity was an unclimbable mountain to him – powerful beyond reckoning.  He was content to heal the people he could, though. 

Not because it gave him experience.

It barely awarded him anything, largely because there was no danger involved.  If he’d been in a combat situation, things might’ve been different.  Or if he hadn’t had a deity-level Healer hovering over him.  But that just wasn’t the case.

Regardless, Eli wasn’t there for progression.  Even if it awarded him nothing, he still would’ve found time to show up at the clinic – because people needed him.  For some, it was the only healing to which they might have access.

In more ways than one, it reminded him of his grandfather.  Or the work undertaken by the Hartwood Foundation.  It was as noble as it was necessary, though he didn’t think of it as the former.  Not usually.  But Eli still took a degree of pride in each healthy person he released from the clinic.

It was similar to what he felt when he finally overcame one of Birk’s other students.

A rarity, even now.

Not an unexpected one, but frustrating nonetheless.  After all, the others were all ascendents.  Even with the training facilities serving to normalize their attributes, there was only so much equality to go around.  The reality was that the restrictions just didn’t go down far enough to put them on even footing with Eli. 

And they were dragons.

That made an incredible amount of difference.

The end result was that he usually found himself on the wrong end of their weapons.  He could count on one hand the number of times he’d actually won a bout.  He always gave a good accounting, but there were some gaps that just couldn’t be bridged.  Not with technique.  Not with clever tactics. 

Just like he could never heal a demigod so long as he remained a mortal.  He just didn’t have the power to make it happen. 

Still, those times he had managed to eke out a victory sang in his mind, proof that all of his work hadn’t been for naught.  Even with those thoughts bolstering his resolve, Eli had succumbed, and on more than one occasion, to despair. 

Those incidents were better left in the past, barely more than blurry memories that he knew would embarrass him as well as his entire family. 

Tura and Birk knew about them, of course.  Seemingly, they knew everything about everything.  However, they both kept their criticism to themselves. 

For Birk, all that mattered was his performance during his lessons.  For Tura, she likely recognized his regret for what it meant.  He would always make mistakes, but so long as he understood what they were and how to prevent them in the future, she was content to keep her judgement to herself.

Mostly.

A few sidelong glances.  A bit of disappointment behind her eyes.  A couple of extra-large meals and exceptionally foul-tasting potions.  Those were the extent of her punishments, and they worked at least as well as actual admonishment. 

Regardless, he’d left those days behind him.

Eli was well into adulthood.  Not by dragon standards, but certainly by human reckoning.  Although, he’d heard speculation that human emotional development had slowed along with new, longer lifespans.  Some were considered teenagers – or at least something like it – into their fifties.

Eli’s parents had never subscribed to that kind of new age thinking.

Without giving any indication of his thoughts, Eli continued to fight the infection surging through the feathered serpentor’s heart.  It was ethereal in nature, which meant that normal remedies wouldn’t work.  The bird-like woman’s natural regeneration had failed as well, evidence that her class focused elsewhere. 

As far as he knew, she was a Scholar, and not a particularly gifted one.  Likely, she’d end up as a Clerk or some other mundane worker.  Not that Eli looked down on her for it.  As long as she was happy, he wouldn’t judge her. 

Although, he couldn’t imagine a life settling for something like that.

It was also obvious that she hadn’t worked very hard on her body cultivation.  If she had, the infection wouldn’t have been an issue.

Regardless, aside from those superfluous thoughts – barely even noticed amidst everything else – Eli focused on the task at hand.  To him, it wasn’t so different from his sparring matches, just on a simultaneously grander and far smaller scale.  The infection, he imagined as an alien foe, while his chosen spell – Decontaminate – was his weapon. 

However, the infection wasn’t just one enemy.  Instead, it was an army, and Eli stood at the head of his own force of magically enhanced white blood cells.  There were no warcries.  No shouts for a charge.  Just all-out war, the likes of which would see no quarter given or expected.

The infection was stubborn, and more than once, Eli was forced to focus on other spells like Pain Suppression, just to keep his patient from screaming in agony.  Yet, all he saw was the battle.

And gradually, he led his troops to victory, one fight at a time.  As he did so, he felt the woman’s body respond.  Her fever dropped, which just made fighting the infection more difficult.  However, it also served to lessen the strain on her system, which was a net benefit. 

Then, at last, he rooted out the final pocket of infection, eradicating it with Decontaminate. 

With a sigh, he sat back, enjoying the trickle of experience entering his system.

That was when it happened.

