Book Four – Chapter Three – Part Seven – The Joy of Assisting Others

“Help...” whispered Servi, who was brought to the forefront of sadness. In her damaged state, she just stood there, crying while staring at the proof of her theft. No doubt it cost Helena quite a lot to fully refurnish an entire restaurant, and that was on top of meeting with suppliers to negotiate another contract for food delivery. Perhaps this restitution could lessen the blow? Money couldn’t bring back her son, but any financial woes could be conquered.

Regardless, Itarr expected Servi to start making her way back to Warden, but that didn’t happen. She patrolled the streets of Canary until she found herself in Canary’s poorest part of town. She stood still, staring at the shanty houses. Nearly all of them weren’t fit for inhabitants, but more often than not, entire generations of families had no choice but to use them as shelter. The Goddess wondered what was going through Servi’s mind, and then she promptly cracked the code after realizing what her host was staring at.

It was a well that had seen much better days. The rope was frayed and barely hanging on by a thread, and black sludge dripped from the rusty bucket. The handle that worked it all was missing, and the bricks surrounding it had started to chip and crack. Not to mention that the wood that held the bucket and rope had fallen, meaning it couldn’t have been used in the first place.

Itarr remember that Claire had mentioned something about a well that barely worked, or perhaps it was a water pump? Regardless, she knew that water was a much-needed substance that every living thing needed to live. When Servi repeated the word ‘help’ twice over, she knew what she needed to do.

The first thing was getting rid of what was there, which wasn’t hard at all since it literally blinked from existence. Then Servi hopped down into the large hole left behind, falling for about 20 seconds until she reached the bottom and smacked into an ugly, murky abyss that used to be water. Thick sludge covered her entire body, coating her spotless skin in the purest filth known to man. Her beautiful hair lost its luster after being swallowed, and a moment later, the thick, black gunk was sucked into her ring. The freedom didn’t last long as water started to flow from empty space, filling the now-empty well. The muck that had been caked into the very ground ruined the fresh water right as it came into existence. Slightly annoyed, Itarr then had to go around and use Absorption to make sure it was all squeaky clean. A few Lux Spheres provided just enough illumination for the Goddess to visually check her work.

When that was done, Servi jumped out of the hole. Itarr cleaned the girl she loved, then used Create Water to fill the pristine reservoir. After that, it was time to construct the actual well. She used Metal Wall to form a bucket after using a metal spear as its base. Telekinesis did most of the work in shaping it out, then a great sword was molded to form the well’s base. Before, it was made out of bricks, which were weak and fragile, especially to the harsh elements. This Metal Wall was stacked a few thousand times, meaning it was harder than anything that wasn’t pure mythril or nadrium. It sat perfectly on top of the now clean hole, and all that was left was the rope and handle. And that was taken care of in about thirty seconds. Itarr did have to make the overhang, the part that the rope was wound around, and she had to meld the rope to the bucket, and the rope to the overhang, then attach the handle.

Finally, it was time to test it out. Servi cranked the handle, lowered the bucket, and waited for it to fill. Then she cranked it back up and showed no reaction whatsoever when she dumped the purified contents out. It landed with a noticeably loud splash, and all was well. This part of town would now have a safe source of water. No longer would they have to barter, haggle, steal, or sell their bodies just to quench their arid throats. Thirst was always a severe issue, but it was worst in the middle of an especially hot summer.

“Help... More help...” whispered Servi. Itarr activated The Shadow’s Embrace, removing her and her host from existence as the ruby-eyed girl ran off in search of another dilapidated well. For the next twenty minutes, the Goddess had the pleasure of renovating 12 additional wells, all located within Canary’s poorer districts. She cleaned and constructed each one the same as before. Only this time, she attempted to increase the size of the reservoir by using a few thousand stacks of Telekinesis to ‘shovel’ the ground away. Then in order to keep the dirt from tainting the crystal-like water, she covered it all with a thin layer of metal before she began to fill it up.

