We found out a day afterwards that the girl did not survive.

  At the time, I had a lot of difficulty expining to the Guild Master that there was nothing that I could do. Diabetic ketoacidosis was a condition that needed to be treated within… hours or days… but there was clearly no way for me to invent a hypodermic needle, intravenous fluids, medical-grade potassium chloride, and purified insulin from porcine pancreases (extracted with acid-ethanol and liquid chromatography) in the space of a single afternoon.

  Ultimately, I lied and pretended that I had never seen this ‘mysterious’ illness before.

  The Guild Master was disappointed, but he didn’t say anything else.

  Culturally speaking, the expectations for a random woman in this medieval world were quite low. At the end of the day, this was a patriarchal society, and most people believed that the wisdom of a famous male priest from the Holy Church was far more valuable the pagan ramblings of an ‘uneducated’ (note: religious teachings = education) hedge witch from overseas.

  It simply affirmed their beliefs that healing ‘magic’ was superior to the arts of natural philosophy. Given a choice, virtually anyone would pick magic over pharmaceutical herbs.

  + + +

  There was a loud thwack as a broomstick struck the table in front of me.

  I jolted to attention.

  “Daydreaming again?” The old hunchbacked witch said with a raspy sneer.

  I was in the middle of grinding sun-dried Witchshade leaves using a mortar and pestle.

  Witchshade was a highly poisonous pnt indigenous to this fantasy isekai universe. Just as the etymology of its name would suggest, it was one of the Old Grass Witch’s favorite garden herbs — her bread and butter, so to speak.

  When ingested normally, it was a lethal poison that was infamously used by assassins. As a matter of fact, cultivating the herb was completely banned in the Kingdom. However, when the organic (non-por) component was extracted with an oil infusion and subsequently dehydrated, the resulting extract was a very potent anesthetic and antipyretic. It could still kill someone at high doses, but the Old Witch liked to give away small amounts of it as a cold medicine.

  “Don’t touch your eyes,” the witch warned me.

  “…I’ll wash my hands afterwards.”

  “I’m just saying… I can’t resurrect an idiot from the dead.”

  It was now nearly a month after I arrived in this isekai universe. During this span of time, I had apparently upgraded my retionship with the neighborhood witch to the point that I was doing household chores for the old dy. At over a hundred years old, she suffered from joint problems, and she hadn’t refused when I offered to help with her yard. Before long, I was learning various bits of random trivia simply by spending a lot of time around her.

  Officially, she hadn’t acknowledged me as her ’apprentice’ or any formal retionship like that — but she certainly hadn’t shied away from immediately whacking me on the head whenever she felt like I was making a mistake in front of her.

  + + +

  “Can I ask something?”

  “No.” The witch refused before I could bring up yet another one of my asinine questions.

  However, I proceeded with my inquiry anyway.

  Despite how she looked, the witch was actually one of the biggest ‘softies’ that I had ever met. It was nearly impossible to make her truly angry, and I had discovered over the past few weeks that she had an incorrigible doting personality even if she acted like a grumpy old grandma who supposedly despised children.

  “The Church doesn’t allow women to become priests, so can you teach me magic?”

  A scowl appeared on the witch’s face.

  Her expression was as if a five-year-old toddler had asked her if it was okay to eat mud pie.

  “Why do you want to learn ‘magic’?” She spoke disapprovingly.

  In this universe, I had discovered some time ago that the Holy Church held a strict monopoly on the mystical entity known as ‘magic’. No one else was allowed to use holy spells or magic crystals, and in fact I overheard some people whispering about the Inquisition — secret agents who hunted down anyone who practiced magic without the Church’s approval.

  It was illegal for me to use, but it was undeniably effective.

  A few days ago, I had seen a priest heal a patient’s injury right in front of my own eyes. The huge gaping wound had closed in a matter of seconds, which was absolutely impossible with any kind of modern medical technology from Earth.

  Perhaps learning ’magic’ could help me save more people.

  “I want to be able to do more,” I expined naively.

  “It’s a filthy power,” the witch grimaced. “Horribly inefficient. For every life a priest saves, it comes from the death of five others. There is no true ‘healing’ from the misery and suffering, but rather it simply moves it around to different vessels while making the illness much worse.”

  “…I see.”

  Apparently there really were no magical miracles that happened for free…

  The Second Law of Thermodynamics was invioble even in a fantasy isekai universe.

  + + +

  Later in the afternoon, after we split apart to focus on our own miscelneous interests and activities, the Old Grass Witch came back to the apothecary room to find me.

  “There’s someone at the door.“ The witch said with a grumble. “Make them go away.”

  I looked up from the mountain of Witchshade powder that I was (still) grinding.

