Chapter 125: The Healer’s Name

Thorn read the next section. "If any signatory is attacked, all five provide assistance. Delvers supply combat teams, Artificers supply equipment, healers provide medical support, and the Undercity supplies communication and intelligence."

Hendricks tapped the crystal on his belt. "We can send warnings across the network before a patrol even reaches the lower lifts. But I want it written that the network remains independent. No Guildmaster takes our crystals during an emergency."

"Agreed," Thorn said.

Tobias read the market provision with his mechanical finger following the lines. "Undercity stalls and workshops get recognized as legitimate trade partners. No extra Crown tariff charged on goods moving through the participating Guild routes. And no noble representative gets to confiscate food because the seller lives below street level."

"What about traders who don’t belong to a Guild?" somebody called from the crowd.

"They can register through the block council," Tobias answered. "Hendricks is setting up the forms. Yes, there’s paperwork. Try not to faint."

The next clause caused the loudest reaction. A young woman in a patched work coat raised her hand as Vex read the judicial section.

"Wait. That says Undercity residents can file cases with the joint Guild tribunal? Even against a licensed delver?"

"Yes," Thorn answered.

"Last year a licensed delver broke my father’s arm over a debt. They wouldn’t even let us inside the hearing room."

Thorn looked at her. "Bring the record to the new council office. If the claim is supported, the tribunal hears it."

The woman stared. Her friend nudged her, whispering, "Ask about the compensation." But the woman was already pulling an old receipt from her pocket.

[Ding!]

[Political agreement detected]

[Guild legal protections extended to Undercity residents]

[Territorial governance change registered]

[Version 4.0: Sovereignty Tier]

[Unlock conditions met: 1/2]

[The Host may stop checking after every signature]

’Wasn’t going to,’ Alvian thought.

’Probably.’

Then came the final section. No offensive action against the Crown. Disputes would go through negotiation and Guild legal channels. Heller kept his mouth shut this time, although he nearly snapped his pen when the clause passed.

Five signatures followed. Thorn. Vex. Ashby. Tobias. Hendricks. The Guild seals flashed on the parchment, then the two Undercity marks lit beside them. Serah switched the broadcast back on, sending the completed accord across the communication network.

An hour later, a royal statement arrived. Hendricks read it aloud while Vex checked the new signatures.

"His Majesty acknowledges the Guilds’ right to enter into mutual agreements. Certain provisions may require Crown review."

"Crown review?" Tobias repeated. "They want to approve our treaty?"

Vex held up the Guild law register. "They don’t have that authority. Not over agreements between Guilds."

"They’re hoping someone believes they do," Serah said.

A crystal on Hendricks’s desk started flashing. Then another. The market coordinators were already calling about the new registration process. He answered the first, listened for three seconds, and scowled.

"No, you don’t pay the tariff collector twice. Give me his name."

┌──────[ Profile]──────┐\

│ [Host]: Alvian Vance\

│ [Level]: 70\

│ [Talent]: Clearwater/Dissolution/Reformation [Unique]\

│ [Skills]: Genesis Forge [S-RANK]\

│ Abyssal Dissolution Domain [S-RANK]\

│ Void Step: Annihilation [S-RANK]\

│ Severing Void Edge [S-RANK]\

│ Dissolution of Form [CONCEPTUAL]\

│ Clearwater Palm [D-Rank, Enhanced]\

│ [Weapon Mastery]: Short-Sword [MAXIMUM, evolved]\

│ [STR]: 530 | [AGI]: 290 | [VIT]: 855\

│ [INT]: 215 | [Essence]: 287\

│ [Karma Points]: 53\

│ [EXP Bank]: \~4,737,100\

│ [World Will]: Monitoring (creation-tolerant)\

│ [System Version]: 3.0 → 4.0 (1/2 conditions met)\

│ [HP]: 1,710/1,710\

│ [Genesis Forge]: Apprentice\

│ [Patients Healed]: 231\

│ [Creation EXP]: \~849,100\

│ [Array Status]: SELF-SUSTAINING\

│ [Alliance Status]: FORMAL FIVE-PARTY ACCORD SIGNED\

│ [Bounty Status]: FORMALLY VOIDED\

│ [Criminal Charges]: DISMISSED\

│ [Crown Posture]: NEUTRAL STATEMENT, REVIEW REQUESTED\

│ [Dimensional Connectivity]: 7 LAYERS RESTORED\

│ [System Classification]: RESTORATION PROTOCOL\

│ [System Origin]: RESTRICTED\

│ [Accord]: MUTUAL DEFENSE, TECHNOLOGY, TRADE, JUSTICE\

│ [Version 4.0 Condition 2]: IN PROGRESS\

│ [Next Priority]: PRE-CATACLYSM ARCHIVE INVESTIGATION\

└─────────────────┘

—-

Two weeks after the Guild Accord, Hendricks Cole finally got through breakfast without someone calling to complain about Crown tariffs.