In her eyes, this was a much-needed upgrade since it prevented anything from staining the pureness of the water, and Servi noticed this as well. That was why she soared back to the previous wells, which allowed Itarr a chance to re-build them. And since safety was at the forefront of her mind, she made sure to sanitize the metal swords she used as a base for Metal Wall.

When the pair had finished the final well of the night, the last thing they expected to hear was a sharp cry of pain. As if she was on autopilot, Servi walked away from Itarr’s finished project and proceeded down a dark, spooky back alley towards the source of the noise. She eventually came across a hastily constructed shack with a broken door. Upon entering it, she found herself in a cramped, candle-lit room, which was full of injured men, women, and children of all races. All eyes fell upon the girl with red eyes, and she blankly returned their stare. Ahead, in front of her, was a separate door that presumably led to a back room. She walked across the room, the weak floorboards creaking something fierce under her weight. Her hair trailed behind her, leaving a definite proof that she wasn’t the onlookers’ imagination.

Servi entered through the door and came across a startling sight. A young child, probably no more than seven or eight years of age, was restrained to a lumpy table with frayed belts and crimson-stained rope. An elderly woman with a mask held a bloody scalpel in her left hand. She lowered it to his left knee and made a long, sharp incision downward until she reached about the top of his foot. She placed her tool down on a brown rag. With a breath, the woman placed both hands inside the incision. The child bit his lips hard enough to draw blood, and the cries of pain escaped his trembling mouth. Tears washed away the dirt staining his puffy cheeks, and the pain was agonizing to the point where urine soon started to soak his raggedy pants.

“I know it hurts,” said the old woman. “But I have to do this if I want to fix your broken leg. Please, try to bear—” Servi took a step forward, and the surgeon looked up from her patient. The look in her eyes could kill a devil, and the thick gown-like apron seemed equally as hostile “You... You don’t belong here... Leave this place and never return!” Her hostility was to be expected. She was the closest thing to a free clinic, and most of her clients didn’t look anywhere as close as put together as Servi did. The homeless and poor couldn’t afford to see an apothecary, nor could they pay the church for healing. The old woman had devoted the golden years of her life to helping the sick and injured in the slums since no one else would ever want to offer a hand.

“Help...” Servi whispered, raising her hand. Itarr acted fast, using 4,000 stacks of Remedium Lux to heal the boy with a broken leg. The surgeon's eyes went wide as the bone reattached itself together, and the open wound closed as if time was rewinding. The blood dripping down his leg vanished out of this world. The pained, hushed groans of agony coming from the patient quieted down. A moment later, thanks to Kaasuvuoto’s sleeping gas, the child took a side-trip to the much-needed world of slumber.

It all happened so fast—faster than it took to blink—and the old surgeon was lost for words. And right then and there, any negative feelings she had for the girl, who used her healing skills for the greater good, disappeared like smoke in the wind. But that didn’t mean the distrust and wariness were gone as well. Doing a single good deed didn’t automatically make a stranger trustworthy.

“Don’t think you’re going to get paid for doing that. We’re all broke,” the woman said. She took off her mask to reveal a face full of wrinkles and liver spots. She went to reach for her bloody scalpel since it was time to clean it, but she gasped when the crimson disappeared before her very eyes. And if that wasn’t enough, the light the dull candles emitted was dwarfed by five Lux Spheres, which overwhelmingly illuminated the make-shift operating room.

“Help... Help...” That was all Servi said. She stepped away, turning from the woman, and walked back to the waiting room. The surgeon followed after her with hasty steps.

“Wait, don’t leave!” cried the old woman. Servi came to a halt in the middle of the room of patients, then raised an arm towards a boy with a grotesque gash across his cheek. It had been left untreated for days, allowing germs to fester within the wound. With it turning green and gross, it wouldn't be long before the pain spread down his throat. What followed would be the inability to breathe, which meant nothing but pain awaited this young child.