  By saying ‘go away’, the witch’s true meaning was to say ‘please help them.’ This old dy had this terrible habit of saying the exact opposite of what she truly meant. At least, I was quite sure about her intent, since there was multiple prior instances when I did exactly as she said (literally) and then she yelled at me for being a total idiot shortly afterwards.

  “Okay, I’ll be right over,” I said.

  I put the ground powder aside along with a dozen other jars and went to wash my hands.

  After cleaning up a little bit, I walked out of the front entrance of the witch’s cottage.

  There was a young city girl waiting nervously just outside of the rickety fence.

  If I had to describe her, I would say that she was the spitting image of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. She even wore a red hood and a dyed scarf that was tightly bundled around her neck. The only thing missing from her stylish look was the ‘Big Bad Wolf’, although it was hard to know if the monsters that lurked in the forest counted as fulfilling the parameters of the cssic fairy tale.

  “I-Is the Old Grass Witch home?” The girl stammered when she saw me.

  “If she were home, she’d throw you into a cauldron and cook you for dinner,” I replied ominously.

  “—Eep!”

  I was still practicing my ‘spooky witch speak’ after all. The st few times when I observed the old witch interacting with visitors, she nearly always threatened them, so I figured it was important to stay on brand. The witch was even more of an introvert than I was, and I could imagine that she’d die of social exposure if the locals liked her too much and knocked her front door every day.

  She was a very busy old dy with too many things to do, after all.

  “Why have you come here, foolish human child?” I asked, sticking to the witch’s standard customer service script.

  “…My grandmother is sick…”

  Of course.

  Why else would Little Red Riding Hood be here?

  “Sick from what?” I asked impatiently.

  “She’s been screaming all day in horrible pain… it’s on her left eye… there are dozens of bright red blisters on her face and my mom and dad are terrified. They think she’s been cursed by the devil. My grandmother says that it hurts like a knife is stabbing her eye.”

  —Well. That certainly wasn’t what I expected…

  “When did it start?”

  “Last night. She was completely normal the day before.”

  “Did anything touch her eye?”

  “No! Nothing at all!” The girl insisted. “I was knitting with my grandmother the evening before it started, and all she said that she had a little bit of a headache so she was going to bed early. Then she woke up a few hours ter with red pimples on her face!”

  “Can you point on your own face to show me where the blisters are?” I asked.

  The girl nodded and gestured over her left forehead and left orbit.

  “It doesn’t cross over to the right side?”

  “No… it’s just one side.”

  “Any swelling, pus, discharge from the eye or the rash?”

  “Not that we saw…”

  Well, in either case, I already had a strong idea about the final diagnosis.

  Even though I hadn’t seen the patient or the actual rash, the granddaughter’s description was highly suggestive of Herpes zoster ophthalmicus, otherwise known as ocur shingles. It was a notoriously painful rash caused by uniteral reactivation of the chicken pox virus along the V1 distribution (dermatome) of the trigeminal nerve.

  It would still be important for me to see the actual rash in case the young girl had described the lesion grossly inaccurately, but I had low suspicion for a bacterial, allergic, or rheumatologic etiology. If it were the Old Grass Witch, she wouldn’t have even bothered to see the actual patient, but as a licensed practitioner from Earth, it was much more of my own preference to confirm the physical exam in person before making any final recommendations.

  “Can you take me to your grandmother?“

  “Y-Yes! Thank you so much for coming to help!”

  The young girl bowed deeply.

  If she had gone to the Holy Church to beg for a healer, they would have demanded that she pay in gold upfront, which was far beyond the financial means of most citizens in the city of Rupelweld. In contrast, the Old Grass Witch never put a price on any particur treatment. That being said, most people still tried to compensate her after the fact… rgely out of fear that they would be horribly cursed if they offended the witch.

  “Can you wait here while I prepare a few things?” I asked the girl.

  Little Red Riding Hood nodded repeatedly while I went back inside of the witch’s cottage.

  + + +

  In the apothecary room, I grabbed a glob of rd and some dough for making old-fashioned pills. Next, I took some Witchshade extract from the shelves a measured out the amount that I wanted on a bance scale.

  The acute neuritis (pain) from shingles could be quite intense, and sometimes acetaminophen or NSAIDs wasn’t sufficient to control the knife-like pain. In severe cases, I had occasionally prescribed opiates on Earth. From what I had observed so far, high doses of Witchshade could be as strong as hydrocodone, but it cked the euphoric or addictive qualities. Consequently, I measured out a rger quantity of the powder with the intent to pack it into individual “pills” so that it would be harder to overdose by accident.

  “…Interesting.”

