It took another month before their combat training with magic came to an end. During that period of time, they'd practice, duel, and practice some more almost everyday all under the keen supervision of Sirius, who kept pushing the novices closer to their breaking points.
The inquisitor would, if he had to, punch the teachings he had to offer into every single one of them. Sirius would do it without question; he would do it because it was his duty, and he took his job seriously.
No slacking, no missing lectures, for he would himself go and find those who tried to skip even a single lecture; he would drag them by their necks and force them to practice even if they were ill, even if they had just woken up. He didn't care about such things as sickness or being tired.
They would have time for that later; this last month of rigorous training is what would save the lives of many; this was so that they could proudly do as the Angels asked them to do. To carry the burden of the weak and defend them.
And when it all came to an end, Sirius held his last lecture in the Dueling Halls, as he always did. His gaze measured every single one of them. "You've worked hard; all of you. Though, of course, the outcomes may not have been the exact same for everyone, and not even the effort put into training," he said.
"But all in all. This will do. I have limited time to teach you, and you have limited time at the academy. Those who have the required talent, the required sense of duty, will one day find themselves at my doorstep, either at the Fortress by the edge of all civilization, or in Lo'Gran in the House of Truths. There, despite your talents and your sense of duty or want, you will be trained into inquisitors, and you will accept this appointment as what you ought to do." He didn't look pleased, nothing like that. He was just himself; earnest and direct with what he thought.
With a nod, he dismissed everyone. Their studies of combat with magic were now done. However, before Kanrel and Yirn could leave, he called for them. The two friends looked at each other, then Yviev, who just shrugged and, with a wave, departed, making her way toward the laboratory.
Kanrel and Yirn were left standing together with Sirius, who peered at them. His gaze was intense. "I have written a letter of recommendation to the Herald, suggesting that you both be appointed as inquisitors after your graduation. I see much potential in you, enough to mirror my own, when I was a youth at the academy," he spoke after a silence that had dragged on.
"Of course, it doesn't mean that either of you will become one; so this might be the final time we see one another. I bid you farewell, Yirn the Nameless, and Kanrel Iduldian." Sirius patted their shoulders roughly and dismissed them as well. It was his time to return to the capital, where the House of Truths awaited; the very building that served as the headquarters of the Inquisition.
Yirn was all smiles while they made their way to the laboratory. In fact, the young man was practically beaming as he gallivanted down the corridor while Kanrel tried to keep up with him. Instead of feeling a rational sense of pride or satisfaction because of the obvious compliment, he was instead more curious about the next thing they might study; though, of course, in the future being an inquisitor didn't sound too bad.
Amusingly, at around the time when Sirius left, there was a sudden disappearance of three students, one of whom was a novice like them. Since then, rumors circulated among the students that they had run away because of the stress caused by the expectations put on them by their parents and the system.
Some even suggested that they had fallen victim to rogue priests or that the novice had accidentally teleported them into another dimension. None of those rumors made any sense, but Kanrel had his own theory, since soon after their departure, there were no longer cases of graffiti calling his mother a heretic, so the inquisitor must have done his job and gotten rid of those who would spout such things.
Despite the relief of no longer having to hear that many rumors about the graffiti or his own mother, he instead found himself more conflicted than anything else. If it were the case that Sirius had arrested the three students, what would happen to them next? Would they be imprisoned, or simply killed for heresy?
In a way, it could be justified, but Kanrel couldn't accept said justifications. He had yet to hear from his mother. As far as he knew, if the students were imprisoned or killed, they might have been judged unjustly.
He hoped that she would reply sooner rather than later, lest his own doubts haunt him further than necessary. He had to convince himself that she was just busy and nothing more, or that the letter had taken an unusual amount of time to reach its destination... and maybe the Herald was traveling around the Kingdom?
Days later, through sheer accident, Kanrel found out why Yirn was often so late. Kanrel had knocked on Yirn's door, and the young man opened it, shirtless and covered in sweat; his muscles glistened in the light because of it.
Kanrel frowned at the sight. "What were you up to?"
Yirn was breathing heavily and then flashed that dashing smile of his. "Lifting," he said, and opened his door further so that Kanrel could see what he had in his extremely tidy room. Besides the bed, some shelves, a wardrobe, and a table, there were heavyweights, dumbbells, and such, many things that Kanrel could hardly name.
"Yviev was right…" he managed to mutter.
"What?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. You do your thing; I'll wait for you at the laboratory."
"You sure? I could teach you some advanced lifting techniques; start training with me, and then you could easily carry people and much heavier things around—with these weapons," Yirn said, and then flexed his muscles. But Kanrel was already running off.
"You can change your mind anytime!" Kanrel heard Yirn yell after him.