He would not die today.

“Help...” said Servi, and Itarr was more than happy to grant the wish of the girl she loved.

“Answer me! Why are you helping us?! We can’t pay you a damn thing!” asked the surgeon. She was about to ask again, yet she chose to stave off her curiosity to focus on the now-healed patients. Servi then turned to the next person, who had a broken arm, and healed them. They obviously tried to talk to the mysterious healer, yet she had no words for them. Then she turned to the next, and the next, and the next, healing and healing until there were only five people left. By now, those who were already healed had thanked their healer and left with a mental state that was appreciative, fearful, and slightly worried. This was after the old woman had checked them out.

The individuals remaining had injuries far too severe to be healed with Remedium Lux. The only way to cure them of their maladies was to use the fabled Rank 0 healing skill. Unfortunately, due to the nature of Lux Dei Omnipotentis, which was a single-use skill that doubled in cost each time it was learned, Servi only had enough Potential to use it 4 times. If she wanted to use it again after that, she would need to cough up 12,928 more Potential. Thus, there was a dilemma. Which of the five would have to be passed over?

Would it be the middle-aged Singi with one eye, whose spine grew at a harsh angle after her abusive foster mother broke her back? Her horrific appearance was often a cause of her emotional pain because the other children and peers of her age brutally bullied her. She was there for something to lessen the discomfort that originated from her back.

How about the scarred Dwarf, who had his vocal cords brutally ripped out as an infant because his father became irate by his constant crying? If his injury had happened far more recently, it would’ve been fixable. And like the previous woman, he was there for something to stave off the harsh uncomfortableness that radiated from his scratchy throat.

There was a woman who was born blind. Her eyes had a glossy, foggy color to them. She was all alone in this world with no friends or family, and unfortunately, she was often attacked and sexually exploited since she literally couldn’t see anything coming. Her reason for visiting was to obtain something to kill the lingering pain in her crotch.

The last of the five was an Elven mother and her child. She suffered from an infernal disease that would eventually claim her life, and it was a shame it was passed on to her baby in an even more horrendous form. Thick scabs covered the baby’s skin, and goopy blisters littered his tiny fingertips. Those weren’t able to be taken care of via Remedium Lux because right when they vanished from the healing, they promptly came back like a bad itch.

With four to choose, who would be the one left alone? Servi’s current state could only be summed up as her carrying the purest essence of the concept of ‘help.’ She desired to help. She yearned to help. Her current state of mind, even if she wasn’t in direct control, did not see a future in which she didn’t provide any assistance.

“Please, help my child... He doesn’t deserve to suffer from the pain,” cried the mother after she had witnessed miracle after miracle. Fat tears trembled beneath her slightly slanted eyes. And she wasn’t the only one who was asking. All five begged the Servi after witnessing the miracle of a Goddess. The man who couldn’t talk bowed down and almost prayed to Servi in order to ask for her assistance. And the blind woman just went along with it since she could clearly sense something was amiss. If there was just a tiny chance her sight would be returned to her, she had to take it.

“Help... Help... Help...” Startled, the patients and surgeon silently watched as the mysterious girl vanished from their eyes. Itarr had used The Shadow’s Embrace, and Servi used the fact she didn’t exist in the physical world to jump up through the shack’s roof without crashing through it. She used all of her strength in her legs to soar high above Canary to the point where the large city looked like a simple dot, then stared off towards the southeast. With Air Step stacked to the max, she used her tens of thousands of souls to soar across the sky faster than the speed of sound. In no time at all, the landmass below her became replaced with the wide-open ocean.

But she didn’t stop. She continued to leap across the very sky until even she couldn’t see the land behind her.

Servi was alone with Itarr in the middle of the watery frontier, which still hadn’t been fully explored or conquered by any one nation.