  The witch’s soft wispy voice was right on my neck, and I nearly jumped in surprise.

  I hadn’t even noticed when she walked in.

  “Do you think this little girl’s grandmother is in peril?” She asked me probingly.

  She was testing me.

  But this certainly wasn’t my first time working underneath an attending physician.

  “I think she will probably go blind in the left eye,” I described my thought process aloud. “The rash will scar, and it will leave ugly marks on the face. It’s not life-threatening disease, but it is certainly an urgent situation in the sense that blindness is permanent. However, I don’t have the medicine that I would need in order to prevent those complications from occurring.”

  “You don’t think you need Pysophorilibum?”

  Pysophorilibum — spores collected from a certain fungus that the witch cultivated which resembled penicillin. She typically used it as an all-purpose antibiotic for skin infections, which probably gave it a simir spectrum of activity as contemporary cephalexin (a first-generation cephalosporin).

  “No,” I responded ftly.

  Herpes zoster was a virus (varicel zoster virus), which meant that antibiotics were ineffective.

  A wide… almost giddy… grin appeared on the witch’s face.

  She was clearly very happy.

  “I think you could use some of this.”

  She pushed a pouch of medicine that I was unfamiliar with into my hands.

  “Zocrythethyaciux,” she announced proudly. “A medicine unlike any you have ever used before. In fact, I created it myself. It is also effective at treating the common cold, but it causes severe diarrhea and stomachaches… so it’s hard to say if the treatment is better than the disease.”

  …An antiviral?

  Frankly, I was almost shocked.

  The earliest css of modern antivirals were nucleoside analogs, but the qualities of these compounds meant that they were virtually impossible to find in nature and had be artificially synthesized in a boratory. As a matter of fact, it was a difficult enough of a process that I doubted that I would never achieve such a massive accomplishment even if I spent an entire lifetime trying to replicate this technology from Earth.

  “Wow…”

  It was a beautiful medicine, and I was practically salivating.

  This old dy was a genius, wasn’t she?

  I really hoped that she would expin to me how she did this in the future.

  + + +

  I was in quite a happy mood as the little girl led me back inside the walls of Rupelweld.

  As usual, I was wearing a thick bck hooded cloak that concealed most of my figure. This was my usual attire while going out in the city, as I did not want to attract too much attention to myself given my atypical skin and hair color. During my time here, I had received more than a few remarks about how dark = ‘evil’ or ‘unlucky’, and I simply didn’t want to deal with the casual prejudice about hair color that was widespread in this society.

  As a matter of fact, I hadn’t been able to find an ordinary job in this isekai universe because none of the taverns or inns wanted to hire a ‘cursed’ waitress with bck hair. I was a highly suspicious foreigner who cked any background or credentials, so there weren’t many other jobs that a peasant woman could take in a medieval society.

  If I hadn’t summoned my boyfriend along with me… I really would have been completely penniless. After all, it wasn’t like the old witch paid me in cash for “volunteering” to help her. Currently, I was living like a total leech off of my boyfriend’s meager sary, and I was sure I would have been in deep financial trouble if I was going through all of this alone.

  I still had absolutely zero income.

  Finding a job was really hard, wasn’t it?

  We passed a brothel in the city streets, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have turned to selling my body for money. That being said, it seemed doubtful that I would go for a particurly high price. I simply didn’t have the physical features that were popur in this society. As a child, my genetics made it quite clear that I would never have a rge bosom or plump buttocks no how much I grew. None of the women in my family had that kind of body type.

  “What does your family do for work?” I asked Little Red Riding Hood.

  Her clothes were quite nice, so she must have come from a middle css background.

  Professional trades in this medieval society were rgely familial. The first-born son typically inherited his father’s business. Each craft was reguted by a guild, which set prices and controlled trade secrets so that outsiders could not waltz in and penetrate the market. It was also common for the children of different businesses to intermarry in order to protect the secrecy of their craft, so many local guilds were essentially one rge heavily interbred family.

  “They’re gss-blowers,” she answered.

  “I see.”

  This made me excited.

  There were a lot of things that I wanted to make that depended on gss technology. I clearly couldn’t do it myself, especially since gss-working was a highly delicate process. Even if I learned how to improvise a basic product, there was no way I would ever be better than a master craftsman who had many decades of hands-on experience.

  + + +

  We turned into a little-known alleyway on the street where all the gssworkers were located.

  I had never been in this part of the city before, and I didn’t recognize the name of the shop that the little girl led me into. At the very least, I could say that it wasn’t among the top three gss workshops in the city. Rather, it was a small establishment that was likely in the bottom half of the local guild’s tier list.

  The workshop was aged and slightly run-down.

