Enigma of Sin

For the next couple of days, Kayn kept to himself while moving around the convention. People of various races gave lectures every hour of the day, so Kayn spent most of his time listening to the different lecturers.

As usual, most of the healers here had high light element affinities and talked about their specific field of interest and how they would go about solving different problems. Kayn made a point to look for the lectures that weren't as popular. Most of the people teaching these classes had a less popular element such as earth or darkness as their main aptitude.

Kayn was very interested to know how other non-light or water elemental healers approached the field. Most of their ideas were already things he knew or did, but a few gave him a hint in the right direction to solve issues he was currently coming across.

There was even a lecture by a 6th stage light and water healer that explained in depth the process of regeneration of limbs. Apparently, this guy was some old monster that had helped develop modern regeneration techniques in the first place.

Listening to this man speak gave Kayn several ideas on how to improve his own process of regeneration. As it sat now, Kayn could regenerate hands, feet, and even half of a limb using the traditionally taught spells.

However, this wasn't good enough for Kayn. He wanted to regenerate limbs his own way without any of the drawbacks. The only problem was that he hadn't been able to succeed in doing it in any short amount of time, even with his higher mana capacity.

The normal spell took roughly half an hour to fully regenerate a hand, while Kayn could only manage to do it in a few hours. But Kayn's overall goal was to be able to bring a hand back almost instantly or at least within a minute with full strength.

While it may not be a realistic goal for performing these spells on other people, his own unique body should be able to handle doing that if not even assist him in the process.

The rest of Kayn's time spent outside of lectures was spent exploring the make shift trade market. His favorite area was where the various food stalls were set up that featured different cuisines from all over the continent, including the Inmortuea Empire.

While there were no undead present at the convention as they were public enemy number one, there were several other races that resided in the Inmortuea Empire, such as orcs and dark elves. He found the orc healers particularly interesting as they were very attuned with nature. 

Rather than using purely the light element, they typically used combinations of it with earth or water to achieve their desired effect. Rather than affecting the person specifically, their spells targeted the environment around the wounded individual which in turn somehow healed their target. Kayn enjoyed these unique points of view and couldn't wait to try incorporating some of them into his own practices.

Even the dark elves had their place here. Most of them could only use the dark element, but as their bodies were more attuned with it, they were able to utilize solely the dark element for their healing spells.

This was quite eye opening to Kayn as it essentially told him that they had different bodily constitutions, anatomy, and physiology. His fourth day was spent entirely in a lengthy discussion with one of the dark elf experts whom he had to pay to get a private lesson with.

On the fifth day, he was invited by Charlotte to attend a discussion between all of the big shots, such as the directors from the most prestigious academies as well as the leaders of the largest factions or societies. This meeting ended up lasting for two days as the topic roamed around to various areas and specialties.

Afterwards, Charlotte asked Kayn to accompany her for a few days as she wanted to help him out with something, but she wasn't telling him what and he couldn't think of anything he needed help with.

It wasn't until the first introductions she made that he understood. She was taking him around to meet with all of the royal healers from the Carnet Empire and talking with them about Lydia.

She would often broach the subject about how it was lamentable that she wasn't able to work with Lydia to further her research or that she wanted to know more about how she came to certain conclusions in the work that was released and so on. This would all lead to her asking more pointed question to probe if they knew what happened to her or not.

Kayn couldn't help but gawk as he knew that she was basically acting as a lie detector for what these people said. Anyone that lied to her was added to a list of suspicious healers that may be in cahoots with the Emperor of Carnet.

Even Kayn could tell when some of them lied as it was blatant to anyone who had even a semblance of knowledge about the situation. Kayn should have expected it, but one of the people they added to their list was the Head Healer of the Carnet Empire, who worked directly for the Emperor himself.

He talked about how he was sad Lydia was gone as her research could have been revolutionary if she were alive to continue it. He also mentioned that Lydia had passed away around the same time as her prodigal disciple had, whom she claimed had helped with her research.

What really irked Kayn was when he asked if Charlotte would be willing to sit down with him to review some notes he had made about Lydia's research as he was trying to further improve it.

However, what almost threw Kayn over the edge was when he stated that he was mad Lydia had been working for the traitorous general who had been righteously executed. He went so far as to say that she had been corrupted by the general's family and that it was their fault she was dead.

Fortunately, before the man could further incriminate himself with Kayn's anger boiling over, Charlotte asked for his forgiveness and excused herself from their talk, taking Kayn along with her.

She understood Kayn's anger with the situation, but still lectured him to keep himself calm, or else her plan wouldn't work out like she was hoping. Her end goal was to hopefully find someone that they could get to inadvertently spill the beans about Lydia and her current whereabouts if she was truly still alive as Tessa had stated.

What better way to achieve this than find some vulnerable man that was in deep with the Emperor and ask him to drink with her. Charlotte was a beauty and quite renowned, so very few people would decline to partake in drinks with her.

She eventually found one that was a 5th stage human. He was already tipsy when Charlotte approached him, so when she asked if he wanted to drink with her and her student, he was more than happy to oblige.

Charlotte pulled out some of her own special brew that had an extremely high alcoholic content that was infused with mana as that was the only thing that could affect a mythical beast like her.

After a single sip of the drink, the man was talking about working on a project with a small blue haired woman that he loathed. Apparently, she only had a 4th stage core, but always ended up making him feel stupid and he was very bitter about it.

When Charlotte asked about what he was working on offhandedly, he didn't answer, but vaguely mentioned something about studying organs.

Charlotte mentioned that she might be interested in assisting him as she had a keen interest in new theories, but when she asked where the project site was their conversation was interrupted. The Head Healer ended up taking their loose lipped healer away saying that he would help him sober up.

The two hadn't gained any concrete evidence of Lydia's status or whereabouts, but it was a start. They stopped asking around after that as they didn't want to draw any suspicion on themselves. The previous healer even found them a day later and apologized for his drunk ramblings, stating that he might have even confused his research with some of his dreams.

It was a poor excuse and the man knew it too. He had a constipated look on his face while saying it before scurrying off like a scolded child.

The convention passed by quickly and there were only a couple of days left now, the larger speeches that almost everyone at the convention would attend then began.

Kayn was far more interested in continuing to learn about unique approaches to healing than listening to the old farts who came up with some of the currently used spells. They would mainly brag about themselves and their contributions to the healing community as a whole. They even tried to play it off by encouraging the younger generation of healing experts in attendance to follow in their footsteps.

Kayn sat with the Astaro Academy professors during this time and was even elbowed by Director Vix a couple of times for nodding off during some of the more boring speeches. 

Falling asleep during a lecture was very unprofessional of Kayn, but he couldn't help it as the subjects they spoke about were just the same old theories that were used to teach new healers. It was either that or them talking about themselves for hours on end.

Unfortunately, when Kayn was startled awake this last time, it wasn't because the director was angry at him for falling asleep. Kayn glanced up at the sky to see what everyone else was staring at in the night sky, only to notice several large figures flying in their direction in the moonlight.

Kayn's focus quickly came back to him as he narrowed in his senses on the approaching figures that were cloaked in an aura of darkness. He couldn't tell what they were exactly, but one thing was for sure, the aura surrounding these figures reeked of death.