The crescent moon beautifully reflected off of the uncommonly still surface of the ocean. The reason she was here was simple. The concept of ‘help’ that currently controlled Servi’s body had decided that since she received 1 Potential for each soul she absorbed, the best way to obtain the souls needed was to find the area with the densest population of animals. And in her mind, she had decided the ocean was the best spot because fishes often traveled in groups called schools, which numbered in the hundreds or thousands. And on top of that, their meat would not go to waste since that would be stored inside the ring, forever frozen in a state of freshness until it was needed.

The only problem would be deciding how to go about this fish slaughter, but the help-focused Servi had it all figured out. She just canceled Air Step, falling until she sunk into the ocean. The Shadow’s Embrace ensured pesky annoyances like water and its resistance seemingly passed her by, so her drop didn’t disturb the stillness of the watery surface.

She used Air Step to halt her descent, then continued to soar under the water as if she flew through the air while searching for a suitable target. Itarr didn’t really know what to look for, but after about ten minutes of dashing around, she found it. It was right there, a couple hundred meters below the surface. It was a swirling shoal of nocturnal cod, a type of salt-water fish that was more active when the moon was out. With their black skin and scales, they blended into the darkness.

They all ferociously swam in a cyclone-like pattern, nearly creating an underwater tornado, which drew in smaller prey that was promptly devoured by all. The spreading blood would soon attract sharks, but even the sharp-tooth hunters of the sea weren’t a match for a swarm of nocturnal cod.

They were thick and big, almost reaching a meter in length, with the average weight being 15 kilograms. It would only take two of them to sustain someone like Feral for an entire day. Even a single one went for a few hundred dupla, so yet again, Servi was staring at a few tons of fish that was well worth their weight in dupla.

With a hand raised out, it was like the silent girl gave a command to her Goddess, and she was eager to please her. To painlessly kill the fishes swirling in a school in front of her, she needed to stack Telekinesis enough until she had 2,654 anchor points. Once they were attached, it just took the tiniest effort to rip off their heads at the same time, instantly killing them. A horde of blood surged into the ocean, which disguised the massive collection of souls as they rushed towards the girl with red eyes. Next, Itarr brought the fish corpses towards her until they were within her Absorption range.

Even she thought the situation was kind of odd and a bit humorous. Out of the hundreds of skills she had available to her, Servi and Itarr always fell back on Telekinesis. If Itarr wanted, she could have used Water Spear, which worked similar to Shadow Shot as long as the user was inside a body of water. A hot enough Firewall would’ve done the job just right. Sword Beam would have been wholly inefficient, yet that was another option. But at the end of the day, Telekinesis, even if it was a Rank 3 skill, was only overpowered and useful in the hands of someone who could Skill Stack. Even at its max level, it had a limit of 100 anchor points and a weight limit of 100 kilograms.

The number of souls collected wasn’t enough, so Servi had to scout out six more schools of fishes, and it so happened that all of them were nocturnal cod. The whole hunt took no longer than ten minutes, but by the end, she had gained almost 14,000 Potential while acquiring over 200,000 kilograms of fish. Such a haul would probably have repercussions on the ocean’s food chain since it all happened at once and not over time, but was a fish’s life, or rather the life of those animals that lived in the ocean, more valuable than that of a living, breathing person?

Servi thought they weren’t.

With her goal accomplished, she leapt from the ocean, easily bypassing the water resistance. She was still under the effects of The Shadow’s Embrace and dashed back towards Canary on a path of invisible platforms. Such a journey would have taken someone else months to complete, but the entire side trip took no longer than 25 minutes. Before long, Servi saw Canary come into sight, which happened just a few minutes after the ocean below her was replaced with land. The giant walls protecting the city were awfully small from where she was, but they rapidly grew in size as she started to make her descent in front of the makeshift shack.