  We walked through the street-facing retail shop and then went upstairs to private area that the owners used as their living residence. There was a separate passageway on the first floor that led to a crafting area, and I saw a backyard shed that likely contained a gssblowing furnace.

  “Danieka, where have you been?” A stern voice reverberated from across the narrow corridor.

  “Mommy!” The little girl ran forward. “I brought the witch’s assistant!”

  A gaunt, scary-looking man stepped into view.

  When he saw me, there was a distrusting glint in his eyes.

  “We have no need for a witch in this household,” he growled disapprovingly.

  “B-But… grandma said…”

  “It doesn’t matter what my dear mother said,” the father interrupted her. “Heathens have no pce in this household. The pagan ways are evil. Send the devil’s wench away!”

  “But…” The young girl looked like she was about to cry.

  The situation did not look very promising.

  “Sir,” I tried to provide a voice of reason. “Your daughter tells me that your mother is suffering in severe pain. If it is left untreated, she will go blind in the left eye.”

  “If she goes blind, then that is God’s will. I would sooner kill her myself rather than make a deal with an agent of the devil!”

  …Well, there was certainly no way I was going to go anywhere from here.

  The little girl had a ugly face covered in snot, but her father didn’t seem to care.

  “Could you at least make sure that she sees a priest quickly, then?” I said. “The rash needs to be treated within 72 hours of its appearance. After that time passes, I am doubtful there is any healing magic from the Holy Church that could cure the blindness.”

  As far as I could tell, holy magic was powerful, but it wasn’t capable of achieving the impossible.

  “Why you cunt—” The man stepped forward with his arm raised, as if he intended to strike me.

  His wife suddenly jumped in front of him, holding him back.

  “What gives you the audacity to tell me what to do?!” He screamed at me. “This is my family, my property, and my mother. Don’t you dare insult my right to make my own decisions!”

  I backpedaled several steps with my arms up in the air.

  I really had zero interest in tangling with this deeply opinionated person.

  It was deeply unfortunate, but I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to argue with people who weren’t going to consent to treatment. Even in my past life, I encountered simir types of people fairly frequently, and I had learned retively early on that it wasn’t possible to force one’s values onto another person. At the end of the day, I was just a powerless witch/doctor.

  There was no reason for me to stay any longer, so I simply turned around and promptly left.

  + + +

  I had walked maybe a few hundred steps down the street when the little girl came running after me.

  After she caught up, she put her hands on her knees, panting and wheezing out of breath.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” She repeated multiple times with tears in her eyes.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said ftly.

  There really wasn’t anything that a child could do in a deeply conservative medieval world. Even when she grew up, there wasn’t ever a point when her words would ever hold more weight than her husband’s. It was the harsh reality of living in this kind of patriarchal universe.

  The girl sniffled and hiccuped.

  That being said… what purpose did an ‘evil’ witch serve in society if she didn’t py the role of Cinderel’s fairy godmother every now and then?

  In fact, I was absolutely certain about what the Old Grass Witch would have done.

  I squatted down to the little girl’s level and took out a few medicinal pouches from the improvised pockets that I had sewn into my dress.

  “From the red pouch, have your grandmother swallow one pill every eight hours for seven days. It prevents blindness in the eye, but it may cause a lot of belly cramps and diarrhea. Be sure that she drinks a lot water. From the bck pouch, take a maximum of one pill every four hours for pain. Less is better. If she swallows too much, the bck medicine is poisonous.”

  I pced the two bags in the young girl’s hands and then immediately stood up.

  “T-This…” The girl stammered, fbbergast.

  She hadn’t expected that I would give her any medicine at the st second. As a child, she certainly didn’t have any money to pay for it, but I also did not ask for any payment.

  “…Thank you!”

  “Did you remember the instructions? Don’t forget them,” I warned her seriously.

  “I’ll remember it!” She promised vigorously.

  “Repeat it for me then,” I asked her.

  I confirmed that the read-back was correct, and then I let her run off alone.

  At the end of this encounter, I betedly remembered to cover myself with my oversized cloak. In this medieval isekai universe, I was literally doing a drug deal in the middle of the street, and I didn’t want to be identified by any nosy bystanders who might otherwise report me to the city guards for illegal activity.

  These were deeply troubling times in the Kingdom of Adelgracia.

  It was hard to predict how long the dwindling old pagan tradition would st before it was successfully exterminated by the Holy Church. In this remote frontier region hundreds of leagues away from the royal capital, I still felt quite safe, but I knew that the Church was on a crusade to eliminate any serious competitors within its sphere of influence.

  It wasn’t a question of whether it would happen — but rather a question of when.

  Sooner or ter, the great tide of society would overwhelm the few witches who remained.

  ?