Then the reporters arrived.

They crowded the Undercity market with floating recording crystals, blocking a vegetable stall and nearly knocking an old woman into a drain.

"Move your bloody equipment!" the woman shouted. "I sell onions here, not interviews!"

The nearest reporter apologized and moved two steps sideways, straight into the fish seller.

"Wonderful," Hendricks muttered, watching through a communication crystal. "We’ve survived assassins and royal investigators. Now we’re being invaded by idiots with microphones."

Six weeks had passed since the healing array first switched on. The extranet once called Alvian Vance a criminal. Now his face appeared on clinic notices and cheap healing-crystal copies.

One shopkeeper advertised CLEARWATER CURES EVERYTHING above a water bucket, until Hendricks asked whether that included bad marriages.

At the Academy medical wing, Elara Voss stood in front of a recording crystal and rolled up her left sleeve.

"Hold it closer," she told the interviewer.

The reporter blinked. "Are you sure? Some viewers might find the injury details disturbing."

"The injury’s gone. That’s the point."

Elara raised her hand, opened and closed her fingers, then touched each fingertip to her thumb.

"A Voidcrawler hit me during the Calamity Rift. My arm looked normal, but half the tissue wasn’t properly in this dimension anymore. My hand kept slipping through things. One time I tried to hold a cup and my fingers went straight through the handle."

The reporter’s smile disappeared.

"The healers said it would keep spreading," Elara continued. "I’d have lost the use of my whole arm. Maybe worse."

"And Alvian Vance cured you?"

"The array did. He built it, and the healers operated it. I was the first patient."

She grabbed the reporter’s heavy equipment case and lifted it with one hand.

"See? Nothing slips through now."

Behind the recording crystal, an Academy student snorted.

"Ask her what the treatment cost."

Elara turned. "Nothing. Why?"

"Because my father paid three hundred credits just to get a consultation for my brother last year."

Elara turned the crystal back. "Show them the waiting room. Show them who actually does the work."

Across the hall, Elder Morrain Ashby was shouting at two assistants over an incorrectly fitted regulator. A patient laughed from her treatment bed, then winced when the movement pulled at her damaged ribs.

The camera followed them inside.

By noon, clips of Elara flexing her restored arm had spread through the extranet. So had a separate recording of a Delver’s Consortium veteran walking without the metal brace he’d worn for nineteen years.

The veteran, Orren Dace, listened to a commentator call Alvian "the savior of modern medicine."

"Savior, my arse," Orren said, standing in the Consortium mess hall. "I sent three requests to the Assembly before I got my appointment. Want to know who made sure they reached the right desk? A clerk named Nessa. Put her bloody face on the feed."

A dozen delvers cheered. Someone raised a cup, and Orren took three steps toward the counter without his old limp.

He stopped, looked down at his leg, and grinned.

"Still getting used to that."

Back in the merchant district, handwritten letters filled the noticeboard outside the Guild registration office. A father thanked the medical wing for saving his daughter. An Academy instructor wrote that he could finally breathe without pain. Two parents whose sons had survived the Rift asked other families to stop calling the array a trick.

A noble’s clerk grumbled that people had forgotten the Crown’s hospitals. A woman folded her daughter’s discharge letter. "They told me to pay for her burial. She’s home now. Go ask them what they did with my money."

Serah Garrick had her own problem.

The Academy had booked her for one extranet interview about the healing array’s science. By the time she reached the lecture room, six broadcasters and forty students were waiting, along with three Guild engineers who had brought actual notebooks.

"I’m not answering questions about Alvian’s love life," she said before sitting down.

One broadcaster lowered his hand.

"You haven’t even started," he protested.

"You were holding a gossip feed. I can read."

Serah placed a cracked training crystal on the desk. Then she activated a small circuitry scanner and let its pale lines appear above the surface.

"This crystal has damaged channels," she said. "Sending more Essence through them won’t repair anything. The array breaks down damaged tissue and helps rebuild it in the correct place. That doesn’t mean you can dump a patient onto a table and press a button."

A young healer raised her hand. "What happens if the central focus fails?"

"The operators shut down treatment and move the patient. That’s why we train people and keep records."

"Can the Guilds build one without Vance?" asked an engineer.

"They can build the frame, pylons, controls, and medical equipment. We still need his Genesis Forge to make the central focus. Corrin Vex is trying to change that."

The engineer wrote so quickly his pen snapped. Serah handed him another.

The interviewer leaned forward. "So the whole system still depends on one man?"

"For one part of production, yes. That’s a problem we’re working on, not something I’m going to hide because it sounds bad on your feed."

Several students started clapping. Serah pointed at them.