Itarr hoped that the patients were still there, and she wanted to slap herself because the least she could have done was leave a note detailing they would be right back. In the end, her worries were for naught when a couple of gasps welcomed Servi back after Itarr had canceled The Shadow’s Embrace.

“Don’t worry, Trese, I have something for the discomfort between your legs. Just let me go—What?! Where did you go?!?” exclaimed the old woman, who was about to go fetch some pain medicine for the blind woman. As expected, she received no answer at all.

“Please... Heal my child,” begged the elvish mother, who had nowhere else to turn to. While her hopeful savior was gone, the old woman confessed that nothing she could do to ease the child’s pain wouldn’t bring about the risk of death. The mother raised his little, trembling body up to the red-eyed girl, and she only replied with two words while staring at his tiny pointed ears.

But now that she had the potential needed, Itarr started to buy Lux Dei Omnipotentis, then use it. Instead of waiting for it to be finished with the whole song and dance, she purchased and used it again, and again, and again. The skill wasn’t designed to work that way, and the consequence of that was an overlapping speech by a voice from the heavens. Apparently, the skill had enough sense to not transport the users from the world of Skill Energy to the world of Skill Energy, which would have been overly redundant.

Servi and Itarr stood off to the side, staring at the colorful paradise before them. They watched as five angels descended from the sky, each one looking just like their beloved Momo. They listened to her lovely voice reassure their specific patient that all would soon be well. And just as quickly as it happened, the five skills came to an almost concurrent end, and that utopia surrounding them was replaced with the rundown shack.

Only this time, the middle-aged Singi with a single eye and curved back had two eyes and a straight spine. Her scruffy-looking coat properly fit her body, and she no longer needed that patch to hide her disfigurement.

The scarred Dwarf with the missing vocal cords discovered he could speak once more; a strange collection of sounds that almost resembled words flowed from his newly healed throat. He reached down to grab his dirty shirt, using it to wipe up the tears flowing down his cheeks.

The woman with the curse of blindness had been gifted the miracle of sight, but it also cured the ugly disease that festered within her crotch. As soon as the light entered her virgin eyes, she turned into a sobbing mess, unable to process what had just happened.

And the Elven mother, who was so afraid for her child, had a great weight lifted from her shoulders. She didn’t have to worry about an early death, and she cried tears of happiness that she would still be there to guide her child through his childhood. On top of that, the awful scabs and blisters that had once damaged his beautiful skin had disappeared, and no longer would her heart have to hear his screams and cries when it was time to bathe him.

Perhaps the person who was most surprised by everything was the old woman. Her mind was so blown and shocked by what she had seen in the past 40 minutes that it felt like everything was all a lie. It seemed like she was about to pass out, but reason took control of her body when Servi fell to her knees.

“Help... Help... More help... Not...enough...help... Help...” she repeated as if it was her personal motto. She only had a measly 1,013 Potential left to spend, and if she wanted to use Lux Dei Omnipotentis again, she would need to have 32,000. She rocked back and forth, hugging her arms to her chest. “HELP!!!! HELP!!! HELP!!!” she screamed. The six people surrounding Servi did not know how to respond since, to them, it felt like their words of thanks had harmed their savior. A few seconds later, the old woman acted fast and bent down on her old, achy bones. She placed a hand on Servi’s quivering shoulders, then spoke in a quiet voice.

“You’re... You’re the very miracle I’ve been praying for... I don’t know what you did, but you’ve done something incredible...” she whispered. Hearing that just made Servi sob harder. She scratched and pulled at her hair, then vanished from reality. The old woman nearly fell through to the floor, but she was caught by Singi who used to have a curved spine.

And just like that, the incident that would come to be called the Miracle of Canary came to a quiet end. It took the trembling Servi a few minutes to return to her stoic, apathetic state of mind, and by then, she was already back inside her room at Warden. Stationary and frozen, any and all proof of her late-night excursion was absorbed by Itarr. The Goddess had a lot to think about, and she passed the night away by dreaming of the future.