Something unexpected.  Something that he should have anticipated.  The only excuse was that it had been so long since he’d gotten a level that he barely even thought about it anymore.

Congratulations!  You have reached level ten, earning two free attribute points.  Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

Eli stared ahead, entirely unseeing.  He didn’t refocus until the woman muttered, “Am I healed?  Are you okay?”

He shook his head in alarm.  Then, he offered her his best smile, which seemed to upset her even more.  He’d been told that his face was too intense for smiles.  Maybe there was some truth to that.

In any case, he said, “I’m fine.  Sorry.  I just got an unexpected notification.  But you’re entirely healed.  Just stay away from that fungal colony.”

“I work at a fungi processing facility,” she responded, and with a glare she probably intended as withering.  However, she was some sort of humanoid bird woman, so he had a little difficulty reading the less obvious expressions. 

Regardless, her statement alone was enough to tell him that she’d probably be back in for healing.  The Vyrin territory was one of the most prosperous in the Empire of Scale, but that didn’t mean they were perfect.  Far from it.  With the emphasis on success – or the evidence of it, at least – came a willingness to cut corners in the name of profits.

The government did what they could to curtail that kind of thinking, but no one was perfect.  And besides, some classes came with abilities meant to hide from just such scrutiny. 

“Well, at least try not to expose any open wounds to the atmosphere inside the facility,” he advised.  “And if you do get infected, don’t hesitate to come back.  You let it go for too long this time, which is why it got so bad.”

“Do you know how long it takes to get a slot here?”

“Uh…”

“Thank you for your help, but you might want to figure those things out before you start giving advice,” she said, clacking her beak a couple of times.  Eli knew enough to recognize frustration when he saw it.

The rest of the interaction went along those lines.  She offered to pay.  He refused, reminding her it was a free clinic.  She offered again, and he repeated the line.  They both knew she wasn’t going to part with any coins, but it was a familiar dance in the Empire of Scale. 

Pride was a huge part of their culture, after all.

Once that awkward dance had played out, Eli explained to his supervisor that he needed to leave early.  His shift, such as it was, would end in less than an hour, so it was no problem.  Soon enough, he found himself leaving the clinic and stepping into a busy avenue in the poorest part of Ashakar.

Of course, that meant it was still wealthier than just about anywhere on Earth.  But by Vyrin standards, it was very much a dump.

He stepped into the flow of traffic until he reached one of the public clouds.  That, he rode down to the surface of the planet.  The closer he drew to the ground, the more his skin prickled from the increased ethereal density. 

He’d been fortifying his body since before his arrival, and with a zealotry that bordered on the religious. Even then, he was still a mortal, and the atmosphere outside of the city or Birk’s compound still left him feeling more than a little uncomfortable.  Prolonged exposure would actually leave blisters.

He knew because he had a habit of testing the limits, then retreating once he verged on passing out.  Healing those wounds was an exercise in frustration, but he also regarded it as great practice.

When the other students found out about it, they invariably called him insane.

As the cloud deposited him just outside Birk’s compound, he remembered the first few classes.  Most of the ascended dragons who studied under him only stayed for a year or two, so he’d seen more than a dozen classes come and go.

He was practically a fixture by now.

Despite his long tenure, Eli still believed he had a lot to learn from Birk.  Every time he thought he’d plumbed the depths of the drake’s knowledge, he discovered something new that opened up an entirely novel avenue for improvement.  He’d spent an entire year working on a very specific shield maneuver that he knew would one day save his life.

Eighteen months were spent on complex footwork meant to help him evade a faster opponent.  And he’d been working on an overhand strike for the better part of five years now.  According to Birk, it was close to acceptable. 

Mastery, though?

That was a long way off.

And Birk often said that mastery was just the first step to becoming a real fighter.  Eli wanted to walk that path almost as much as he wanted to become a Healer to rival his grandfather.

Pointedly, he didn’t look at the next notification until he’d found his quarters, which amounted to a tiny room barely large enough for a cot and his footlocker.  There, he kept every possession he’d brought with him. 

A meager accumulation of wealth by anyone’s standards – especially a Vyrin.  Which he was.

He sat on the cot, ready to explore his options.

However, when he prepared to finally address a concern he’d held for more than a decade, he found his access to the system entirely blocked.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to delay your class choice for a little while longer,” came a melodious voice. 

Eli looked up find a woman standing in the close confines of his room.  She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, and that was just scratching the surface of her effect on him. 

What’s more, it only took one look at her golden scales for him to know exactly who’d come to visit.

Everyone on Ashakar knew Prosperity when she came to visit.