Sure, one could say that lifting was something Kanrel practiced quite often, but lifting for Yirn meant a very different thing than the lifting Kanrel practiced. Creating more complicated codes to move a chair doesn't much alter his own physical form.
The next day, they already had a new professor to teach them; this time, they had a professor of advanced medical magic. Lena Forsvarn was her name, and she practiced her medicine in the Academic Hospital of the Academy of the Heavenly.
Her research into medical magic was known to be groundbreaking, and thus, she was stationed at the academy by the Priesthood. There she would spend her time further honing her craft and advancing her research with constant patients and simulations that were possible because of the magic that she had developed.
Her understanding of the human body was astonishing, but it was no wonder, for she used to actively work in the busiest hospital in the kingdom, the Royal University Hospital located in Lo' Gran.
The students circulated rumors that she did something that many would never do: on the dead, she would perform something called an 'autopsy.' This way, she could theorize the reasons why the person had died, and she could also poke around the body to figure out what was inside. A thing that was nigh heretical, though there weren't any mentions against it in the Book of the Heralds. Most would much rather have their loved ones be buried or cremated than chopped into pieces and then sewn back together.
And now this legendary woman stood before them, a frail-looking woman in her late fifties. Though she wasn't that tall, she beamed authority, and when she spoke, she projected it so loudly that one could not believe that a woman so small could be so loud.
"The practice of medicine is a greatly misunderstood craft; it has not been about hexes and unknown alchemical mixtures for a long time now; yet even among you, there is a fool or two who still believe in the ways of long ago."
"I am here to fix that misunderstanding, and I am going to fix it in a way that will leave you more tired than a battle or running a marathon."
"Medicine is about the scientific way of diagnosing the patient so that we can figure out a scientific answer to their problem, be it a disease or an injury. To make such decisions, I will try to teach you something that one should study for years before becoming even remotely proficient at it."
"In three months, a sergeant can teach the king's soldiers enough so that they aren't completely useless on a battlefield. In three months, I can teach you to at least be cognizant of your own lack of knowledge."
"Even then, we have to put theory into practice after just a month of lectures."
"I require absolute obedience, and for you all to listen and soak in the information that I will teach you. If you fail to do so, you might cause more deaths than is necessary in the last two months of this course."
"Sure, it might be that in the past six years, you've had many lectures about medicine, but that is just the surface of one of the least understood things in the world: the human body."
"The books you studied are possibly all wrong, and the professors that taught you have no idea about magic the way I do."
"If any one of you wants to argue with that, you can do so after these next few months; until then, shut your mouths and listen to those who know better than you do."
"Now, let us begin... As I said, the human body is one of the least understood things about this world…"
These were the very lectures that Kanrel had most anticipated; this was the thing he felt he needed to learn the most. Through understanding medical magic and the human body, he could then delve deeper into the hypothesis he had about body transformation. Because when he had to reconstruct his face, he soon had a thought: if regenerating muscle, flesh, and skin didn't take as much effort as he had thought, couldn't he then be more liberal with how he regenerated a body part? Couldn't he then grow, let's say, a third arm?
The possibility of this intrigued him greatly, but if he wanted to move his hypothesis any further, he would have to understand something he didn't know enough about. The human body.
During those four weeks, he completely immersed himself in medical magic and studied it; he read up-to-date books about the topic and carefully listened to every word that Professor Forsvarn had to offer; of those, he wrote exact notes, and unlike himself, he often asked questions about the things that she taught them. Like the many bones and muscles of the human body, and the thing she had called the 'nervous system.'
Of course, she would patiently answer his questions when they were relevant to the current lecture.
In his free time, Kanrel would seek out the professor to ask even further questions, usually those he did not get answers to during the lectures, and then she would answer those questions, usually while hurrying toward the Academic Hospital.
Sadly, there wasn't a way for him to practice unless he decided to do self-harm, but causing oneself pain wasn't something he was ready to do just to figure out how to close a wound a bit quicker. So he instead spent his time reviewing his notes and conversing about the things that they had learned with Yirn and Yviev.
They weren't as excited about the lectures or the contents of them, especially Yirn, who would've much rather continued under the guidance of inquisitor Sirius. Alas, medical magic was part of their curriculum and something they had to get some sort of understanding of.
After those four weeks, Kanrel felt that he had scratched just the surface of it, and he would need to dig deeper than just that surface to find out the answers he needed. But at the same time, he had to dismiss his own ideas about having extra limbs as he began to understand just how complex something like that would be, if not outright impossible. How would he be able to grow and then connect, let's say, a third hand, when it would need to be in synch with the brain, a thing he and everyone else knew almost nothing about? Otherwise, the thing would just become a flaccid limb that had no purpose to it other than maybe looking somewhat intimidating.
