CH718

“Well, don’t you look happy?” Ben teased, even as Thera strongly denied it.

“Of course I’m not,” She told him, trying to control her face. “Do you really think I’d be happy just because I have an official excuse to avoid helping out at the hospital for a while? No matter how constantly draining and exhausting it is, it’s important work.”

“…I was actually assuming it was because you finally get to do a rank one quest. Something you want to get off your chest there, Thera?”

She slumped over as he asked, looking all the more tired for it. “Ben, you’re clever. Please do me a favour and put that freaky brain of yours to work figuring out how to awaken more life and light mages.”

“Pretty sure you don’t ask for favours while calling someone’s brain freaky.”

“Let me try again. Using your completely normal, not at all unnatural mind, please save me by awakening more of the planet’s healers.”

“Somehow the lack of sincerity hurts even more, but what’s the problem currently? Weren’t the mana bracelets I’d distributed to everyone helping?”

“Mmh, they were and they are but this work is never ending,” She complained. “Everyone is still getting hurt all of the time to the point that any day I need for something else, everyone I work with ends up on the edge of tears with how much more that means they’re all going to have to do and as handy as your new tool is, the fact that it hurts to use doesn’t exactly leave it as an enjoyable option no matter how much it helps. It feels like I’m drowning every time I go off to work.”

“Mmh, kind of sounds like you guys need to unionize.”

“You can’t unionize every light and life mage on the planet.”

“Why not? Leverage that collective bargaining power as the only people who can keep everyone from dying en masse. Break off from the mages’ guild and start your own, I think the healers’ guild has a pretty good ring to it.”

“Okay, but that sounds like a multi-year project that would be completely impossible to pull off in the middle of a war. The much easier alternative would be to turn to my very smart, very caring boyfriend and hope that he’d be able to find a solution. All I’m looking for is only a hundred new awakened mages.”

“That really isn’t some small ask but I’ll at least think on it, even if it isn’t going to be my area of expertise. As both this world’s awakener and great teacher, I suppose it’s the least I can do.”

“Yes, let those and any other useful titles go to your head so you can solve this for me,” She joked, feeling better with his agreement to try. “The sooner we get more healers, the sooner I can take more days off to work on other things, guilt-free.”

“How could I even force any levels in those branches though?” He muttered to himself, seriously considering the problem. “They’re both non-physical so I can’t force any materializations to make it work and trying to force groups of ninth-level mages to take on their respective towers to get the gods to awaken them mostly just runs the risk of killing off some of the world’s better healers. That really just leaves trying to force them to constantly use complex spells until they break that barrier themselves and with my mana bracelets and the constant work they’ve already been put through then you’d expect some to awaken on their own eventually anyway so what does that leave? Hmm, I suppose I could suggest to the gods that a new hospital be set up with every mage at the ninth level of those affinities acting as the staff. From there, divert all of the most extremely injured to work it and get Yuzu to visit often enough that she could constantly lower their awakening limits… No, there’s a better option. I could help Falk build an enchantment to place on any such building as a whole to help reduce the awakening limits for the people in it and I could just supply however much mana crystal or souls to ensure they’d always be fully powered which actually feels like a decent idea for awakening people, I’d just need to convince the gods it would be worth it. Okay, I can at least bring it up, not like it would do any harm.”

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