Chapter 273: Chapter 257 – To Kill with Kindness

“While violence certainly helps solve issues, not every issue demands its use, and indeed, some are better served with more gentle solutions.” - Old folk saying.

“Thank you for the lecture, Lady deVreys,” said Asclepius when he met Aideen after the lecture. The crippled and disabled veterans who had volunteered for the demonstration had just thanked her so much - often with tears - until Aideen was a bit embarrassed to receive their gratitude. After all, while the lecture was definitely one done with kind intentions on her part, it was also a political maneuver by the Border Duchies to destabilize the Guild of Unburdened Healers supported by the Centrals.

 

Over the past half a year, Aideen had been giving regular lectures like just now, in the territory of the three Border Duchies, with each lecture gathering hundreds of new attendees, healers from further out on the countryside or others who were attracted by the philosophy she preached. Many of the attendees were similarly opposed to the way the Guild had done things, so it was not a leap for them to agree with her thinking.

 

With Aideen to personally explain things and answer their questions, as well as performing demonstrations where she would casually heal dozens of injuries that would have taken most healers hours to handle each in mere moments, most of the healers who came to the lectures joined their cause. The influx of said healers naturally strengthened the position of the Border Duchies, and their far more philanthropic view on healing made the Guild look like money-grubbing villains by comparison.

 

As for the volunteers for her demonstrations, there was no lack of crippled veterans in the Border Duchies, as their soldiers saw action frequently due to their position. While their liege lords or ladies were generally generous to those who risked life and limb for them, the lack of highly skilled healers in general made it hard for retired soldiers to find one at all, while the exorbitant fees healers associated with the Guild charged made most balk at healing themselves, preferring to use their pensions for their descendants’ sake instead.

 

All the Dukes had to do was to summon the veterans and then split them up into batches for Aideen to heal during one of her lectures. The veterans had not minded waiting for such a boon, as they had already dealt with their conditions for years to decades anyway. Some were skeptical at first, but after the first batch in each Duchy, all the skepticism vanished.

 

Of course, while she had spent her time helping out the Border Duchies of late, Aideen had not intended to proselytize long-term. She had mostly agreed to help them out a bit until some of the most skilled healers in the Duchies like Asclepius had learned enough that they could handle the rest without her.

 

After all, a small delay of a year or two meant little to her. Time was something Aideen had plenty of, and besides her own plans was not one where time would be measured in weeks or months, but in decades to centuries. Even if she found an ideal plot of land to build a city on, it would still take time to accumulate the manpower and talents to actually build said city, notwithstanding those needed to clear the area as well.

 

She had come to terms with the fact that the work she had in mind would take centuries to bring to reality long ago, so when Duke Hass Tovmund pitched her his plan after hearing about her lectures, she had agreed without much consternation.

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After her short time in Posuin, she had seen how the different regions treat their people, and she couldn’t help but sympathize with the Border Duchies the most, since they were the ones who took care of their people the most, even if it was for practical reasons. That they were strongly against the practices of the Guild which she only felt loathing for, was a happy coincidence.

 

Naturally she had not rejected a chance to further loosen the Guild’s monopoly on highly skilled healers in the region. Amongst those she lectured, quite a few had shown noticeable improvements as they started to apply her teachings, while some people even escaped with their families and loved ones from the Central regions when they caught wind of her lectures.

 

A political mess was naturally unavoidable after such incidents, but those were none of her concern. The Border Duchies held strongly to their authority, and were only too happy to butt heads with the Centrals they were already hostile against to begin with.

 

They had also reinforced their border security, and according to reports, at least a few dozen suspected spies or assassins had already been apprehended over the past few months. Aideen herself was naturally completely unconcerned about assassins, but those who would take up her work after she left could not say the same.

 

Her plan was to stay in the Border Duchies and give lectures for another year or so, before she would continue on her trip. Along the way, she had also exchanged more letters with Ginnie in Knallzog, who had apparently pulled some strings along, as there was a sudden influx in dwarven merchants who visited Dvergarder and offered their wares at lower than usual prices, which contributed to an increase in prosperity for the Duchy.

 

As Jonkver and Algenverr were Dvergarder’s main trading partners, part of that prosperity flowed over to them, which further contrasted the good living in the Border Duchies to the rest of the Kingdom. Illegal immigrants from other regions rose to unprecedented levels, even after many regions made their rules stricter and even threatened death penalty on those that tried to migrate without permission.

The overall situation wasn’t the most positive for the Kingdom as a whole. Such instability and economic disparity between its regions, along with the powerless puppet king, reminded Aideen all too much of tales from history books about nations that had fallen apart. On the other hand, she had not cared that much either if the Kingdom was to fall apart. After all, it was not her country.

 

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