But he still wanted to know more for the sake of general curiosity regarding medicine, as well as its practicality for the future. And as if as a blessing, that opportunity was given to all of them: a period of intense work at the Academic Hospital that would last for two months. They'd get to practice the things they learned in theory with constant simulations until they learned the basics, like how to stop bleeding, how to close a wound, and how to fix a broken bone.
For this, they would be divided into groups of five because of the lack of simulation chambers. And of course, they would mostly practice using these simulations that would give them realistic medical issues that they would have to diagnose and then try to solve, but according to the professor herself, if and only if your group did well, they might be allowed to practice on an actual patient.
And that was something Kanrel wanted. For surely, a simulation could never offer as much as the real thing.
On the last day of theory, they were set with their first mission: form groups of five members, then register their study group and all the members of it at the Academic Hospital. The next morning, they would have to announce themselves at the hospital at exactly four in the morning.
Every day, they would have to stay awake for twenty hours and sleep for just four hours. This was to make sure that the novices got a realistic experience and understanding of how a real hospital works.
This schedule would be the reason why many would much rather do almost anything else than practice medicine. The pay was poor, and the patients and their families were often not that understanding of the stress that a doctor or a nurse had to go through in their day.
At least the normal doctors and nurses could think of themselves as heroes, as they might've saved another man from certain death. Those who practiced medical magic, on the other hand, wouldn't get to celebrate; for them, there was no such thing as 'heroism.' For them, it was all about duty and the vows they had taken. And of course, the possibility of research that could contribute more to saving lives than performing thousands of life-saving surgeries in one's lifetime.
Kanrel himself doubted that he would go down that path; he just needed enough information and practice to try his hypothesis out. This was all for his own duty for knowledge.
The team that they, though mostly Yviev, managed to form and then register was one made out of old and new acquaintances. There was, of course, Kanrel, Yirn, and Yviev herself, but also two people Kanrel hadn't talked with much before. Yviev knew them much better and had some connection to them, but did not elaborate on what these connections were.
There was Wen Kaiw, with whom Kanrel had dueled at least once; she was tall and had long black hair, and a very formal personality. She must have seldom smiled before the ritual, but when she did, it wasn't nearly as awkward as Kanrel's.
Then there was Uanna Wektet, who was about a head shorter than Wen, with a much more approachable personality. She seemed social, though at times a bit awkward, and far less confident than her friend. She had blonde hair and an awkward smile.
Both of them stood tall, as if unaffected by the changes that they had gone through. They had an aura of pride that Kanrel could sense, to the point that it was difficult to tell if they had truly gone through with the ritual. But it was quickly made clear where such an aura came from. They were both nobility, and that must have rubbed off on them and how they were and behaved to the point that it remained even now.
After long, somewhat awkward introductions headed by Yviev, Kanrel invited everyone to gather in the laboratory so that they could share codes and information about what was ahead of them.
Uanna stepped closer, pulling Wen with her. "We would be most delighted to accept this possibility, O Son of the Herald," she exclaimed.
Kanrel blinked, and for a moment their gazes met, only for Uanna to direct hers at the floor. She seemed embarrassed. Kanrel didn't know what to say.
Yviev scoffed. "Don't call him that, he might otherwise start to believe that he's something great," she took the lead again, and began guiding the lot toward the laboratory.
Uanna sprinted after her, still pulling Wen with her. "But, but he is! He's the Son of the Herald!" she huffed after her. Wen glanced back at Kanrel and Yirn. She wore an apologetic expression on her face, though it was difficult to say whether it was because of Uanna's or Yviev's behavior.
"Do not encourage him, nor feed his ego!" Yviev's voice echoed from further ahead.
Kanrel and Yirn stood in the corridor just outside the lecture hall. Yirn shook his head. "All this effort I've put into myself, and all they can see is you," he mock-complained, then grinned, patting Kanrel on his shoulder. "Let's hurry before Yviev manages to break all illusions."
After hours of sharing notes, codes, and other information. He was tired and practically crawled his way back to his room. Socializing with his newly found teammates was a lot of work since they had much ground to cover. He figured that it would take weeks before he'd be comfortable with Uanna and Wen around, but thankfully, they had many weeks to get to know each other.
His notes still in hand, Kanrel fell on the bed. He had to keep reading and reviewing them. There was so much he had to remember, so much he had to think of, and so much more that he didn't know of. There weren't many hours left until he would have to wake up, and despite wanting to keep reading and skipping the sleep he surely needed, he at last put down his notebook.
Tomorrow morning, he knew that he'd be tired. There was nothing he could do about it. It was better to get used to it now. Soon, another feeling would tag along with his despair: exhaustion, and it would last through the coming months and maybe even a longer time afterwards. He closed his eyes.
He was ready to sacrifice, if just for a little more information that could be useful to him. Even if he'd only get four or fewer hours of sleep, it would all be worth it in the end. It had to be.